Although a lot of different variables including the user interface, apps, servers, locations, protocols and security come into play when choosing the best VPN for your use case, speed will likely be the most important one.
However, measuring the speed and performance of a VPN can be difficult which is why 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 accounts for a broad array of testing use cases and allows users to add and compare different VPN services while also providing detailed reporting.
Cybersecurity expert at NordVPN, Vykintas Maknickas explained in a press release why the company decided to develop its own speed testing tool and make it publicly available on GitHub, saying:
“Connection speed is one of the most important factors that affect user experience when they use a VPN. People want to secure their internet traffic without having to sacrifice speed. However, testing VPN speed meaningfully is a complex procedure because countless factors can impact it. A unified, standard speed-testing methodology would go a long way towards solving the problem for all of us. And that’s what we’re trying to achieve.”
Measuring VPN performance
The lack of a unified approach towards how performance is measured in VPNs has led to a situation where different researchers from different outlets showcase different results ranked in a different order.
By providing potential customers with conflicting information, it has made it difficult for them to make informed decisions when shopping for a VPN. At the same time, it can also be hard for VPN providers to evaluate how their performance will measure up when they're working on improvements to their service and infrastructure.
According to NordVPN's whitepaper on the matter, its VPN provider network performance testing tool will support its own VPN as well as those of ExpressVPN, SurfShark, PIA and PureVPN upon release. However, other VPN providers can be added by crating a personal branch of their tool's project on GitHub and updating the code. NordVPN's developers will then review the code and merge it into the master branch making it available for everyone.
The whitepaper also explains that the company has chosen Ookla as part of its tool because its one of the most popular tools for testing network performance, it can be used via a command line interface (CLI) and Ookla allows third parties to configure speedtest servers on their own infrastructure.
In the same way that TechRadar tests VPNs, NordVPN's new tool will use OpenVPN as a baseline so that these results can be compared to a VPN provider's proprietary protocols like ExpressVPN's Lightway, Hotspot Shield's Catapult Hydra, VyprVPN's Chameleon or NordVPN's NordLynx.
Those interested in testing out NordVPN's new 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 begin participating in its development.
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