The NordVPN P2P Servers

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NordVPN has developed P2P dedicated servers in many of its locations. These servers are purpose-built for P2P traffic and have been optimized for high speeds and low latency. 

But connecting to a random P2P server doesn’t necessarily mean you will have the fastest speeds. You should follow some simple tips to select the best servers and, therefore, get the most out of your torrent experience with NordVPN.

In this guide, I’ll show you how to connect to a P2P server within NordVPN and offer some suggestions on how to find the fastest ones.

NordVPN P2P Servers Vs Regular Ones

A P2P server is just an optimized server to handle large data transfers, both uploading and downloading. These are the servers you can use to download torrents with NordVPN. Thanks to no bandwidth limitations, you can download without restrictions and achieve breakneck speeds.

NordVPN has other types of servers, such as regular ones, “double VPN” and “dedicated IP”. Those are meant to perform duties that do not require heavy file-sharing. Therefore, you can assume that a server that is not in the P2P category is slower, as it was not optimized to achieve high download speeds.

NordVPN P2P Server List

Right now, you can find P2P servers in 47 countries. Considering that they offer a total of 59 locations, it shows that almost 80% of their servers can be used to transfer files via P2P. Here is the list of P2P optimized servers, with the countries organized by continent:

How to Select a P2P Server in the NordVPN App?

There are different ways of connecting to a P2P server in the NordVPN client. The only choice is whether you want to pick a specific one manually or you’d like the software to assign it to you.

The automatic way

With this method, the VPN client selects a server automatically. You just need to click on the “P2P” section in the main window. It will pick the fastest one for you, which will likely be located within your country.

You can head to the NordVPN recommended server tool on their website and see which one they suggest for you, considering your connection and location. 

The manual way

Instead of clicking the “P2P” option, click on the three periods (“…”) on the right of the selection. A mini pop-up menu will show up. This menu allows you to select the specific country you’d like and how the software should choose your server.

For example, as you can see in the screenshot above, I am telling NordVPN that I want the fastest P2P server in the Netherlands.

Which method is the best?

As I mentioned, the automatic method will probably connect you to a server in your own country. That’s because it’s close to you and, therefore, the fastest available for your particular connection.

This isn’t the best option, as it prevents NordVPN from reaching its full potential, safety-wise.

It’s always best to cross borders and choose a server in another country when downloading torrents. The manual approach is the way to go because it lets you do just that; to connect to a different country from yours. Anyone trying to track your activity would have to go through various jurisdictions. That would be a tricky thing to do.

As a final tip, make sure you connect to a location that is not too far away; otherwise, you might experience a significant speed loss.

P2P Server Tests

It’s time to test the speed of NordVPN’s P2P servers. But before we move forward, here are a few things to have in mind:

1. The test was performed in Poland.
2. I am sharing tests on two server locations; one in Germany (very close) and the other in the Netherlands (far away).
3. I am testing two protocols for each server location: OpenVPN UDP and NordLynx.

With this particular test, I wanted to verify two things:

1. If there was a significant speed loss when increasing the distance between my computer and the server.
2. The difference in speed for each protocol.

Speed loss with increased distance

As you probably know, the further you are from the server location you have chosen, the bigger impact there will be on your connection speed. In other words, I was expecting a more significant loss in the server located in the Netherlands than the one in Germany. And that was indeed the case.

But I have to say that the speed loss did not increase as much as I thought. It went from 36% (Germany) to 40% (the Netherlands) with the Open VPN protocol and from 4% to 6% with the NordLynx protocol. Considering the distance increase, it’s a pretty good result. Just for you to have a better idea of how far I am from the server locations, here are the exact distances (on a straight line):

• The first server location (Germany) is 518km / 321.87 miles away
• The second location (the Netherlands) is 1094km / 679.78 miles away

Protocols and speed

NordLynx was the clear winner, maintaining 96% (Germany) and 94% (the Netherlands) of the original internet speed. NordLynx is NordVPN’s own protocol, based on wireguard, but with some improvements that make it safer. If you want to know a bit more about it, you can read the following post about the NordLynx protocol.

When comparing directly to the OpenVPN UDP numbers we registered, one might think it’s a bad result, but it’s not. OpenVPN also showed some good test results.

The main thing to have in mind is that OpenVPN’s higher encryption consumes more resources, and such an impact on speed was expected. In most VPNs, the speed loss with OpenVPN is usually more visible than this.

Our recommendation

In my opinion, connecting to a server in a neighboring country when connected to the NordLynx protocol provides an excellent download speed. This is one of the highest speeds we achieved with a VPN.

Are NordVPN P2P Servers Reliable?

NordVPN is one of the VPNs I use the most, and I can say from experience that their P2P servers are very reliable. I have used them for many years without experiencing any problems.

Latency

There are so many of them that you will find several low-populated servers, which is ideal for torrenting. In other words, because the users are spread out among their vast network of servers, you’re less likely to experience any slowdowns. Therefore, you will have plenty of bandwidth and low latency, which are two of the main factors you should be looking for when choosing a server for P2P traffic.

And remember that if a particular server doesn’t work for you, you can quickly switch to another.

Disconnections

I have also found that NordVPN’s P2P servers are very stable, and disconnections are rare. But, just to be safe, make sure you activate the NordVPN kill switch. That way, the VPN will block your traffic should the connection drop for any reason.

Conclusion

NordVPN P2P servers are a great way to share files securely and anonymously. To ensure the best possible experience when using these servers, be sure to follow the guidelines we’ve outlined in this post. Doing so will help you find the fastest possible connection and download speeds.