How does the use of encryption affect the performance of a network connection?
The use of encryption adds some additional overhead to a session. Most VPN devices, whether hardware or software based, will be able to process encryption for connections up to 10baseT speeds. On a lower speed connection like a modem, VPN processing is much faster than delays introduced by the limited bandwidth availability. Often performance is potentially affected more by packet loss and latency on bad Internet connections than by the encryption overhead. Contributed by Pete Davis.
