So I’ve been considering buying a VPN, And i’ve been wondering if it will improve performance when connecting to servers in other countries? For example in games like TF2 you’re able to connect to servers from many places around the world, But let’s say I connect to a server from Australia, even though I have pretty good ping on my router, My connection to the server suffers since it’s so far away from where I live. So will it improve my ping? Thanks in advanced.
Will using a VPN improve ping when connecting to servers in other countries (when gaming obviously)?
Maybe, you won’t know until you try. Don’t get your hopes up though.
The main limiting factor is distance. If you are connecting to a server on the other side of the world you are going to have higher ping than if you’re connecting to some place closer.
This is why a lot of games (if not all) have servers based on geographic regions. Because the easiest way to decrease ping is to decrease the distance traffic has to travel.
So a VPN can, and I would go so far as to say usually, makes your ping higher. This is because your traffic has to take a detour through the VPN servers before their final destination which increases the distance they have to travel.
However there are some edge cases where a VPN does improve your ping. Some ISPs have poor peering on certain routes. So if a VPN forces you to use a different route then your ping would improve. Try a few VPN servers that are located in geographical different places.
In my experience, the further the server is from my location, the slower my connection gets.
I think the best thing to do is always staying connected to the closest server from your location. That’s basically why a VPN will connect you to the server of your country automatically. It think it’s because it’s looking for the fastest servers first. In other words, the connection with the smallest ping.
Technically using a vpn will lead to higher ping since the connection will travel between more servers
No, it will more likely hurt ping times.
Subscribing to a VPN service provider gets you access to servers around the world, but doesn’t change your internet connection or the laws of physics. VPN traffic still goes over the same internet, it just gets “wrapped” in an “envelope” that is specially sealed at each end and can only be opened using the agreed upon secret from the original connection “handshake” between the server and client. This adds a bit of time (“overhead”) to the final connection which measurably slows the connection speeds. Unless there is a major routing error on your current connection that somehow gets avoided by moving where you openly talk to the internet a VPN can not improve performance.
TLDR; unless something is wildly messed up with your current routing a VPN will increase ping times and decrease speed.
Nope not necessarily true in all cases