Do you want to stay anonymous while surfing the web? If yes, then AirVPN could be the best option for you.
While anybody can claim to be unique these days, when it comes to VPN service providers, AirVPN shows that it truly is.
AirVPN stands apart from other VPN services because of its commitment to protecting user privacy. Right from the start, the AirVPN website starts with an appeal for your trust, stating, “A VPN based on OpenVPN and operated by activists and hacktivists in defence of net neutrality, privacy and against censorship”.While anybody can claim to be distinct these days, when it pertains to VPN suppliers, AirVPN reveals that it really is.
They’ve been around a very long time, since 2010, when it was begun with the help of two lawyers and a small group of hackers and activists. The satellite communications supplier Iridium formerly ran it, but AirVPN took over in November 2012. According to the owner’s listing, AirVPN, based in Perugia, is currently owned by Paolo Brini (Italy).
Throughout the last years, it hasn’t been dogged by security scandals like some VPNs have. Nor has it been acquired by a larger business either.
Across their About Us and Mission pages, the business’s history is explained and information the personal privacy projects that AirVPN has actually developed or supported. These include an online encryption tool, a net neutrality monitor, and other projects such as Tor, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and WikiLeaks.
AirVPN takes the unconventional route and breaks the mold by providing a VPN created by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.
How does AirVPN stack up versus its competitors with such strong personal privacy qualifications?
AirVPN’s Key Features
Servers
AirVPN’s network is much smaller sized than most, with only 246 servers spread out throughout 23 countries.
A lot of servers are in Europe (besides those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A small problem here is that the absence of variety of servers reduces the number of global AirVPN users who might access geo-restricted services in their home nation while keeping their privacy.
That stated, Air is popular for its exceptional performance across its server network, with lots of countries having high-performance physical individual servers.
They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation techniques to offer a precise evaluation of performance, without any overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are totally unlimited, with no speed restrictions or time limits.
To establish a connection between your machine and their servers, they utilize OpenVPN and WireGuard (in beta). OpenVPN is the most reliable and safe way to create encrypted tunnels. It provides more security than the military.
Numerous ports and protocols are available; they use OpenVPN on the following ports: 80 TCP/UDP, 443 TCP/UDP, and 53 TCP/UDP. Every Air server directly supports OpenVPN over SSH, OpenVPN over SSL, and OpenVPN over Tor. So forget PPTP and other unsafe protocols.
No choice is given to any service, protocol, or application when it comes down to it. Net Neutrality is maintained. Significantly, you can overcome web constraints such as avoiding censorship, geographic limitations, and traffic shaping.
The usage is OpenVPN is a big plus as it instantly enhances users’ privacy and security and is highly reliable. The absence of WireGuard as standard might reveal Air isn’t rather keeping up with its rivals. That said, AirVPN states it is testing WireGuard, however it will not put the newer protocol totally in place till some of its technical and personal privacy concerns are attended to.
AirVPN has actually also added a lot for power users and tech-savvy individuals who like to experiment with things.
Switching is unlimited, so if you do not like one server, you can quickly switch servers as frequently as you like.
You can monitor the present load on each server, any existing problems, and a history of previous issues on AirVPN’s network status page (which opens in a new tab).
There is a comprehensive specs page for AirVPN’s servers, with info like the available ports, protocols, DNS server info (AirVPN has its own DNS server), and the IP addresses of each VPN server’s gain access to points.
All of it is nice, however because there is no third-party audit, you need to rely on that what is being used will work. However looking at the active community forum or the comprehensive open-source clients puts your mind at ease.
A good feature of this is that you can see what other people state about the service before signing up. You do not need to take their word for it or the word of an audit.
Just How Private Is AirVPN, & Does It Keep Logs?
The business is very clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online personal privacy and security are the outright concern, with defense from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that invade privacy. There is no individual details logged by AirVPN, which has a strong no-logging, tracking, or monitoring policy.
AirVPN doesn’t track what you do when you’re connected to the VPN, date/time stamps, or your IP address. It just gathers non-identifiable “technical data” to keep the server running and enhance services, however you can request this details to be deleted at any time. This makes it one of the most privacy-friendly VPN services.
As a result, nobody can identify you online; not even your ISP can determine what sort of traffic or protocol you’re using.
There’s no listening in, so you can connect to any wireless network without stressing over your computer and the Wi-Fi hotspot spying on your data.
Even the most ruthless surveillance, censoring, throttling, and traffic shaping strategies will fail versus AirVPN due to the fact that your ISP and government will just see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.
They likewise state they adhere to EU personal privacy guidelines and that any servers outside the EU will be treated with the same or greater levels of privacy and information protection as those in the EU.
You can get a brand-new IP address to hide your IP so that nobody can utilize it to discover who you are. You’ll stay safe with the top-level protection provided.
You can still connect to an AirVPN server through OpenVPN over SSH, SSL, or Tor if your ISP or country blocks OpenVPN.
Open-source clients and a lively community online forum enable you to get a sense of what current users are saying about the service before signing up.
All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a huge plus. This suggests that anybody can check out AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, but just ProtonVPN’s apps have been checked by a 3rd party.
Regarding security, AirVPN’s cryptography is probably the very best readily available. It resembles that of some other companies, but still worth mentioning. The first exchange utilizes 4096-bit RSA to achieve Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) through Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Following the first key negotiation, re-keying takes place every 60 minutes, and the user can lower this value. The primary data channel uses AES-256-CBC encryption.
When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal information, not even your genuine e-mail address. That’s fantastic considering that it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. However understand that you will not have the ability to change your account’s password if you don’t utilize one.
Italy, where AirVPN is based, belongs to the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliances (a group of countries that share intelligence information). Even if the government asked for user info, AirVPN would have nothing to give them.
Who Or What Is Eddie??
The Eddie UI is the name of AirVPN’s primary open-source application, available on all major platforms and OSes, consisting of Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Unfortunately, despite Eddie’s substantial ability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as good as those service providers who use it as requirement.
Setting up the app is easy, and it has all the information you require to connect to a VPN.
There are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to guide you. While it’s not hard to get things working, it doesn’t have the most user-friendly user interface, so it may be a more difficult learning curve for unskilled users.
With Windows, there are a lot of download choices. There are builds for various running systems (from Windows XP to Windows 11), in 32- and 64-bit tastes, and in portable or installable formats. In addition, there’s a changelog to explain what’s brand-new and an archive of past releases in case the most existing does not work on your setup.
After launching it, choose ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest location. You simply click Disconnect when you’re finished. Simple enough for anyone, however Eddie can do so much more because AirVPN provides more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we have actually seen.
2 essential AirVPN functions through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN allows you to connect when your computer starts up, however you can’t select which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you selected last.
Despite the fact that it defines “kill switch” throughout the settings, AirVPN has actually a tab called “network lock” that does the exact same thing. The distinction is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its safe tunnel. Most basic kill switches only do this when the VPN is on, however you can establish the “network lock” to filter your traffic at all times.
Eddie’s layout is easy to understand. Along the top, there are six tabs: Overview, Servers, Countries, Speed, Stats, and Logs.
The Overview just displays the server to which you are connected, the download and upload speeds, the exit IP address, and the connection time. This is where you log into your account.
The Servers page displays all available servers in the network, in addition to comprehensive info about every one, such as the server’s label, area, latency in milliseconds from your place, and current users and server load. Impressive stuff!
This tab also has an amber/green signal that lets you understand whether a server is recommended for you.
The Countries page shows the number of servers readily available in each nation at a look, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. As with the Servers page, the amber/green sign is likewise shown. Numerous servers have up to 1000 Mb/s bandwidth, while some smaller ones have a 100 Mb/s connection.
A green checkmark, a red “X,” and a blank box can be discovered on the right rail of the Countries tab. Highlight a country, click the green checkmark, and the servers for that nation will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is essentially a favorites list; you might pick as numerous nations as you like.
If you click the red “x”, that nation will be removed, effectively making it a blocklist/denylist. To eliminate the green checkmark from a country, click the empty box.
By selecting a country, you are not right away connected to a VPN server. Connect to a server by marking it and clicking on the “sign out” icon on the right-hand side (a right-facing arrow pointing into a square bracket).
The Speed tab displays a simple throughput graph with thin plot lines. Its temporal resolution can be changed, so you can see traffic from the last 10 seconds to one day.
While most apps display your current VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also shows fine-grained info, such as the server’s location, load, current user count, protocol, port, encryption algorithm, session start time and length, IPv6 exit address, information uploaded and downloaded, and a lot more.
Power users, in particular, should value the ability to use a VPN with all the details they could ever want about the numerous locations, down to the variety of users on a particular server. It’s a priceless resource.
Logs is a comprehensive record of connections, routes, and other information.
A million and one other settings are hidden in the app’s Settings menu. This permits you to fine-tune the setup, such as whether it should always connect when opened, which protocol to utilize between UDP and TCP, and which port number. Or whether to try an SSH tunnel by means of more versatile ports such as 22, 80, and 443. Proxies, Tor assistance, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.
The truly competent user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which allow, to name a few things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management Interface via the Logs pane.
If the large function list appears scary, even if you are a VPN professional, it might be tough to figure out what specific settings do and how to get the preferred results. In addition, it is unlike any other service in terms of customization.
Don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie simply due to the fact that of its intricacy. Remember that the program usually operates fine by itself, and you’ll never ever see the settings till you search for them. However, if you periodically long for power or configurability, the app will supply it.
Suppose you do not want to utilize Eddie. In that case, you can also set up a router or firewall to send out all traffic through a VPN tunnel. This works with routers running the open-source DD-WRT and Tomato firmware and the FreeBSD-based pfSense firewall.
How Good Is AirVPN’s Mobile App?
Although there isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can utilize a very feature-rich Android VPN app rather. This software application offers the very same comprehensive setup options as its desktop sibling and useful status information.
Separate pages for nation and server lists are what the Android app lacks that the desktop versions provides. Instead, you can expand a nation and choose a specific city on the very same page. Some useful text additions make the info more reasonable, however it’s still rather tough to understand in some spots.
Android does not have as numerous settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still a lot more than many people will ever require. The software application likewise tries a little more to help you, with extra text subtitles to describe what each alternative does.
Speeds/Performance
Utilizing OpenVPN, the Eddie Windows app from AirVPN typically connects quickly and is ready to go in less than 10 seconds.
Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was great, with the app finding when the VPN tunnel drops, alerting us with a desktop notification, and reconnecting us in seconds.
In regards to personal privacy, leak tests showed that AirVPN’s Windows client didn’t have any DNS leaks, which shows that the Network Lock/Kill Switch works well.
Now let’s get to those speeds.
It was always going to be slower than the WireGuard-equipped competition because AirVPN only supports OpenVPN.
Reviewers have actually reported speeds to be exceptional. Certainly, one stated there wasn’t a single nation where they might grumble about the speed. On the contrary, it was truly impressive overall.
While it wasn’t quite at the top tier for VPNs that utilize WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for the majority of people, and scenarios like HD streaming, video, and gaming conferencing absolutely will not slow you down.
What AirVPN does not have is a broader number of server places. This might limit the availability of close-by servers for some users (which will constantly result in much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an excellent option for the majority of people in the United States and Europe, however possibly less so for other areas.
Streaming
Streaming the huge services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Apple TV, Hulu, HBO, BBC iPlayer, and Discovery+ has been a mixed bag for reviewers. Some report that AirVPN is powerful enough to bypass the VPN blocks utilized by Netflix in the U.S.A., whereas others do not.
Some report that Air is pretty poor for streaming and does not work with any of the major streaming services. It appears to work with less-popular streaming apps like Peacock and Sony Crackle.
Another reviewer states services like BBC iPlayer and United States Netflix rarely work, and when they do, discovering the best server needs prolonged trial and error. This is most likely since, unlike other companies, AirVPN doesn’t provide servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.
The good news is, on AirVPN’s site, there is a list of ‘blocked websites’ that users can check to see if the situation with these streaming sites ever changes.
Nevertheless, streaming is definitely not an area in which AirVPN stands out, merely because that’s not what the service is about, as they are more concentrated on personal privacy and security.
Does AirVPN Permit P2P?
Yes, it does; every web protocol, consisting of peer-to-peer, is welcome. Undoubtedly, Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. There’s absolutely nothing to set up, no hoops to jump through. Simply connect to the VPN server of your choice and start.
Plus, you can use port forwarding to enhance your file-sharing performance. Numerous applications, such as BitTorrent and eMule clients, would run poorly without it, and your computer’s shares might be inaccessible from the Internet.
File sharing has good speeds on local servers, permits port forwarding for up to 20 ports at once (which lets you connect to more peers for faster speeds), and deals with leading torrenting clients like qBitTorrent and uTorrent.
AirVPN’s integrated kill switch, activated by default, will block all traffic from exiting your device if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you will not be sending unencrypted packets to the Internet. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is extremely practical, specifically if you need to leave your connection unattended.
Reviewers have actually revealed torrenting to be impressive, smooth running with quick download and upload speeds, and without any concerns whatsoever.
AirVPN Plans & Rates
AirVPN provides a broader variety of plans than a lot of VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect as much as 5 devices simultaneously, so you can connect your PC, phone, tablet, and a couple of other devices all at the same time.
This makes it an outstanding choice for people who live in a family house or wish to utilize a VPN on a public network. While five should suffice for the majority of people, other VPN companies provide 7 or even 10 if you require more.
Pricing differs based on the membership length, and each plan consists of the same features. Most plans offer good value; nevertheless, longer memberships use the best offer.
The standard pricing is in Euros. However, they use the European Central Bank to supply real-time exchange rates for those overseas, so it can be easily converted to and paid for in the currency of your option.
The existing plans readily available are:
Three days- EUR2
One month – EUR7
Three months – EUR15 – works out to EUR 5/month
Six months – EUR29 – works out to EUR 4.83/month
One year – EUR49 – works out to EUR 4.08/month
Two years – EUR79 – works out to EUR 3.29/month
Three years – EUR99 – works out to EUR 2.75/month
AirVPN accepts major credit cards, PayPal, Amazon Pay, and a whole load of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Doge. Lots of international alternatives are likewise accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.
AirVPN offers a three-day totally free trial, which can be obtained by sending out a message to the support team and utilizing the discount coupon code they send you.
There’s also a 30-day money-back guarantee, as long as they have not broken the terms of service or utilized more than 5 GB of data during that time.
AirVPN Customer Support
AirVPN has a different customer assistance offering than many other VPNs. While it does not have live chat, it uses email assistance and frequently asked questions (FAQs) and has a really active assistance online forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.
Importantly, AirVPN’s e-mail assistance isn’t outsourced however can be a little irregular with the time it requires to get a reaction. That said, the e-mail assistance is high quality, and the representatives are friendly and helpful, however the extensive answers can be quite technical, which may put off those new to VPNs.
AirVPN’s website has a great deal of details, including a large FAQs area that is separated by topic.
AirVPN’s community forums cover several subjects, however beginners will have the very same problems understanding a lot of the tech jargon in the posts.
AirVPN Pros & Cons
Pros:
No logging Whatsoever.
Exceptional speeds with very little loss.
Unrestricted P2P permitted with Port Forwarding.
Strong security on apps and servers alike, with advanced protocols and encryption.
Network Lock/Kill Switch.
Split tunneling.
Supports Windows, Mac, Linux, mobile, and routers.
Supports Tor over VPN.
Easy app setup and usage.
Many, many advanced settings and customization options in the client app.
Solid Customer Support.
Active Community Forums and Comprehensive Guides.
Great costs, particularly for longer-term plans.
Optional block lists shield you from ads, adware, trackers, and hazardous sources.
Cons:
Only fully supports OpenVPN.
Client app isn’t really user-friendly or attractive like other services.
Client app might overwhelm more recent users.
It is extremely hit and miss with streaming services.
No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.
Maybe there are a lot of advanced alternatives.
Located in 14-Eyes Country.
Server numbers are reasonably low.
Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Best Option?
So the bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, dependable, and safe VPN service with good pricing. It’s plainly geared towards more power and advanced users, so those brand-new to VPNs will be much better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN company. Even brand-new users might do much, much worse.
While it could be challenging to use if you’re new to VPNs, you’ll get much quicker speeds and much better results than many of its competing VPN competitors.
When it comes down to it, this VPN service is more focused on safeguarding your privacy than unblocking streaming services like Netflix or Hulu.
Although it might not guarantee the exact same level of personal privacy and privacy as a service like Mullvad, which assigns you a random account number and enables you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still a good alternative for customers who value their personal privacy.
While it does not hit the speed heights of a WireGuard service, performance-wise, it’s definitely the very best purely OpenVPN service out there. In addition to being an excellent option for online filesharing.
Highly recommended!
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AirVPN 101 – A New User’s Guide To Deciding On The Ideal VPN Provider
