PIA’s NextGen Servers – How Colocated Servers Improve Our Infrastructure

Private Internet Access is designed with online security in mind. From our open-source apps to a successful independent server audit, we’re committed to safeguarding your data and to securing your digital life. Our NetxGen servers are at the core of our service, and they help us make the internet a safer place for you. 

The PIA NextGen servers are colocated. This means we buy our own hardware, and use highly secure data centers to store and maintain each individual server. Only our own team of experts can access, and have complete oversight of, our network. 

Let’s take a closer look at what it takes to build a safe and resilient VPN.

What Is Colocation?

Server colocation is a big topic for IT hardware departments, but it rarely makes headlines outside these teams. Let’s start with a definition.

Server colocation means storing hardware in a data center with an ideal environment for IT infrastructure. PIA collaborates with major data centers around the world, and we rely on some of them to store our physical servers. We have VPN servers in 84 countries, and this is essential to provide secure connections worldwide. 

Colocation allows only our team of specialists to run and manage our network, while preventing anyone else from accessing the servers. We buy and maintain the hardware; we only rent the server rack in the data centers. This gives us full control over each node.

We’re passionate about online security, and colocated servers are a guarantee no third party has access to our infrastructure. Colocation also helps us enforce our strict No Logs policy.

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Colocated vs. Non-Colocated: Two Different Types of Servers

Servers come in loads of different types. With VPN providers, the most important distinction is between owned and leased servers.

• Owned servers refers to the servers a VPN provider bought and has sole access over. PIA’s NextGen servers are owned by us and hosted by a data center (colocated).
• Leased servers refers to the servers VPN providers rent from data centers around the world. This is an industry-standard practice (non-colocated).

Other noteworthy distinctions are:

• Physical versus virtual servers, and 
• RAM-only versus HDD servers. 

Private Internet Access uses physical servers, which you might also know as bare-metal servers. We just rent the space on the rack where the server is plugged in, so the data center only has to guarantee their structural security and protection from physical damage, like broken electrical outlets or power surges.

All our servers are RAM-only. Normally, servers use hard disk drives (HDDs). HDDs represent a non-volatile type of storage which makes it easy to store a large amount of data efficiently. Since storing data goes against our strict No Logs policy, we got rid of the HDDs. 
A RAM-only environment is volatile, which means any information it handles is lost if power is interrupted. The Random-Access Memory (RAM) modules only handle the necessary information for our online service to function, and only while the machine is running. This is another failsafe we put in place to ensure no data is ever stored.

Even better, this practice doubles as a security measure. If anyone were to remove or otherwise cause power to shut down to our servers, everything currently on them is wiped clean. 

PIA’s NextGen Servers: Colocated & Stronger

We’re committed to building a strong and robust server fleet. Our infrastructure team has developed our NextGen servers specifically to prevent network vulnerabilities and offer unmatched speeds. The servers’ OS is encrypted and features several safety measures to mitigate digital threats.

Global Coverage

In the past years, we’ve worked hard to offer more VPN server locations to suit our users’ needs – 120 VPN locations in 84 countries. In terms of colocated servers, we’re covering all locations with significant traffic.

Currently, we have colocated servers across the world. And we’re planning to expand the list!

Region	Location
North America	New York New Jersey Miami Los Angeles Chicago Washington DC Las Vegas Seattle Atlanta Dallas San Jose Denver Toronto Montreal Vancouver
Europe	Frankfurt Amsterdam London Paris Manchester Brussels Berlin
Australia	Melbourne Sydney

Faster Data Transfer

We use dedicated 10Gbps internet lines to offer increased bandwidth. While bandwidth by itself doesn’t translate into fast VPN speeds, having enough bandwidth to go around keeps it from being a bottleneck for our customers. This is what spells out better performance for you.

The fact that we’re fully in control of the hardware and can upgrade it to suit our needs allows us to better balance traffic. Better hardware specifications, including 10Gbps network cards, also means our NextGen servers can handle large volumes of data transfers without network congestion. This gives you a faster, more reliable VPN connection. 

Visually, the average performance increase looks like this.

Enhanced Security 

We lease the entire server rack in the data centers we work with, which ensures only our infrastructure team can physically access them. 

You can think of our IT infrastructure as the real-life equivalent of a private network. No one can access the server rack for any reason without our explicit permission. Even if it’s for a general incident that requires a press-of-the-button reset, no one can touch our equipment without a green light from us.

On the software side, we have ironclad firewall and anti-malware solutions to prevent unauthorized entry. USB port access is also blocked. 

We’ve designed our system to prevent data retention by default. We even went as far as to disable all error logs and debug information. This way your private information stays secure.

Less Downtime

We lease 42RU server racks, which, by design, make routine maintenance a breeze. 42RU racks also allow easy server scalability so we can efficiently upgrade and access our servers with little to no downtime. 

We use a blade chassis that encloses 16 Dual CPU servers per location. The architecture allows us to optimize power consumption and prevent overheating or random shutdowns.

This entire setup gives us full control over the hardware, which means we can troubleshoot connectivity issues more efficiently. Connection errors are easier to pinpoint and fix, so you can enjoy a reliable VPN service with no trouble.

What’s in Store for PIA Next?

We’re far from resting on our laurels. While our NextGen servers are a milestone in PIA’s history and mission to achieve digital security, we don’t plan to stop here. 

Our 50 Servers in 50 States initiative is a testament to our commitment to our customers in North America. We’re now offering strong data protection across the US, and we’re the first provider to do so. We plan to expand our network to include more locations, so we can give you a seamless online experience free of threats and digital surveillance.

Besides our robust server fleet, we’re focused on developing strong VPN apps that are customizable to your every need. From split-tunneling to an advanced Kill Switch and our built-in ad-blocker, we’re giving you all the features you need to surf the internet on your own terms.

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