GoKawiilZDNET
Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google.
Virtual private networks (VPNs) are the kind of tool that you don't know you need until you need one. Especially when traveling, as so many do during the summer, the best VPNs are crucial for encrypting your traffic, disguising your IP address, and limiting the risk of data exposure and surveillance while you're using public Wi-Fi.
Also: The best travel VPNs
But the main metric to consider when choosing a VPN is always going to be speed -- specifically, download speeds -- since that's what most people do on the web, whether you're streaming, saving an email attachment, installing new apps, or just about anything else. And when you're traveling, you want a VPN that won't slow you down.
We ran the top five VPNs in our lab in Kentucky through rigorous testing to find the fastest VPN for traveling. The one VPN that stood out above the rest for speed was NordVPN, which is why it earns a ZDNET Lab Awards badge.
How we tested these VPNs
On a Spectrum cable connection, we used different Raspberry Pi configurations with unique VPN services and protocols, running a scheduled test cycle every 16 minutes to avoid network congestion and bottlenecks caused by simultaneous testing. The test cycles were staggered, ensuring that only one Raspberry Pi ran its test at any given time, minimizing cross-device interference and providing a more accurate, stable, and isolated measurement. A single test iteration yielded four metrics: download speed, upload speed, ping/latency, and packet loss.
Each test spanned 24 hours, yielding 90 data points per Raspberry Pi, per metric, per day, totaling approximately 2,160 data points per VPN service over a full six-day test cycle involving six combinations of protocols and server locations. The testing framework included OpenVPN as the baseline for comparison and a VPN-specific preferred protocol, tested against three distance-based server locations: US New York (close), UK London (medium), and Tokyo, Japan (far).
Schylar Breitenstein/ZDNET
... continue reading