//Choosing a route
Five tips for picking a route by use case
No route is universally better — only better matched to a use case. Below are recommendations for five common needs, each with the reasoning behind it. In practice, keep one dedicated line and one direct route on hand: the dedicated line for your main work, the direct route as backup and for less common regions.
// 01 Everyday browsing
Land nearby, cut the round trips
Looking things up, reading docs, opening a dashboard — these don't need much peak bandwidth, but they are sensitive to time to first byte. A page load involves several round trips, so every step you shave off the physical distance is clearly noticeable.
First choice Relay or direct routes in Hong Kong, Singapore or Japan
// 02 Streaming
A fixed egress, no buffering
4K playback needs sustained, steady bandwidth: the player keeps pulling the stream, and a single hiccup triggers buffering. A dedicated line's fixed path avoids peak-hour congestion on the public internet. Check the catalogue region first — Netflix, Disney+ and HBO Max libraries differ by region — so decide which region carries the title you want, then pick the matching landing point.
First choice IEPL dedicated lines in Japan, Los Angeles, Hong Kong or Amsterdam
// 03 AI tools
Long connections first
Services like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini need a session that stays up, not peak bandwidth. If a conversation drops mid-way, the page errors out and you start over; Midjourney runs inside Discord, where uploading reference images and waiting for renders are both long tasks. Prefer a dedicated line with a fixed path so the egress doesn't switch mid-session and kill the conversation.
First choice Dedicated or relay routes in Los Angeles, San Jose, Tokyo or Singapore
// 04 Gaming
Land in the same region, shorten the path
Games are latency-sensitive and bandwidth-light. The logic is to find out which region the game servers sit in, then pick a landing point in that same region — the shorter the physical distance, the better. Logging in across regions adds a detour that usually isn't worth it.
First choice A dedicated or relay route in the same region as the game servers
// 05 Work
Stability first, many devices at once
Cross-border work is about stability: email, online documents, video meetings, back-office systems — any dropped connection interrupts the flow. One subscription allows unlimited devices online at the same time, so laptops, desktops and mobile devices can all stay connected without a separate plan for each.
First choice Dedicated lines in Hong Kong, Japan or Singapore, with a US route as backup