Why is my VPN connection so incredibly slow?

I have a VPN connection on my home Win7 Pro 64-bit machine to access files on the server at my office. I connect using Win7's built-in VPN protocol, using my office's static IP address. After the VPN connection is active, I can go to \\server\share and access our files, just as if I were sitting within the office LAN.

Problem is recently it seems like data transfer speeds are immensely slow, so much so that I cannot work on what I need to.

We use Comcast Business at the office, and various speed tests show what I consider to be a blazing fast 110-115 Mbps download speed, and 20-25 Mbps upload speed. At home I have the consumer version of Comcast Xfinity internet, and I get what I consider a decently fast 25-30 Mbps down, and about 5 Mbps upload.

So I tried the LAN SpeedTest Lite utility on my home machine, entered a location on the office server as the location for the test file, and the speed I got back was a dismal 1.6 Mbps down, and 0.8 Mbps up.

In the case of most of my work, most of the data is traveling from the office to home, which would mean it's using the office outgoing connection and my home's incoming connection, both of which are around 25 Mbps in online speed tests.

Is there any way to increase the speed to the office server? I could have sworn I used to get about 5 Mbps down thru VPN, which wasn't great, but adequate for the work I was doing. What to do?

Depending on the type of VPN connection you have configured and which client you are using the cause and thus the solution for your problem can vary. If you are using Windows 7 as your VPN client you might want to try disabling the Use Default Gateway option so that you use your internet connection as opposed to the VPN internet connection to tunnel traffic.

To disable this feature you would go into the properties of your VPN connection and select the Networking tab. From there you would highlight Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) and click the “Properties” button. Next, select the “Advanced” button. The first checkable box says “Use default gateway on remote network”. You will want to ensure this box is unchecked.

Hope it could help.

Have already tried that and it only affects internet traffic. Doesn't seem to affect data transfer between the office server and home machine. When I tried the LAN SpeedTest described above, I actually had already disabled the Use Default Gateway option.

Yes I am using the Win7 built in VPN. Are there other option that could increase speeds?