On common, Proton dropped about 15 p.c of my unprotected velocity, however that quantity wants some context. In a location like Atlanta, Georgia, noon on a Thursday, I skilled a drop of solely round 3 p.c. In Columbus, Ohio, within the night on a Friday, that grew to a 25 p.c drop. Such a variation is regular. Suppliers like Surfshark and NordVPN see comparable variations and have comparable velocity drops on common.
The distinction for Proton is that I’ve but to come upon an actual stinker of a server. I’m positive they exist—with some 15,000+ servers, you’re sure to search out one sooner or later—however I haven’t seen them after weeks of use. Windscribe and ExpressVPN are aggressive with Proton on common, however in addition they have some places the place I noticed anyplace from a 40 to 60 p.c drop in velocity. These outcomes aren’t indicative of the velocity total (you simply swap to a special server), however Proton will get you there sooner.
That edge is probably going resulting from Proton’s VPN Accelerator. I’ll admit, it appeared like nonsense. Within the Proton VPN app, you’ll discover a toggle for VPN Accelerator, which boldly claims to extend velocity by as much as 400 p.c; not going. Regardless of the speedup, I don’t suppose VPN Accelerator will attain anyplace close to that quoted quantity, no less than within the overwhelming majority of instances.
Nonetheless, there are some benefits, most notably, BBR. Bottleneck Bandwidth and Spherical-trip propagation time, or BBR, is a congestion management algorithm developed by Google that’s been deployed on YouTube and Google itself. Fairly than limiting packet switch when packets are misplaced, as most congestion management algorithms work, BBR fashions the community and estimates accessible bandwidth. It doesn’t must see misplaced packets to kick in.
Proton’s speeds aren’t fully attributable to BBR, however I believe it helps when connecting to servers over lengthy distances. Connecting within the UK, for instance, I noticed a median velocity lack of round 20 p.c, which is far nearer to my US outcomes than it has any proper to be.
