AirVPN 101 – A Rookie’s Guide To Looking For The Ideal VPN Service Provider

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Do you wish to stay anonymous while surfing the web? If yes, then AirVPN could be the ideal solution for you.

While anybody can claim to be unique these days, when it pertains to VPN companies, AirVPN shows that it truly is.

AirVPN stands apart from other VPN services because of its dedication to securing user privacy. Right from the start, the AirVPN site starts with an appeal for your trust, specifying, “A VPN based on OpenVPN and operated by activists and hacktivists in defence of net neutrality, privacy and against censorship”.While anyone can declare to be special these days, when it comes to VPN providers, AirVPN shows that it genuinely is.

AirVPN Home Page

They’ve been around a long period of time, since 2010, when it was begun with the aid of 2 lawyers and a little group of activists and hackers. The satellite communications service provider Iridium previously ran it, but AirVPN took control of in November 2012. According to the owner’s listing, AirVPN, based in Perugia, is presently owned by Paolo Brini (Italy).

During the last decade, it hasn’t been dogged by security scandals like some VPNs have. Nor has it been acquired by a bigger company either.

Throughout their About Us and Mission pages, the company’s history is discussed and details the privacy projects that AirVPN has actually developed or supported. These consist of 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 against its competitors with such strong personal privacy credentials?

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

AirVPN’s network is much smaller than the majority of, with just 246 servers spread out across 23 nations.

Most servers are in Europe (besides those in the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong). A minor issue here is that the lack of variety of servers minimizes the number of global AirVPN users who might access geo-restricted services in their home country while keeping their privacy.

AirVPN Servers

That said, Air is popular for its outstanding performance across its server network, with lots of nations having high-performance physical individual servers.

They use transparent bandwidth allocation methods to supply a precise assessment of performance, without any overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are entirely unlimited, with no speed restrictions or time limits.

To establish a connection between your machine and their servers, they use OpenVPN and WireGuard (in beta). OpenVPN is the most reliable and safe method to create encrypted tunnels. It offers more security than the military.

Numerous ports and protocols are readily available; they use OpenVPN on the following ports: 80 TCP/UDP, 443 TCP/UDP, and 53 TCP/UDP. Furthermore, every Air server directly supports OpenVPN over SSH, OpenVPN over SSL, and OpenVPN over Tor. So ignore PPTP and other unsafe protocols.

No choice is given to any protocol, service, or application when it comes down to it. Net Neutrality is upheld. Importantly, you can get rid of web restrictions such as avoiding censorship, geographical restrictions, and traffic shaping.

The use is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it automatically improves users’ privacy and security and is extremely dependable. The absence of WireGuard as standard may show Air isn’t rather keeping up with its competitors. That said, AirVPN states it is evaluating WireGuard, but it won’t put the more recent protocol completely in place up until some of its technical and privacy concerns are resolved.

AirVPN has actually likewise added a lot for power users and tech-savvy people who like to experiment with things.

Switching is unlimited, so if you don’t like one server, you can easily change servers as frequently as you like.

You can monitor the present load on each server, any existing issues, and a history of previous issues on AirVPN’s network status page (which opens in a brand-new tab).

There is a comprehensive specs page for AirVPN’s servers, with information like the available ports, protocols, DNS server info (AirVPN has its own DNS server), and the IP addresses of each VPN server’s access points.

All of it is nice, however given that there is no third-party audit, you have to rely on that what is being offered will work. However looking at the active community forum or the comprehensive open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A nice feature of this is that you can see what other people say about the service before signing up. You do not have to take their word for it or the word of an audit.

Just How Private Is AirVPN, & Does It Keep Logs?

When it pertains to AirVPN’s no-logging policy, the company is extremely clear. Online personal privacy and security are the outright top priority, with defense from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that invade personal privacy. There is no personal 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 only gathers non-identifiable “technical data” to keep the server running and enhance services, however you can ask for this information to be erased at any time. This makes it one of the most privacy-friendly VPN services.

As a result, no one can identify you online; not even your ISP can determine what type 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 techniques will fail versus AirVPN since your ISP and government will only see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.

They also say they follow EU personal privacy regulations and that any servers outside the EU will be treated with the same or higher levels of privacy and data protection as those in the EU.

You can get a new IP address to hide your IP so that nobody can use it to find out who you are. You’ll remain safe with the top-level protection supplied.

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 forum allow you to get a sense of what present users are stating about the service prior to signing up.

All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a huge plus. This means that anyone can look into AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, but only ProtonVPN’s apps have been inspected by a 3rd party.

Concerning security, AirVPN’s cryptography is probably the best available. The first exchange utilizes 4096-bit RSA to accomplish Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) via Diffie-Hellman key exchange.

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal details, not even your genuine email address. That’s terrific since it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. Be conscious that you will not be able 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 nations that share intelligence data). But even if the government requested for user info, AirVPN would have absolutely nothing to give them.

Who Or What Is Eddie??

The Eddie UI is the name of AirVPN’s primary open-source application, offered on all major platforms and OSes, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Regrettably, despite Eddie’s substantial capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as good as those service providers who use it as requirement.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

Setting up the app is simple, and it has all the details you need to connect to a VPN.

There are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to guide you. While it’s not difficult to get things working, it does not have the most user-friendly user interface, so it might be a more tough learning curve for unskilled users.

With Windows, there are a heap of download alternatives. There are builds for different operating systems (from Windows XP to Windows 11), in 32- and 64-bit flavors, and in portable or installable formats. In addition, there’s a changelog to describe what’s brand-new and an archive of past releases in case the most current doesn’t work on your setup.

After introducing it, select ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest location. When you’re ended up, you simply click Disconnect. Simple enough for anybody, but Eddie can do a lot more given that AirVPN offers more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we’ve seen.

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

2 key AirVPN functions through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN permits you to connect when your computer starts up, but you can’t pick which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you chosen last.

Although it specifies “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 secure tunnel. The majority of standard kill switches only do this when the VPN is on, but you can set up 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 shows 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 in-depth details about each one, such as the server’s nickname, area, latency in milliseconds from your location, and existing users and server load. Impressive stuff!

This tab also has an amber/green signal that lets you understand whether a server is suggested for you.

The Countries page displays the variety of servers available in each nation at a glance, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. As with the Servers page, the amber/green sign is also revealed. Many servers have up to 1000 Mb/s bandwidth, while some smaller sized ones have a 100 Mb/s connection.

A green checkmark, a red “X,” and a blank box can be found on the right rail of the Countries tab. Highlight a nation, click the green checkmark, and the servers for that nation will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is basically a favorites list; you might pick as lots of nations as you like.

If you click the red “x”, that nation will be gotten rid of, successfully making it a blocklist/denylist. To remove the green checkmark from a country, click the empty box.

By picking a nation, you are not immediately connected to a VPN server. To do so, go back to the Servers page and pick the server you desire in a specific country. Then, connect to a server by marking it and clicking the “indication out” icon on the right-hand side (a right-facing arrow pointing into a square bracket). There are also a checkmark, “X,” and blank box icons. There’s likewise a “refresh” button to get updated info on ping times and load times.

The Speed tab shows a simple throughput graph with thin plot lines. Its temporal resolution can be altered, so you can see traffic from the last 10 seconds to one day.

While a lot of apps show your present VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also reveals fine-grained information, such as the server’s location, load, present user count, protocol, port, encryption algorithm, session start time and length, IPv6 exit address, data uploaded and downloaded, and much more.

Power users, in particular, should value the ability to use a VPN with all the info they might ever desire about the various locations, down to the number of users on a specific server. It’s an invaluable resource.

Logs is an in-depth 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 use between UDP and TCP, and which port number. Or whether to try an SSH tunnel through more flexible ports such as 22, 80, and 443. Proxies, Tor assistance, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

The really experienced user can enter into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which enable, to name a few things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management Interface via the Logs pane.

If the huge function list appears frightening, even if you are a VPN specialist, it might be difficult to figure out what particular settings do and how to get the desired results. In addition, it is unlike any other service in regards to customization.

Nevertheless, do not dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just because of its complexity. Bear in mind that the program generally works fine by itself, and you’ll never ever see the settings until you search for them. However, if you occasionally long for power or configurability, the app will provide it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

Suppose you do not want to use 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 use an incredibly feature-rich Android VPN app rather. This software application supplies the exact same extensive configuration choices as its desktop sibling and helpful status info.

Different pages for country and server lists are what the Android app lacks that the desktop versions provides. Rather, you can expand a nation and select a specific city on the very same page. Some practical text additions make the details more reasonable, however it’s still rather difficult to understand in some spots.

Android does not have as numerous settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still much more than most people will ever need. The software application also tries a little more to help you, with extra text subtitles to describe what each choice does.

Speeds/Performance

Utilizing OpenVPN, the Eddie Windows app from AirVPN normally connects quickly and is ready to enter less than 10 seconds.

Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was good, with the app discovering when the VPN tunnel drops, notifying us with a desktop alert, and reconnecting us in seconds.

In terms of privacy, leak tests revealed 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.

Due to the fact that AirVPN only supports OpenVPN, it was always going to be slower than the WireGuard-equipped competition.

However, reviewers have reported speeds to be outstanding. One stated there wasn’t a single country where they might complain about the speed. On the contrary, it was really excellent overall.

While it wasn’t rather on top tier for VPNs that use WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for the majority of people, and circumstances like HD gaming, streaming, and video conferencing absolutely will not slow you down.

What AirVPN lacks is a broader number of server areas. This might restrict the accessibility of close-by servers for some users (which will constantly result in much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an outstanding option for most people in the United States and Europe, however maybe less so for other areas.

Streaming

Streaming the big services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Apple Television, Hulu, HBO, BBC iPlayer, and Discovery+ has been a mixed bag for reviewers. Some report that AirVPN is effective enough to bypass the VPN blocks utilized by Netflix in the USA, whereas others do not.

Some report that Air is quite poor for streaming and doesn’t work with any of the major streaming services. Nevertheless, it appears to deal with less-popular streaming apps like Peacock and Sony Crackle.

Another reviewer says services like BBC iPlayer and United States Netflix rarely work, and when they do, finding the ideal server needs prolonged trial and error. This is most likely since, unlike other providers, AirVPN does not provide servers that are optimised for accessing streaming sites.

Fortunately, on AirVPN’s site, there is a list of ‘blocked websites’ that users can inspect to see if the situation with these streaming websites ever changes.

Streaming is absolutely not an area in which AirVPN excels, simply because that’s not what the service is about, as they are more focused on personal privacy and security.

Does AirVPN Permit P2P?

Yes, it does; every web protocol, including peer-to-peer, is welcome. Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. There’s absolutely nothing to set up, no hoops to leap through. Merely connect to the VPN server of your choice and start.

Plus, you can use port forwarding to improve your file-sharing performance. Numerous applications, such as BitTorrent and eMule clients, would run badly without it, and your computer system’s shares might be inaccessible from the Web.

File sharing has decent speeds on regional servers, permits port forwarding for as much as 20 ports at once (which lets you connect to more peers for faster speeds), and works with top torrenting clients like qBitTorrent and uTorrent.

AirVPN’s integrated kill switch, activated by default, will obstruct all traffic from leaving your gadget if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you will not be sending out unencrypted packets to the Internet. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is very convenient, especially if you need to leave your connection unattended.

Reviewers have revealed torrenting to be excellent, smooth running with fast download and upload speeds, and without any concerns whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Rates

AirVPN offers a larger range of plans than the majority of VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect as much as five devices all at once, so you can connect your PC, phone, tablet, and a couple of other devices all at the same time.

This makes it an exceptional choice for individuals who live in a family home or wish to use a VPN on a public network. While five really should suffice for most people, other VPN companies provide 7 or even 10 if you need more.

Rates differs based upon the subscription length, and each plan consists of the same features. The majority of plans use good value; however, longer subscriptions use the very best offer.

The standard pricing is in Euros. Nevertheless, they utilize the European Central Bank to provide real-time currency exchange rate for those overseas, so it can be easily converted to and paid for in the currency of your choice.

The existing plans 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, consisting of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Doge. Lots of worldwide choices are likewise accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.

AirVPN offers a three-day free trial, which can be obtained by sending out a message to the support team and using the voucher code they send you.

There’s also a 30-day money-back guarantee, as long as they haven’t broken the terms of service or utilized more than 5 GB of data during that time.

AirVPN Customer Assistance

AirVPN has a different customer assistance offering than numerous other VPNs. While it doesn’t have live chat, it offers email assistance and frequently asked questions (FAQs) and has an extremely active support online forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.

Importantly, AirVPN’s email assistance isn’t outsourced however can be a little irregular with the time it takes to get a reaction. That stated, the e-mail assistance is high quality, and the representatives are practical and friendly, but the extensive answers can be quite technical, which may put off those new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s site has a great deal of information, including a big FAQs area that is broken up by subject.

AirVPN’s community forums cover various topics, however newbies will have the very same problems comprehending a lot of the tech jargon in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Exceptional speeds with minimal 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 use.

Many, many advanced settings and customization options in the client app.

Strong Customer Care.

Active Community Online Forums and Comprehensive Guides.

Excellent costs, particularly for longer-term plans.

Optional block lists protect you from advertisements, adware, trackers, and hazardous sources.

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

Client app isn’t extremely easy to use or attractive like other services.

Client app might overwhelm newer users.

It is really hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Maybe there are a lot of advanced alternatives.

Located in 14-Eyes Nation.

Server numbers are reasonably low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Best Option?

The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, reliable, and safe VPN service with good rates. It’s clearly geared towards more power and advanced users, so those new to VPNs will be better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN provider. Even brand-new users might do much, much worse.

While it could be challenging to utilize if you’re new to VPNs, you’ll receive much quicker speeds and much better results than a number of its rival VPN rivals.

When it boils down to it, this VPN service is more focused on protecting your privacy than unblocking streaming services like Netflix or Hulu.

It might not ensure the exact same level of personal privacy and privacy as a service like Mullvad, which designates you a random account number and permits you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still an excellent alternative for customers who value their privacy.

While it doesn’t 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 choice for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

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