Proton VPN created a feature that accelerates your VPN by 400%

[fUnDaMeNtAl_knobhead]

Summary

 Proton VPN claims that they have made a new feature called  VPN Accelerator wich claims to boost the vpn speed up to 400% by utilizing multithreading, shorter paths ( 300+300<600), and by using bare metal servers.

 

Quotes

Quote

ProtonVPN solves this problem by using multiple OpenVPN processes per server to fully take advantage of multi-core processors. However, this alone is not enough to fully address the problem unless the load is properly distributed between the multiple processes. Otherwise, a single CPU thread could become overloaded.  ...

We cannot increase the speed of light or bring New Zealand closer to Europe, but VPN Accelerator addresses the issue by breaking up the 600 ms path into shorter paths (for example, two 300 ms paths). Much faster goodput is possible on each of the shorter paths, resulting in higher combined performance over the entire path. 

 

To achieve even higher speeds, VPN Accelerator also uses a TCP delay-controlled TCP flow control algorithm called BBR along each path. On longer paths or congested networks there is often some level of packet loss. BBR recovers faster from packet loss and also ramps up quicker (that is, it achieves maximum speed faster when a data transfer begins). 

Lastly, ProtonVPN avoids the virtual servers, virtualization, or containers used by many other VPN services. Our entire infrastructure is installed on bare-metal servers, eliminating the need to forward encrypted packets between virtual machines or containers and their host machines. This further reduces latency and boosts speed.

 

My thoughts

 We will have to see if Proton VPN's 400% speed increase is actually true. I hope that more VPNs will make similar features evolving the VPN industry, and that the end users can see the benefit of the feature in real use cases.

 

Sources

 Increase speeds by over 400% with VPN Accelerator (protonvpn.com)

[Stahlmann]

Are they trying to achieve negative latency?

 

C'mon, we had enough brands shooting themselves in the foot because of ridiculous claims.

[fUnDaMeNtAl_knobhead]

Just now, Stahlmann said:

Are they trying to achieve negative latency?

/s ?

[Stahlmann]

1 minute ago, linux fanboy said:

/s ?

I edited to make it more obvious.

[Rauten]

11 minutes ago, Stahlmann said:

Are they trying to achieve negative latency?

First thing I thought of.

Google weren't forward-thinking enough to make it a reality but, GOSH DARNIT SOMEONE WILL!!

 

On a more serious note, what they explain does sound interesting, though I have no use for it. All I use a VPN for is music streaming and web browsing, latency is not really a concern.

[Moonzy]

enabling protonVPN actually lowers my ping to certain servers from 220ms to 180ms, so i guess there's that

[fUnDaMeNtAl_knobhead]

3 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

enabling protonVPN actually lowers my ping to certain servers from 220ms to 180ms, so i guess there's that

Is it with or without the VPN Accelerator ?

[Moonzy]

2 minutes ago, linux fanboy said:

Is it with or without the VPN Accelerator ?

I've no idea, I'll have to check

If I had to guess, it's a no

[fUnDaMeNtAl_knobhead]

7 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

I've no idea, I'll have to check

If I had to guess, it's a no

Did you update Proton VPN recently if yes it is probably Yes and if you didn't probably no.

[BuckGup]

I would much rather just use WireGaurd

[Vanderburg]

Sounds like marketing.

[MultiGamerClub]

If it helps lower my ping from 10 to 3 that would help alot.. Not that you need a VPN if you live in a decent country..

[ouroesa]

400% faster what? Latency, throughput? Both? How was this measured?

Also compared to what? Their own service when not using these techniques? 

 

I can't read the article as any third party VPN related services and websites are blocked at work unfortunately. 

[fUnDaMeNtAl_knobhead]

53 minutes ago, ouroesa said:

400% faster what? Latency, throughput? Both? How was this measured?

Also compared to what? Their own service when not using these techniques? 

 

I can't read the article as any third party VPN related services and websites are blocked at work unfortunately. 

IDK but I think it is both speed and latency.

[Arika]

If you're using a VPN that is quartering your internet speed and/or quadrupling your latency, then it's a shit VPN and you should ditch it immediately.

[leadeater]

12 hours ago, linux fanboy said:

We cannot increase the speed of light or bring New Zealand closer to Europe, but VPN Accelerator addresses the issue by breaking up the 600 ms path into shorter paths (for example, two 300 ms paths).

If their existing pathing they were using was 600ms then they were paying the lowest rate absolute worst possible and probably going around the world twice lol.

 

 

From me (NZ) to Paris, 18922km.

 

[leadeater]

43 minutes ago, linux fanboy said:

IDK but I think it is both speed and latency.

Technically they are one and the same thing, latency is a factor of achievable bandwidth so lowering that will increase bandwidth.

 

Quote

The Maximum bandwidth can be calculated as follows: where RWIN is the TCP Receive Window and RTT is the round-trip time for the path. The Max TCP Window size in the absence of TCP window scale option is 65,535 bytes. Example: Max Bandwidth = 65,535 bytes / 0.220 s = 297886.36 B/s * 8 = 2.383 Mbit/s

 

[captain_to_fire]

Shady marketing aside, I see all VPNs as more about circumventing geographical blocks and less about them as a privacy tool. Sure my ISP can't see what sites I visit but the VPN can see everything because it has to get decrypted on their end. VPN servers imo are low hanging fruits that are irresistible to hackers especially government intelligence agencies and I don't see any reason why hacking a VPN server would be difficult.

 

12 hours ago, linux fanboy said:

Proton VPN claims that they have made a new feature called  VPN Accelerator wich claims to boost the vpn speed up to 400% by utilizing multithreading, shorter paths ( 300+300<600), and by using bare metal servers.

I would say Proton VPN simply got more bandwidth and more bare metal servers and used the term accelerator. It's like how Apple called individual pixels being indiscernible at normal viewing distance as "retina display".

[captain_to_fire]

17 minutes ago, leadeater said:

From me (NZ) to Paris, 18922km.

 

I certainly wouldn't want to open my camera when having Zoom or Teams meeting with 275 ms latency 

[orbitalbuzzsaw]

22 minutes ago, captain_to_fire said:

Shady marketing aside, I see all VPNs as more about circumventing geographical blocks and less about them as a privacy tool. Sure my ISP can't see what sites I visit but the VPN can see everything because it has to get decrypted on their end. VPN servers imo are low hanging fruits that are irresistible to hackers especially government intelligence agencies and I don't see any reason why hacking a VPN server would be difficult.

 

I would say Proton VPN simply got more bandwidth and more bare metal servers and used the term accelerator. It's like how Apple called individual pixels being indiscernible at normal viewing distance as "retina display".

I mean unless you're doing a homebrew VPN then yeah. Even so, I think the VPN companies have more of a privacy focus in their sort of ethos and it would be worse for them to do it and have it found out so they have an interest in being less awful, I feel

[leadeater]

16 minutes ago, captain_to_fire said:

I certainly wouldn't want to open my camera when having Zoom or Teams meeting with 275 ms latency 

"Hi guys"

"Hello...?"

"Oh they already left the meeting, bloody latency!"

[captain_to_fire]

1 minute ago, orbitalbuzzsaw said:

I think the VPN companies have more of a privacy focus in their sort of ethos and it would be worse for them to do it and have it found out so they have an interest in being less awful, I feel

There have been cases of "zero-knowledge, zero logs" paid VPNs in the past only to be in collusion with law enforcement agencies. I know some VPNs have opened up bug bounties, and even resorted to RAM only servers so that everything would be wiped after each reboot. Proton VPN as far as I know have deployed their Swiss servers inside bunkers and promise that they're not tracking logs of user activity. Basically it is still all lip service requiring a matter of faith.

 

13 minutes ago, leadeater said:

"Hi guys"

"Hello...?"

"Oh they already left the meeting, bloody latency!"

Basically me trying to do a video call on Nokia N70 over 3G in 2006 

[fUnDaMeNtAl_knobhead]

31 minutes ago, captain_to_fire said:

There have been cases of "zero-knowledge, zero logs" paid VPNs in the past only to be in collusion with law enforcement agencies.

PIA, HMA VPN are a great example.

[Kisai]

3 hours ago, linux fanboy said:

IDK but I think it is both speed and latency.

You can't have both.

 

Higher speed means larger buffers, packets or something else, which means higher latency. For less latency the buffers have to be smaller, which means higher overhead in state tracking.

 

Let's be honest though, 200ms (nagle algorithm) is what all software is designed around, and if you can get sub-200ms from a VPN, you're only "better than dial-up", not anywhere near the low latency required to play games competitively without excessive lag.  If you turn the nagle algorithm off, you can get like 6ms to servers in a 100 mile radius without the VPN, so if the VPN adds 180ms then that means it's likely travelling 500 miles back and forth first.

 

 

[Lightwreather]

12 hours ago, BuckGup said:

I would much rather just use WireGaurd

True,

Proton VPN (I'm using it temporariliy while trying to setup my wireguard server), uses like 200-400MiB of RAM while wireguard uses like less that 50MiB....