There have been a few reports over the last few years that using a VPN can avoid the congestion between your ISP and Netflix, giving you full access to the bandwidth you’ve paid for. After the recent news that Verizon is still crippling Netflix performance so that even a 75Mbps FiOS connection can’t receive a max-quality video stream, we decided to try out the VPN thing, to see if there really is a significant performance boost. You will be glad (or saddened) to hear that using a VPN really can speed up Netflix performance. If you’re wondering how to set up a VPN to see if your own Netflix performance can be improved, read on.

How to improve your Netflix performance with a VPN

Before setting out, I honestly didn’t think that a VPN would improve Netflix performance much. My connection isn’t particularly fast, but I can reliably haul down about 14Mbps when downloading files and I live out in a rural area where there can’t be many other people on the same line. In the name of science I decided to test this theory — I signed up for a free 30 day trial of Netflix and got in touch with Golden Frog, the company that owns VyperVPN. VyprVPN is the same company that provides the VPN service the irate FiOS customer was using. [Read: Why Netflix streaming is getting slower, and probably won’t get better any time soon.]

I’ve used two VPN services to date — BTGuard, which I wrote about last year, and now Vypr . BTGuard’s setup is a bit more barebones than Vypr’s, but honestly, both are simple — you configure a small software application with your account details (Vypr) or you use the Windows connection tools to connect to BTGuard’s servers. In either case, setting things up and downloading the client is literally the work of minutes.

Once you’ve done that, you can sign in to VyprVPN. The software defaults to the OpenVPN 256-bit security standard, but multiple options are available. Which standard is available depends on which package option you choose (more on that later).

I went with the default 256-bit OpenVPN encryption method, fired up my browser, and loaded up Netflix’s test video. This is a nifty video that will stream a series of clips to your system and increase the visual quality as the system prebuffers more content. It starts off as low as 250Kbps and picks up thereafter.

In my case, both the non-VPN and VPN-connected streams topped out at 3000 Kbps at a resolution of 1280×720 and a pixel aspect ratio of 1:1. The Vypr connection may have hit that limit a minute or so faster than the non-VPN test, but it’s difficult to be sure — download speeds can vary even in the best of cases.

I decided to do a different kind of test. Netflix also offers some sample 4K content, so we fired up one of those streams and used Windows 7’s Performance Monitor (Perfmon) to watch total bytes sent to and from this system’s ethernet adapter. All other browser windows and applications were closed for these tests.

The first graph below is network activity when using my basic Time Warner Connection; the second graph is performance when connected to the Vypr VPN.

I ran these tests 3x to be certain of the results. The results are unequivocal — when using Vypr, my overall download rates were nearly 2x as fast. It wasn’t just the average — the maximum rate was nearly 2x faster as well. On top of that, the network performance was far more consistent — running through Time Warner Cable, my download rate dipped and jumped sharply.

Did all of this translate into better video quality? Honestly, no. The 4K test stream that Netflix offered was equally sharp in both cases, though I should note that it took less time to start streaming when using Vypr as compared to the non-VPN connection.

The point of this test, however, was to investigate whether Netflix streaming was faster when using a VPN, even if my own connection is already fast enough to sustain high quality streaming. The answer, for me at least? Yes. And if you’re stuck on an achingly slow connection to start with, Vypr’s service could be a huge improvement.

Next page: A better, philosophical question — should you buy a VPN?