Do VPN Accelerators truly increase the speed of the VPN?

Hi everyone,

We have a router together with a VPN service that doesn't give us more than 1MB per second in speed. This is bothersome when both me and my roommate are streaming movies simultaneously, as I can instantly feel the drop in quality when it happens.

I have seen a device on the same site that sold the router that there is something called a VPN Accelerator, which supposedly should increase the VPN speed of the service. A friend of mine who is into technology doesn't believe in it and thought I would waste my money (costs like 300 dollars) for almost no increase in speed.

Is he telling the truth? Why is the VPN service slow in the first place? Isn't the speed regulated on the VPN provider's end, meaning it would not matter if I buy an additional device to try to get more speed? In other words, is the bottleneck with the VPN provider or with connection on my end?

How does it work?

Now that we can't use Netflix all the time anymore, perhaps it's not worth spending more money on it, but it's great to be able to use other services when you are not directly in the country (studying abroad).

Any help is appreciated

For home VPN uses.... Just use the VPN client software on the PC, that way all the VPN gubbins is done in the CPU of your machine as opposed to on the router. A lot of VPN providers use OpenVPN too which most routers don't support.

In reply to a post by Pipexer:

For home VPN uses.... Just use the VPN client software on the PC, that way all the VPN gubbins is done in the CPU of your machine as opposed to on the router. A lot of VPN providers use OpenVPN too which most routers don't support.

Thanks for the reply, Pipexer. According to my friend, uur router supports OpenVPN and the reason we bought it was to be able to connect multiple devices of all sorts to it (consoles, dvd/blur ray players etc), rather than just the laptop needing additional software.

Are you saying that for Home VPN uses, it's actually better to use VPN client software directly on a computer in comparison to software/3rd party firmware on a router? But this way only the computer can take advantage of the VPN service, right?

With regards to VPN, is it harder for Netflix to detect VPN use with an OpenVPN router than a client software on the PC?

Sorry if I'm terrible at explaining. Not too familiar with all the terms

The only way to speed up the VPN is to go to the VPN provider and get them to increase the speed of it. So you say it is 1MB per second now, ask them to increase this.

Anything else is generally not very good.

If "accelerators" were the solution, we would all still have dial-up with a super accelerator running

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

If "accelerators" were the solution, we would all still have dial-up with a super accelerator running

Thanks ukhardy07,
So you more or less agree with my friend that a VPN accelerator is not going to be worth spending money on, especially for home users?

Your suggestion is the same as my friend's. Already tried this last year but they said then it was max. Should I mention something in particular, perhaps a complaint of some sorts, in order for them to try harder in increasing the speed?

If the fastest they offer is the speed that you have, then that's as good as it is going to get without moving to an alternative VPN provider.

There is no point in complaining if they are giving you the correct speed, and it is simply not fast enough for you.

May I ask why you have all traffic going via VPN? It would make a lot more sense to just use an ISP supplied router, get say a 40Mbps fibre connection, then if and when the VPN is required, fire it up on the system that requires it.

The way you have it means all traffic is restricted by the VPN, even if the ISP is providing a connection 8x the speed of the VPN, you will never get those speeds since the VPN becomes the bottleneck.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Wed 29-Jun-16 11:58:56)

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

If the fastest they offer is the speed that you have, then that's as good as it is going to get without moving to an alternative VPN provider. There is no point in complaining if they are giving you the correct speed, and it is simply not fast enough for you.

I see. The reason I was hoping an accelerator had a use is because I remember staying in an apartment in Scandinavia many, many years ago where they had fibre with a 100/100 connection. At that time, I would only get 0.5MB per second and had to learn how to increase some sort of buffer on Netflix for it to show in HD.

Then, as soon as I moved back to the US the VPN service jumped to 1.5MB per second and now it's down to 1MB. Thus, I therefore thought the bottleneck was on my side and not the VPN service.

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

May I ask why you have all traffic going via VPN?

The reason was mainly for services such as Netflix and access to downloads that were restricted to IP addresses located in the US. Because my laptop isn't powerful enough to stream in HD without having poor framerate, the consoles would do a much better job at showing Netflix, NHL, NFL etc.

We do follow your suggested step when we do not have to access the US. We just turn the VPN service off via the router and we surf with whichever max speed we have from our local service provider (50 down and 5 up)

Anyway, thank you very much for your replies!

When you say the connection is 50 down and 5 up.

Is the VPN 10 down? Ie when downloading 1MB/s?

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

Is the VPN 10 down? Ie when downloading 1MB/s?

That's correct At least the download rate. Instead of getting 5 to 6 MB per second locally, the VPN only gives 1 MB (approx 10%?). The Upload rate is the same, probably because it's so low to begin with.

New info: I realized that the local speed is 50/10, not 50/05 which I specified previously.

Again, thanks for helping out.