5 Factors to Consider When Choosing an iPhone VPN Provider

Choosing a VPN (Virtual Private Network) provider is an important decision when using a smartphone. A user’s VPN provider plays a big part in their online experience. At first glance, many VPN services appear similar. However, upon further investigation, it is apparent that this is not the case. They differ based upon price, value, speed, security, reliability and usability. To effectively compare multiple VPN services, there are five important factors to consider.

Price

The easiest factor to compare is price. However, it is important to note that price shouldn’t be the primary factor if a user wants a quality service. There are free VPN providers available but they do not offer a quality service. They often don’t manage the actual VPN service. They instead rely on a third party. This means that they can’t guarantee a fast, reliable or secure VPN connection. The best services utilize their own infrastructure rather than rely on a third party.

Reliability

Reliability is an extremely important factor to consider when selecting a smartphone VPN provider. Free and cheap iPhone or Android VPN providers often have connectivity issues without explanation or compensation to users. Quality smartphone VPN providers maintain redundant servers and networks. This ensures that if there ever is a problem with the service, it doesn’t impact the user.

Security Add-ons

Some VPN providers offer more than just a basic VPN service. Some also offer NAT Firewall. Nat Firewall is a packet filter than runs on the VPN provider’s servers. It blocks unrequested inbound traffic from ever reaching the user’s device. This is especially important when connecting with a VPN. VPNs create a dedicated tunnel to the Internet, thus bypassing router protections from inbound scans. Since NAT Firewall runs on the VPN provider’s servers, there is no configuration required from the user. It also protects any device that can access the VPN.

Protocol Options

There are severalVPN protocols to choose from. The most popular are PPTP, OpenVPN, and L2TP/IPsec. Each providesunique benefits and trade-offs. PPTP provides the lowest encryption of the three, with 128-bits, but is very fast. L2TP/IPsec and OpenVPN both provide strong 256-bit encryption. OpenVPN provides the best speed and stability but it is only available on Windows, Mac and Linux.

SPeed

The final consideration is the speed. A quality VPN service utilizes their own network. This gives them the flexibility to choose the optimum path for the traffic to flow between their servers and the user. The result is a transfer speed which is only limited by the user’s CPU processing power and their Internet Service Provider bandwidth. The best VPN services do not place a limit on the transfer rate or amount of bandwidth used.They do not charge to switch between their world-wide server locations.

While many VPN services look the same, these five factors allow consumers to choose the best iPhoneVPN service for their needs. These factors may be weighed differently based upon personal preferences but none should be ignored completely.