In September 2016, we moved to a US based entry point for the USA VPN, as part of a strategic move to avoid detection. If you are using a PPTP VPN type, you may have noticed that your connection speed has dropped. The reason for this is that PPTP degrades over distance, and since the distance is considerable, if you are on a low speed connection, the tunnel will take up a lot of your bandwidth.
There is some good news :-)
We now support OpenVPN. OpenVPN is fast, secure & reliable, and should be your first choice when configuring a VPN client on your device. If you are running PPTP, we strongly recommend that you move to OpenVPN (see our setup guides here)
How to compare VPN vs Non VPN Speed
To test your VPN speed , and compare to normal ISP speed, follow the following steps .
1) Run a speedtest with no VPN connected using fast.com
2) Connect to the VPN which you want to test
3) Refresh the browser page (or close and reopen the browser). THIS IS IMPORTANT. If you don't do this you will be testing the speed for the wrong location
4) Run a new speedtest using fast.com
This will give you VPN Speed VS Non VPN Speed. In most cases VPN speed will be slower. Don't worry, this is normal. Read on.
FACTS & TIPS TO IMPROVE YOUR SPEED
A VPN creates a secure tunnel through the internet. Due to the encryption (which is required to keep you safe, and unblock content), there is a physical limit on the size / speed of this tunnel. Speed is also impacted by distance. Therefore, there is a physical / hard limit on the speed that you can achieve with a VPN. Many other providers also throttle your bandwidth which makes the connection slower. We don't. VPN speed is not necessarily a % of your overall bandwidth. If your normal bandwidth is 20MBPS, and you're getting 5MBPS running the VPN, your VPN speed may not necessarily increase by 5x to 25MBPS if you upgraded you ISP bandwidth by 5x from 20MBPS to 100MBPS.
Your VPN speed will also be impacted by the following factors - Device capability, router, modem, ISP, wireless network interference (objects in the way, or interference from neighbours using the same channels). All of these are environmental factors which we cannot support or fix.
If your router cost less than $300, and is more than 2 years old, the best way to improve your VPN speed is likely to be a router upgrade. Quite simply, you get what you pay for with a router. They are like any other computer in as much as they need computing power (CPU / memory) to do their job. Under 'normal' conditions, you may not notice any drop off in speed. Asking your router to run a highly encrypted VPN tunnel is something different. Just by upgrading a router, you could double your speed overnight.
Think about upgrading your device. The capability of the end device which you're streaming on will make a difference. If you have an ATV2, consider upgrading to an ATV4, and you will see a difference in quality. If you're running a 5 year old laptop with Windows 7, you will see a difference if you upgrade to the latest Mac, or PC running Win10. Newer devices are more powerful, and have better technology for streaming video. They will compensate and you will see less buffering , and higher quality video compared to an old device on the same network.
If OpenVPN doesn't work for you, we also support L2TP which is more consistent, and faster over distance than PPTP. If you want to improve your speed, we suggest that you setup an L2TP VPN (search our knowledge base for instructions). Note if you are using a Windows device you may need to make a registry change (the instructions include this). Only attempt this if you are comfortable with changing the registry, and always backup before.If you are running a new version of Android, you may need to enable 'backward compatibility mode' in 'advanced options'