Perimeter 81 Review 2024: Before You Buy, Is It Worth It?

Decent Speeds on Both Local and International Servers

Perimeter 81 speeds were more than adequate for streaming, torrenting, and more. Tests conducted on various servers showed decent speeds, both locally and internationally. When you use overseas servers, you always lose a little bit of speed, especially since your data will be traveling a lot farther. However, I would expect this to be barely noticeable with a reliable VPN, and Perimeter 81 meets this feat.

Speed Test Results

Perimeter 81 speeds were fast enough to stream HD content no matter if you are on a long-distance or same-country connection. After I performed several tests, Perimeter 81 showed an average drop of 37% on connections with a local service. International connections dropped by an average of 50%. Using Ookla’s SpeedTest tool, I tested Perimeter 81’s speed and performance using locations in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Australia.

Tests were conducted using the WireGuard protocol, which provides a more reliable connection and controls network changes better than OpenVPN. My speed was reduced from 250Mbps to 157Mbps when connecting from within the US, a mere 37% loss. This is about what you can expect from some of the top VPNs.

For UK testing, the speeds dropped even more, hitting a maximum speed of 146Mbps, which is fairly standard for a Wireguard protocol setup. My connection suffered a 58% drop when connected to an Australian server, but this is typical for the distance and is a good result. I also experienced a 51% speed loss connecting to France from the United States.

Thanks to these speeds, you can perform high-end tasks such as streaming and downloading videos in HD without any problems. Similarly, simple activities such as surfing the web can be accomplished at breakneck speed.

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Server Network — Only 34 Countries Available

Perimeter 81 has a network of 700+ servers in 34 countries. VPN locations covered include those in North and South America, Europe, Asia, Oceania, and Africa. However, there is no way to find out how many servers any specific country has since there is no way to connect to individual locations or cities.

There is even the option to buy dedicated VPN servers in 8 different countries, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Japan, India, Singapore, and France. This option ensures that your business will not have to deal with clogged servers ever again.

A VPN with more servers often offers faster speeds, so it is valuable to keep this factor in mind when selecting a VPN. If there are fewer servers, there is a greater likelihood that there will be more people using them, causing your speed to decline.

I recommend that you choose Cyberghost if you need a super-reliable VPN server network across the world. Wherever you are in the world, you’ll have access to a large bank of fast servers nearby, allowing you to stay protected and browse securely.

Security — Robust Security Measures

Perimeter 81 takes its security very seriously as seen throughout its performance. It uses AES-256 to encrypt all your sensitive data and has a variety of protocols (OpenVPN, L2TP, IKEv2, and PPTP) that you can choose from. This means that your employees will be protected on unsecured networks, which is particularly important for employees who travel abroad.

This provider boasts a number of features to boost security, including a kill switch, which is essential when choosing a VPN. Your actual IP address will not be revealed if your connection drops for any reason, thanks to the kill switch. Additionally, Perimeter 81 is powered by a software-defined perimeter (SDP). This type of infrastructure provides a higher degree of protection than traditional VPNs. It protects you from DDoS attacks, man-in-the-middle attacks, server queries, and more.

Device Posture Check (DCP) is another feature that can be very useful for business VPNs, and Perimeter 81 gives it a lot of attention. Through this feature, your admin can easily ensure that all devices connected to the company’s network are secure – or can selectively allow connectivity.

According to the website, the “Always On VPN” in Windows 10 is part of Microsoft’s technology. Through these clients, employee clients have secure and remote access in place of direct access. When the VPN connection is established and authorized, it is in an “Always On” mode. However, the Always On VPN offers much more functionality than this.

Perimeter 81’s Wi-Fi security enables you to establish an instant and secure connection to the internet while ensuring the highest level of encryption. Remote workers will find this a helpful feature when they connect to insecure or public Wi-Fi hotspots. These connections will be directly routed through the Perimeter 81 secure-access servers.

Perimeter 81 provides your company with a monitor and logs tab, where the admin can monitor what devices are being used, as well as the user’s activities. The activity log gives you an overview of activities performed within and outside the workspace while connected to this business VPN.

The provider’s superb user management features are worth mentioning which is evident in its two-factor authentication features. With this double layer of protection, your company can seamlessly secure your entire network and data. Taking this measure reduces the chances of future attacks infiltrating your system, network, and data. For apps without extra security features, 2FA is the best option.

The Split-Tunneling feature lets you select which network subnets you would like to tunnel from your client to the Perimeter 81 network. Basically, you get to choose which subnets you want to pass through the encryption tunnel instead of going through Perimeter 81’s encrypted tunnel mode. It’s similar to regular VPN split-tunneling, only better.

By using Perimeter 81’s FWaaS feature, you can avoid traditional firewalls that are less secure. FWaaS is effective when the IT department fails to address the overall security flaws in the network. Cloud-based networks and all resources attached to them can be made more secure with this Perimeter 81 feature.

Privacy — Keeps Minimal Usage Logs

Perimeter 81 claims to maintain a strict no-logs policy so that your team’s data stays private. Unfortunately, I found details contrary to this claim after reviewing its privacy policy. In particular, Perimeter 81 records admin and team member action.

It also collects connection and login timestamps, device location, chosen server information, hostnames of connected devices, which server team members connect to, and the timestamps of their connections. Further, the provider records origin IP addresses when team members visit private access gateways, but not when they access public locations.

The company’s claim that “all transmitted data is encrypted” was contradicted by the availability of more vulnerable VPN protocols like PPTP. However, Perimeter 81 uses high encryption levels and allows users to access their accounts with two-factor authentication alongside the kill switch and Wi-Fi security features mentioned earlier.

DNS Leak protection hides your real IP address behind multiple layers of cloaking, thereby protecting your identity. I tried to breach the security features during my online test to verify that the leak protection features worked and they all worked as expected.

The company is based in Israel, which has strong data protection laws that limit government access to personal data. Alternatively, Mossad is a close ally of the NSA, and Israel is famous for its cyberdefense operations and the way it cooperates with the NSA when it comes to mass surveillance. On the whole, though I consider Israel to be a fairly privacy-friendly location given its strong data protection laws.

ExpressVPN is a better VPN service if you want an anonymous browsing experience. It uses diskless servers, so even the VPN provider cannot access your browsing history. It is also one of only a few VPNs that has been audited by an independent party.

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Editor's Note: Transparency is one of our core values at WizCase, so you should know we are in the same ownership group as ExpressVPN. However, this does not affect our review process, as we adhere to a strict testing methodology.

Torrenting — Torrenting Is Essentially Banned

Perimeter 81 is not intended for use with torrenting or other peer-to-peer traffic sharing. The service is designed to provide remote workers with secure network access without all the hassles associated with self-managed corporate VPNs.

As stated in its terms of service, Perimeter 81 prohibits the use of its service to create, distribute, and receive torrent files. I pursued the matter further by contacting the company’s support team, where it was confirmed that file sharing is not permitted on the network.

ExpressVPN covers all the bases with regard to torrenting – with servers located all around the world, fast connections to ensure the fastest downloads, effective kill switches across several devices and a user-friendly interface.

Keep in mind that my team and I do not support illegal torrenting in any way. However, you are free to use the VPN to hide your IP address while downloading copyright-free materials. You should also make sure to thoroughly check the laws of your country because some countries don’t permit torrenting.

Does Perimeter 81 Work in China? No!

There is no certainty from Perimeter 81’s customer support team that the Israel-based service provider can work in China. Perimeter 81 doesn’t have the obfuscation tools to cope with China’s high level of security and privacy restrictions.

The Chinese government’s stance remains unchanged on VPN usage. Chinese authorities have continued to develop their great firewall to keep VPN services they cannot influence from operating on the Chinese internet. If you are running a business in countries such as China or the United Arab Emirates, it would be better to utilize another VPN service provider.

ExpressVPN enables businesses in China to access blocked websites, social media, news, and video content. It offers excellent internet speed as well as access to Netflix and other geo-restricted websites. You can also use it to protect your public Wi-Fi connections from third-party eavesdroppers.

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Editor's Note: Transparency is one of our core values at WizCase, so you should know we are in the same ownership group as ExpressVPN. However, this does not affect our review process, as we adhere to a strict testing methodology.

Perimeter 81 has a helpful support service available if you have issues setting up or getting access to the service. The online live chat has a relatively quick response time and a reasonably well-informed team on the other end. There is also an efficient email response service if you aren’t in a hurry.

You’ll find ample guides, tutorials, webinars, documentation, and videos to help you out if you prefer to deal with tech issues yourself. The video tutorials provide step-by-step guidance on setting up your private server, creating a custom network, and more.

Those on the Essentials plan will have access to email support during standard business hours, whereas the Premium plan offers priority email support and 24/7 chat support. Only customers on the Enterprise plan get phone support, but there are only a few languages available, so those with different language needs may need a VPN provider that can support multiple languages.

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