Is it possible to navigate quickly through the Tor network? It could be soon

One of the safest methods to connect to the Internet with guarantees of privacy and even anonymity, is the Tor network, for «The Onion Router» or «the onion router» in Spanish, a technology that has been developing for almost twenty years now and that, however, continues to be marginalized for occasional use or for very specific user profiles. Among other things, for its speed.

Thus, many of the users who want extra privacy on the Internet, and even anonymity -it all depends on what you do and how you do it- prefer to pay for a VPN, rather than use the Tor network, even though it is more secure. and private, as well as free. Why? Among other limitations, by the speed of navigation.

Of course, it is not even the same in terms of features to use a VPN, in which your traffic will be recognized by the company that operates it, whether it admits it or not, than the Tor network, whose connection is skipped to host that you have configured on the device. One could therefore say that while a VPN provides you with privacy, you will find anonymity on the Tor network, as long as you do things properly.

In any case, we were going to talk about the speed of the Tor network, one of its main obstacles if not the most, and that is that those responsible for the project have announced the arrival of a novelty that could turn the tables: Congestion Control, a feature designed to squeeze the capacity of the Tor network and considerably increase the speed of navigation.

How Congestion Control works and the advantages it can bring is explained in a detailed article published on the official blog of the Tor project, but it can be summarized with what has been said: take advantage of the current technology of the Tor network as it had not been done until now. moment, reducing latency and increasing efficiency to eliminate speed limits wherever possible.

Increased speed using Congestion Control

How big is the improvement going to be? According to the tests carried out by the development team, it is significant, although it seems difficult for it to come close to the current browsing speed, not even through a VPN due to the very nature of the node system that manages the Tor network. But if enough so that using it more often is not a little torture, especially when consuming multimedia content or holding videoconferences, to give a couple of examples with which the use of the Tor network is currently inadvisable.

The implementation is done, but the node operators have to be updated to make it effective, which is delaying its start-up. It is expected that by the end of this month anyone will be able to try it and that little by little this new technology will be polished, which could give a breath of fresh air to the use of the Tor network on a more regular basis.

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