Do you wish to stay anonymous while surfing the web? If yes, then AirVPN could be the perfect solution for you.
While anyone can declare to be distinct these days, when it comes to VPN providers, AirVPN shows that it genuinely is.
AirVPN sticks out from other VPN services because of its commitment 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 distinct nowadays, when it concerns VPN suppliers, AirVPN reveals that it really is.
They have actually been around a long period of time, since 2010, when it was begun with the aid of two lawyers and a little group of hackers and activists. The satellite communications company Iridium formerly ran it, but AirVPN took over in November 2012. According to the owner’s listing, AirVPN, based in Perugia, is currently owned by Paolo Brini (Italy).
During the last years, it hasn’t been dogged by security scandals like some VPNs have. Nor has it been acquired by a bigger company either.
Across their About Us and Mission pages, the business’s history is discussed and information the privacy projects that AirVPN has established 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 non-traditional route and breaks the mold by supplying a VPN developed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.
So 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 many, with only 246 servers spread out throughout 23 nations.
Most servers are in Europe (aside from those in the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong). A small problem here is that the lack of variety of servers decreases the number of global AirVPN users who might access geo-restricted services in their home nation while keeping their privacy.
That stated, Air is well known for its impressive performance across its server network, with lots of nations having high-performance physical individual servers.
They use transparent bandwidth allocation techniques to supply an accurate evaluation of performance, with no 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 use OpenVPN and WireGuard (in beta). OpenVPN is the most secure and reputable method to create encrypted tunnels. It offers 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. So forget PPTP and other unsafe protocols.
No choice is given to any service, protocol, or application when it comes down to it. Net Neutrality is upheld. Significantly, you can overcome web restrictions such as avoiding censorship, geographical limitations, and traffic shaping.
The use is OpenVPN is a big plus as it instantly enhances users’ personal privacy and security and is highly reputable. Nevertheless, the lack of WireGuard as standard may show Air isn’t quite staying up to date with its competitors. That said, AirVPN says it is testing WireGuard, however it will not put the newer protocol completely in place until some of its technical and personal privacy concerns are dealt with.
AirVPN has actually also included a lot for power users and tech-savvy people who like to experiment with things.
Switching is limitless, so if you do not like one server, you can easily switch servers as often as you like.
You can keep an eye on the present load on each server, any existing concerns, and a history of previous issues on AirVPN’s network status page (which opens in a new tab).
There is an in-depth specifications 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, but because there is no third-party audit, you need to rely on that what is being provided will work. Looking at the active community forum or the detailed open-source clients puts your mind at ease.
A nice thing about this is that you can see what other individuals say about the service before signing up. You do not need to take their word for it or the word of an audit.
Just How Private Is AirVPN, & Does It Keep Logs?
The business is really clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online privacy and security are the absolute priority, with security from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that invade personal privacy. There is no individual information 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, but you can request for this details to be deleted 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 sort of traffic or protocol you’re using.
There’s no listening in, so you can connect to any wireless 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 versus AirVPN due to the fact that your ISP and government will only see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.
They also state they abide by EU personal privacy policies and that any servers outside the EU will be treated with the very same or greater 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 utilize it to find out who you are. You’ll remain 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 blocks OpenVPN.
Open-source clients and a lively community forum enable you to get a sense of what existing users are saying about the service before registering.
All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a huge plus. This suggests that anyone can check out AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, however just ProtonVPN’s apps have been examined by a 3rd party.
Concerning security, AirVPN’s cryptography is arguably the very best available. It resembles that of some other service providers, however still worth pointing out. The first exchange utilizes 4096-bit RSA to accomplish Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) via Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Following the first key negotiation, re-keying takes place every 60 minutes, and the user can decrease this value. The main data channel utilizes AES-256-CBC encryption.
When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal info, not even your real e-mail address. That’s fantastic given that it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. Be aware that you won’t be able to change your account’s password if you don’t 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). Even if the government asked for user details, AirVPN would have nothing to offer 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. Regardless of Eddie’s significant capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as excellent as those providers who utilize it as requirement.
Establishing the app is simple, and it has all the info you need to connect to a VPN.
Sadly, there are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to direct you. While it’s not hard to get things working, it does not have the most easy to use interface, so it might be a more difficult learning curve for inexperienced users.
With Windows, there are a heap of download choices. There are builds for different 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 describe what’s brand-new and an archive of past releases in case the most existing does not operate on your setup.
After launching it, choose ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest location. You just click Disconnect when you’re finished. Simple enough for anyone, however 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.
2 crucial AirVPN functions through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN allows 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 defines “kill switch” anywhere in the settings, AirVPN has a tab called “network lock” that does the very same thing. The distinction is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its protected tunnel. Many standard 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 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, together with in-depth details about each one, such as the server’s label, location, latency in milliseconds from your place, and present users and server load. Remarkable stuff!
This tab likewise has an amber/green signal that lets you know whether a server is recommended for you.
The Countries page shows the number of servers offered in each nation at a glance, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. Similar to the Servers page, the amber/green sign is also revealed. Lots of 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 discovered 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 select 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 eliminate the green checkmark from a nation, click the empty box.
By picking a country, you are not immediately connected to a VPN server. Connect to a server by marking it and clicking on the “sign out” icon on the right-hand side (a right-facing arrow pointing into a square bracket).
The Speed tab shows an easy throughput graph with thin plot lines. Its temporal resolution can be changed, so you can see traffic from the last 10 seconds to one day.
While a lot of 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, present user count, protocol, port, encryption algorithm, session start time and length, IPv6 exit address, information downloaded and uploaded, and far more.
Power users, in particular, should value the capability to use a VPN with all the details they could ever want about the various locations, down to the number of users on a particular server. It’s a priceless resource.
Lastly, Logs is a comprehensive record of connections, routes, and other information.
A million and one other settings are hidden in the app’s Settings menu. This permits you to fine-tune the setup, such as whether it should always connect when opened, which protocol to use 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 assistance, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.
The really experienced user can enter into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which allow, among other things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management User Interface by means of the Logs pane.
If the large feature list appears scary, even if you are a VPN expert, it might be difficult to determine what specific settings do and how to get the preferred results. In addition, it is unlike any other service in terms of customization.
However, don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie even if of its intricacy. Bear in mind that the program generally functions fine on its own, and you’ll never see the settings until you try to find them. If you occasionally yearn for power or configurability, the app will offer it.
Suppose you don’t want to use 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?
There isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can use an exceptionally feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software application supplies the exact same extensive configuration options as its desktop sibling and valuable status info.
Separate pages for nation and server lists are what the Android app does not have that the desktop versions provides. Rather, you can expand a country and pick a specific city on the very same page. Some handy text additions make the information more easy to understand, however it’s still quite difficult to understand in some spots.
Android does not have as lots of settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still much more than the majority of people will ever need. The software also tries a bit more to help you, with additional text subtitles to describe what each choice does.
Speeds/Performance
Using OpenVPN, the Eddie Windows app from AirVPN usually connects rapidly and is ready to enter less than 10 seconds.
Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was excellent, with the app finding when the VPN tunnel drops, notifying us with a desktop alert, 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.
It was always going to be slower than the WireGuard-equipped competition because AirVPN just supports OpenVPN.
Reviewers have actually reported speeds to be outstanding. One said there wasn’t a single country where they could grumble about the speed. On the contrary, it was really impressive overall.
While it wasn’t rather at the top tier for VPNs that use WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for most people, and scenarios like HD streaming, video gaming, and video conferencing definitely won’t slow you down.
What AirVPN does not have is a wider variety of server places. This might limit the accessibility of neighboring servers for some users (which will constantly lead to better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an excellent option for the majority of people in the United States and Europe, however 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 been a mixed bag for reviewers. Some report that AirVPN is powerful enough to bypass the VPN blocks utilized by Netflix in the U.S.A., whereas others do not.
Some report that Air is quite poor 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 says services like BBC iPlayer and United States Netflix hardly ever work, and when they do, finding the ideal server requires prolonged trial and error. This is most likely due to the fact that, unlike other suppliers, AirVPN does not offer servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.
Thankfully, on AirVPN’s website, there is a list of ‘blocked websites’ that users can check to see if the situation with these streaming sites ever changes.
Streaming is certainly not an area in which AirVPN stands out, just because that’s not what the service is about, as they are more focused on personal privacy and security.
Does AirVPN Allow P2P?
Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. Just connect to the VPN server of your option and get going.
Plus, you can utilize 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 system’s shares might be inaccessible from the Web.
File sharing has good speeds on regional servers, allows port forwarding for as much as 20 ports simultaneously (which lets you connect to more peers for faster speeds), and works with leading torrenting clients like qBitTorrent and uTorrent.
AirVPN’s built-in kill switch, activated by default, will block all traffic from leaving your device if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you won’t be sending unencrypted packets to the Web. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is really hassle-free, especially 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 issues whatsoever.
AirVPN Plans & Rates
AirVPN offers a larger range of plans than many VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect up to five gadgets 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 people who live in a family house or want to utilize a VPN on a public network. While five should suffice for the majority of people, other VPN companies offer 7 or even 10 if you need more.
Prices differs based upon the subscription length, and each plan consists of the same features. The majority of plans use good value; nevertheless, longer memberships use the best offer.
The standard pricing is in Euros. However, they use the European Central Bank to offer real-time exchange rates for those overseas, so it can be quickly transformed to and paid for in the currency of your choice.
The current plans readily available are:
Three days- EUR2
One month – EUR7
Three months – EUR15 – works out to EUR 5/month
Six months – EUR29 – works out to EUR 4.83/month
One year – EUR49 – works out to EUR 4.08/month
Two years – EUR79 – works out to EUR 3.29/month
Three years – EUR99 – works out to EUR 2.75/month
AirVPN accepts major credit cards, PayPal, Amazon Pay, and a whole load of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Doge. Lots of worldwide options are also accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.
AirVPN offers a three-day totally free trial, which can be obtained by sending a message to the support team and utilizing the discount coupon code they send you.
There’s also a 30-day money-back guarantee, as long as they have not broken the terms of service or used more than 5 GB of data throughout that time.
AirVPN Customer Assistance
AirVPN has a different customer support offering than lots of other VPNs. While it doesn’t have live chat, it offers e-mail support and frequently asked questions (FAQs) and has an extremely active assistance online forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.
Importantly, AirVPN’s e-mail assistance isn’t outsourced but can be a little irregular with the time it requires to get an action. That said, the e-mail assistance is high quality, and the representatives are friendly and practical, but the detailed answers can be pretty technical, which might put off those brand-new to VPNs.
AirVPN’s site has a great deal of details, consisting of a big FAQs area that is broken up by topic.
AirVPN’s community forums cover several subjects, but novices will have the exact same problems understanding a lot of the tech lingo in the posts.
AirVPN Pros & Cons
Pros:
No logging Whatsoever.
Exceptional speeds with minimal loss.
Unlimited 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 installation and usage.
Many, many advanced settings and customization options in the client app.
Strong Customer Service.
Active Community Online Forums and In-depth Guides.
Excellent rates, particularly for longer-term plans.
Optional block lists protect you from ads, adware, trackers, and harmful sources.
Cons:
Only fully supports OpenVPN.
Client app isn’t very easy to use or pretty like other services.
Client app might overwhelm more recent users.
It is extremely hit and miss with streaming services.
No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.
Possibly there are too many advanced choices.
Found in 14-Eyes Nation.
Server numbers are fairly low.
Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Very Best Choice?
So the bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, trustworthy, and safe VPN service with great 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 company. Even brand-new users could do much, much worse.
While it could be challenging to utilize if you’re new to VPNs, you’ll get much quicker speeds and much better results than much of its competing VPN competitors.
This VPN service is more focused on safeguarding your privacy than unblocking streaming services like Netflix or Hulu when it comes down to it.
Although it may not ensure the very same level of 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 a good alternative for customers 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 exceptional choice for online filesharing.
Highly recommended!
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