Does distance matter?

VPN
1

The distance between where I live and Japan is almost 1/3 of the distance to Netherland but whenever I clicked fastest the VPN route me to Netherland server while at the same time Japan has more “green” server than Netherland. I haven’t noticed any different in speed so can anyone explain to me does distance really matter?

2

Each server has three basic metrics that will impact your connection:

  1. Bandwidth - how fast the connection is (Mbps). This one covers how fast you can download files and such. Downloading big files and streaming high-res video care a lot about bandwidth.
  2. Load - how much of the server is being utilized. The more loaded a server, the fewer resources are available to each individual user. A highly loaded server could result in lower bandwith and possibly higher latency.
  3. Latency - how long it takes for your data to go from origin to destination and back (ms). This is important for responsiveness and is critical for real-time applications such as video calls and online gaming. This is also the one affected by distance - the longer your data packets have to travel, the more time it’ll take them to reach their destination.

So the distance of the VPN route does matter, but only for the things that care about latency.

3

Yes, you are going to have some latency issues depending on the distance of the server you’re connecting to. The farther the server = The higher the latency. If you’re okay with an increased latency, go ahead for it, use the product as you please. Even I connect to distant servers for different purposes. Bandwidth speed is the same for me, so basically the distance of the server matters only in terms of latency.

Hope that helps and have a good one!

4

You can try the result in testers such as https://www.speedtest.net/ (still be to taken with caution as real-condition usage might differ a lot from speed-testing context).

Theoretically a farther server with a lower load would give you better bandwidth (download/upload) and worse ping.

If you download/upload large files, watch videos, you want bandwidth and don’t care the ping.

On the opposite, if you play real-time online game, you likely don’t need that much bandwidth but you need a short ping.