Reflections and issues, a few days after joining Perfect Privacy...

zuben

New Member
There is a huge amount that I admire and already enjoy about this service. The emphasis on security and pseudanonymity. No logs, ever. Neurorouting is great. Multi-hops too.

All of these are excellent. Flawless, even.

Things I am less thrilled about. The price, well above competitors. For a "Perfect" service, that would be fine. But see the points below.

Fist gripe. The speeds are slower, in my experience, than, say, ExpressVPN and (definitely) vpn.ac. Even with one hop only, and neurorouting turned off. Why, I wonder?

But my biggest gripe is the GUI. It is a nightmare. I'm not bothered that it looks ancient. My problem is that it is not intuitive or easy to use. At all. And so here are my questions, in the hope that admin will address them. (And that a new GUI is in the pipeline!)

1) How do I choose the fastest connection?

a) Ping alone? Bandwidth al0ne? Some mix of the two? If so, how do I work this out, without wasting my time on trial and error?

b) Is 4000/5000 Mbits on one server (say, Rotterdam) better than 999/1000 Mbits on another server (say, Calais)? There's no way to know. (If there is some info somewhere on this, why should I have to dig it out?)

c) Geographical proximity alone (btw, you need more servers in Southern Europe - or indeed any: Spain, Portugal, Italy!!)?

d) A blend of these? If so, which has priority? I've not found any guidance on this so far. ExpressVPN offers, for example, a best server suggestion. Why don't you? (I can always ignore it, but might not!)

2) Does any of this matter if I use neurorouting? (I suspect it does, in that it's best if the first 'hop' is as fast as possible, but there's little advice on this.)

3) Confusion on connection. Why, when I connect to, say, London, does it tell me at the top of the GUI that I am connected to Amsterdam [see image]? There must be a reason; but, if it's buried in the forums, I've not found it yet. Is there a reason? The GUI all seems very approximate, and (at the price of this service!) that makes me feel uncomfortable.

I have signed up for a month. I shall be interested to see what response to these questions I get from staff members. I would like to commit to a longer period of use. But, imo, some of these questions need resolving, for me at least, as a new user with previous experience of other reputable VPNs.

So, admin people, can you address these issues for me? Thanks!

2018_09_15 22-05-16.png
 
I'm not an admin, but I think that I can help you:

1) How do I choose the fastest connection?
Depends on ping, server load and routing.

a) Ping alone? Bandwidth al0ne? Some mix of the two? If so, how do I work this out, without wasting my time on trial and error?
I'd suggest testing servers near your physical location (or using a ping test)

b) Is 4000/5000 Mbits on one server (say, Rotterdam) better than 999/1000 Mbits on another server (say, Calais)? There's no way to know. (If there is some info somewhere on this, why should I have to dig it out?)
PP has 5 servers in Rotterdam and the current load of each server is just added up. When you connect to a location with multiple servers (afaik), you will be automatically connected to the server which has the most a available bandwith (you can disable this in the settings, then you'll have all 5 Rotterdam servers in your serverlist)

c) Geographical proximity alone (btw, you need more servers in Southern Europe - or indeed any: Spain, Portugal, Italy!!)?
PP only rents servers if they are really needed, but they also said that the next location will probably be Italy (Spain doesn't have enough traffic for a gigabit server)

d) A blend of these? If so, which has priority? I've not found any guidance on this so far. ExpressVPN offers, for example, a best server suggestion. Why don't you? (I can always ignore it, but might not!)
They probably just do a ping test and connect you to the server with the most available bandwidth.
 
Thanks for this, ItsFe.

Do you have any insight as to my point 3 above (and the image)? I'm not sure why the GUI highlights London in green, but says I'm connected to Amsterdam.
 
Do you have any insight as to my point 3 above (and the image)? I'm not sure why the GUI highlights London in green, but says I'm connected to Amsterdam.
I've never seen that. Maybe a reinstall helps?
 
ItsFe, so I've reinstalled, and it's still happening.

Here is the GUI: Paris highlighted, told I'm connected to Amsterdam:
2018_09_16 12-12-58.png

Here is the PP IP test page, saying I'm connectied to amsterdam2:
2018_09_16 12-13-58.png

Here is the PP DNS test page, saying that my DNS resolver is paris1:
2018_09_16 12-14-28.png

So. my question about the GUI is this: does the green highlighter refer to DNS, and the Amsterdam connection refer to actual connection? If so, why, when I select Paris, is my actual connection not Paris?

I'd be grateful for any thoughts...
 
Seems like you're using NeuroRouting (the PP website is hosted in Amsterdam, so your traffic "hops" from the Paris server to the Amsterdam server)
 
Thanks for the prompt and helpful replies. I did wonder if that might be the answer. I'm going to stop fretting about this now, and just use the service!
 
So I turned Neurorouting off, and checked that I was getting the same IP (I used the Neurorouting test page at https://restoreprivacy.com/neurorouting-test/).

I connected to Calais and then Bucharest.

Yes, the highlighted server and the connection information were the same.

So I conclude that the green highlighted connection and connection information can indeed differ when Neurorouting is used. (Not that is explained anywhere in the documentation!!)
 
Hey guys, I just started using PP, and I mostly agree with Zuben. Despite it has a lot of features and really secured, the internet speed is killing me.
I really like the ads filter, one thing less to worry.
I am living in Spain (No PP server here) and I have 500 mb fiber connection, but I usually get 30% the speed of what I usually get without a VPN.
So, how do I actually chose which server is fastest for me ?
 
I too spend a lot of time connected from Spain.

I do wish there were some Southern Europe servers!

I find that Paris, Calais, Strasbourg are generally the fastest. Ping servers, and that'll tell you where to connect.

Could we perhaps have some servers in Southern Europe? Spain? Portugal? Italy, even?
 
So far Paris was the fastest one, tried both Amsterdam and Frankfurt and many others, still the speed is to slow, I can barely get above 50 mb/s, during the day is even worse, the best that I got was 40 mb/s.
Tried both from my Mac and my iPhone, so I can't blame the mac App. On iPhone i am using directly the profile.
I wrote an email to support, maybe I am doing something wrong.
 
Goodness, I'd be pleased with such a speed! I am getting around 30 at the moment - but, there again, my connection w/o VPN is slower than yours.
 
Just done some tests, which may or may not be informative. All are ping/download:-
No VPN (Spain): 23 ms / 40 Mbps
Perfect Privacy (Strasbourg): 55 ms / 26 Mbps
Another VPN (vpn.ac, Madrid): 18 ms / 39.8 Mbps.

My conclusion: An alternative VPN did a faster ping, and almost as much download speed, as no-VPN; PP lagged behind on both. PP is great for privacy; but we really do need some Southern European servers!
 
Just done some tests, which may or may not be informative. All are ping/download:-
No VPN (Spain): 23 ms / 40 Mbps
Perfect Privacy (Strasbourg): 55 ms / 26 Mbps
Another VPN (vpn.ac, Madrid): 18 ms / 39.8 Mbps.

Yes, vpn.ac is fast, really fast - too fast. But don't try it with TOR!

VPN.ac is incompatible with TOR.
We tried testing it and were unable to hide our true IP address

https://thebestvpn.com/reviews/vpn-ac/

That may be the difference between a lot of exciting years in prison OR a boring life in freedom.
 
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I have fiber connection, without VPN I always have above 400 mb / s, so 30-40 mb/s it is unbearable.
I will try PP a couple of days more, if not, back to ExpressVPN for one more year.
I really like PP with all its features.
 
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