What Is VPN and Benefits of Using One

Do you know what a VPN is? If not, you’re in for a treat. A VPN, or virtual private network, is a service that creates a secure connection between your computer and the internet. This connection allows you to safely transmit data and access blocked websites from anywhere in the world. VPNs are essential for keeping your online activity private and secure, and they have several other benefits as well. Read on to learn more about VPNs and why you should start using one today.

What Is VPN?

The first question that you may have if you have just stumbled across the term “VPN” is “What is a VPN?” Well, as mentioned above, a “VPN is also called a virtual private network” or a “virtual proxy network. “

Many people confuse a VPN with a proxy, which is a very easy thing to do since they have a similar purpose but a different approach. VPNs secure your entire network traffic, which means that regardless of the app you use or the website you visit, your VPN will keep you secure. A proxy, on the other hand, only works with a site or a single app, which means you’ll need to change settings every time you use a proxy.

How Does It Work?

The next question that you might have is “How exactly does a VPN work?” which is something that many people are still confused about. In a nutshell, what happens when you visit a website is that a direct connection is made between your device and the website itself, and information is transmitted back and forth between your device and the site.

VPNs work like middlemen. Essentially, what this means is that you will send a request to the VPN, and the VPN will handle that request for you by directing it to the website and sending that transmission of data back to you without forming a direct connection with the site. In other words, not only does a VPN encrypt the information that is being sent and received, but it also reroutes your traffic, which means that the information cannot be intercepted.

Access to Geographically Restricted Content

One of the very first benefits of using a VPN is that you have access to geographically restricted content. Perhaps you have tried to watch YouTube outside the US or have visited a website before only to get a message that says that this content is not allowed in your country.

If you were to make use of a VPN service, you would have access to this geographically restricted content since the site would assume that you are from the country when connected to a VPN. This is because when you connect to a VPN, you are given the IP address of whichever server the VPN is located on.

Increased Levels of Privacy

The next benefit of making use of a VPN, and probably one of the biggest reasons why many people do so, is that it helps you to increase the levels of privacy that you have, which is incredibly important when browsing the Internet.

As mentioned above, VPNs hide your IP address, and this is because the VPN will assign you an IP address depending on the server that you access. In other words, this means when you visit a website, that website will not have access to your real IP address. Furthermore, it will protect you from hackers that might try to gain this information for nefarious purposes.

Better Online Gaming

Finally, the last benefit on this list as to why you might want to be using a VPN is that it will enhance your online gaming experience. If you are a gamer, you have no doubt suffered ping from time to time. In case you are not aware, ping is the latency between you and the server that you have connected with; lower levels of ping make for a great gaming experience.

Using a high-quality VPN will allow you to reduce the ping that you experience, which in turn allows for better online gaming. It should be noted that if you do want to use a VPN for gaming to reduce ping, you’ll probably want to get a higher-quality VPN that allows you to precisely select the server that is closest to the one that you are connecting to in-game.