How to Increase Your VPN Speed?
There are, of course, choices and tweaks you can make to improve the efficiency and the overall speed of your connection to get the best VPN you can get. This includes protocols you choose to employ, firewall tweaks, the internet connection you use and more.
1. Your Internet Connection
Firstly, it’s important to note you are limited by the speed of your Internet connection without the VPN. It may sound obvious but it’s worth getting out of the way first.
You cannot get better speed than is available via your regular broadband connection and it’s important to always be aware of this limiting factor.
While we understand the freedom a Wi-Fi connection allows, it’s always recommended to connect directly to your router as that usually provides a faster and more stable connection.
You can always quickly check if your connection is down for a reason by disconnecting your VPN and running a speed test to the same server location. If there are significant differences you need to run the diagnostics and take steps to achieve an unaffected and fast VPN.
2. The Device You Use
Many of the best VPN services available will support mobile and desktop devices, but some devices will not be able to attain the high speeds users hope for. Heavy encryption processes need newer processors
with more power and the older generation, especially mobile, devices can cause problems.
It might be a little drastic but if your device is lagging with other “heavy” apps your only option for consistently fast VPN could be changing your device.
3. VPN Server Location
The server to which you connect is very important for many, quite obvious reasons.
The best VPN providers will have multiple servers and locations users can choose from. It’s usually best going for the closest server to your actual location to ensure lower latency and consequent faster connection, but you can fiddle and check out several different options with the above-mentioned internet connection speed test to discover the fastest VPN servers for yourself.
4. Server Bandwidth
Speed is also affected by the VPN server bandwidth coupled with the number of users connected to it. The fastest VPN service is obviously achieved with more available bandwidth per user. You can usually check this before taking up any VPN. You’ll notice that more expensive VPNs can afford better infrastructure, which is one of the main reasons why the free VPNs are usually somewhat slower .
5. Firewall and Antivirus Software
While we do recommend having both your antivirus and firewall software on at all times, it’s evident they can also slow down your connection as they actually filter all data traffic. Therefore, if your VPN has slowed down you can look for the issue by pausing the firewall and antivirus services to see if they actively impede your VPN speed.
If the antivirus does seem to be at fault you shouldn’t resort to uninstalling or switching between VPN providers too quickly.
You can work your way around this by making exceptions for the VPN processes within the specific local security software which can easily be found under advanced settings and active protection.
6. Protocol, Routing and Ports
The encryption and tunnelling protocol you choose will directly and sometime drastically affect the VPN speed.
L2TP and SSTP protocols offer better security but best security may come at a high cost as they usually offer slower speed. If you use VPN mainly to download and access geo-restricted content, you may want to try weaker encryption levels. Less data usually means better speed but protocol will also determine other settings where
TCP , for example, will force the server to verify the data received and further slow the process, while UDP will do no such thing.
Users are urged to explore the data routing options with all VPN providers, as only the fastest VPN services will have the most efficient routes between servers and the end-user. The speed is sometimes slowed as routes are ineffic
There are, of course, choices and tweaks you can make to improve the efficiency and the overall speed of your connection to get the best VPN you can get. This includes protocols you choose to employ, firewall tweaks, the internet connection you use and more.
1. Your Internet Connection
Firstly, it’s important to note you are limited by the speed of your Internet connection without the VPN. It may sound obvious but it’s worth getting out of the way first.
You cannot get better speed than is available via your regular broadband connection and it’s important to always be aware of this limiting factor.
While we understand the freedom a Wi-Fi connection allows, it’s always recommended to connect directly to your router as that usually provides a faster and more stable connection.
You can always quickly check if your connection is down for a reason by disconnecting your VPN and running a speed test to the same server location. If there are significant differences you need to run the diagnostics and take steps to achieve an unaffected and fast VPN.
2. The Device You Use
Many of the best VPN services available will support mobile and desktop devices, but some devices will not be able to attain the high speeds users hope for. Heavy encryption processes need newer processors
with more power and the older generation, especially mobile, devices can cause problems.
It might be a little drastic but if your device is lagging with other “heavy” apps your only option for consistently fast VPN could be changing your device.
3. VPN Server Location
The server to which you connect is very important for many, quite obvious reasons.
The best VPN providers will have multiple servers and locations users can choose from. It’s usually best going for the closest server to your actual location to ensure lower latency and consequent faster connection, but you can fiddle and check out several different options with the above-mentioned internet connection speed test to discover the fastest VPN servers for yourself.
4. Server Bandwidth
Speed is also affected by the VPN server bandwidth coupled with the number of users connected to it. The fastest VPN service is obviously achieved with more available bandwidth per user. You can usually check this before taking up any VPN. You’ll notice that more expensive VPNs can afford better infrastructure, which is one of the main reasons why the free VPNs are usually somewhat slower .
5. Firewall and Antivirus Software
While we do recommend having both your antivirus and firewall software on at all times, it’s evident they can also slow down your connection as they actually filter all data traffic. Therefore, if your VPN has slowed down you can look for the issue by pausing the firewall and antivirus services to see if they actively impede your VPN speed.
If the antivirus does seem to be at fault you shouldn’t resort to uninstalling or switching between VPN providers too quickly.
You can work your way around this by making exceptions for the VPN processes within the specific local security software which can easily be found under advanced settings and active protection.
6. Protocol, Routing and Ports
The encryption and tunnelling protocol you choose will directly and sometime drastically affect the VPN speed.
L2TP and SSTP protocols offer better security but best security may come at a high cost as they usually offer slower speed. If you use VPN mainly to download and access geo-restricted content, you may want to try weaker encryption levels. Less data usually means better speed but protocol will also determine other settings where
TCP , for example, will force the server to verify the data received and further slow the process, while UDP will do no such thing.
Users are urged to explore the data routing options with all VPN providers, as only the fastest VPN services will have the most efficient routes between servers and the end-user. The speed is sometimes slowed as routes are ineffic
