How to Use a VPN: 10 Beginner Questions Answered

How do you use a VPN? It's the question new users ask most often before signing up. In practice, every step — choosing a plan, getting your subscription link, connecting to your first route — has a definite procedure and clear criteria, and there's nothing mysterious about it. This guide lines up the 10 most common beginner questions in the order you'll actually encounter them, each with an answer you can act on directly. One read-through and the whole onboarding path is done.

What a VPN Is and What You Need to Sign Up

Question 1: What exactly is a VPN, and how is it different from a gaming “booster”?

At its core, a VPN is an encrypted tunnel: your device and a remote server establish an encrypted channel, your traffic is encrypted and sent to the server, and the server then reaches the destination site — which sees the server's exit IP. A gaming “booster” is a different animal entirely: it only optimizes the route between your machine and the game server, encrypts nothing, and usually applies only to specific processes. One is an encrypted tunnel for all of your device's traffic; the other is route optimization for a single path. Their purposes don't overlap.

In today's mainstream self-hosted route ecosystem, the common protocols are Shadowsocks, VMess, Trojan, and VLESS, plus Hysteria2 and TUIC, which are built for weak, lossy networks. Each makes its own trade-offs between interference resistance, handshake overhead, and speed, and clients let you switch between them directly — no need to understand the details of every protocol.

Question 2: What do I need to sign up?

This service requires no email address — just choose a username and a password and the registration is done, with no extra verification steps. Payments support Alipay, WeChat Pay, and USDT. Data transmission uses military-grade encryption, route configurations are pushed down from the server side, and you never have to fill in keys manually in the client.

Choosing a Plan and How Data Is Counted

Question 3: Monthly plan or data package — which one should I pick?

The difference in one sentence: a monthly plan is billed by the month, with data resetting on your activation date each month; a data package is a one-time purchase that never expires — it's yours until you use it up. The deciding rule is just as simple: if your monthly usage is steady, a monthly plan is the hassle-free choice; if your usage swings a lot or you want to keep a backup on hand, a data package is the better deal, with zero expiry-date anxiety.

Question 4: How is data counted? How much does streaming use?

Only traffic that passes through the tunnel counts against your plan. In rule-based (split-routing) mode, traffic to sites in mainland China goes direct and never touches your quota, so everyday use doesn't “burn data”. Video is the real heavy hitter: at typical bitrates, standard definition runs about 0.7GB per hour, 1080p about 3GB per hour, and 4K starts at 7GB per hour, depending on the source. Take the 250GB tier — that's roughly one hour of 1080p a day plus everyday browsing for a full month.

Subscription Link and Importing It into Your Client

Question 5: What is a subscription link?

A subscription link is your client's entry point for fetching the server list: a single URL carrying a token. The client requests that URL, and the server returns the configuration for all currently available nodes. Whenever routes are adjusted or nodes added or removed on the server side, a subscription update in the client pulls the latest list — no manual, node-by-node editing. That's also why it's far more convenient than importing node configurations one at a time.

# Typical subscription link format (the one shown in your user panel is authoritative)
https://your-panel-domain/beacon-hub/client/subscribe?token=a-random-string

Question 6: How do I import it into a client?

1. Log in to the user panel, open the subscription page, and copy your subscription link;
2. Download the client for your platform — Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, and Linux are all covered; once logged in, you can get them from the download page;
3. In the client, choose “Import from URL” or “Add Subscription” and paste the link;
4. Click update and wait for the server list to finish loading;
5. Pick a regional node, hit connect, and you're done once the status shows connected.

After your first successful connection, turn on the client's “auto-update subscription” option so it syncs on its own whenever routes change. Client interfaces differ slightly across platforms — for screenshots, see the Guides.

Throttling and Whether to Keep It On

Question 7: Will I be throttled? Is it enough for 4K?

Actual speed depends on three links in the chain: your local broadband, the route's load, and the destination site itself. Route type weighs the most: an IEPL dedicated line enters through a private internal network with no public-internet transit, making it the most stable during evening peaks; a relayed route passes through a transit server in mainland China before heading abroad — slightly higher latency but steady; a direct route costs the least and fluctuates the most at peak hours. 4K streaming needs sustained bandwidth, so pick an IEPL node first. This service covers 100+ countries / regions and 180+ routes; check route types by region on the servers page before deciding which one to connect to.

Question 8: Does it need to stay on all the time?

That depends on the mode. Clients generally offer two: global mode sends all traffic through the tunnel, while rule-based (split-routing) mode checks each connection against a rule table — addresses in mainland China go direct, international addresses go through the tunnel. For everyday use, stick with rule mode: you can leave it on permanently without affecting access to sites in mainland China or consuming plan data. Switch to global only when troubleshooting connection issues or working in special network environments.

• ✅ Rule mode is fine to leave on: mainland China traffic goes direct and doesn't consume plan data
• ✅ Turn it on when using public Wi-Fi: the encrypted tunnel blocks plaintext sniffing from others on the same network
• ❌ No need for global mode to watch videos on mainland China sites: it burns data for nothing and can even be slower
• ❌ Don't leave your subscription un-updated for long: old nodes can stop working after route adjustments

Troubleshooting Connections and the Refund Policy

Question 9: Can't connect or stuck with slow speeds — in what order do I troubleshoot?

1. Switch nodes first: try another route in the same region to rule out a single-node failure;
2. Change protocol: swap Shadowsocks for VLESS or Hysteria2 and retry — protocols differ in how well they get through;
3. Update your subscription: if an entire region won't connect, the routes have most likely been adjusted, and a subscription update restores access;
4. Check your local network: pause other bandwidth-hungry apps and restart your router;
5. Check DNS: with a misconfigured DNS setup, domain resolution goes through your local ISP — the so-called DNS leak. Turn on the client's built-in DNS protection, or configure it manually following the guide.

If none of that works, open a ticket through customer support and attach a screenshot of the client error along with your network environment — it makes pinpointing the problem much faster.

Question 10: What's the refund policy? Do data packages expire?

Monthly plans come with a 60-day no-questions-asked refund — just apply within the window if you're not satisfied. Data packages never expire: buy one, keep it, use it until it's gone — there's no such thing as an expiry-date wipe. Payments support Alipay, WeChat Pay, and USDT.