VPN seems to be disruptingg my internet connection and everything iss slow to load or doesn't load at all.

And if you disable the builtin VPN functionality, do new tabs load again?

What about existing tabs, these do not seem affected any you can still use them just fine, and even navigate to the same sites that are not loading in new tabs in these, or these also stop loading any new content at that point?

If I disable the VPN new tabs do load again and existing tabs seem okay too. When I shut down and restart my computer the first few tabs may open okay but then it becomes an issue again. Thank you.

And if you disable VPN, verify tabs are loading again, and enable the VPN back — would it start getting new content now, or still stuck?

Interestingly, so far this morning everything seems to be loading.

But to try to answer your question, turning off VPN and the turning back on didn't seem to work. Only shutting down and re-starting the computer.

If things aren't loading, turning off VPN lets them load right away. And then when I turn VPN back on things continue to load for a while. But eventually it becomes a problem again.

Are you using the built in "VPN" browser protection, or this is an issue with the paid Mozilla VPN app?

The free Firefox VPN

Does changing locations have any effect? (e.g. if one gets unavailable, could routing through somewhere else help?) — just trying to figure out on which end of the hose this could be…

I have it on "Recommended" where Firefox finds the fastest location. I did once try switching to United States which didn't seem to make a difference.

That probably won't make a difference. Try switching to GB or CA for a bit and then switching back to US or your default — to see if you get a different location, in case it's the endpoint that needs rotating.

I don't know offhand if there's anything on macOS level that wouldn't like this prolonged masque/proxy connection — there should be no reason the system dislikes it after a while to the point it would stall the line. I can only think of some issues with your ISP or router/modem that might not like the persistent connections to one single endpoint. 🤷

Do you have anything to restart or update firmware in your networking HW, or try connecting through different service (in a café or using a mobile hotspot tethering to a data plan?)

For whatever reason, today everything is working just fine. I haven't had a chance to try switching because it has loaded every time. Could it just be the volume of traffic at certain times?

It stopped loading again so I switched to the UK and it did load right away.