Tobi’s take on secure communications: Can you have fast Internet and VPN?

Hello, everybody!

Welcome to the final episode of Tobi’s take on secure communications, where we have already learned so much about Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) together. After reading this post, you’ll be even better informed about VPNs and have a clearer picture about some of the myths surrounding the technology. How can this new knowledge benefit you? Well, using VPNs is becoming so commonplace that it’s certainly not a bad idea to understand a little more about it. There are various reasons for this, such as the increasing number of people working from home or networking machines being used in industry. These are just two typical example scenarios for VPN software, but it is designed for secure data communications of any kind.

But let’s return to the topic of today’s post, the myth: “VPNs slow down your Internet speed.”

When I first read this myth on the Internet, I didn't think there was anything wrong with this statement. As I have already told you, I use a VPN connection to the university on my personal laptop to be able to retrieve certain files. I haven’t ever noticed that my Internet connection is better or faster with or without VPN. However, I must admit that this could also be due to my overall poor Internet connection. It’s so slow that I wouldn’t notice if it got any slower or to think of blaming the VPN connection.

I wanted to know more about this topic and so I asked our product manager in the hope that he could shed some light on this myth. What came next was short and sweet:

“I agree with the myth on the whole, but you can't compare apples to pears either.”

He explained that it was quite normal for the Internet speed to slow down a little if the data has to pass through a VPN tunnel first. However, the reduction in Internet speed is hardly noticeable in the case of professional VPN software and it shouldn’t affect productivity, for example, when someone is working from home.

Let’s sum up what we’ve learned so far: There is an element of truth behind this myth. However, if someone tells you that they prefer not to install VPN software on their PC because it will slow down the Internet, then you are welcome to contradict them, as they will hardly notice it. Anyway, it might be worth accepting a marginal reduction in speed anyways if that means the data traffic is protected by the VPN.

Now we’ve reached the end of this series on myths about VPN. I hope you enjoyed my posts on this topic and you can now tell your friends more about VPN. And if you want to show that you know better, then you know have the knowledge to bust a myth or two!

Have a good week and take care out there,

Tobi