Do you wish to remain anonymous while surfing the web? If yes, then AirVPN could be the perfect option for you.
While anybody can claim to be special nowadays, when it pertains to VPN companies, AirVPN reveals that it really is.
AirVPN stands out from other VPN services because of its dedication to protecting user privacy. Right from the start, the AirVPN site starts with an appeal for your trust, mentioning, “A VPN based on OpenVPN and operated by activists and hacktivists in defence of net neutrality, privacy and against censorship”.While anyone can claim to be special nowadays, when it comes to VPN suppliers, AirVPN shows that it really is.
They have actually been around a long time, since 2010, when it was started with the aid of 2 lawyers and a small group of hackers and activists. The satellite communications service provider Iridium formerly ran it, but AirVPN took over 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 organization either.
Throughout their About Us and Mission pages, the business’s history is explained and details the personal privacy projects that AirVPN has 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 credentials?
AirVPN’s Key Features
Servers
AirVPN’s network is much smaller sized than most, with just 246 servers spread out throughout 23 countries.
Most servers are in Europe (besides those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A small issue here is that the lack of variety of servers minimizes the number of international AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home country while maintaining their privacy.
That stated, Air is popular for its exceptional performance across its server network, with many nations having high-performance physical individual servers.
They use transparent bandwidth allocation techniques to provide an accurate assessment of performance, with no 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 use OpenVPN and WireGuard (in beta). OpenVPN is the most safe and trusted way to create encrypted tunnels. It uses more security than the military.
Various ports and protocols are available; they use OpenVPN on the following ports: 80 TCP/UDP, 443 TCP/UDP, and 53 TCP/UDP. Additionally, every Air server directly supports OpenVPN over SSH, OpenVPN over SSL, and OpenVPN over Tor. So ignore PPTP and other risky protocols.
No preference is given to any protocol, service, or application when it comes down to it. Net Neutrality is upheld. Significantly, you can overcome internet constraints such as avoiding censorship, geographic constraints, and traffic shaping.
The use is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it immediately improves users’ personal privacy and security and is extremely dependable. The lack of WireGuard as standard may show Air isn’t quite keeping up with its rivals. That said, AirVPN says it is evaluating WireGuard, but it will not put the newer protocol fully in place till a few of its technical and privacy concerns are dealt with.
AirVPN has also added a lot for power users and tech-savvy individuals who like to experiment with things.
Switching is limitless, so if you don’t like one server, you can easily switch servers as often as you like.
You can keep an eye on the current load on each server, any existing issues, and a history of previous issues on AirVPN’s network status page (which opens in a new tab).
There is a detailed specs page for AirVPN’s servers, with details like the available ports, protocols, DNS server details (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 need to trust that what is being provided will work. But looking at the active community forum or the in-depth open-source clients puts your mind at ease.
A great aspect of this is that you can see what other individuals say about the service before registering. 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 company is extremely clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online personal privacy and security are the outright concern, with security from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that attack 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 only collects non-identifiable “technical information” to keep the server running and improve services, but you can request this info to be erased 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 kind of traffic or protocol you’re using.
There’s no listening in, so you can connect to any wi-fi network without fretting about your computer system and the Wi-Fi hotspot spying on your information.
Even the most ruthless surveillance, censoring, throttling, and traffic shaping tactics will fail versus AirVPN since your ISP and government will only see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.
They also say they stick to EU personal privacy regulations and that any servers outside the EU will be treated with the exact same or higher levels of privacy and information protection as those in the EU.
You can get a new IP address to hide your IP so that no one can utilize it to learn who you are. You’ll stay safe with the high-level protection offered.
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 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 means that anybody 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.
Regarding security, AirVPN’s cryptography is probably the best available. The very first exchange uses 4096-bit RSA to achieve 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 fantastic since it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. But understand that you will not be able to change your account’s password if you do not use 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 information, AirVPN would have nothing to give them.
Who Or What Is Eddie??
The Eddie UI is the name of AirVPN’s main open-source application, available on all significant platforms and OSes, consisting of Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Unfortunately, despite Eddie’s significant capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as good as those companies who utilize it as requirement.
Establishing the app is easy, and it has all the info you need to connect to a VPN.
There are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to assist you. While it’s not tough to get things working, it does not have the most user-friendly interface, so it may be a more difficult learning curve for inexperienced users.
With Windows, there are a heap of download choices. There are builds for various 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 discuss what’s new and an archive of past releases in case the most present does not function on your setup.
After launching it, choose ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest area. When you’re ended up, you just click Disconnect. Easy enough for anybody, however Eddie can do so much more since AirVPN provides more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we’ve seen.
2 key AirVPN functions through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN permits you to connect when your computer system launches, but you can’t choose which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you selected last.
Even though it defines “kill switch” throughout 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 secure tunnel. A lot 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 design 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, together with detailed info about every one, such as the server’s label, area, latency in milliseconds from your location, and current users and server load. Excellent 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 number of servers readily available in each nation at a look, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. Similar to the Servers page, the amber/green sign is likewise shown. 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 may choose as many nations as you like.
If you click the red “x”, that country will be eliminated, effectively making it a blocklist/denylist. To get rid of the green checkmark from a country, click the empty box.
By choosing a country, 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 particular country. Then, connect to a server by marking it and clicking the “sign 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 information on ping times and load times.
The Speed tab displays an easy 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 display 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, data downloaded and uploaded, and far more.
Power users, in particular, should value the ability to utilize a VPN with all the information they might ever want about the various locations, down to the number of users on a specific server. It’s an invaluable resource.
Lastly, Logs is a comprehensive record of connections, routes, and other data.
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. Proxies, Tor assistance, custom-made DNS servers, and routes can be modified.
The genuinely knowledgeable user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which permit, to name a few things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management Interface by means of the Logs pane.
If the huge feature list appears scary, even if you are a VPN expert, it might be difficult to figure out what specific settings do and how to get the wanted outcomes. In addition, it differs from any other service in terms of customization.
Nevertheless, don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just because of its intricacy. Keep in mind that the program typically operates fine on its own, and you’ll never ever see the settings until you look for them. If you occasionally yearn for power or configurability, the app will provide it.
Suppose you don’t wish to utilize Eddie. In that case, you can also set up a router or firewall to send 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 extremely feature-rich Android VPN app rather. This software provides the exact same substantial setup choices as its desktop sibling and practical status info.
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 pick a specific city on the same page. Some useful text additions make the details more understandable, however it’s still rather tough to understand in some spots.
Android does not have as many settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still much more than most people will ever require. The software application likewise tries a little bit more to assist you, with additional text subtitles to discuss what each choice does.
Speeds/Performance
Utilizing OpenVPN, the Eddie Windows app from AirVPN usually connects quickly and is ready to go in less than 10 seconds.
Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was good, with the app finding when the VPN tunnel drops, notifying us with a desktop notification, and reconnecting us in seconds.
In terms of personal 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.
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 excellent. Undoubtedly, one stated there wasn’t a single country where they might grumble about the speed. On the contrary, it was really remarkable overall.
While it wasn’t quite at the top tier for VPNs that use WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for many people, and circumstances like HD video, gaming, and streaming conferencing certainly will not slow you down.
What AirVPN does not have is a broader variety of server areas. This may restrict the availability of close-by servers for some users (which will always lead to much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an excellent choice for many 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 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 utilized by Netflix in the USA, whereas others do not.
Some report that Air is quite bad for streaming and does not work with any of the major streaming services. Nevertheless, it appears to work with less-popular streaming apps like Peacock and Sony Crackle.
Another reviewer says services like BBC iPlayer and US Netflix hardly ever work, and when they do, finding the right server requires prolonged trial and error. 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 inspect to see if the situation with these streaming sites ever changes.
Streaming is absolutely not an area in which AirVPN stands out, just since that’s not what the service is about, as they are more focused on personal privacy and security.
Does AirVPN Permit Torrenting?
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 set up, no hoops to jump through. Just 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 Internet.
File sharing has good speeds on local servers, allows 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 block all traffic from exiting your gadget if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you will not be sending unencrypted packets to the Web. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is very practical, specifically if you need to leave your connection unattended.
Reviewers have actually revealed torrenting to be excellent, smooth running with fast download and upload speeds, and with no concerns whatsoever.
AirVPN Plans & Rates
AirVPN uses a larger variety of plans than the majority of VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect up to 5 gadgets all at once, so you can connect your PC, phone, tablet, and a couple of other gadgets all at the same time.
This makes it an outstanding option for people who reside in a family home or wish to utilize a VPN on a public network. While five really should be enough for most people, other VPN suppliers offer 7 or even 10 if you require more.
Prices differs based upon the membership length, and each plan includes the same features. Most plans provide good value; nevertheless, longer subscriptions provide the best offer.
The standard pricing is in Euros. Nevertheless, they use the European Central Bank to supply real-time currency exchange rate for those overseas, so it can be easily transformed to and spent for in the currency of your option.
The current 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 global options are also 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 discount coupon 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 assistance offering than lots of other VPNs. While it does not have live chat, it offers email support and frequently asked questions (Frequently asked questions) and has a very active support forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.
Significantly, AirVPN’s email assistance isn’t contracted out however can be a little inconsistent with the time it takes to get a reaction. That stated, the email assistance is high quality, and the representatives are handy and friendly, however the thorough answers can be quite technical, which might put off those brand-new to VPNs.
AirVPN’s site has a lot of info, including a large Frequently asked questions area that is separated by topic.
AirVPN’s community forums cover several subjects, but newbies will have the very same problems comprehending a great deal of the tech jargon in the posts.
AirVPN Pros & Cons
Pros:
No logging Whatsoever.
Exceptional speeds with minimal loss.
Unlimited P2P allowed 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.
Strong Customer Service.
Active Community Forums and Detailed Guides.
Excellent rates, 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 really user-friendly 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.
Perhaps there are a lot of advanced options.
Located in 14-Eyes Nation.
Server numbers are fairly low.
Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Very Best Option?
So the bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, trusted, and safe VPN service with good prices. 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 provider. However even new users might 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 much of its competing VPN rivals.
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 may not guarantee the very same level of personal privacy and privacy as a service like Mullvad, which assigns you a random account number and allows you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still an excellent option for consumers who value their personal 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 exceptional option for online filesharing.
Highly recommended!
Click Here Or Below To Join AirVPN Today!!
AirVPN 101 – A Rookie’s Guide To Deciding On The Best VPN Company
