Following closely on the heels of NordVPN announcing its proof of concept testing for WireGuard VPN protocol, IVPN has made the trial available to a select number of subscribers. The protocol is currently only available on their iOS, Android and macOS applications, since there hasn’t yet been an officially released Windows package.
There has been quite a buzz about the new protocol to date since it has so far been akin to the proverbial Yeti – often talked about yet not really seen. What is known is that the consensus is that the WireGuard VPN protocol is faster and more secure than OpenVPN, one of the most commonly used protocols today.
Although IVPN has made WireGuard available now it still comes with a big pinch of salt. IVPN CEO Nick Pestell wrote in a blog post a warning that WireGuard was still in a highly experimental stage.
“The WireGuard protocol is currently under heavy development and should be considered experimental. At this time we do not recommend using WireGuard except for testing or in situations where security is not critical. Our Wireguard VPN servers are completely separate from our OpenVPN servers to ensure no security risks,” commented Pestell.
Why is IVPN’s Move Significant?
When we first saw IVPN claiming first commercial availability we were a little dubious since this protocol has been toyed with by various VPN service providers already, including Azire and a couple of others.
Yet in between the lines we notice an extremely significant difference – Due to its extremely small footprint, it leaves portions of the protocol dependant on VPN servers. This includes key and IP address management. The VPN service providers dabbling in this upcoming protocol so far have in turn foisted the responsibility onto users.
In order to use WireGuard, you need to generate your own encryption keys and upload those to the servers you are using. This is kind of iffy as anyone in tech knows that most problems with services are caused by PEBCAK – Problem Exists Between Chair and Keyboard – which is the user.
What IVPN has done is to take on that responsibility and built in an automated system into their applications. Remove PEBCAK and WireGuard becomes a LOT more user friendly.
Try WireGuard on IVPN Today
While the trial for WireGuard on IVPN is open to the general public with a no-commitment free account on IVPN, we highly recommend existing VPN users test it out. This will lay to rest questions about how much faster WireGuard is compared to OpenVPN.
Having tested quite a number of VPN service providers such as ExpressVPN and NordVPN, we have found that with increased high speed internet becoming more prevalent today, a lighter protocol is something that is much looked forward to.
While we have not tried it out for ourselves yet, according to Viktor Vecsei, CMO of IVPN, “both the WireGuard’s authors’ and our (sic) internal test results showed WireGuard beating out existing protocols in initial connection time and connection speed.”
We believe that IVPN has its finger on the right pulse. As Pestell says, many VPN users disconnect from their service when they need full speed for certain applications. We know this is true for us and hope that WireGuard will swiftly flood the market, thanks to early adopters like IVPN.