NordVPN has announced that it’s introducing virtual servers to its network of 6,000+ physical servers. NordVPN is making the move to serve more customers in locations where it’s impractical to establish physical servers or where the internet infrastructure is poor.
By gradually adding 50 virtual server locations over March, NordVPN will increase the number of countries it serves from 67 to 117, giving it the widest coverage of any VPN provider.
A virtual server assigns a user an IP address from the country they connect to, but the physical server is located in a different country. In January, NordVPN conducted a trial run of establishing a virtual server in India, which passed a law recently that requires VPN providers to retain user data for 5 years. When a user connected to the server in India, they got an Indian IP address but the Indian server is located in Singapore. Since the physical server isn’t located in India, NordVPN won’t be bound by India’s data retention law.
The company said the trial worked well and led it to roll out more virtual server locations. It was not clear from the announcement or NordVPN’s published server list whether the India virtual server location would become permanent.
Notably, NordVPN’s list of new virtual server locations includes Pakistan, which has been increasingly limiting its citizens’ access to news and social media outlets. Other countries on the new virtual server list include Myanmar, which has been embroiled in a brutal civil war, and Venezuela and Lebanon, which have been experiencing economic turmoil.
A number of other countries on the NordVPN have unreliable or limited internet service, such as the Philippines, Laos, and Nepal. Some countries like Brunei and Mongolia are simply remote, and their residents will benefit from greater connectivity to the global internet.
NordVPN is also adding service to a wide swath of Central America and the Caribbean and several microstates in Europe like Andorra, Monaco, and Liechtenstein.