1Gbps To 10Gbps, NordVPN Becomes One Of The First To Do That At A Global Scale

NordVPN

VPN is slow, and users should know that. But someone is trying to change that fact.

NordVPN is a VPN service provider for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS, as well as for Android TV. Based in Panama, a country that has no mandatory data retention laws and does not participate in the Five Eyes or Fourteen Eyes alliances, NordVPN has been around since 2012.

After introducing its WireGuard-powered NordLynx protocol earlier this 2020, NordVPN is taking things a step further by upgrading its servers.

The company said that it has been using 1Gbps servers for years.

But knowing the technologies that power VPN services can be complicated, VPNs can be rather slow from time to time. This can happen when users connect to a VPN server to send and receive data, during a time when the server is overloaded with traffic.

To counter this issue, NorVPN has upgraded its infrastructure with 10Gbps servers.

By upgrading to 10Gbps servers, NordVPN hopes to eliminate bottlenecks.

When multiple users try to connect to a server, the higher capacity means that NordVPN can be more effective in splitting the bandwidth, preventing slow speeds from happening. In other words, using 10Gbps servers allows for more simultaneous uploads without throttling, NordVPN states.

More data passing through the connection per second means that it takes less time to make requests to the server.

For starters, NordVPN is upgrading its servers to that 10Gbps capacity in cities in the U.S., including New York, Seattle and Miami. After that, it plans to upgrade its servers in Tokyo and London, and following that, also to its servers worldwide.

“While our servers in Amsterdam and Tokyo have been 10Gbps for quite some time now, London, Singapore, and a part of the U.S. are planned to fully integrate a 10Gbps network by the end of this year,” said NordVPN CTO Marijus Briedis.

With the intention of providing users a better performance and maximum speed, the VPN service provider is regarded as one of the first on the market to move from 1Gbps to 10Gbps servers and cover such a wide range of locations.

VPN diagram
VPN create a tunnel to establish connection between two hosts. But when the VPN server is crowded, that "tunnel" can turn into a bottleneck that compromises speed.

In addition to significantly improving speed and performance, these upgraded servers should also help the company to future-proof its systems.

As 4G is rapidly spreading to even the most remote places on Earth and 5G coverage becomes more common, internet users are going to use a lot more data at a faster pace.

And with the 'COVID-19' coronavirus pandemic where more people are working remotely, the number of VPN users is skyrocketing. And NordVPN here, is "going to keep improving our server speeds to meet that demand by acquiring future-focused solutions like 10Gbps servers," Briedis said.

"Speed can make or break a VPN service; there’s nothing as irritating as fluctuating download times and endless buffering."

At this time, according to NordVPN on its blog post, the company runs 5,000 servers worldwide, with 1,800 of them in the U.S. alone.

Published: 
23/12/2020