If you follow our blog then you already know all the reasons why you need a VPN. Whether you’re a business owner who has employees working on location, if you’re a student using free Wi-Fi, or if you’re simply shopping online for your husband’s birthday gift, a VPN will protect you from scammers, viruses and potential identity theft.
Now that we know how important VPN is, you need to know how to choose a VPN server that will work the best for you. There are a few factors to consider when choosing which of Ghost Path’s VPN servers you want to use.
Factors In Choosing A VPN Server
1. Location: The simplest solution is to always choose the server that is closest to your location. For example, Ghost Path is located in the state of Georgia, so we typically connect through the Atlanta servers. Connecting to the closest servers typically gives you the best speeds. Sometimes factors like network latency may make the closest server slower than one that’s just a bit farther away.
2. Connection Speed: Speed is the most important factor in your VPN server choice. Usually the closest server will be the fastest, but sometimes you might find that connecting to a server a little further away gives you less latency. The Ghost Path VPN client has the ability to test VPN servers and find which one is the fastest, so that’s highly recommended. If you use another VPN client then you should choose 4 or 5 of the closest servers, test them all out, and see which one performs best for you.
3. Special Needs: A common VPN use is to get around geolocation, meaning that you will want to choose a VPN server in a specific location. In this case your proximity to the VPN server and it’s speed less important than where you want your traffic to appear to be coming from.
A Word About VPN Clients
All VPN clients work a little differently when it comes to choosing/configuring VPN servers. The Ghost Path VPN client tries to do all of the work for you. It automatically chooses the servers closet to you and lets you connect to the quickly. Other clients like Viscosity and Tunnelblick require you to manually enter your VPN configurations, so you have to choose which VPN servers you want to use. In summary, the Ghost Path VPN client makes getting started a little simpler, but other clients might make handling multiple servers a tad easier.
Your Advice?
Are there any other tips that you use when choosing a VPN server? What other factors do you consider? Do you tend to use a single server all the time or change between several different servers depending on your needs? Comments welcome!