Poor transatlantic speeds (U.S. - U.K.)

Hello all,

I'm not sure if this is the best place to post this thread but I did so because I have BT Business Infinity (80/20) and couldn't find a suitable forum. My question is probably more related to this country's infrastructure rather than my own ISP (or maybe it IS related since BT owns most if not all of it).

Also, please bear in mind I'm not a Networking God so go easy on me!

I have a bunch of servers hosted in NY and NJ and I can't download or upload to them at more than around 500-700KB/s.

If I connect to a VPN hosted in DC, or even one here in Europe (eg. Germany) I get around 1.2-1.4MB/s.

Can anyone help make sense of this? Is the transatlantic link between the U.S. and U.K. capped or just overloaded? How is it the VPN traffic goes through much faster?

Here's a test IP from the NY Data Center: 173.234.117.106

This is my trace to that test IP:
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 10.0.0.1
2 4 ms 4 ms 4 ms 217.32.145.228
3 5 ms 5 ms 4 ms 217.32.145.254
4 9 ms 8 ms 9 ms 213.120.181.134
5 9 ms 9 ms 9 ms 217.41.169.221
6 9 ms 9 ms 9 ms 217.41.169.109
7 19 ms 18 ms 18 ms 109.159.251.229
8 24 ms 23 ms 23 ms core1-te0-13-0-2.ilford.ukcore.bt.net [109.159.251.137]
9 14 ms 14 ms 14 ms core1-pos9-1.telehouse.ukcore.bt.net [194.74.65.114]
10 17 ms 17 ms 17 ms t2as1-tge4-4.uk-lon1.eu.bt.net [166.49.211.145]
11 16 ms 17 ms 16 ms t2a1-ge4-0-0.uk-lon1.eu.bt.net [166.49.135.17]
12 14 ms 14 ms 17 ms linx.ge1-0.cr01.lhr01.mzima.net [195.66.225.15]
13 99 ms 89 ms 89 ms te0-5.cr1.nyc2.us.packetexchange.net [69.174.120.89]
14 101 ms 107 ms 107 ms xe6-1.cr1.nyc3.us.packetexchange.net [216.193.255.210]
15 91 ms 99 ms 99 ms 68.64.145.202
16 97 ms 97 ms 98 ms 173.234.117.106.rdns.ubiquityservers.com [173.234.117.106]

Here's a trace to the VPN network in DC that I used:
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 10.0.0.1
2 4 ms 4 ms 4 ms 217.32.145.228
3 5 ms 6 ms 5 ms 217.32.145.254
4 9 ms 8 ms 9 ms 213.120.181.94
5 9 ms 9 ms 9 ms 217.41.169.221
6 9 ms 9 ms 9 ms 217.41.169.109
7 19 ms 18 ms 18 ms acc2-10GigE-9-2-0.sf.21cn-ipp.bt.net [109.159.251.221]
8 26 ms 23 ms 23 ms core2-te0-0-0-4.ealing.ukcore.bt.net [109.159.251.155]
9 16 ms 16 ms 16 ms peer1-xe11-1-0.redbus.ukcore.bt.net [62.6.200.93]
10 17 ms 17 ms 17 ms ge-2-1-0.mpr1.lhr2.uk.above.net [195.66.224.76]
11 20 ms 20 ms 20 ms ge-2-1-0.mpr1.lhr2.uk.above.net [64.125.28.141]
12 89 ms 89 ms 89 ms xe-5-2-0.cr1.dca2.us.above.net [64.125.26.21]
13 92 ms 92 ms 92 ms xe-0-0-1.er1.iad10.us.above.net [64.125.31.206]
14 90 ms 90 ms 90 ms 209.66.64.190.t01166-02.above.net [209.66.64.190]
15 93 ms 93 ms 93 ms us2.vpn.giganews.com [216.168.3.17]

VPN trace to the NY Data Center:
1 98 ms 93 ms 93 ms 192.168.35.55
2 95 ms 95 ms 93 ms 192.168.32.3
3 129 ms 92 ms 93 ms xe-2-3-0.er1.iad10.us.above.net [209.66.64.189]
4 103 ms 107 ms 93 ms xe1-0.cr01.iad01.mzima.net [206.223.115.62]
5 107 ms 107 ms 107 ms 69.174.120.113
6 * 106 ms 105 ms xe6-1.cr1.nyc3.us.packetexchange.net [216.193.255.210]
7 112 ms 101 ms 101 ms 68.64.145.202
8 * 114 ms 101 ms 173.234.117.106.rdns.ubiquityservers.com [173.234.117.106]

Thank you so much for looking and any comments you leave.

I think its taking a different route, so could be route congestion, i.e. affects you when not on the VPN, but as the VPN traffic is tunnelled over a different route you bypass it.

Suspect you need someone with access to the bits of network to figure this out fully

I would look at ISP throttling.

By using a VPN, your traffic can't be inspected, classified and throttled - consequently you'll usually get higher throughput up and down.