Do you wish to remain anonymous while surfing the web? AirVPN could be the perfect solution for you if yes.
While anybody can claim to be special nowadays, when it comes to VPN companies, AirVPN reveals that it genuinely is.
AirVPN stands out from other VPN services because of its commitment to protecting user privacy. From the start, the AirVPN site starts with an appeal for your trust, specifying, “A VPN based on OpenVPN and operated by activists and hacktivists in defence of net neutrality, privacy and against censorship”.While anybody can claim to be unique nowadays, when it pertains to VPN suppliers, AirVPN reveals that it genuinely is.
They have actually been around a long time, since 2010, when it was begun with the help of two lawyers and a small group of activists and hackers. The satellite communications provider Iridium formerly ran it, but AirVPN took control of in November 2012. According to the owner’s listing, AirVPN, based in Perugia, is currently owned by Paolo Brini (Italy).
Throughout the last years, 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 discussed and details the privacy projects that AirVPN has 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 non-traditional route and breaks the mold by supplying a VPN designed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.
How does AirVPN stack up versus its rivals with such strong personal privacy credentials?
AirVPN’s Key Features
Servers
AirVPN’s network is much smaller than many, with just 246 servers spread out throughout 23 nations.
A lot of servers are in Europe (besides those in the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong). A small problem here is that the absence of diversity of servers decreases the number of international AirVPN users who might access geo-restricted services in their home country while keeping their privacy.
That stated, Air is popular for its impressive performance across its server network, with lots of nations having high-performance physical individual servers.
They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation strategies to supply an accurate assessment of performance, with no overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are completely unlimited, without any speed constraints or time limits.
To establish a connection between your machine and their servers, they utilize OpenVPN and WireGuard (in beta). OpenVPN is the most secure and reliable way to create encrypted tunnels. It offers more security than the military.
Many ports and protocols are offered; they use OpenVPN on the following ports: 80 TCP/UDP, 443 TCP/UDP, and 53 TCP/UDP. Furthermore, every Air server directly supports OpenVPN over SSH, OpenVPN over SSL, and OpenVPN over Tor. Forget about PPTP and other hazardous protocols.
When it comes down to it, no choice is given to any protocol, application, or service. Net Neutrality is maintained. Notably, you can overcome web restrictions such as avoiding censorship, geographical constraints, and traffic shaping.
The use is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it immediately enhances users’ personal privacy and security and is highly reliable. Nevertheless, the absence of WireGuard as standard may show Air isn’t rather staying up to date with its rivals. That said, AirVPN states it is evaluating WireGuard, however it will not put the more recent protocol completely in place up until some of its technical and privacy problems are resolved.
AirVPN has actually likewise included a lot for power users and tech-savvy individuals who like to try out things.
Switching is unlimited, so if you do not like one server, you can easily change servers as often as you like.
You can keep an eye on the present load on each server, any existing problems, and a history of previous problems 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 offered 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 considering that there is no third-party audit, you have to rely on that what is being provided 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 individuals state about the service prior to 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 company is extremely clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online personal privacy and security are the absolute priority, with defense from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that attack privacy. There is no individual information 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 gathers non-identifiable “technical information” to keep the server running and improve services, however you can ask for this information to be erased at any time. This makes it one of the most privacy-friendly VPN services.
As a result, nobody can identify you online; not even your ISP can figure out what type of traffic or protocol you’re using.
There’s no listening in, so you can connect to any wi-fi network without stressing over your computer and the Wi-Fi hotspot spying on your data.
Even the most ruthless surveillance, censoring, throttling, and traffic shaping strategies will fail versus AirVPN because your ISP and government will just see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.
They also state they follow EU privacy regulations and that any servers outside the EU will be treated with the same or higher levels of privacy and data protection as those in the EU.
You can get a brand-new IP address to hide your IP so that nobody can use it to discover who you are. You’ll remain safe with the high-level protection offered.
If your ISP or nation blocks OpenVPN, you can still connect to an AirVPN server through OpenVPN over SSH, SSL, or Tor.
Open-source clients and a lively community forum enable you to get a sense of what current users are stating about the service before signing up.
All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a big plus. This implies that anybody can check out AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, however just ProtonVPN’s apps have been checked by a third party.
Regarding security, AirVPN’s cryptography is perhaps the very best offered. It resembles that of some other suppliers, however still worth pointing out. The first exchange utilizes 4096-bit RSA to accomplish Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) through Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Following the first key negotiation, re-keying occurs every 60 minutes, and the user can lower this value. The primary information 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 terrific because it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. Be aware that you won’t 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 nations that share intelligence information). Even if the federal government asked for user information, 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, available on all significant platforms and OSes, including 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 service providers who use it as requirement.
Establishing the app is easy, and it has all the info you require to connect to a VPN.
There are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to assist you. While it’s not hard to get things working, it does not have the most user-friendly user interface, so it might be a more challenging learning curve for unskilled users.
With Windows, there are a load of download options. There are builds for various 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 explain what’s new and an archive of past releases in case the most present doesn’t work on your setup.
After introducing it, choose ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest place. You just click Disconnect when you’re ended up. Simple enough for anyone, 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 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 pick which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you chosen last.
Despite the fact that it specifies “kill switch” anywhere in the settings, AirVPN has a tab called “network lock” that does the same thing. The difference is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its safe tunnel. A lot of standard kill switches just 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 six tabs: Overview, Servers, Countries, Speed, Stats, and Logs.
The Overview merely 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 comprehensive details about every one, such as the server’s nickname, location, latency in milliseconds from your place, and present users and server load. Excellent 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 variety of servers available in each nation at a glimpse, together with an indicator of server load and user numbers. Similar to the Servers page, the amber/green indicator 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 discovered 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 nation will be gotten rid of, effectively making it a blocklist/denylist. To remove the green checkmark from a nation, click the empty box.
By selecting a nation, you are not right away connected to a VPN server. To do so, go back to the Servers page and pick 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 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 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 uploaded and downloaded, and much more.
Power users, in particular, should value the capability to utilize a VPN with all the info they might ever desire about the various locations, down to the number of users on a particular server. It’s an invaluable resource.
Logs is an in-depth record of connections, routes, and other information.
This enables 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. Proxies, Tor support, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.
The really skilled user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which permit, among other things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management User Interface by means of the Logs pane.
If the huge feature list appears frightening, even if you are a VPN specialist, it might be difficult to figure out what specific settings do and how to get the preferred outcomes. In addition, it differs from any other service in regards to personalization.
Don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just due to the fact that of its intricacy. Keep in mind that the program normally functions fine on its own, and you’ll never ever see the settings till you search for them. If you occasionally long for power or configurability, the app will offer it.
Suppose you do not want to utilize 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 instead. This software offers the same substantial configuration options as its desktop sibling and helpful status info.
Separate pages for nation and server lists are what the Android app lacks that the desktop versions provides. Rather, you can expand a country and select a particular city on the exact same page. Some helpful text additions make the info more understandable, however it’s still quite tough to comprehend in some spots.
Android does not have as lots of settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still many more than most people will ever require. The software application likewise tries a little more to assist you, with additional text subtitles to explain what each option does.
Speeds/Performance
Using OpenVPN, the Eddie Windows app from AirVPN typically connects quickly and is ready to go in less than 10 seconds.
Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was great, with the app discovering when the VPN tunnel drops, alerting us with a desktop notification, 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 shows that the Network Lock/Kill Switch works well.
Now let’s get to those speeds.
Since AirVPN just supports OpenVPN, it was always going to be slower than the WireGuard-equipped competitors.
Reviewers have actually reported speeds to be outstanding. One stated there wasn’t a single nation where they might complain about the speed. On the contrary, it was really outstanding 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 absolutely won’t slow you down.
What AirVPN lacks is a more comprehensive variety of server areas. This may limit the accessibility of nearby servers for some users (which will constantly lead to much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an excellent choice for most people in the United States and Europe, however maybe 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 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.
Indeed, some report that Air is pretty bad for streaming and does not 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 hardly ever work, and when they do, finding the right server requires prolonged trial and error. This is most likely since, unlike other suppliers, AirVPN doesn’t provide servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.
Fortunately, 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 definitely not an area in which AirVPN excels, just because 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 web protocol, consisting of peer-to-peer, is welcome. Certainly, 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 option and start.
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 decent speeds on regional servers, allows port forwarding for up to 20 ports simultaneously (which lets you connect to more peers for faster speeds), and deals with leading torrenting clients like qBitTorrent and uTorrent.
AirVPN’s built-in kill switch, activated by default, will obstruct all traffic from leaving your device if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you won’t be sending out unencrypted packets to the Internet. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is very practical, especially if you need to leave your connection unattended.
Reviewers have actually revealed torrenting to be excellent, smooth running with quick download and upload speeds, and without any problems whatsoever.
AirVPN Plans & Prices
AirVPN uses a larger variety of plans than a lot of VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect as much as 5 devices at the same time, so you can connect your PC, phone, tablet, and a couple of other gadgets all at the same time.
This makes it an excellent option for people who live in a household home or want to utilize a VPN on a public network. While five really should be enough for the majority of people, other VPN providers provide 7 or even 10 if you need more.
Rates varies based on the subscription length, and each plan consists of the exact same features. Many plans use good value; however, longer subscriptions offer the very best offer.
The standard pricing is in Euros. Nevertheless, they use the European Central Bank to offer real-time exchange rates for those overseas, so it can be quickly transformed to and spent for in the currency of your option.
The existing plans offered 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 international choices are also accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.
AirVPN offers a three-day free trial, which can be obtained by sending a message to the support team and utilizing the 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 Support
AirVPN has a different customer support offering than numerous other VPNs. While it does not have live chat, it uses e-mail assistance and frequently asked questions (FAQs) and has an extremely active support online forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.
Notably, AirVPN’s email support isn’t contracted out however can be a little irregular with the time it requires to get a response. That stated, the email support is high quality, and the agents are valuable and friendly, however the thorough answers can be quite technical, which might put off those brand-new to VPNs.
AirVPN’s site has a great deal of information, including a big FAQs area that is separated by topic.
AirVPN’s community forums cover many different subjects, however newbies will have the same problems comprehending a great deal of the tech lingo in the posts.
AirVPN Pros & Cons
Pros:
No logging Whatsoever.
Excellent speeds with very little 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 installation and usage.
Many, many advanced settings and customization options in the client app.
Solid Client Service.
Active Community Forums and Comprehensive Guides.
Great costs, particularly for longer-term plans.
Optional block lists protect you from ads, adware, trackers, and damaging 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 extremely hit and miss with streaming services.
No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.
Possibly there are a lot of advanced options.
Located in 14-Eyes Country.
Server numbers are fairly low.
Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Best Option?
The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, trustworthy, and safe VPN service with great pricing. 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 service provider. But even brand-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 better results than a number of its rival VPN competitors.
When it boils down to it, this VPN service is more concentrated on safeguarding your personal privacy than unblocking streaming services like Netflix or Hulu.
It may not guarantee the very same level of privacy and privacy as a service like Mullvad, which assigns you a random account number and permits 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 very best purely OpenVPN service out there. In addition to being an outstanding option for online filesharing.
Highly recommended!
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