How to Speed Up VPN

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VPNs are great for a ton of things–whether you need to encrypt your information at a coffee shop, so a malicious hacker doesn’t steal your Facebook login, or if you need a secure way to torrent at home. They can also be useful to watch streaming content around the world, or even access video games early.

Read more: Best VPNs for Netflix Mid 2016

VPNs have become easier and easier to use, and a lot of our top-rated VPNs are pleasures to behold. They have powerful security, great customer support, and are easy to use. However, depending on how fast your internet is, you might find that with a VPN your internet now becomes too slow while it was manageable before.

In this guide, we will give you some great tips on using VPN without much of a speed compromise.

How to Speed Up VPN

How to Speed Up VPN

Lower the encryption rate

When you use a VPN, you are usually given a standard encryption rate. This means that most VPNs automatically default to 256-AES–which is a good thing since it’s the most secure. However, 256-AES also means that the cipher has more potential to slow down your internet since it’s more powerful. In many ways, 256-AES is a bit overkill.

With a smaller rate like 128-AES, you can see some speed increases. 128-AES is also very good, while not as secure as 256-AES–it still will be good  for most users who value security and speed equally.

Keep in mind that most VPNs don’t actually let you change the cipher strength, so this one depends if you have a VPN that will allow you to do so. Thankfully, our top-rated VPN, TorGuard, does.

Change protocol

Using a protocol like OpenVPN is the best for security. As we noted in this article that compares different protocols, it’s often simply the best pick for general use. However, if you just want pure speed, you might want to consider using a different protocol temporarily. L2TP/IPsec offers a solid amount of security but might provide a bit more speed than the more robust OpenVPN. In addition, you might find that OpenVPN feels throttled on some networks while L2TP/IPSec doesn’t.

Use wired connection

Are you using Wi-Fi for your VPN connection? If so, you might want to consider using ethernet/wired connection since this can give you a great general boost to your internet speed and reliability.

Select the nearest server

How to Speed Up VPN

When you connect to a VPN server, make sure that you pick the closest server near you. Now this might be hard in some cases since some VPNs have limited servers, limited ways to choose servers, or just slow servers in general. However, once you get a solid VPN from our list, make sure to pick a close server and you’ll notice great speeds.

Use a better VPN router

How to Speed Up VPN

If you’re using a VPN router and are encountering slow speeds, you might be in time for an upgrade. A VPN router’s specifications directly affect speed since the strength of the processor determines how fast the encryption can handle.

Use a faster VPN

How to Speed Up VPN

If you have slow speeds, it might just be that you need a new VPN. A lot of VPNs we have tested have slow to average speeds–in fact, we’ve tested much more with bad speeds than good–so if you do have slow speeds with your chosen VPN, it might be a good time to switch.

Some reasons a VPN might have slow speeds is that they have a smaller server network, so you can’t connect to a location that is ideal. Or perhaps your VPN doesn’t give you the option to customize any of the reasons we mentioned like protocol switching or cipher strength customization.

 

Thanks for reading this guide on how to speed up VPN.  Let us know if you have problems speeding up your VPN below!

Spark has a simple mission to help you chose the best VPN without any bias. Which VPN do I use? See it here!

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