TECH

Surfshark launches world's first 100Gbps VPN servers

VPN competition has been fierce in recent years. Major brands vie for consumer attention with promises of increased privacy, more server locations, and, above all, faster speeds. Today, Surfshark has taken a giant leap forward on this last front, announcing the launch of the world's first 100Gbps VPN servers.

This is a monumental technological leap, representing a tenfold increase in capacity compared to the current 10Gbps standard, which most major VPN providers, such as NordVPN and ExpressVPN, have adopted in recent years. With this move, Surfshark isn't just trying to be faster; it's redefining what's technically possible and preparing its network for the future of the internet.

Before you imagine that your download speed will magically skyrocket to 100Gbps, it's crucial to understand what this number means. The advertised speed doesn't refer to each user's individual speed, but rather to the server's total bandwidth capacity.

Think of a VPN server like a highway. The server's bandwidth is the number of lanes on that highway. If too many cars (users) try to use a highway with few lanes at the same time, the result is a traffic jam (congestion), and everyone's speed slows down.

Until now, the industry-standard highway had 10 lanes (10Gbps). What Surfshark has done is open the first 100-lane highway.

The benefit to you, as a user, isn't having a car that runs at 100Gbps, but rather having the guarantee that, even if the highway is full of other cars, there will always be a free lane for you. This translates into a much more stable, consistent, and faster connection, especially during peak hours (at night, for example), when VPN servers are under greater pressure. Surfshark's justification for this massive investment is the future. Bandwidth-hungry activities like 4K (and soon 8K) video streaming, competitive online gaming, virtual reality, and remote work involving large file transfers are becoming the norm.

To prevent your VPN from becoming a bottleneck preventing you from enjoying these experiences, server capacity must grow to keep up with demand. By making this leap to 100Gbps, Surfshark is "future-proofing," ensuring its network will have the necessary capacity for years to come.

This is where expectations need to be tempered. This isn't an update that will affect your connection tomorrow, unless you live near Amsterdam.

For now, the launch is limited to just a few servers in this Dutch city. Surfshark hasn't given any indication of when it plans to expand this technology to other major locations, such as the United States, Asia, or the rest of Europe.

In practice, this announcement should be seen more as a proof of concept and a powerful marketing ploy than as a feature that most users will be able to take advantage of in the short term. Surfshark is demonstrating its technological capabilities and establishing itself as a leader in innovation.

According to Donatas Budvytis, Chief Technology Officer at Surfshark, this change is happening due to several factors, including increased devices per household requiring higher network capacity to perform large software updates and ensure higher bitrates.

“With 10 times the headroom of 10Gbps, we can reduce congestion and maintain consistent speeds, even during high traffic spikes. This is especially important as the demand for higher network capacity and the number of online devices per household continue to grow rapidly. Also, VPN services should not become a bottleneck and have to be prepared for future technologies like augmented reality glasses or any other virtual reality headsets, which will depend on real-time data streaming and fast connections,” explained Budvytis.

Surfshark's new 100Gbps servers allow VPN technology to be future-proof and ready for the growing demand when the shift to higher-capacity hardware happens.

Increased bandwidth also reduces the need for throttling or deprioritizing traffic, allowing users to get closer to their maximum internet speeds more often, even when backing up heavy documents to the cloud or downloading a game.

“100Gbps hardware enables faster encryption on modern CPUs, more intelligent software paths, and improved load distribution. This results in consistently high speeds, greater stability, and the necessary capacity to handle future bandwidth-intensive applications,” said Budvytis.

For this solution, Surfshark has chosen the Amsterdam location due to its impressive internet exchange (AMS-IX), which handles over 14 trillion bits per second, making it one of the world's largest internet exchanges by traffic volume. To put this into perspective, that’s roughly 1.75 terabytes of data every second, ~560,000 simultaneous 4K streams, equivalent to about 7.5 million people watching TikTok videos simultaneously, or around 63 million people playing Fortnite at once.

The pressure on the competition...Still, the impact of this news on the industry will be immediate. Providers like NordVPN, ExpressVPN, and Proton VPN, which have invested millions in recent years to modernize their networks from 1Gbps to 10Gbps, now see Surfshark leapfrogging them an entire generation ahead.

The pressure to stay ahead is now immense. Although the reach is limited, the title of "first and only VPN with 100Gbps servers" is a formidable marketing tool, which will certainly force competitors to accelerate their own development plans. The race to 100Gbps has officially begun, and Surfshark has fired the starting gun.

mundophone