VPNs will always decrease your internet speed due to the processes involved when your internet traffic is tunneled through a remote server.
This article covers:
What is a VPN?
How using a VPN affects internet speed?
What is a VPN ?
Simply put, a VPN stands between your computer and the internet. Imagine that you're on your computer and the cloud is the internet. Normally, your computer accesses the cloud directly ("internet") via your internet service provider.
When using a VPN, your internet traffic is routed through the VPN server (which can be in a different city/country/continent), so the VPN server is accessing the internet on your behalf.
How using a VPN affects internet speed?
A VPN will always decrease your internet speed, as it adds a number of steps that were not initially present in your connection to KUDO. The main reasons for a decrease in internet speed are:
Latency
Latency represents the amount of time between a user action and the resulting response. For example, the delay between when a meeting attendee clicks on a different language option during a meeting, and the time the audio reaches the attendee.
The main cause of latency when using a VPN is the physical distance between locations where the data is accessed and delivered. When a user makes an Internet request, the farther the request and subsequent response have to travel, the more delay the meeting attendee will experience.
Suppose Cecilia is based in Spain, and she uses a VPN server from Greece to connect to one of the meetings. Every time her computer communicates over the internet, it must send the request all the way to Greece, and then her VPN service will decrypt the request and forward it to KUDO. KUDO will then send a response back to the VPN server in Greece, and finally, the VPN will encrypt this response and send it to Cecilia in Spain.
Encryption
Different VPN's might be using different level of encryption and different implementation processes. The encryption/decryption process takes time, and it could add noticeable latency to your KUDO meeting.
VPN Server Load
When there are too many users connected to one VPN server (VPN customers choosing the same VPN server location as you do), the connection speed drops.
Suppose Nils is connecting to a VPN server at the same time as 1,000 other users, and the server only has enough capacity to handle 300 requests at a time. The server will likely get overloaded and start queueing or dropping requests, slowing load times for Nils and many of the VPN’s other users. This experience is especially common with free and discount VPN services.