Security experts suggest using a VPN whenever you surf the web, but doing so is easier said than done. VPNs slow down your connection and often have trouble when jumping between Wi-Fi and 4G on mobile devices. That’s why ExpressVPN built a new VPN protocol, called Lightway, with a focus on speed, power-efficiency, and the mobile web experience.
Most VPN services aren’t optimized for today’s internet users and rely on pre-made protocols that are full of useless legacy code (or don’t work well on mobile devices, which don’t support the common AES standard). But Lightway is an all-new protocol built from the ground-up by ExpressVPN. It contains just around 1,000 lines of code, allowing you to connect to anonymous servers in a fraction of a second without wasting processing power or battery. (ExpressVPN is one of the only services to go down this route, Cloudflare being a notable exception).
But Lightway’s most innovative feature isn’t its speed or power efficiency; it’s the protocol’s tolerance for internet dropouts and network switching. Older VPN protocols have to restart your session after a drop-out, and tend to stutter when switching from Wi-Fi to 4G on mobile devices. Lightway, with its focus on the modern web experience, maintains a connection when switching networks on laptops or phones, and continues your VPN session after internet dropouts without the wait time of other services. Until now, Speedify was the only service to support seamless networking switching.
Interestingly, ExpressVPN plans to open source Lightway for transparency and scrutiny. If you’re interested in the Lightway code or don’t want to use a closed-source VPN software, check out ExpressVPN’s developer blog post on Lightway.
ExpressVPN is our highest recommended VPN service thanks to its speed, reliability, strict no-logging policy, and advanced features like split tunneling. You can try ExpressVPN and its new Lightway protocol today for as low as $10 a month. Current ExpressVPN customers can try Lightway after updating their ExpressVPN app on desktop or mobile. Bear in mind that Lightway isn’t available on iOS yet, but it supports Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and routers.
Source: ExpressVPN
