Can a VPN slow down the internet speed?
Yes because it’s being routed and encrypted. But it doesn’t effect your regular internet
Not can it will.
A VPN is almost all normal circumstances WILL slow down your speeds and introduce more latency.
Latency: Think of it this way. You’re driving a car from Maine to Florida. What will take longer, driving straight down the coast or driving out to California and then to Florida? Obviously it will take longer to go to Cali and back florida.
Speed: now, you can either drive a Ferrari down or a mini van. The Ferrari is fast and fun but isn’t quite the safest choice and is a cop magnet, or you can drive a 2016 mini van. Not very stylish, not super fast, but doesn’t stand out, and fits all your luggage.
Put these together and you have the issues with vpns. Latency and speed will always be impacted in favor of encryption and security (NOT to be confused with privacy)
Absolutely it does.
Which is why you’d want to use Split Tunneling for apps where it matters and you don’t need the protection; I let steam/cs2 bypass the vpn. I also have a browser excepted so if I must access a site that isn’t playing well with it, I can through my non-standard browser.
Yes VPN makes your connection slower depending on what kind of service you’re using. If you’re on a free plan it might be a lill slower than the paid one.
Now let’s come to security, VPN doesn’t protect you from getting hacked, get your pc compromised by virus or malware.
BUT VPN can protect your traffic from getting hacked, eaves drop and can help you to bypass censorship. If your country has a bad reputation for censorship and mass surveillance then VPN can protect your traffic from being compromised. Also, it protects your from your ISP peeking into your data.
Next, VPN hides your IP address, so your geo location is also invisible and it gives you security in a country with censorship. But here is the catch, you gotta check the privacy policy of your VPN provider, check if they are implementing No - log policy. If they strictly implement no - logs policy then you can be safe actually.
Finally, yes certain VPN can save you from Trackers and Malware, like Proton has Net shield, it protects you from trackers and ads. Also there are many VPNs who protects you from malicious websites.
Ps: Pardon me for my bad English.
i’d suggest making 2 profiles - 1 for normal browsing/gaming and another for strict privacy/security. If you’re on Unlimited, connect to your country (and state) and toggle Accelerator. IMO it’sonly marginally slower than no VPN. but if you’re going full privacy whether it be secure core or Tor, you’re really gonna notice stuff loading slower
The whole point of using a VPN is to encrypt / hide your traffic. Your bound to lose some speed on your internet since your using other nodes to route that traffic.
When using a VPN, all requests have to go through their servers before the data gets sent back to you from their servers.
Think of it like you asking someone to get something for you and getting it delivered. The speed is limited by the delivery driver (the VPN server).
Also some ISP’s will throttle VPNs and you might want to use stealth mode and see if that improves speed.
Yes. VPN is another hoop the signal from your computer has to jump through to reach the destination. Any hoops on the way have the potential of reducing speed. Doesn’t mean it always will to the noticeable level but it can.
You can use split tunnelling to enable Internet heavy apps like Steam to download at full speed, so you’d effectively never notice a slowdown.
On the right server, Proton VPN is damn quick.
Yes. Secure Core even more so
It will reduce the internet speed of the client, but that’s acceptable with VPNs
Yes but if you are using closet server the difference will be minimal
Interesting that no reply so far has actually tested it - just done a quick bunch of tests. All I discovered was ISP is not providing with their advertised speed, time to make a complaint. As for Proton VPN virtually no impact.
Suggest actually testing rather than speculation : https://www.speedtest.net/ make sure you use the same server for tests.
Test it for yourself with a free Proton account.
What do you mean doesn’t affect my regular Internet like it won’t affect other devices connected to the Internet’s speeds
Tbf WireGuard is damn fast, I’m on a 900/900mbit line and I get 880mbit. It’s an amazing protocol.
i thought protonvpn didn’t have split tunneling?
It does, but not natively in the Linux client, unfortunately.