[rwiggins]

There's a fourth use-case: occasionally, gaming.

I play Final Fantasy XIV, an MMORPG - apparently, supposedly, the peering connection between AT&T and FFXIV's US ISP (NTT) was particularly bad. [1]

This manifested as pretty severe connection issues for AT&T customers playing FFXIV. Except, it was a chronic issue that would only flare up when that particular connection point was stressed.

One of the easiest workarounds? Hop on a VPN.

That's one example. Anecdotally, I have a few friends that toggle VPNs on and off when they encounter "network weather" in games. Personally, I'm a bit skeptical they're truly so often mitigating problems by toggling a VPN (instead of, say, just waiting a couple minutes), but hey, they swear by it.

[1]: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/482155-Bad-lag-a...