Mullvad halves my internet speeds — is there a fix?
Typically, my ISP provides ~500mbps down, but Mullvad seems to struggle to get above 220mbps. Is this typical?
I want to route all network traffic through it on the router, but don't want to miss out on the download speeds I'm paying for.
Yes speed decreases are typical. Pick what's more important to you the speed or using the vpn.
Or use split VPN to have things you want to use full speed go through your raw isp.. like steam downloads.
Switch location in Mullvad. I often find that solves any issues I see (such as poor speed or too many captchas ...)
Yes, a slight speed decrease is expected even with good proxy services at common residential speeds. Given that yours is far above the average, a greater decrease can be expected. It shouldn't be this much though.
If this is installed on a common "router" SOHO gateway appliance, it's likely that its hardware is simply not able to keep up with the tunnelling workload (encryption, package handling). For troubleshooting, try the same proxy server on a more powerful machine while disabling the proxy on the gateway. If it's faster, that's likely your issue.
Also try a different proxy server. That particular one might simply not have enough capacity to serve you more than that.
Open VPN has a knack for taking out a big part of the throughput. My 1gb gets knocked down to somewhere in the 300 space. Wireguard has more performance but more of a trick to set up, and if the ISP is feeling obnoxious is a lot easier to isolate and block than OVPN.
Yea , a bit is expected. But use wireguard to get better speed
Put your VPN on a device with a fast CPU. That'll help with speeds. Also be sure you're using the wireguard protocol