VPN is the perfect tool that allows you to surf the internet with total anonymity. It encrypts your outgoing traffic and even gives you access to geo-restricted content on the internet. That’s why almost 11% of the world’s online population uses a VPN.
As people use VPNs for different purposes, like gaming, access to geo-blocked websites, torrenting, or just secure access to the internet.
Choosing the best VPN server depends on why you’re using a VPN in the first place.
You have to ask yourself why you need a VPN and when you’re certain, connect to a VPN server that best serves your goal.
What Is A VPN & How Does It Work?
A VPN can help you hide your original identity from being exposed on the internet. When you access the internet with your original IP address, you’re vulnerable to hackers looking to exploit your sensitive data.
Clicking a phishing site, connecting a public WiFi that is not secure, or getting attacked by malware, all can be prevented when you’re connected to a VPN.
In addition to these, you can geo-spoof your location to anywhere in the world with just a single click of a button.
To explain to you how VPNs work, it creates a secure tunnel between the user and the VPN server. All the traffic generated from your device has to pass the VPN server first, where your traffic is encrypted.
That encrypted traffic then reaches the actual destination with perfect anonymity.
So even if someone gets hold of your traffic, it’ll be gibberish to them as a key is required to decrypt it.
How to Choose the Best VPN Server?
Just ask these questions to yourself and it’ll be clear as day to you about the VPN server you choose.
1. Is Privacy My Primary Concern?
A VPN connection with PPTP, L2TP/IPsec protocols can encrypt your data just fine when you’re on the internet. But if privacy is your main concern and you want to eliminate all the risks then go for a VPN server with OpenVPN or IKEv2/IPsec.
OpenVPN is one of the latest VPN protocols which uses the AES-256 encryption algorithm and it has been proved to be one of the safest and flexible protocols to go for.
Most of the reliable VPN providers like ExpressVPN or NordVPN offer this protocol. They even have their own protocols like Lightway and NordLynx, so you can try those too if you want to go above and beyond.
And always choose a VPN provider which has strong log policies.
2. Is Speed My Primary Concern?
VPN consumes a little more of your internet which can slow down the speed if you are connected to a server that is far away from your actual location.
When you’re connected to a VPN, whatever requests you generate on the web, your data travels through a secure tunnel, reaches the VPN server first, and then to the destination page.
So the longer the distance from your actual location to the VPN server, the longer it will take to load. And sometimes it just keeps buffering if you already have a bad or average internet connection.
So to avoid this, just connect to a nearer VPN server. For example, if you are in the US, try connecting to a Canadian server.
You can even connect to a server of your own country if geo-spoofing is not the reason you’re using a VPN. This way, the VPN will still be encrypting your traffic and you’ll have maximum speed.
3. Do I Want To Bypass A Specific Geo-Restriction?
If you’re using a VPN to bypass a region-restricted website then choose a VPN server of a country where the website is available and accessible.
Almost 56% of VPN users access Netflix each month, which means that the best VPN server they choose is the one that unlocks the international catalog of Netflix.
Similarly, if you want to access a streaming platform that is unavailable in your country or watch a movie that is geo-restricted in your region then go for a VPN server that can get the job done.
Choose a VPN provider that works best on streaming services so you can eliminate the barrier of geo-blocked content and have unlimited access to everything.
4. Do I Want To Download Torrents?
If you’re planning to download movies or TV shows via torrents then make sure that your VPN server supports P2P traffic.
Because even some servers of the top-tier VPN providers might not support P2P.
This is because VPN providers rent servers in other countries for which they have to follow the rules of those countries. And if torrenting is prohibited in those regions then your VPN provider will not be able to protect you while torrenting files or it will just block the torrenting traffic.
So you have to make sure you are subscribed to a top-tier VPN provider that can tell which servers to connect to when you need P2P support.
The servers which support P2P will usually be the servers of the countries where there are no strict laws on torrenting and then you can easily download your torrent files with a VPN.
In the end, you should always go for a VPN provider that offers a decent amount of server counts in different parts of the world.
You should now be able to easily choose a VPN server that best serves your goal.
