What is the best VPN protocol 【 】

There are multiple VPN protocols, and the protocol a VPN uses has a huge influence on how it works. Some protocols are much better than others. Fortunately, finding the best VPN protocol is easy as there are only a few candidates. Find out which is the best VPN protocol

What is the best VPN protocol

What is a VPN protocol?

In short, a protocol is a set of rules that govern how devices within a network communicate with each other. When you connect to the Internet, for example, you are using Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) to allow your computer to communicate with the site you are accessing. A VPN protocol is a specific type of protocol intended for, you guessed it, VPN.

A protocol can include all kinds of information. In the case of HTTP, it’s a set of rules surrounding how two devices can exchange data (in the form of HTML documents), as well as some basic security rules.

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When you use a VPN, you are redirecting your connection through a server operated by your VPN service. To do this securely, the VPN must use a separate protocol, one that is designed for VPNs and contains information about the encryption used on the connection, as well as some other technical details.

how did youFect a VPN protocol

This may sound a bit abstract, but it affects you directly: a good protocol will be much faster and much more secure than a bad one. Some protocols are slow because they take more steps to send information, while others are less secure because they contain a flaw or use an encryption key that has a known weakness.

To help you choose the best VPN protocol for you, and by extension the best VPN, we’re going to go over the protocols we’ve come across the most, as well as some proprietary ones. We’ll start with the best, OpenVPN and WireGuard, and work our way up from there.

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OpenVPN

it is probably the most popular VPN protocol out there. Almost all VPN providers offer it to their customers in one way or another. It offers speed and security, without any significant compromise on either. When using OpenVPN, most VPN providers will let you choose between TCP and UDP. In general, it is better to go for UDP as it is faster.

To give you an idea of ​​how good OpenVPN is, almost all VPNs use it by default. In the vast majority of cases, there is no good reason to use anything else. The only exceptions are WireGuard or particularly strong proprietary protocols like NordLynx and Lightway, all of which we explain below.

In fact, we’d go so far as to recommend against using any VPN that doesn’t offer OpenVPN and be a bit wary of any provider that doesn’t have it as a default, apart from the exceptions we mentioned above. We talked about an example in our article Surfshark vs. ExpressVPN , where we add some serious points to Surfshark for breaking a mediocre protocol.

WireGuard

For most people, most of the time, OpenVPN seems like the ticket. However, in 2021 a very interesting new protocol came out, which has the potential to dethrone OpenVPN. Called , it’s oiled-up lightning fast, often outperforming OpenVPN at similar server load, though keep in mind that there’s a lot more to determining the speed of a VPN connection than just the protocol.

Still, WireGuard seems solid. It has had at least one excellent proprietary protocol based on it: NordVPN’s NordLynx. That said, there have been some rumors about how private it really is, as it appears to store users’ IP addresses indefinitely in some cases.

That said, if speed is your main concern, WireGuard can be a great alternative to OpenVPN. While we generally prefer OpenVPN, WireGuard comes a close second.

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SSTP

Our third entry is Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol, or SSTP, which dates back to the early 2000s and is generally considered fast and secure, although it generally performs a little less well than OpenVPN. However, if for some reason you can’t use OpenVPN, SSTP is a solid fallback option.

The main problem people seem to have is that their code is owned by Microsoft, a company with a less than stellar reputation when it comes to privacy. Although it is not clear whether or not Microsoft collects data from SSTP connections, if it is something you are concerned about, you may want to avoid this protocol.

L2TP/IPsec and IKEv2/IPsec

This entry is two for the price of one: Both L2TP and IKEv2 are two connection protocols that are often combined with the IPsec security protocol to strengthen encryption. In both cases, you’re making a trade-off: L2TP is reliable, but slow, while IKEv2 is fast, very fast, even, but has security issues.

In any case, they are an interesting option for developers, since they are much more flexible than OpenVPN. However, most ordinary users may not notice much of a difference. Generally, we only recommend using these two if you have no other choice.

PPTP

From some of the best VPN protocols out there, we move on to probably one of the worst available. Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) is a VPN protocol dating back to the 1990s, technologically old, not particularly secure, and incredibly slow.

It’s usually not used anymore because it’s obsolete, but for some reason some VPNs still offer it. Whatever you do, don’t use PPTP, especially if you’re doing something sensitive like using BitTorrent to download files.

Proprietary VPN Protocols

We will finish by reviewing three interesting proprietary protocols that have appeared. Developed by a VPN service for their own use, these protocols generally boast higher speeds, although some of them are a bit of a black box.

Hydra

The Hydra protocol was developed and used by and is a good example of how to sacrifice some security for speed. It is very fast but uses weaker encryption: 128-AES instead of the 256-bit variant. It’s not the biggest problem, and the insane speeds Hydra tests at can be worth it.

NordLynx

NordVPN also wanted its own protocol, but modified WireGuard to its liking instead of developing one from scratch. The result is a lightning-fast VPN protocol that seems quite secure. It would be even better if NordVPN fixed their servers, something we went over in our comparing article.

light way

Last but not least is Lightway, built from the ground up by our overall favorite VPN, ExpressVPN. Like NordLynx, it seems perfectly secure, but somehow it’s even faster than anything else, including WireGuard. While we’re hesitant to call it the best VPN protocol, OpenVPN simply has a better track record and pedigree, it’s definitely worth a look.

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