speed-vs-latency

Know How to Make your VPN Faster

Whenever anyone, including us, reviews a VPN, you might have noticed speed is considered a significant factor for selecting a VPN. There’s no question in it, it’s the critical part, which shouldn’t be overlooked. But still, there are other things that play an essential role in deciding what makes one VPN slower or faster compared to others.

To understand what makes a VPN faster, whereas what makes another VPN slower, here we’ll discuss a few of the components. For example, what alters the speed of a VPN, speed vs. latency, how bandwidth differs from throughput, and more.

Here’s What Affects VPN Speed

The download and upload speeds you get after connecting to a VPN server depend upon several factors. Some of those factors are monitored by your VPN provider like the speed of the server, server load, locations, routing, etc. Nevertheless, your internet connection is also equally important to make a difference in speed.

So, let’s dig into it.

1. Speed of Your Internet Connection

It doesn’t matter what’s your VPN provider or whether it’s the fastest VPN service provider or not. If your internet connection is not offering an optimal level of speed, you can’t expect it from the VPN service. For example, you cannot expect VPN speed like 50mbps, if your internet connection at home is only 10mbps.

2. Location of the Servers

On which VPN server you’re connected does makes a difference. For example, a nearby VPN server can get you around 95+ MBPS speed if your internet connection offers a 100mbps internet connection speed, and from the same internet connection, you can also get around 5-10mbps, if your selected VPN server is from other parts of the globe.

3. Server Crowding & Bandwidth

The number of users connected on one VPN server does make a difference in the speed of a VPN server. For example, if there are around 100 people on a VPN server offering 1000mbps, then on average, you can’t expect more than 10mbps per person. It’s one of the reasons why certain VPN services are faster, as they’re offering more server bandwidth per user.

4. Strength of an Encryption

Encryption of data requires adding extra data, also known as encryption overhead, which does affect the bandwidth. So, it’s not good to say, but weaker encryption can help in providing a faster speed, usually not recommended.

5. VPN Protocol

The VPN protocol selected by the users does make a difference in encryption strength as well as speed also. For instance, if the user is using UDP (OpenVPN) protocol, then it’s evident that the user will get a faster rate compared to that TCP (OpenVPN) protocol, which forces the server to verify the receipt of all the data packets and the lost packets which are sent again. Moreover, other deciding factors for speed and latency is determined by the encryption algorithms.

6. Data Routing

How the VPN server routes, your data does make a difference in speed. Also, how your VPN provider routes your connection between the servers impacts the rate. Nevertheless, less experienced VPN providers will not be able to do this efficiently, whereas other popular VPN providers like NordVPN, ExpressVPN, Windscribe offer a robust routing algorithm, making them better when it comes to VPN speed.

7. The Way Your Network is Setup

When a user connects to the router directly with the help of a LAN cable, it will boost VPN speed, specifically if the internet connection speed is more than 50mbps. Also, speed is boosted for more than 100% through a cable connection.

Another Two VPN Components: Speed vs. Latency

Speed

Whenever the word Speed is referred to in this article, it generally regarding the throughput or bandwidth, in which it’s the amount of data (could be bits, bytes, MB, GB, etc.), which can be transferred within a specific time (mostly per second.)

So, usually, it’s stated as Mbps (Mega Bits Per Second) or MBps (Mega Bytes Per Second). Nevertheless, it’s the speed of the server, in larger units. Mostly Gbps (Giga bits per second), which means 1000 Megabits. (For, e.g., 300 3-minute MP3 songs) per second.

Latency

Another component of Speed is Latency. Here, the Latency means a specific time period between sending and receiving of a request and a response from a server a user is trying to access. Such as a website. Also, VPN always adds latency because it lets your data routed from the VPN server before it reaches the destination web server.

Moreover, Latency is doesn’t get noticed by users because,

  • It’s assessed in milliseconds. For example, 1/1000th of a second.
  • Mostly the data packets have the same latency, and whenever the user streams something, it will be in sync. So, it’s streamed and reaches the user’s device in a fraction of second later compared to that without the VPN.
Also, if you’re using a VPN for gaming, latency comes into the picture for picking a server location. For example, close to the location of the game server is good for minimizing lag, especially when it’s real-time gaming, for instance, any FPS (First Person Shooters.)

Here are Other Speed Factors for VPN:

Some other factors which help in deciding VPN speed are:

Location and Distance of a Server

If your data has to be traveled further to reach the VPN server or from a VPN server to the destination website, the speed will deter. Hence, longer the distance, slower the speed.

Protocols of VPN

The type of VPN protocol selected by the user does make a difference in the speed of a VPN. For example, the OpenVPN protocol will offer the highest rate compared to other protocols like IPSec or PPTP.

Load and Bandwidth of a Server

Whenever you connect to any VPN server, a certain amount of bandwidth allocation is done for you. How much it’s done; it depends upon the setup of the server and how much data you’re about to transfer. For example, if you’re connected with any server that has a bandwidth capacity of 1000Mbps and the server is shared among 200 people, then the average bandwidth will be allocated to all the users, which is 5mbps.

Ultimately, the bandwidth capacity available in any given server and the number of people connected to it for verifying is also one of the deciding factors of a VPN speed.

To Some Up What Makes VPN Faster

  • Try to select the closest working VPN server whenever you use a VPN.
  • Choose the VPN server, which is not crowded.
  • Make use of the PPTP protocol if the security is not the priority.
  • If you’re looking for the blend of speed and security, then it’s best to go with OpenVPN UDP protocol.
  • Connect with the router using LAN cable, as its faster compared to Wi-Fi.
  • Upgrade your internet connection speed by contacting your ISP (Internet Service Provider.)

Wrapping Up

By looking at the above points, we can observe that many factors come into play when it comes to VPN speed. Some of them can be controlled by your VPN provider, and others cannot be, depending upon your usage. And by luck, if you go through the above points, you’ll be able to figure out how the VPN can work faster and why the speed is slowed down if it does so.