This VPN-killer aims to make internet connections private by default, without sacrificing speed

Hornet, a new technological breakthrough by researchers in London and Switzerland, claims it can make remaining anonymous online easier and faster while better protecting people’s privacy.

This spells good news for internet users, especially in the wake of recent revelations about government surveillance, but trouble for slower virtual private networks (VPNs), which could lose their competitive advantage.

Researchers at Swiss university ETH Zurich and University College London say the tool they have developed can not only one-up VPNs like Astrill, but also Tor, a popular system that lets users communicate anonymously on the internet.

Like Tor, Hornet bounces network requests through a series of encrypted relays, making them hard to identify or track. But Hornet offers one key difference: speed.

A slowdown in internet browsing speeds is one of the biggest headaches when using tools designed to protect online privacy or dodge internet filters like China's Great Firewall, especially for data-heavy tasks like gaming or streaming video.

But the European researchers estimate that, if implemented, Hornet could move anonymous internet traffic at speeds of up to 93 gigabits per second, making it essentially imperceptible to all but the most data-hungry of users.