![]() When I’m busy online doing a half-dozen things, it’s usually very spiky because, well, ya gotta actually read what you visit occasionally, right? I was watching a YouTube video before I left that particular page, which is why my download bandwidth went from really high down to a very minimal rate. ![]() It’s interesting to see how you actually use the Internet in this window. Interestingly, IPVanish also has a main screen that offers up some stats you can see if you click on the four corners of a square icon on the lower right of the pop-up window: Sounds like something out of a cyber-thriller story, but it’s a smart way to make it really, really hard for anyone to track what you’re up to in the online world. If you’re really concerned about being tracked, you can actually set up IPVanish to automatically bounce you through a different VPN server as frequently as every 45-minutes. IP Settings offers some really interesting options if you’re of the more paranoid ilk: On “ Connection” you definitely want to enable “Auto Reconnect” so that if you switch networks or even close your computer and turn it on again you’ll stay connected to the VPN: There are plenty more interesting settings too. Curious what YouTube looks like if you’re in China? You can find out with IPVanish! IPVanish uses OpenVPN so there are servers throughout the world, offering people in repressive nations the ability to use the Internet as if they’re based elsewhere in the world, and vice versa. You can see that you can easily configure the program to launch – and hide itself – at startup, hide it from the Dock, show connection status (the timer) on the menu bar and much more. The “ General” settings are a good starting point: That’s where you can really fine-tune how things work. See the gear icon on the top right? Click on it and you get to the preferences and settings window. It shows up on the Mac menubar along the top and even shows how long you’ve been running the VPN: ![]() In fact, you can have five simultaneous connections with a single subscription so you really can keep all your devices private). With performance like that you can leave your VPN running 24×7, even on your home network, and that’s just what I do now.īetter yet, IPVanish also turns out to be super easy to work with on the Mac (and Windows, and Android, and iOS for iPhones and iPads too. The ping time is still a lot slower, but notice that both the download and upload speed are barely impacted by using a VPN server that’s actually over 800 miles away from our Colorado offices in Dallas, Texas. Many people just believe that if you’re running a VPN, you just have to pay that penalty, but IPVanish demonstrates that’s just not true, with a minimal impact on network speed: That’s less than half of the network speed without the VPN running, and while it’s still decent speed, it’s going to be noticeable. Where you really see the penalty, though, is in download speed. Ping time is expected to become slower as it’s now testing against a machine that’s geographically further away. Upload speed? Not as good, but that’s pretty typical and fine for most all Internet users.įor the first test, my old VPN service, ExpressVPN: Super fast ping (basically the time between my computer and Comcast’s server: 15 milliseconds), and definitely a solid download speed of almost 120Mbps. To start, here’s the speedtest of my Comcast Internet connection without any VPN running: With all that in mind, let’s look at the performance of a couple of different VPNs. Problem is, a VPN can also really slow your computer connection down and some VPN services are clumsy and a hassle to work with. And it’s all encrypted as soon as it leaves your computer, so even if the ISP wanted to analyze it, they couldn’t. Surf the Web and all your traffic looks like it’s just going to one neutral site and everything else is masked and untrackable. You want to check the scores on the ESPN site, for example, and your request goes from your computer to your ISP to the VPN server to ESPN back to the VPN and back to your computer. ![]() And the one I recommend right now – and use! – is IPVanish.Ĭonceptually it’s quite straightforward: Every site you visit, every data packet you get from a remote service, it’s all relayed through a special server located elsewhere on the Internet. The rise of large scale data tracking and monitoring is precisely why a virtual private network ( VPN) is such a boon: Use a simple software app and it hides all your tracks, restoring your online privacy.
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