VPNRank.io

VPN Glossary

Every VPN term explained in plain English — no jargon, no fluff. Definitions are maintained by the VPNRank editorial team and kept consistent with our testing methodology.

No-Logs Policy

A no-logs policy is a VPN provider's commitment not to record data that could link you to your online activity — browsing history, traffic contents, DNS queries, original IP addresses, or session timestamps that could correlate you with destinations. Because using a VPN shifts trust from your ISP to the provider, the credibility of this policy — ideally verified by independent audits and tested by real legal cases — matters more than any technical feature.

Split Tunneling

Split tunneling is a VPN feature that routes only some of your traffic through the encrypted VPN tunnel while the rest uses your regular internet connection. You choose the split — by app, by website, or by IP range. It solves the everyday conflict of needing a VPN for some things (streaming a home-country service, privacy) while needing your real location or full speed for others (local services, banking, printers).

VPN (Virtual Private Network)

A VPN (Virtual Private Network) is a service that encrypts your device's internet traffic and routes it through a remote server operated by the VPN provider. This hides your real IP address from the websites you visit and hides your browsing activity from your internet service provider, while making your traffic unreadable to anyone monitoring the network you're on.

VPN Kill Switch

A VPN kill switch is a safety feature that immediately blocks your device's internet traffic if the VPN connection drops unexpectedly. Without it, your device silently falls back to the unprotected connection — exposing your real IP address and unencrypted traffic until the VPN reconnects. With a kill switch active, nothing leaves your device except through the encrypted tunnel.

WireGuard

WireGuard is an open-source VPN protocol designed for simplicity and speed. At roughly 4,000 lines of code (versus hundreds of thousands for OpenVPN/IPsec stacks), it is dramatically easier to audit, connects in milliseconds, and delivers significantly higher throughput using modern cryptography — ChaCha20 for encryption and Curve25519 for key exchange. It has been part of the Linux kernel since version 5.6 (2020).