Not sure if this will help anyone else, but I spent a couple weeks blaming Claude Code when it was actually my VPN. Symptoms I was seeing: Web app sometimes loads instantly, sometimes hangs on spinner Occasional 529 - Overloaded Random “service unavailable” errors on first request Same account, same laptop, same repo — no code changes Retrying 1–2 mins later would sometimes fix it At first I assumed it was infra hiccups. Totally fair, happens. But I started noticing it correlated with where I was connecting from. I travel a bit and I let my VPN auto-select the “best” region. It dynamically switches endpoints based on load/latency. After paying attention for a few days, the pattern became obvious: Region A (e.g. US West) → Claude Code works perfectly Region B (e.g. random EU node) → frequent 529 / partial loads Auto-switch kicks in mid-session → next request fails What I tested Disabled VPN entirely → worked fine. Re-enabled VPN but manually pinned to a known-good region → worked fine. Turned auto-region back on → issues came back within ~1–2 sessions. Used split tunneling to route only Claude traffic through a fixed node → stable since. In my case, the fix was: Disable automatic region switching Pin Claude-related traffic to a single region that consistently works (Optional) Use split tunneling so the rest of my traffic can auto-balance Since doing that, I haven’t seen a single 529 or load failure. Why this might matter My guess (pure speculation) is that certain VPN exit regions may hit different routing paths, compliance gates, rate limits, or edge configurations. If your IP is bouncing between regions, you might be effectively changing your “origin” every session. If you’re debugging “random” Claude Code instability, here’s a quick checklist: ✅ Try without VPN ✅ Pin to a single region ✅ Avoid auto-switching endpoints ✅ Check if errors correlate with IP changes This obviously won’t apply to everyone — and I’m not saying the service never has real outages. But if you’re seeing inconsistent behavior with no reproducible code-level cause, networking might be worth ruling out. Curious if anyone else has seen region-dependent behavior like this. submitted by /u/bjxxjj
Originally posted by u/bjxxjj on r/ClaudeCode