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It was with some fanfare that Surfshark announced the launch of its new protocol, Dausos. Coming from the Lithuanian word for "heaven," with roots in Baltic mythology, is the new protocol all that heavenly?
Surfshark is one of the best VPNs out there, and has claimed Dausos will bring speeds up to 30% faster than current VPN protocols. It establishes a dedicated tunnel for each session, meaning no interference from other users, and improved performance. Dausos is also quantum secure, and has been fully audited by Cure53.
Dausos is currently in beta, and only available with Surfshark's Mac VPN app, downloaded via the Mac App Store. I used it 24/7 and road tested it with a number of everyday use cases – including streaming and browsing.
A false start
First impressions of Dausos were poor. When I downloaded the app on April 16, Dausos flat-out refused to work on anything but the most basic websites. I could search for websites with Google, and get a full list of search results, brimming with promise – but clicking on one of those led to nought. I sat there, watching the small blue progress bar under my URL refusing to move, for a solid few minutes.
This was an issue that TechRadar had identified as being linked to maximum transmission unit specifications – essentially sending packets that were too big for the pipe that then got dropped. Much like them, I could use apps that had an established connection, but if I needed to make a new one, I was out of luck.
Thus, the extent of my testing on this version of the app effectively was limited to using Messages to text a friend. Here, it worked fine. Beyond that, it was extraordinarily broken, effectively killing my internet connection and rendering it useless.
Happily, Surfshark were made aware of the issue and an update was released the following day – version 4.27.1. If you have installed this and not noticed a difference, as I did, restart your Mac as this seems to fix things.
With the new update, the Dausos protocol works as intended, and it genuinely surprised me. Going from what was a generally terrible experience just the day before, to testing since the update has been night and day.
Good speeds, but little difference to WireGuard
With the update, Dausos has revealed itself to be a promising protocol. We first tested it on my, admittedly slow, home internet connection (which Google flatteringly calls "very fast"). When testing speed via Google's speedtest, Dausos came back with slightly faster downloads than the modern classic that is WireGuard.
My base connection speed was 62.8 Mbps download and 16.2 Mbps upload. I saw 58.3 Mbps download speeds and 15.2 Mbps upload speeds with Dausos, compared to WireGuard's 58.1 Mbps download and 16.6 Mbps upload – no significant reduction.
We re-tested Dausos' speeds on a faster home Wi-Fi connection, and we were impressed. Compared to our base 535 Mbps download speed and 346 Mbps upload speed, two tests saw Dausos record download speeds of 479 and 443 Mbps, and upload speeds of 258 and 223 Mbps – so only a small drop off.
In comparison, we saw WireGuard measure 472 and 436 Mbps download speeds, and 215 and 200 Mbps upload speeds.
All in all, there isn't a lot to separate the two protocols, with their speeds almost identical. It's not quite the 30% increase Surfshark promised, but Dausos delivers impressive speeds and performance, and effectively maxed out our connections.
Notably, on "super fast" connections, you may well see more of a difference.
Solid streaming performance
Surfshark is traditionally one of the best streaming VPNs. I tried out both Amazon Prime Video and Disney+ on a variety of servers. The first test was to connect to a US server and see if I can gain access to the treasures of American streaming services, and I could. Dausos loaded up Prime Video easily and I could stream Civil War with no issues.
This is particularly impressive considering Surfshark's WireGuard implementation struggled with US Amazon Prime Video in our latest round of testing.
Connecting to a Brazilian server netted me access to their local content too, while I had no issues with Disney+ on either American or Singaporean servers. As a streaming protocol, Dausos seems to work very well indeed – equally as strongly as standard protocols such as WireGuard and OpenVPN.
Strong security and no CAPTCHAs
When browsing the internet, I didn't notice an increase in CAPTCHAs whatsoever when browsing in Incognito Mode, which is rare for a VPN in my experience. Speed loss is somewhat noticeable, though, particularly when connecting to servers located geographically far from the UK. While this is to be expected, it was worse with Dausos than it has been with Proton VPN or Mullvad.
One of Dausos' big selling points is security. The protocol uses AEGIS-256X2 encryption and dedicated tunnels for all users, and the security does appear to be tight after some cursory testing. It does not leak my IP or DNS, and seems extremely reliable, despite only being in beta.
How to use Dausos
As mentioned earlier, at present, Dausos is in beta and only available on Mac, with further rollout to come in the future. Users on other devices need to use other protocols, but even on Mac, getting your hands on a version of Surfshark with support for the new protocol is a little tricky. There are two versions of Surfshark on Mac: one from Surfshark's website, the other from the App Store.
At the time of writing, you'll need to download Surfshark from the Mac App Store to access Dausos. If you're switching to the App Store version, Surfshark recommends uninstalling your previous version first to avoid any conflicts. It's also worth noting that you can't use Dausos and Surfshark's Antivirus together. The former is only available in the Mac App Store version of Surfshark, while the latter isn't.
Once you've downloaded the Surfshark app, log in as normal. The client won't default to Dausos, though, so you'll need to tweak the settings.
Click on the settings button in the app, shown as a cog wheel on the left hand side of the app. Once there, click on the VPN settings button, and scroll down to find the Protocol option just above the advanced settings at the very bottom. Click on this and select Dausos from the list.
If you are currently connected, the app will disconnect your existing connection and reconnect under the new protocol. Once you've done this, Dausos will be set as the default VPN protocol on your Mac, and you'll need to manually change it back if you want to use WireGuard, OpenVPN, or IKEv2.
A protocol with promise
Despite its false start, I'm genuinely impressed by Dausos at present. It features very strong security, is adept at unblocking region-locked content, and doesn't serve me endless CAPTCHAs when I'm browsing Incognito. There are full-fledged finished products that don't offer the same level of proficiency that this beta protocol does.
However, due to Dausos' beta status, you may still experience teething issues. This is particularly salient given the poor state that Dausos launched in before its initial update, when it was essentially unusable. The privacy purists among you may also want to hold off until it has been fully released.
Surfshark has admitted "some connectivity, performance, or feature‑related issues may occur," due to its infant state.
Despite this, it's absolutely one to watch, and Surfshark's innovation is worth applauding – it's been a long while since we've had a fully new protocol to get excited about. While it's unlikely to represent anything like the sea change that came with WireGuard's release in 2015, due to it being closed-source, if it continues to impress as it proceeds towards its final release, it may end up giving Surfshark a competitive advantage as well as helping its users.
As someone who is largely a Linux VPN user these days, I would, of course, prefer for it to be open-source, but that may come later. If not, I suspect that its technological innovations will at least inspire open-source protocol development further down the line. For now, it's not much more than a curio, but it bears a lot of promise, and if you own a Mac, consider checking it out. We don't think you'll be disappointed.
We test and review VPN services in the context of legal recreational uses. For example: 1. Accessing a service from another country (subject to the terms and conditions of that service). 2. Protecting your online security and strengthening your online privacy when abroad. We do not support or condone the illegal or malicious use of VPN services. Consuming pirated content that is paid-for is neither endorsed nor approved by Future Publishing.
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