While many different variables such as user interface, apps, servers, locations, protocols, and security come into play when choosing the best VPN for your use case, speed will probably be the most important thing.
However, measuring VPN speed and performance can be difficult, so NordVPN has developed a new open source tool and methodology to help objectively measure and compare the speed of different VPN services.
The company's new tool takes into account a wide range of test use cases and allows users to aggregate and compare different VPN services while providing detailed reports.
NordVPN cybersecurity expert Vykintas Maknickas explained in a press release why the company decided to develop its own speed test tool and make it publicly available on GitHub, saying:
"Connection speed is one of the biggest factors affecting the user experience when using a VPN. People want to protect their internet traffic without sacrificing speed. It's a complex process, as countless factors can affect it. A unified, standard speed test methodology would go a long way toward solving the problem for all of us. And that's what we're trying to achieve."
Measure VPN performance
The lack of a unified approach to how performance is measured across VPNs has led to a situation where different researchers from different outlets present different results ranked in a different order.
By providing potential customers with conflicting information, it becomes difficult for them to make informed decisions when purchasing a VPN. At the same time, it can also be difficult for VPN providers to gauge how their performance will be measured as they work on improvements to their service and infrastructure.
According to NordVPN's whitepaper on the subject, your VPN provider's network performance test tool will support its own VPN, as well as ExpressVPN, SurfShark, PIA, and PureVPN at launch. However, other VPN providers can be added by creating a personal branch of their tool project on GitHub and updating the code. The NordVPN developers will then review the code and merge it into the main branch, making it available to everyone.
The whitepaper also explains that the company chose Ookla as part of its tool because it is one of the most popular tools for testing network performance, it can be used through a command line interface (CLI), and Ookla allows allow third parties to set up speed tests. servers on your own infrastructure.
In the same way that TechRadar tests VPNs, NordVPN's new tool will use OpenVPN as a benchmark so those results can be compared to a VPN provider's proprietary protocols like ExpressVPN's Lightway, Hotspot Shield's Catapult Hydra, VyprVPN's Chameleon. or NordLynx from NordVPN.
Those interested in trying out NordVPN's new open source VPN speed test tool can download it here from GitHub, and we'll likely hear more once other VPN providers and researchers start getting involved in its development.
We've also rounded up the best VPN services.