Most VPN providers will advertise the number of servers they have available starting with their homepage and will wear those figures like a badge of honor throughout their websites. In the following, I’ll show you why the server count might all be just a gas and why you should not let it influence your buying decision.
Not all servers were created equal
So, let’s talk about servers. They come in all shapes and sizes, while some are serving emails, others do videos or host web sites. In other words, they vary depending on the job they were designed to fulfill and naturally, so do their processors, memory or storage options. Having more servers doesn’t necessarily translate into having better speed, having the right kind of servers though, catering to the right kind of job, does.
For example, some servers were made for high performance applications, serving ever increasing numbers of users (scalability) and highly available or continuous applications, which in plain english means – applications that do not go down. Other servers are serving web content or were made to
VPN servers. Each has its own kind of processor, memory and storage.
Servers can also vary on location and age. A new generation server can be a completely different piece of machinery than an old one and when it comes to VPNs that can go both ways. Good and bad, the whole nine yards. And of course new doesn’t always equal better. In fact, for VPN servers, more often than not older servers usually offer multiple CPUs and have more cores, a relative rare commodity in new generation servers.
Uplinks
Now that we know that internet connection is far more important than the server count, that’s when uplinks come into play.
Good connectivity is today an imperative and that’s why most servers ship 1Gb/s connections. To get the best of each server however, a
VPN provider needs to have a pretty good uplink to the ISP.
What you can take away from this
A large server portfolio is usually perceived as better connectivity and an overall higher speed, when it comes to a VPN service. While the inclination to follow the above logic makes sense, connectivity and speed, particularly, doesn’t have much to do with the actual numbers of servers.
There’s a far more intricate story that dictates connectivity, going behind the scenes that can determine wether or not a VPN provider deserves the hype it gets, or more importantly, has the expected level of performance. Server types, processors, memory, storage options and bandwidth are the actual forces that go into play.
A good VPN will have its own servers and encryption protocols designed for it, reducing possible security failures to a minimum. Free VPN services are often an open door to malware and can be easily used by scammers.
In the FREE vs. PAID matter, its is important to understand that most legit businesses will offer 7 days of free trial, but a free connection on a indefinite period of time is sure to get its profit elsewhere; in ways that can harm your security and defeat the whole purpose of having a VPN in the first place.
We suggest you do yourself a favor and invest a good 5 bucks for a reliable VPN like the dedicated VPN you can get from My IP.io or from another reliable provider.
