AirVPN DNS Leak On Ubuntu 16.04lts

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

While anyone can claim to be special these days, when it pertains to VPN providers, AirVPN reveals that it really is.

AirVPN sticks out from other VPN services because of its dedication to safeguarding user privacy. Right from the start, the AirVPN site 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 unique nowadays, when it pertains to VPN companies, AirVPN shows that it genuinely is.

AirVPN Home Page

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

During the last years, it hasn’t been dogged by security scandals like some VPNs have. Nor has it been acquired by a larger organization either.

Throughout their About Us and Mission pages, the business’s history is explained 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.

So how does AirVPN stack up against its rivals with such strong personal privacy credentials?

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

AirVPN’s network is much smaller than a lot of, with just 246 servers spread throughout 23 countries.

Most servers are in Europe (besides those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A minor issue here is that the lack of diversity of servers minimizes the number of worldwide AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home country while maintaining their privacy.

AirVPN Servers

That said, Air is well known for its impressive performance across its server network, with many countries having high-performance physical individual servers.

They use transparent bandwidth allocation techniques to offer an accurate evaluation of performance, without any overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are totally unlimited, without any 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 reputable and safe and secure method to create encrypted tunnels. It offers more security than the military.

Various 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 risky protocols.

No choice is given to any application, protocol, or service when it comes down to it. Net Neutrality is maintained. Significantly, you can overcome internet restrictions such as avoiding censorship, geographic constraints, and traffic shaping.

The use is OpenVPN is a big plus as it immediately enhances users’ privacy and security and is highly reliable. Nevertheless, the absence of WireGuard as standard might show Air isn’t rather staying up to date with its competitors. That stated, AirVPN states it is evaluating WireGuard, however it will not put the newer protocol completely in place up until a few of its technical and personal privacy concerns are resolved.

AirVPN has likewise added a lot for power users and tech-savvy people who like to try out things.

Switching is limitless, so if you don’t like one server, you can quickly switch servers as often as you like.

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

There is a detailed specifications page for AirVPN’s servers, with info like the readily 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, but since there is no third-party audit, you have to rely on that what is being provided will work. However taking a look at the active community forum or the detailed 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 prior to signing up. You don’t have to take their word for it or the word of an audit.

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

The business is extremely clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online privacy and security are the outright top priority, with security 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 ask for this info to be deleted at any time. This makes it among the most privacy-friendly VPN services.

As a result, nobody can identify you online; not even your ISP can tell what kind of traffic or protocol you’re using.

There’s no listening in, so you can connect to any wi-fi network without worrying about your computer and the Wi-Fi hotspot spying on your data.

Even the most ruthless surveillance, censoring, throttling, and traffic shaping tactics will fail against AirVPN since your ISP and government will only see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.

They also state they abide by EU personal privacy guidelines which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the exact 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 learn who you are. You’ll remain safe with the high-level protection supplied.

You can still connect to an AirVPN server through OpenVPN over SSH, SSL, or Tor if your ISP or nation obstructs 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 prior to registering.

All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a huge plus. This implies that anyone can check out AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, but just ProtonVPN’s apps have been inspected by a third party.

Concerning security, AirVPN’s cryptography is perhaps the very best readily available. It resembles that of some other providers, but still worth mentioning. The very 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 happens every 60 minutes, and the user can lower this value. The primary information channel employs AES-256-CBC encryption.

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal information, not even your real email address. That’s terrific since it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. Be conscious that you won’t be able to alter your account’s password if you don’t use one.

Italy, where AirVPN is based, belongs to the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliances (a group of countries that share intelligence data). However even if the federal government asked 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 main open-source application, readily available on all major platforms and OSes, consisting of Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. In spite of Eddie’s significant capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t rather as excellent as those suppliers who use it as standard.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

Establishing 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 direct you. While it’s not difficult to get things working, it doesn’t have the most user-friendly interface, so it may be a more difficult learning curve for inexperienced users.

With Windows, there are a lot of download alternatives. There are builds for various running systems (from Windows XP to Windows 11), in 32- and 64-bit flavors, and in installable or portable formats. In addition, there’s a changelog to discuss what’s brand-new and an archive of past releases in case the most present does not operate on your setup.

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

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

Two key AirVPN functions through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN permits you to connect when your computer launches, however you can’t pick which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you picked last.

Despite the fact that it specifies “kill switch” throughout the settings, AirVPN has actually a tab called “network lock” that does the same thing. The distinction is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its safe tunnel. Many basic kill switches only do this when the VPN is on, however 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 6 tabs: Overview, Servers, Countries, Speed, Stats, and Logs.

The Overview simply 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 shows all offered servers in the network, in addition to detailed info about each one, such as the server’s label, location, latency in milliseconds from your place, and present users and server load. Outstanding stuff!

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

The Countries page shows the number of servers readily available in each country at a glance, together with an indicator of server load and user numbers. As with the Servers page, the amber/green indicator is likewise revealed. Lots of 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 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 essentially a favorites list; you might choose as numerous nations as you like.

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

By selecting a nation, you are not instantly connected to a VPN server. To do so, go back to the Servers page and choose the server you want in a specific nation. 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 many apps show your present VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also reveals fine-grained details, 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 much more.

Power users, in particular, should value the capability to utilize a VPN with all the information they might ever desire about the numerous locations, down to the variety of users on a specific server. It’s a priceless resource.

Lastly, Logs is a comprehensive record of connections, routes, and other data.

A million and one other settings are hidden in the app’s Settings menu. This allows you to tweak 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 attempt an SSH tunnel by means of more versatile ports such as 22, 80, and 443. Proxies, Tor support, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

The truly experienced user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which permit, to name a few things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management Interface through the Logs pane.

If the large function list appears scary, even if you are a VPN professional, it might be tough to find out what specific settings do and how to get the preferred results. In addition, it differs from any other service in regards to customization.

Don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie simply since of its intricacy. Bear in mind that the program normally operates fine on its own, and you’ll never ever see the settings up until you search for them. Nevertheless, if you occasionally long for power or configurability, the app will offer 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?

There isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can use an exceptionally feature-rich Android VPN app rather. This software offers the very same substantial setup options as its desktop sibling and helpful status details.

Different pages for country and server lists are what the Android app does not have that the desktop versions provides. Rather, you can expand a nation and choose a particular city on the same page. Some practical text additions make the information more reasonable, however it’s still quite tough to understand in some spots.

Android does not have as numerous settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still many more than many people will ever require. The software likewise attempts a little bit more to help you, with additional text subtitles to describe what each option does.

Speeds/Performance

Using OpenVPN, the Eddie Windows app from AirVPN generally connects rapidly and is ready to go in less than 10 seconds.

Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was good, with the app detecting when the VPN tunnel drops, informing us with a desktop notice, 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 reveals 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 due to the fact that AirVPN only supports OpenVPN.

Reviewers have actually reported speeds to be outstanding. One stated there wasn’t a single country where they could complain about the speed. On the contrary, it was truly remarkable overall.

While it wasn’t rather on top tier for VPNs that use WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for most people, and scenarios like HD video, gaming, and streaming conferencing definitely won’t slow you down.

What AirVPN does not have is a wider number of server locations. This may restrict the availability of nearby servers for some users (which will constantly result in better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an excellent option for most 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 used by Netflix in the USA, whereas others do not.

Certainly, 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 states services like BBC iPlayer and US Netflix hardly ever work, and when they do, discovering the right server needs prolonged experimentation. This is most likely because, unlike other providers, AirVPN doesn’t provide servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.

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

Nevertheless, streaming is absolutely not an area in which AirVPN excels, just since that’s not what the service is about, as they are more concentrated on personal privacy and security.

Does AirVPN Allow 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 configure, no hoops to jump through. Merely connect to the VPN server of your choice and get going.

Plus, you can use port forwarding to improve your file-sharing performance. A number of 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 regional servers, allows port forwarding for up to 20 ports at the same time (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 block all traffic from leaving 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 hassle-free, 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 with no problems whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Rates

AirVPN offers a larger range of plans than most VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect up to five gadgets concurrently, so you can connect your PC, phone, tablet, and a couple of other devices all at the same time.

This makes it an outstanding option for individuals who reside in a household home or want to use a VPN on a public network. While five really should be enough for many people, other VPN service providers provide 7 or even 10 if you require more.

Rates differs based on the membership length, and each plan consists of the same features. Many plans offer good value; however, longer subscriptions provide the very best deal.

The standard pricing is in Euros. They use the European Central Bank to provide real-time exchange rates for those abroad, so it can be quickly converted to and paid for in the currency of your choice.

The present 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 international options are likewise accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.

AirVPN offers a three-day complimentary trial, which can be obtained by sending 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 used more than 5 GB of data throughout that time.

AirVPN Customer Assistance

AirVPN has a different customer support offering than many other VPNs. While it does not have live chat, it offers email support and frequently asked questions (FAQs) and has a really active assistance online forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.

Significantly, AirVPN’s email assistance isn’t contracted out but can be a little irregular with the time it requires to get a reaction. That stated, the email support is high quality, and the agents are handy and friendly, however the comprehensive responses can be pretty technical, which might put off those new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s site has a lot of details, consisting of a large FAQs section that is separated by subject.

AirVPN’s community forums cover many different subjects, 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.

Outstanding speeds with very little loss.

Unlimited 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 setup and usage.

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

Strong Customer Service.

Active Community Forums and In-depth Guides.

Great prices, especially for longer-term plans.

Optional block lists shield you from ads, adware, trackers, and damaging sources.

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

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

Client app may overwhelm more recent users.

It is very hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Possibly there are a lot of advanced choices.

Located in 14-Eyes Country.

Server numbers are reasonably low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Best Choice?

The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, trusted, and safe VPN service with great pricing. It’s clearly geared towards more power and advanced users, so those brand-new to VPNs will be better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN company. However even new users could do much, much worse.

While it could be challenging to use if you’re brand-new to VPNs, you’ll receive much quicker speeds and much better results than a number of its competing VPN competitors.

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

It might not guarantee the very same level of personal privacy and anonymity as a service like Mullvad, which appoints you a random account number and enables you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still a good alternative 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 excellent choice for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

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