Will a VPN Stop Buffering? (Helpful Tips)

It’s finally here! The Witcher season 2 has arrived on Netflix, and, having struck a Black-Friday deal on a new TV, you offer to host the binge-watch with a group of friends.  As you cozy up on the couches, popcorn in hand, you excitedly hit “play.”  And you are greeted with the buffer wheel of shame!  Should you get a VPN to help with buffering?

Several factors contribute to buffering. For example, if your streams are buffering because your ISP throttles your connection, a VPN can help resolve the buffering.  However, if you are experiencing buffering because of a slow connection, a VPN may make it worse. 

Suppose you are considering using a VPN, especially with the goal of improved streaming and less throttling.  In that case, you first need to understand why your streams are buffering and how using a VPN may affect your streaming experience. 

will a vpn stop buffering

The 5 Causes of Buffering

When you are streaming content from the internet, your device or application will download a piece or section in advance, storing it on your device’s internal memory.  The idea here is for the download to happen ahead of time or ahead of your current viewpoint to have a smooth viewing or listening experience.  

However, some factors can cause your stream download to experience breaks or dips.  Your viewpoint will catch up to the download point if this happens, stalling the stream and gifting you with the dreaded buffer wheel.  

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Five common factors contribute to buffering. 

1. Slow Internet Speeds Can Cause Buffering

You are in for a nasty surprise if you hope to stream Dune in 4K on a 5Mb per-second line.  However, you may be rocking a 50Mb fiber line and could still be getting slow streaming speeds.  

Think of your available bandwidth as the main water line running to your house.  Once inside, it gets divided among all the faucets, toilets, and showers.  Open all of them at once, and your pressure vanishes.  The same applies to internet speed.  If you have 20 devices suckling at the same router, your bandwidth will disappear.  

Alternatively, you may have fantastic bandwidth, capable of dealing with as many Instagram-iPhones your house can throw at it, but still see slow streaming speed.  This may be because your ISP practices throttling certain internet activities that consume a lot of bandwidth.  We’ll get back to this later, so read on. 

2. Slow Speeds On The Server Causes Buffering

slow internet

If the streaming service provider you are using has slow or limited bandwidth capacity at the server you are accessing, you will also experience slow streaming.  

As much as you require speeds to download the content, they need immensely high bandwidth speeds to upload the content to the thousands of viewers.  Unfortunately, there isn’t much you can do to fix this problem. 

3.  Your Distance From The Server Will Affect Streaming Speed

Although we live in an age where almost everything happens instantaneously, distance still plays a significant role in inhibiting data travel time. If you are far from the server you are streaming from, the data will take longer to get to you, and your viewing experience will be more interrupted. 

4.  The Number Of Users On The Server Will Affect Streaming

crowd

If you think that just because you are the only person in a 1000-mile radius trying to stream some obscure art flick, that you will have a buffer-free viewing, think again.  

The actual content you are viewing doesn’t matter at all.  What matters is which server you are accessing to view that content.  So, if that server has 10 000 people logging into it and viewing content, its bandwidth is shared between them, regardless of what they are trying to watch. 

5.  Your Old Hardware May Be Causing The Buffering

If you are still using a first-generation smart TV or smart/streaming box, then the buffering could be caused or worsened by your hardware.   Remember that you are downloading data, which must be stored, organized, and then played back to you.  

This may seem like a basic computational function for modern hardware, sure, but older hardware may struggle to keep up over time and, as a result, slow down and buffer the show. 

How Can Using A VPN Help Stop Buffering

connecting to vpn

A virtual private network (VPN) uses encryption to hide your identity and activity online.  It does this by functioning in the space between you and your ISP.  

Generally, if you click on a link, your PC sends a signal to your ISP telling it that device “X,” with IP address “Y” has just connected to link “Z.”  From there, your ISP allows you access to that link.  If you use a VPN, the only message your ISP should get is “someone, somewhere, clicked on something. That’s all I have for you.”   

It should be reasonably apparent that using a VPN isn’t going to help resolve any hardware-related issues or problems on the side of the server’s bandwidth.  But if you have identified that the problem definitely relates to your internet bandwidth, using a VPN may help

VPNs Can Bypass ISP Throttling And Geo-blocking

watching streaming services

If your ISP has throttling practices related to specific content, then a VPN could be the answer to your problems.  By using a VPN, your activity is essentially hidden from your ISP.  Sufficed to say, if they don’t know what you are doing, they won’t know when to throttle you. 

VPNs can also be great tools to unlock geo-blocked shows in your area, generally due to licensing and government regulations.  In South Africa, for example, most content is monopolized by a government-affiliated corporation which leaves even giants like Netflix and Amazon offering less than expected.  

Using a VPN could resolve this as you can select a VPN server in, for example, the USA and gain access to their content.  

A note to consider here is that some VPNs may not work with specific streaming networks like Netflix, and, perhaps more sinister, some ISPs allegedly throttle ALL VPN activity.  There seems to be a slightly gray area in identifying which ISPs do this, but I suggest checking your local ISP first before purchasing an expensive VPN. 

VPNs Can Slow Down Your Internet Speed

streaming service phone

It is an unfortunate truth that using a VPN can certainly slow down your internet speed to varying degrees.  This is because all data must be re-packaged, encrypted, and possibly sent through a completely continent back and forth.  

This extra layer of activity and distance inevitably can slow down your internet speeds.  Recently, however, some VPNs have become more efficient and “faster” at doing their job. Currently, Express VPN still holds an excellent reputation for speed and reliability. 

Keep in mind that if you are seeing buffering because your actual bandwidth speed is low, using the wrong VPN, or using a VPN in the wrong way, can make it significantly worse.  

If you are using a VPN and seeing marked slower speeds, try changing your VPN server to one closer to you; this often helps quite a bit. 

Conclusion

Using a VPN could help resolve some buffering issues, but not all of them.  If you’re seeing a lot of buffering as a result of ISP throttling, then you should try using a VPN.  VPNs can hide your identity and activity from your ISP and allow you to bypass their throttle policies. 

However, if you already have slow internet speeds, using a VPN may make it slightly worse for you as your data has to travel further through extra encryption steps.  Also, if you use a small streaming server, have outdated hardware, or access a server far away, a VPN won’t help. 

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