And practically, most of us don’t need features such as multi-hop, Tor over VPN, bank-grade encryption, etc.Īlthough such characteristics are ideal for people in authoritarian regimes, journalists, and activists for others, this needless security is an overkill taking an unavoidable toll on the network speed. In addition, a few VPN providers also develop their custom protocols for the utmost flexibility. Some are built for speed, like WireGuard, while others are time-tested all-rounders, like OpenVPN. They dictate how the VPN tunnels perform, including the encryption strength, speed, efficiency, overall security, etc. Choice of VPN ProtocolĬonsider VPN Protocols as the soul of a VPN connection. This is because of the unique internet infrastructure connecting you to those machines, including the quality of cables, distance, routers, etc.

It heavily depends on the server you connect to, as the hardware has many hard-to-point dissimilarities and the server load, which also varies.Īnd this performance difference is significantly visible if you connect to servers from two separate physical locations.

This section entails a non-exhaustive list of aspects affecting VPN speeds and some ‘standard’ you-need-to-know things before jumping on the actual testing. Thus, before jumping on to how to test VPN speeds, let’s go through some fundamentals. It’s simple to log on to some speed testing tool, yet very difficult to accurately comprehend the results. So, stay tuned to this explainer in which we shed light to the nuances of this ‘simple’ process, including the tools to get this right.Īfter testing ProtonVPN, ExpressVPN, Surfshark, MullvadVPN, and many others, I can safely say speed is the most misunderstood factor among VPN users. Testing a VPN speed is the easiest and trickiest thing to do.

Protonvpn free speed