Pulls from docker hub < 2Mbits/second

Pulling mfthomps/labtainer.base (and related images) from the hub crawls at < 2Mbits/second.
It is pulling from sf09.r.cloudfront.net

Version: Docker version 17.09.0-ce build afdb6d4
OS: Ubuntu 16.4 VM VirtualBox on OSX.

Steps to reproduce:
docker pull mfthomps/labtainer.base

I have a 150Mbps download link. Pulls are usually much faster, but at times they seem to crawl. Is this due to fluctuation in AWS speeds?

Also, subsequent pulling of derivative images has become extremely slow. For example:
docker pull mfthomps/onewayhash.onewayhash.student take 90 seconds to pull 1MByte.

Are such slow speeds for Docker Hub to be expected in the future?