With all of the concerns about personal data and being tracked online that you face on today’s internet. Many have turned to VPN, or virtual private networks, for security and privacy. Using one, it is nearly impossible for hackers, ISPs, or governments to view your data. A firewall can block VPN use, but stealth VPNs can bypass these filters. It can also disguise any type of data as simple website traffic.
Will this cost you speed or even latency?
Any VPN is going to take the data you want to send and start by encrypting it. After this, the data is sent to the VPN server. It is then decrypted and sent to the destination. In a stealth VPN, such as TorGuard, the data is sent by your computer as HTTPS, the secure and encrypted version of HTTP that is used by every website.
1. How Much Time Will All This Take?
Adding an extra stop at the VPN server and the encryption times does add latency, the amount of time it takes a packet of data to travel to its destination. Your computer and the VPN servers take only a couple of milliseconds or less to encrypt and decrypt data. The hop to the VPN server and then to the source will add 15ms milliseconds at most.
So, in total, in the worst case, you have added 20 milliseconds to the travel time of your data. Streaming video or surfing, you would never notice the difference. While playing an online game, latency to the game server of 100 milliseconds or less is needed for smooth play, with 50ms being the average.
So, 70ms. Plenty low enough to dominate games.
2. How a VPN can Unlock More Bandwidth for You:
The initial encryption of the data hardly takes any time at all. Encryption does add to the size, taking some extra bandwidth. But this is tiny compared to the gigabytes we send and receive every day.
The servers running a VPN service have plenty of bandwidth and are much faster than a home computer, so they do not use any noticeable additional bandwidth that a user would see.
It is only a little slower, but that is not the whole picture.
Your internet service provider, or ISP, gives some traffic priority and even limits the bandwidth of some types of traffic, like torrents. Although torrents are used for pirating media and programs, they are primarily used to send updates for programs, like video games. Even Windows and OS X use the protocol to send out updates.
By using a VPN, you disguise the data and method you are using to send it. If you use a stealth VPN, the data looks just like regular, secure website traffic. This kind of traffic is never throttled and is allowed to use your entire bandwidth.
It is also high priority traffic on networks as well, so it will not get sidelined on a busy network like a torrent or video stream.
3. They Also Provide Privacy and Security:
Your activities online are tracked by multiple entities, such as the websites you visit, your internet service provider, and even in some areas your government. They look at where you go, what you download, how you download it, and where from.
Then there are hackers, looking at your data as it passes through the internet. They can steal passwords and gather private information about you, like medical records.
With a VPN, no one can see what your data really is. The encryption used can’t be broken by just throwing computing power at it and with the hacker wouldn’t even know if they are decrypting a password or a cat pic.
Go Out and Get Some Speedy and Safe Internet:
Selecting a VPN can be a little complicated, but over at VPN University there is a handy guide to choosing a stealth VPN and I would suggest you take a look at it.
The extra security and full use of the bandwidth you are already paying for with all types of data makes using a VPN worth using for almost everyone. You aren’t going to lose bandwidth and you will even still be able to play online games, all with privacy and safety.
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