using a VPN for faster downloads without ISP throttling

FTP downloads on our 100 Mbps BSNL fiber averaged at around 10 Mbps when downloading from Fiske planetarium's server in Colorado. First I tried setting up OpenVPN to one of our Azure servers, and when that setup did not go according to plan, I tried ProtonVPN's free plan. 

Using a free server in the US, FTP traffic tunneled through ProtonVPN went at around 30 Mbps on average, touching 40-48 Mbps occasionally. 

Going back to the OpenVPN setup - I went through this webinar on OpenVPN for ZTNA where there is a mention of how to tunnel certain specific domains through OpenVPN - tried it, but instead of specifying only Fiske's server, I tried it with the Split Tunnel Off for a particular user I created. The IP address was being shown as our Azure machine's IP address, but there was not much of a speed improvement - rather, there was the issue of FTP not going through at all. This might have been due to some PASV mode setting etc, but I didn't try troubleshooting since ProtonVPN was sufficient for my needs.

Detailed setup:

ProtonVPN setup was relatively easy. Just create the free account, download the GUI client, and click to start.

OpenVPN cloud setup was more complicated. I wanted to explore some of its features, so I tried various options. The setup steps were mostly as per
https://openvpn.net/cloud-vpn/quick-start/
https://openvpn.net/cloud-docs/user-guide-protecting-your-users-and-your-network-using-cyber-shield/

But instead of a Linux internet gateway, I was using our Azure server running Windows. For setting up connectors and users, some hiccups were caused due to the following points. 

• For the Internet gateway setup, there is a "Deploy connector" option leading to the download of the common Windows connector (which creates a TAP network adapter etc). But when connecting with that connector, we should first download the profile file - which is also available in the Deploy connector drop-down - and use that profile for the connector. That is the correct profile for an internet gateway.
  
  
• When creating users, we need to manually set a temporary password, then view that temporary password if we're creating a user without an optional email linked to it. On first login, the temporary password needs to be changed.
  
  
• The OpenVPN Cloud free plan has unlimited data and we can create a large number of users, but is limited to 3 concurrent connections.