VPN Speeds Explained
By: Yegor S
Tags: Privacy, Networking, VPN

Causes of bad speeds

“Uhh great, how does this relate to VPNs?”, you may be asking. Well, VPN speeds can be affected by many factors. We’re going to discuss the most common ones below. These can be broken down into 2 categories:

Outside of user’s control Within user’s control

Slow Speeds — Outside of User’s Control

Global networking

When you connect to a VPN server, it’s no different than accessing a website. The VPN server can be located right next to you, or it can be found on the other side of the planet. The further away you are from the server, the more networks your connection has to transit through in order to reach the destination. The more networks (and individual routers) in between, the higher the chance of something going wrong. These problems can include, but are not limited to:

Physical cable breakage —someone tries to dig for treasure in their backyard and accidentally severs a physical cable. They blame it on Russian spies and avoid prosecution, but the damage is done, the cable is broken. Network saturation — Each physical line (fiber optic/copper cable) has a capacity limit. If that limit is reached, the average network throughput goes down. This should not be confused with network saturation of the actual server. The saturation can occur between any 2 routers along the way. The saturation may not be physical in nature, but a contractual one. The upstream provider only paid for 10GBps, while the physical line can allow for more traffic to transit through it. Bad routing — Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is not perfect, and neither are people. The route may not be the most optimal one to reach a specific destination. For example, under normal circumstances, your favorite VPN server may be 5 hops away. If the route changes, which can happen multiple times a day, your connection may take a less optimal route. This may add latency and therefore reduce speeds.

Typically speaking, a VPN provider has very little to no control over these aspects. In some cases, routing paths can be adjusted by the hosting company at the request of the VPN provider, but that’s about it.

Misconfigured VPN server

Almost every VPN provider sets up and manages their own VPN servers. Depending on the skill level of their network engineers, this can be done well, or extremely poorly. I won’t go into detail here, but unless the operators are complete idiots, a poorly setup server is a fairly unlikely scenario. However, given that there are over 200 VPN companies out there, many of which are entirely operated by very small teams (a couple of people), it’s not outside the realm of possibility.

VPN server network saturation

When people think “slow speeds” they usually blame network interface saturation of the server, concluding that the VPN provider is “overselling” the servers and keeping them at maximum capacity without adding additional servers. Given the amount of shoddy VPN operations that are out there, “overselling” in this way is very likely with small scale providers that operate a handful of servers. However, for medium to large scale VPN providers, adding another 5–50 servers in a location is not a huge cost. This ensures that no server is running at capacity.

If you look at Windscribe’s server status page, you will see that none of our data-centers (which host multiple Windscribe servers) operate at above 60% capacity, and the vast majority of locations are well below 30%. By keeping the average usage low, we can make sure that the VPN server itself will not be the bottleneck, even if we experience a sudden spike in usage.

ISP Interference

Although you may think that your Internet service provider is there to provide you Internet access, their actual objective is to make your life as miserable as possible — and charge you for it. If you think that they provide you with unrestricted and unfiltered Internet access, you’re living in the dream world, especially if that world is in China, Turkey, Russia or most of the Middle East.

In extreme examples, ISPs block whole sections of the Internet, usually at the request of the government, or — scarier still — because they’re owned by the government. You may think that if you live in “the West”, your ISP is different, but that’s not actually the case. Here are just some examples:

This is just the tip of the iceberg. If ISPs actively police the type of packets they carry on their network, it’s not far-fetched to assume that this monitoring goes beyond Netflix and Torrenting, especially since a VPN is usually the go-to countermeasure that combats this type of throttling.

Slow Speeds — Within User’s Control

A commonly omitted category of slow speed causes is the end-user’s network and device itself.

Network Issues

Your home network is an extension of the Internet. It has a router, and therefore creates another “hop” your connection has to transit through. In a traceroute, your home router will be the first hop. If your home router is the bottleneck, it doesn’t matter how fast or slow all the subsequent networks are, you will not have a good time. Your router can be a bottleneck for several reasons:

Old router— Old routers have weak CPUs. If you’re running a VPN on an ancient router, there is a very high chance that it will be the ultimate bottleneck for speeds. You can verify this by connecting to the same location in our apps, while being disconnected on the router. If the speeds are better, your router is to blame and should be punished. Misconfigured router— Not everyone is a certified network engineer, but that doesn’t stop some people from fiddling with router settings they do not understand. Enabling various firewalls and intrusion detection systems will cause the router to inspect all traffic for possible threats. As a result, encrypted VPN tunnels can/will be slowed down or broken entirely. Try resetting your router to factory defaults and see if there is an increase in speeds. Initial slow speeds — If your initial Internet connection is below 3mbit, using a VPN may make it entirely unusable, as you have very little room for speed loss, which is usually inevitable.

Device Issues

Computers, much like humans, are in many ways unique. Every user of every device installs a unique combination of software, modifies their settings, etc., so no two devices are the same. Device configuration can affect connectivity and speeds in many different ways: