Many VPN providers advertise their number of servers and IPs offered. In (usually paid) online VPN reviews, the number of servers is taken as one of the key metrics to judge, whether a VPN service is “good” or “bad”. However, is the number of servers and IPs that your VPN provider offers really important? The short answer is: (As with most things in life,) it depends on the use case. While there are no inherent benefits from having a lot of servers, for some use cases it may be beneficial to have more IPs available. Especially for privacy protection, however, more IPs may be a disadvantage instead of an advantage. Continue reading to get the full reasoning.
In many VPN advertisements, the number of servers and IPs are listed, and the underlying judgment is usually that more servers and IPs are better, as it makes the VPN provider look big, reliable and stable. There is some degree of truth behind this reasoning, as it does take a lot of staff for the administration of a larger number of servers. However, most VPN providers don’t rely on dedicated servers but use cheap and less secure virtual servers, instead. It’s much easier to set up a large number of virtual servers than a large number of dedicated servers. Thus, often times the number of servers may actually give a false feeling of safety.
For most VPN users, the privacy gains associated with a VPN are the main reason for using a VPN. Especially regarding privacy, fewer IPs are actually better. The more users use the same IP, the harder it gets for services to identify you based on the IP. You are a needle in a big haystack. On the other hand, if you connect to a service with a large number of IPs, only a few (if any) other people will be using the same IP that you’re using. This makes you pretty unique and thus easier to track on the internet.
Among the other user cases of using a VPN is streaming georestricted content. Many streaming services like Netflix restrict access to content to certain geographical areas. For example, when streaming with a German IP, you’re only granted access to the content available for Germany. A VPN lets you use the IP from whatever country the VPN server is in. Thus, VPNs are often used to change your perceived location and circumvent content limitations. Many use VPN to watch Netflix in U.S., Canada, Germany and Asia. However, most streaming services blacklist IPs associated with a VPN to prevent such streaming. In this case, a large number of IPs may be beneficial, if the streaming service has not caught all of them. For streaming content, the number of servers is rather unimportant. What’s more important is where these servers are located.
While a large number of IP addresses may be useful for circumventing georestriction, fewer IP addresses usually mean enhanced privacy. Thus, a larger number of IPs and servers is not inherently beneficial and should therefore not be used as a metric when deciding on a VPN provider. Only go with a VPN provider that only uses dedicated servers, as we do here at SnowHaze. These may cost a little more but are also much safer.
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