Why is my VPN connection so slow?

If you have used different VPN services and connected to different servers you have for sure noticed that some of those times speeds decrease and it feels as if everything is happening in snail speed (at best). Why is that?

To understand why a VPN connection might make your Internet speeds slow, you first need to understand what is happening as you connect to a VPN. If you have no knowledge on the topic of VPNs, why not read our VPN introduction first.

Slow VPN connections

Before we start speaking about VPN connections you need to understand that before complaining about your VPN speed, you better check the speed of your own Internet connection before connecting to a VPN service. If you are curious about that speed, visit our Internet connection speed test. Maybe your provider promises high speeds, but be aware that not all providers actually give you the speeds they promise, so it can be useful from time to time to check your download and upload speeds, to see if they are as quick as they are supposed to.

If you have done that test, connect to a VPN server somewhere and test again. Based on these two tests you will find out what is causing your Internet to slow down… either your own ISP or the VPN provider and server you are connecting to. If it is the server of your VPN provider, try connecting to some other servers they provide instead. If that doesn’t help, it might be that your provider simply offer servers with bad speeds. However, before saying that for sure, do not forget that geographical proximity also influence the VPN speed. If you live in Romania and try to connect to VPN servers in Brazil, the distance is so big, that it will turn out very hard to get great download speeds. But, it still shouldn’t give you download speeds beneath 1Mbps per second.

[stextbox id=”info”]If you complain to VPN providers about bad speeds, they will often tell you to use other protocols (OpenVPN, PPTP and so on). This might increase the speeds a bit, but it will very seldom impact your download speeds in very essential ways.[/stextbox]

For more information on this subject read our article answering if a VPN connection will slow down your Internet connection, or not.

Are you tired of VPN providers with poor speeds? Read our list presenting the top 3 VPN services in 2013. Hopefully they should give you better speeds and a better experience as you surf the Internet safely, protecting your personal information and privacy.