How to interpret the stats to choose server?

[the1lemming 4]

When I go to the Status section, I am presented with a lot of statistics and graphics.  Obviously this is what is expected when I click on a tab that says "Stats"

 

My problem is that I don't actually understand what all thise statistics mean.

 

I would be most grateful if somebody could explain how I read and interprerit the statistics?

 

I am especially interested in learning how to choose the fastest server to where I live so that I can get the best download speeds.

 

I have an ISP provider that advertises 100mbps but when I choose a VPN server I am lucky if I get anything close to 30Mbps.

 

Cheers

 

 

[snaggle 25]

Hi there.

I asked a similar question regarding the information on Eddies server screen - https://airvpn.org/topic/23800-eddie-info-question/?do=findComment&comment=65541

Hopefully this goes part-ways to answering your question.

[the1lemming 4]

When I go to the Status section, I am presented with a lot of statistics and graphics.  Obviously this is what is expected when I click on a tab that says "Stats"

 

My problem is that I don't actually understand what all thise statistics mean.

 

I would be most grateful if somebody could explain how I read and interprerit the statistics?

Hopeful bump.

 

Maybe an admin could offer a bit of advice?

 

Cheers

:-)

[zhang888 1066]

What part of the statistics is not self-explanatory? There are no technical terms there.

Except maybe the Status log, which is an historical data of server failures/packet loss, for transparency reasons.

 

For example:

https://airvpn.org/servers/Alderamin/

 

The graphs represent current load, Traffic, Users, and estimated latency to other cities.

[the1lemming 4]

What part of the statistics is not self-explanatory? There are no technical terms there.

Hello,

 

As I am not an IT person, I do not understand or know what the statistics represent or mean.  I genuinely do not know what the numbers and stats represent and as such I resort to randomly choosing servers and check out their speeds hoping that I find a good one.

 

I don't think that I am alone in not being able to read and decipher the statistics because I do not do this sort of thing for a living.  If I showed you an ECG from my job, would you be able to interperit it?  It has a graph and numbers so surely you would be able to tell me exactly it was you were looking at to make an informed decision?

[serenacat 83]

But it is 2017, so your computer or smartphone can decide for you using its programmed intelligence, and you just have to pay, and follow instructions, and wait for things to happen to you.

His name is Eddie, and you ask "Connect to a recommended server".

Why ask questions, he-it will take you there.

[the1lemming 4]

But it is 2017, so your computer or smartphone can decide for you using its programmed intelligence,

If I used Eddie then all would be good, however I use my router as a VPN client and its up to me to choose a server and enter the address into router.

 

And this is where my problem is.

[serenacat 83]

Perhaps I was a bit unkind by a "satirical" reply to your specific problem. My setup is quite different, and internet performance is a result of many factors, including your type of usage - multiple video streams for family house, torrents asap or background/overnight, web browsing "heavy" pages with many ad links and autoplay, skype style video calls, gaming, ...

Configuring routers and network optimisation does require some knowlege of internet technicals, but I cannot give a *.101 tutorial link, but try googling and "drill down" on terms like "latency" and "load" and "protocol". If you work with med tech, it would be a similar learning process for basic equipment operation and analysis.

A starting point would be to select the physically nearest few servers which tend toward the lowest latency. Usually, Air servers do not exceed about 40% load, even at peak local evening times, and so should be "good enough" unless everything else is going fast.

Some routers do not have the cpu processing power to en/decrypt at >20Mbps, and can be a "weakest link".

[Staff 9972]

But it is 2017, so your computer or smartphone can decide for you using its programmed intelligence,

If I used Eddie then all would be good, however I use my router as a VPN client and its up to me to choose a server and enter the address into router.

 

 

Hello,

 

not necessarily: you can use names of the type .vpn.airdns.org to have some automation. Such addresses resolve into the entry-IP address of the highest rated server in a country. Use the ISO country code for the country, for example "nl.vpn.airdns.org" resolves into the IP address of the highest rated server in the Netherlands. Of course in this case you still need the mental effort to pick a country.

 

The rating of each server is computed every 5 minutes through a formula which takes into account a variety of parameters which include those which you don't understand in the real time servers monitor.

 

And this is where my problem is.

 

 

The stats are so simple to decipher and based on such basic concepts that it's worth that you spend some time to understand them: they will be useful not only to understand our servers monitor, but in an enormous variety of situations. Start with "bandwidth", "throughput" and "round trip time". Wikipedia features good articles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Throughput

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Round-trip_delay_time

 

Kind regards

[the1lemming 4]

Hello,

 

not necessarily: you can use names of the type <country code>.vpn.airdns.org to have some automation. Such addresses resolve into the entry-IP address of the highest rated server in a country. Use the ISO country code for the country, for example "nl.vpn.airdns.org" resolves into the IP address of the highest rated server in the Netherlands. Of course in this case you still need the mental effort to pick a country.

 

The rating of each server is computed every 5 minutes through a formula which takes into account a variety of parameters which include those which you don't understand in the real time servers monitor.

Kind regards

 

Good afternoon,

 

Thank you for helping to explain how I can learn to read the stats to help me choose a suitable server for my home router.  I also appreciate the useful guidance that I have the possibility to use an entire country's servers rather than an individual server with my Router working as a VPN Client.  I'm a bit of a dullard and don't know how to find the abbreviations for each country, but I will try my best to work on this.  As it is, I get the best results from servers in the Netherlands rather than my home country.

 

I really do appreciate all your help and understanding of the fact that I have very rudimentary skills and understanding of such a complex subject that is VPN and its workings.

 

Once again when my subscription is up, I shall be voting with my wallet and staying with such a stellar organisation.  AirVPN all the way for me.

 

:-)

 

 

 

Edit

 

Do I copy and paste  nl.vpn.airdns.org into a Command Prompt of Windows 10?

Or do I type something else, because I get a bad command with this.

 

Cheers

[Staff 9972]

don't know how to find the abbreviations for each country

 

 

Hello,

 

when you have such issues put all the keywords inside a good web search engine: this is generally a good start. For example, we wrote in our message "Use the ISO country code for the country" and you don't know what it is, so a good idea is looking for "iso country code list", which returns in various search engines as a first link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1 - there you find definition and a table with all the country codes. Consider the two letters codes, obviously.

 

 

Edit

 

Do I copy and paste  nl.vpn.airdns.org into a Command Prompt of Windows 10?

Or do I type something else, because I get a bad command with this.

 

You can use "nslookup" to resolve a name into an IP address in a command line interface. For example, enter the command:

 

nslookup nl.vpn.airdns.org

 

You will see something like:

 

$ nslookup nl.vpn.airdns.org
Server:        10.4.0.1
Address:    10.4.0.1#53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:    nl.vpn.airdns.org
Address: 213.152.162.169
 

and you see that, at that moment, nl.vpn.airdns.org resolved into 213.152.162.169 IPv4 address.

Kind regards