Increase your download speed with WARP

[Cpt_Piett 4,529]

As ever I'm on an endless quest to optimize things. This week the topic has been download speeds. I tried with a VPN (I'm using F-Secure's Freedome) and that gives you the option of choosing a location which may provide a better ping to the closest MSFS server. 

Then I came over this: Cloudflare WARP. It's not a VPN, and it doesn't let you choose your location. Here's a little info on it: 

"Cloudflare — the company that owns WARP — is one of the most trusted DNS hosts in the community. WARP is a VPN add-on for its 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver (a free app that handles your DNS queries to make your connection faster). WARP essentially protects your traffic with encryption, while 1.1.1.1 optimizes your DNS to give you a faster connection."

With the VPN I only got 200-300Mbps on my max 600 fibre connection. With Cloudflare I get this excellent download speeds and latency: 

So IMO this is worth a try. It's a free app and the installation is dead easy. 

[Cpt_Piett 4,529]

I accidentally posted this both here and in the MSFS forum. Mods - feel free to delete either this one or the other one. Sorry. 

[vbazillio 2,226]

Thanks for the (free) tips. Let me share my experience of the day.

At home, I have excellent performance and response time with my provider (Free, France) when downloading from Microsoft for MSFS and using extensively Microsoft One Drive. This week I'm Off on vacation with a high speed internet totally different from my home provider. It tooks ages to open a small 1 MB file located on my One Drive. As soon as I opened a VPN connection, the download from One Drive, start immediately in background.

The same happened with 1.1.1.1 WARP.

[Cpt_Piett 4,529]

I'm using a VPN for now, getting decent pings and download speeds. WARP comes with some cons, so I've put it on hold for now. But it's free, it's easy to install, and it's easy to turn on or off. So might be worth a try if one suffers with poor download speeds. 

[pgde 571]

9 hours ago, Cpt_Piett said:

I'm using a VPN for now, getting decent pings and download speeds. WARP comes with some cons, so I've put it on hold for now. But it's free, it's easy to install, and it's easy to turn on or off. So might be worth a try if one suffers with poor download speeds. 

What cons have you experienced/know about? Haven't installed it yet but interested. I do use 1.1.1.1 for DNS.

[Cpt_Piett 4,529]

43 minutes ago, pgde said:

What cons have you experienced/know about? Haven't installed it yet but interested. I do use 1.1.1.1 for DNS.

I think mainly I didn’t want to introduce anything new on my system as I have such rampant instability issues with MSFS. And my VPN was working well. Secondly there were some issues brought up in this review, particularly potential consequences to gaming and streaming. I guess I’d suggest to give WARP a try, keeping an eye on download speed and server ping before and after.