One of the safest methods Connect to the Internet with guarantees of privacy and even anonymity, is the Tor network, the Spanish “The Onion Router” or “The onion router”, a technology that has been in development for almost twenty years but is still marginalized for occasional use or for very specific user profiles. . Among other things, for its speed.

So many users who want more privacy and even anonymity – it all depends on what you do and how you do it – would rather pay for a VPN than use a Tor network, even if it’s more secure and private and also free. Why? Among other things, limitations due to navigation speed.

Of course, it’s not the same in terms of features to use a VPN in which your traffic is recognized by the company that runs it, whether it admits it or not, other than the Tor network whose connection is skipped. host that you have configured on the device. So you could say that while a VPN gives you privacy, you can find anonymity in the Tor network if you do things right.

In any case, we were going to talk about the speed of the Tor network, one of its main obstacles, if not the biggest, and that the project responsible announced the arrival of news that could turn the cards: Congestion Control, a function designed to reduce the capacity of the Tor network and significantly increase navigation speed.

How Congestion Control works and what benefits it can bring is explained in a detailed article published on the official Tor project blog, but it can be summarized in what has already been said: take advantage of current Tor network technology as it should. It has not yet been done to reduce latency and increase efficiency to eliminate speed limits whenever possible.

Increased speed with Congestion Control

How much improvement will there be? According to tests performed by the development team, it is important, although it seems difficult for it to approach the current browsing speed, not even via VPN due to the very nature of the node system that manages the Tor network. But if it’s enough to make it more torture, especially when consuming multimedia content or holding video conferences, here are a few examples with which the use of the Tor network is currently not recommended.

The implementation is complete, but the node operators must be updated to be effective, which delays its execution. By the end of this month, anyone is expected to be able to try it out, and this new technology will gradually improve, which could give a breath of fresh air to the more regular use of the Tor network.

You haven’t done so yet and want to try out the current experience offered by the Tor network? It’s as simple as doing it through Tor Browser, a Firefox-based browser that automatically connects to it; or you can also try Tails, a Linux distribution for those seeking anonymity on the Internet. But remember: if you use Tor to connect to your Google or Facebook account … Don’t waste time.