Speed vs. Security.

[Davidquarm 0]

When choosing a VPN, users often face the trade-off between speed and security. A VPN that offers high security might slow down your internet connection, while one that prioritizes speed may compromise on encryption. What criteria do you consider most important when evaluating the performance of a VPN? How do you balance the need for fast connections with the necessity of strong security features?

[Tech Jedi Alex 1582]

I don't think speed (= throughput) influences security or vice versa in any way nowadays. Especially with the inclusion of the AES-NI instruction set in 10+ years old CPUs (and which is found even in aarch64, i.e. ARM64 mobile SoCs) it's no longer about key length choice or something. And ChaCha20-Poly1305 is even more efficient and is an equivalent encryption standard. When it comes to throughput problems, the issues usually lie somewhere else: The local machine (drivers, software interference), the access technology used (WiFi instead of ethernet), sometimes it's the ISP or its peering to servers. Sometimes port choice. It can also just be the VPN server panting, though that's rare and would affect everyone using it. Last time we were seriously discussing lowering the key length was before AES-NI was a thing, around OpenVPN 2.2/2.3 and earlier..
 

7 hours ago, Davidquarm said:

How do you balance the need for fast connections with the necessity of strong security features?

.. so don't even bother balancing anything: Use the strongest cipher available and troubleshoot somewhere else.