Do you wish to stay anonymous while surfing the web? If yes, then AirVPN could be the ideal service for you.
While anyone can claim to be distinct these days, when it concerns VPN suppliers, AirVPN shows that it truly is.
AirVPN stands out from other VPN services because of its commitment to safeguarding user privacy. Right from the start, the AirVPN website 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 unique nowadays, when it comes to VPN providers, AirVPN shows that it genuinely is.
They’ve been around a long time, since 2010, when it was started with the help of two lawyers and a little group of activists and hackers. The satellite communications provider Iridium previously 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 decade, it hasn’t been dogged by security scandals like some VPNs have. Nor has it been acquired by a larger company either.
Across their About Us and Mission pages, the business’s history is explained and information the privacy projects that AirVPN has actually established 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 non-traditional route and breaks the mold by providing a VPN developed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.
So how does AirVPN stack up against its rivals with such strong privacy credentials?
AirVPN’s Key Features
Servers
AirVPN’s network is much smaller sized than most, with only 246 servers spread throughout 23 nations.
Many servers are in Europe (aside from those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A small problem here is that the absence of variety of servers minimizes the number of global AirVPN users who might access geo-restricted services in their home nation while maintaining their privacy.
That stated, Air is well known for its exceptional performance throughout its server network, with lots of nations having high-performance physical individual servers.
They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation methods to offer an accurate evaluation of performance, with no overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are completely unlimited, without any 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 safe and trustworthy way to create encrypted tunnels. It provides more security than the military.
Many ports and protocols are readily 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. Forget about PPTP and other unsafe protocols.
No preference is given to any protocol, application, or service when it comes down to it. Net Neutrality is upheld. Importantly, you can get rid of web restrictions such as avoiding censorship, geographic restrictions, and traffic shaping.
The usage is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it automatically improves users’ privacy and security and is highly reliable. However, the absence of WireGuard as standard might reveal Air isn’t quite staying up to date with its competitors. That stated, AirVPN states it is testing WireGuard, however it will not put the more recent protocol completely in place till some of its technical and personal privacy issues are addressed.
AirVPN has also included a lot for power users and tech-savvy people who like to experiment with things.
Switching is limitless, so if you don’t like one server, you can quickly switch servers as frequently as you like.
You can keep an eye on the current load on each server, any existing concerns, and a history of previous issues on AirVPN’s network status page (which opens in a brand-new tab).
There is a detailed specs page for AirVPN’s servers, with information like the available ports, protocols, DNS server information (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 considering that there is no third-party audit, you have to rely on that what is being used will work. But taking a look at the active community forum or the comprehensive open-source clients puts your mind at ease.
A nice thing about this is that you can see what other people say about the service prior to registering. You don’t need to take their word for it or the word of an audit.
Just How Private Is AirVPN, & Does It Keep Logs?
When it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy, the company is really clear. Online privacy and security are the absolute priority, with defense from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that attack personal privacy. There is no individual details logged by AirVPN, which has a strong no-logging, tracking, or monitoring policy.
AirVPN does not track what you do when you’re connected to the VPN, date/time stamps, or your IP address. It just collects non-identifiable “technical information” to keep the server running and enhance services, but you can request this details to be erased at any time. This makes it among the most privacy-friendly VPN services.
As a result, no one can identify you online; not even your ISP can figure out what type of traffic or protocol you’re utilizing.
There’s no listening in, so you can connect to any wi-fi network without stressing over your computer system and the Wi-Fi hotspot spying on your data.
Even the most ruthless surveillance, censoring, throttling, and traffic shaping tactics will fail against AirVPN because your ISP and government will just see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.
They also state they abide by EU privacy policies which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the same or greater levels of personal privacy and data protection as those in the EU.
You can get a new IP address to conceal your IP so that nobody can utilize it to discover who you are. You’ll stay safe with the high-level security supplied.
You can still connect to an AirVPN server through OpenVPN over SSH, SSL, or Tor if your ISP or nation blocks OpenVPN.
Open-source clients and a lively community forum allow you to get a sense of what existing users are saying about the service prior to registering.
All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a big plus. This suggests that anyone can check out AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, but only ProtonVPN’s apps have actually been checked by a third party.
Relating to security, AirVPN’s cryptography is arguably the very best available. It resembles that of some other service providers, but still worth discussing. The first exchange uses 4096-bit RSA to attain Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) by means of Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Following the first key negotiation, re-keying occurs every 60 minutes, and the user can decrease this value. The main information channel uses AES-256-CBC encryption.
When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal info, not even your genuine email address. That’s fantastic given that it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. Be mindful that you will not be able to change your account’s password if you don’t utilize one.
Italy, where AirVPN is based, is a member of the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliances (a group of countries that share intelligence information). However even if the government requested 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, offered on all significant platforms and OSes, consisting of Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Unfortunately, despite Eddie’s significant ability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as good as those suppliers who use it as standard.
Setting up the app is simple, and it has all the details you require to connect to a VPN.
There are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to guide you. While it’s not tough to get things working, it doesn’t have the most user-friendly interface, so it may be a more tough learning curve for unskilled users.
With Windows, there are a load of download alternatives. There are builds for different 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 describe what’s new and an archive of past releases in case the most existing does not function on your setup.
After launching it, select ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest place. You just click Disconnect when you’re ended up. Easy enough for anybody, but Eddie can do a lot more considering that AirVPN uses more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we have actually seen.
Two essential AirVPN functions through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN permits you to connect when your computer launches, but you can’t pick which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you picked last.
Although it defines “kill switch” anywhere in the settings, AirVPN has actually a tab called “network lock” that does the very same thing. The difference is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its protected tunnel. A lot of basic kill switches just do this when the VPN is on, but you can establish the “network lock” to filter your traffic at all times.
Eddie’s design is easy to understand. Along the top, there are six tabs: Overview, Servers, Countries, Speed, Stats, and Logs.
The Overview simply 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 offered servers in the network, together with comprehensive information about every one, such as the server’s nickname, location, latency in milliseconds from your place, and existing users and server load. Impressive stuff!
This tab also has an amber/green signal that lets you know whether a server is suggested for you.
The Countries page shows the variety of servers available in each nation at a glimpse, together with an indicator of server load and user numbers. As with the Servers page, the amber/green sign is likewise 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 country, click the green checkmark, and the servers for that nation will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is basically a favorites list; you may pick as lots of nations as you like.
If you click the red “x”, that nation will be eliminated, efficiently making it a blocklist/denylist. To eliminate the green checkmark from a nation, click the empty box.
By picking a nation, you are not instantly connected to a VPN server. To do so, go back to the Servers page and pick the server you desire in a particular country. Then, 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). There are likewise a checkmark, “X,” and blank box icons. There’s also 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 the majority of 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 downloaded and uploaded, and a lot more.
Power users, in particular, should value the capability to utilize a VPN with all the details they could ever desire about the different locations, down to the variety of users on a particular server. It’s an invaluable resource.
Lastly, 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 tweak 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 support, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.
The truly experienced user can enter into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which permit, to name a few things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management User Interface through the Logs pane.
If the huge feature list appears scary, even if you are a VPN expert, it might be hard to determine what particular settings do and how to get the desired outcomes. In addition, it differs from any other service in terms of personalization.
Nevertheless, don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just because of its intricacy. Bear in mind that the program normally works fine on its own, and you’ll never see the settings until you look for them. Nevertheless, if you sometimes yearn for power or configurability, the app will offer it.
Suppose you don’t wish 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 a very feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software application supplies the exact same extensive setup options as its desktop sibling and practical status details.
Separate pages for country and server lists are what the Android app lacks that the desktop versions provides. Rather, you can expand a nation and choose a particular city on the exact same page. Some helpful text additions make the details more understandable, however it’s still quite difficult to understand in some spots.
Android does not have as many settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still many more than the majority of people will ever require. The software likewise tries a bit more to help you, with additional text subtitles to explain what each option does.
Speeds/Performance
Utilizing OpenVPN, the Eddie Windows app from AirVPN generally connects quickly and is ready to enter less than 10 seconds.
Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was good, with the app identifying when the VPN tunnel drops, notifying us with a desktop notification, and reconnecting us in seconds.
In regards to privacy, leak tests revealed that AirVPN’s Windows client didn’t have any DNS leaks, which reveals that the Network Lock/Kill Switch works well.
Now let’s get to those speeds.
Because AirVPN just supports OpenVPN, it was always going to be slower than the WireGuard-equipped competitors.
Reviewers have actually reported speeds to be outstanding. Indeed, one said there wasn’t a single country where they might grumble about the speed. On the contrary, it was truly outstanding overall.
While it wasn’t quite at the top tier for VPNs that use WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for most people, and circumstances like HD streaming, gaming, and video conferencing absolutely won’t slow you down.
What AirVPN lacks is a more comprehensive variety of server places. This may restrict the ease of access of neighboring servers for some users (which will always result in much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an outstanding choice for the majority of people in the United States and Europe, but perhaps less so for other regions.
Streaming
Streaming the huge services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Apple Television, Hulu, HBO, BBC iPlayer, and Discovery+ has actually been a mixed bag for reviewers. Some report that AirVPN is effective enough to bypass the VPN blocks used by Netflix in the USA, whereas others do not.
Some report that Air is quite bad for streaming and doesn’t 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 US Netflix rarely work, and when they do, finding the right server needs lengthy trial and error. This is most likely because, unlike other service providers, AirVPN doesn’t use servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.
Thankfully, on AirVPN’s website, there is a list of ‘blocked websites’ that users can examine to see if the situation with these streaming sites ever changes.
However, streaming is absolutely not an area in which AirVPN stands out, merely since that’s not what the service is about, as they are more focused on personal privacy and security.
Does AirVPN Allow P2P?
Yes, it does; every internet protocol, including peer-to-peer, is welcome. Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. There’s absolutely nothing to configure, no hoops to jump through. Merely connect to the VPN server of your option and start.
Plus, you can utilize 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 Web.
File sharing has good speeds on local servers, enables port forwarding for up to 20 ports at once (which lets you connect to more peers for faster speeds), and works with leading torrenting clients like qBitTorrent and uTorrent.
AirVPN’s integrated kill switch, activated by default, will obstruct all traffic from exiting your device if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you will not be sending out unencrypted packets to the Web. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is very practical, especially if you need to leave your connection unattended.
Reviewers have revealed torrenting to be impressive, smooth running with fast download and upload speeds, and without any concerns whatsoever.
AirVPN Plans & Prices
AirVPN uses a broader range 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 reside in a family home or wish to use a VPN on a public network. While 5 should suffice for most people, other VPN suppliers provide 7 or even 10 if you require more.
Rates differs based on the membership length, and each plan consists of the exact same features. The majority of plans provide good value; nevertheless, longer memberships offer the best offer.
The standard pricing is in Euros. However, they use the European Central Bank to provide real-time currency exchange rate for those overseas, so it can be quickly 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, consisting of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Doge. Lots of global alternatives are likewise accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.
AirVPN offers a three-day complimentary trial, which can be obtained by sending out a message to the support team and utilizing the voucher code they send you.
There’s likewise 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 throughout that time.
AirVPN Customer Support
AirVPN has a different customer support offering than numerous other VPNs. While it doesn’t have live chat, it provides email support and frequently asked questions (FAQs) and has an extremely active assistance online forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.
Significantly, AirVPN’s e-mail support isn’t contracted out however can be a little inconsistent with the time it takes to get a reaction. That said, the email assistance is high quality, and the agents are useful and friendly, but the detailed answers can be pretty technical, which may put off those brand-new to VPNs.
AirVPN’s website has a great deal of info, including a big Frequently asked questions section that is broken up by topic.
AirVPN’s community forums cover several topics, but beginners will have the very same troubles understanding a great deal of the tech lingo in the posts.
AirVPN Pros & Cons
Pros:
No logging Whatsoever.
Outstanding speeds with minimal loss.
Unrestricted P2P enabled with Port Forwarding.
Strong security on servers and apps 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 installation and usage.
Many, many advanced settings and customization choices in the client app.
Solid Customer Service.
Active Community Forums and Detailed Guides.
Good costs, especially 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 very user-friendly or attractive like other services.
Client app may overwhelm more recent users.
It is extremely hit and miss with streaming services.
No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.
Possibly there are too many advanced options.
Located in 14-Eyes Nation.
Server numbers are relatively low.
Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Very Best Option?
So the bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, reputable, and safe VPN service with excellent prices. It’s clearly tailored towards more power and advanced users, so those new to VPNs will be better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN supplier. Even new users could do much, much worse.
While it could be challenging to utilize if you’re brand-new to VPNs, you’ll get much quicker speeds and better results than a number of its competing VPN competitors.
This VPN service is more focused on protecting your privacy than unblocking streaming services like Netflix or Hulu when it comes down to it.
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 a great option for consumers who value their privacy.
While it does not hit the speed heights of a WireGuard service, performance-wise, it’s absolutely the best purely OpenVPN service out there. In addition to being an outstanding option for online filesharing.
Highly recommended!
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