How to test your VPN speed and how to speed up a VPN 👉

You may have noticed that, with your VPN connected, your internet speed has dropped, if only slightly. No matter how fast a VPN claims to be, you will always get this slowdown. Let’s see the reasons why, and how to test your vpn speed and how to speed up a vpn

How to test the speed of a VPN

To test VPN speeds, you’ll need to have a basic idea of ​​how fast your Internet connection is. First, if you are connected to the VPN, disconnect and run a speed test.

The easiest way to test your connection speed is by visiting a speed test website like , which is run by the analytics company Ookla. There are alternative sites, such as , but SpeedTest is generally considered the best. Many other speed tests simply run an Ookla clone.

IT MAY INTEREST YOU:

Test your connection speed

On the site, you will see a big round button that says “Go”. Below that, you’ll see your IP address on the left and the server you’ll be using on the right. You can change the server, but there is no real reason to do so for our purpose.

Press the big button and wait approximately 30-60 seconds to test the download and upload speeds. Once the measurements have been made, you will be presented with the test results.

These describe the ping, or latency, of your connection, as well as download and upload speeds. This isn’t exactly a high-speed connection, but in Cyprus, where Larnaca is, you take what you can get.

In this case, ping is vital for people who want to play online while using a VPN, as it influences how quickly changes are transmitted over your connection, a measure called latency.

IT MAY INTEREST YOU:

Download speed is probably the most important for all the others as it determines how fast you can surf the web and stream. However, upload speed is something to consider for professionals looking to work while using a VPN, as it influences file sharing and the like.

Guide to how to test your VPN speed

To see the change when we use a VPN, we will first have to connect to one. For the purpose of this article, we use ExpressVPN, a service that we really like.

We will first connect to a server that is relatively close in Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands, and see what kind of result we will get.

You will immediately see latency increase, while download and upload speeds decrease. Now, we’ll do another test and see what happens. This time, we will connect to a server in New York, which is about 8,800 km or 5,500 miles away.

This result will also be interesting: the latency will skyrocket, while the loading speed will drop to a slow. However, the download speed will be much higher than the Dutch server, which is almost as good as not having any VPN at all. So what’s up?

What affects VPN speed?

VPNs will always negatively affect your speed and latency. There is simply no way around that. According to Dimitar Dobrev, founder of , there are three reasons for this: how far away the server is from you, the load on that server, and the level of encryption used on the connection.

Distance between you and the server

The biggest speed bump for your connection is the difference between you and the server. While it’s tempting to think of the Internet as instantaneous, the packets that contain the bits and bytes that contain the information you’re sending and receiving have to travel a physical path across connections. Although duration is often measured in picoseconds, time is time.

From this, it follows that a server that is close will always be faster than one that is further away, all other things being equal. In general, when you connect to a server in Amsterdam and another in New York from Spain, the one in the Big Apple will be noticeably slower. However, this could be due to another reason, namely the load on the server.

VPN server load

A VPN server can only handle so much at a time. As such, a VPN service that wants to be fast must employ high-capacity servers that can handle many people using it at the same time.

Even then, however, at peak times or on popular servers, speed will suffer. Many, but far from all, VPN providers will give you an indication of server load. Staying away from the crowded ones should help you keep your speed up.

Hopefully that’s what happened with our speed tests: the Amsterdam server may have been experiencing heavy load, while the New York server might have had far fewer people.

It’s hard to know exactly what’s going on, of course, but that’s the most likely explanation, especially given when we ran the tests: early morning on the east coast and mid-afternoon in the Netherlands.

encryption

Last but not least to know how to test your vpn speed, the encryption used must be considered . A stronger cipher cipher, like AES-256 for example, will take longer than the same at 128 bits.

That said, generally speaking, as Dobrev explains, most VPN services will use an encryption standard that doesn’t affect regular users too much. As such, encryption is the factor that least influences the speed of your VPN.

How to make sure you have a fast VPN

If you want to make sure you have the fastest VPN available, when choosing one, you need to consider coverage and server quality. Server coverage is easy to find out: go to the website of the VPN you are interested in and check their server page. Then check if they have servers near you. That should guarantee you decent speeds while browsing.

However, if you specifically want servers in a country far away from you, because you want to bypass regional restrictions, for example, server quality becomes a bigger issue. In that case, you want a VPN provider that has just a few servers that can handle a heavy load ( is a great example of this), or one that has many lower-capacity servers per location ( comes to mind.).

Whichever you think will work best for you, we recommend that you sign up with the VPN of your choice after checking that they have a refund policy. Then run the aforementioned speed test yourself at : if you’re not happy with the results, you can always use the money-back guarantee

In addition to discovering how to test your vpn speed and how to speed up a vpnbelow you can see more related topics of related to this article: