How can I fix an issue where my internet stops when downloading something in a hyper-v vm while using a VPN on host (both using windows)?

Question

The setup where the problem happens is having a vpn (ExpressVPN) active on my host computer and a windows instance running in hyper-v.

My problem is that whenever I download a software inside the virtual machine, the internet stops working on both the virtual machine and the host machine. The only way to fix this is to pause (or stop) the virtual machine session, diconnect and reconnect the VPN and resume the session again. It is very problematic since it only downloads up to a few hundreds MB before this issue happens.

This issue does not happen when browsing the internet, only when downloading (any software that is big enough).

I tried with a download speed of 3MB/s and 30 MB/s.

The lowest amount of data I have downloaded before the internet cutting off was 20 MB and the largest ammount was up to 1.6 GB but on average it happens after only a few hundreds MB.

Solutions I tried so far without success:

• Trying a different browser
• Trying a different internet connection
• Trying to recreate a different vm
• Trying to use different types of network adapters
• Requesting help from expressVPN and fiddling with their settings (including using different protocols)

Answer 1

Hello,

 

Thank you for posting in Q&A forum.

To further troubleshoo this issue, please kindly try below steps:

1.Open task manager in hyper-V VM, check the network speed/CPU and disk performance when downloading software.

2.Check if ExpressVPN is set as allow split tunneling, which allows traffic to bypass the VPN.

3.Check if the network adapter is external switch.

4.Check if there's any VPN or related network log.

 

Best regards，

Jill Zhou

 

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