AirVPN Tomato Setup

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Do you want to remain anonymous while surfing the web? If yes, then AirVPN could be the best solution for you.

While anybody can claim to be special these days, when it concerns VPN service providers, AirVPN reveals 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 begins 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 declare to be unique nowadays, when it concerns VPN providers, AirVPN reveals that it really is.

AirVPN Home Page

They’ve been around a very 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 supplier Iridium previously ran it, however AirVPN took control of in November 2012. According to the owner’s listing, AirVPN, based in Perugia, is presently 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 bigger organization either.

Across their About Us and Mission pages, the business’s history is explained and details 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 unconventional route and breaks the mold by offering a VPN designed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

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

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

AirVPN’s network is much smaller sized than most, with only 246 servers spread across 23 countries.

A lot of servers are in Europe (besides those in the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong). A minor concern here is that the lack of variety of servers reduces the number of worldwide AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home nation while maintaining their personal privacy.

AirVPN Servers

That stated, Air is well known for its exceptional performance throughout its server network, with lots of countries having high-performance physical individual servers.

They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation techniques to provide an accurate evaluation of performance, without any 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 utilize OpenVPN and WireGuard (in beta). OpenVPN is the most trusted and secure way to create encrypted tunnels. It uses more security than the military.

Numerous 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 upheld. Significantly, you can overcome internet restrictions such as avoiding censorship, geographic constraints, and traffic shaping.

The use is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it immediately enhances users’ personal privacy and security and is extremely dependable. The absence of WireGuard as standard might show Air isn’t rather keeping up with its competitors. That said, AirVPN says it is evaluating WireGuard, but it will not put the more recent protocol completely in place till some of its technical and personal privacy problems are addressed.

AirVPN has likewise included a lot for power users and tech-savvy individuals who like to experiment with things.

Switching is limitless, so if you do not like one server, you can quickly switch servers as often as you like.

You can keep track of the current 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 an in-depth specs page for AirVPN’s servers, with details like the available ports, protocols, DNS server information (AirVPN has its own DNS server), and the IP addresses of each VPN server’s access points.

All of it is nice, however considering that there is no third-party audit, you need to rely on that what is being used will work. Looking at the active community forum or the comprehensive open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A nice feature of this is that you can see what other individuals 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 concerns AirVPN’s no-logging policy, the business is really clear. Online personal privacy and security are the absolute priority, with security from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that attack personal privacy. There is no individual info 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 collects non-identifiable “technical information” to keep the server running and enhance services, but you can request for this details 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 type 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 system 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 guidelines which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the very same or higher levels of 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 top-level protection provided.

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 online forum allow you to get a sense of what present 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 look into AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, but only ProtonVPN’s apps have been inspected by a 3rd party.

Regarding security, AirVPN’s cryptography is arguably the very best readily available. It’s similar to that of some other service providers, but still worth pointing out. The very first exchange uses 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 primary data channel utilizes AES-256-CBC encryption.

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal information, not even your genuine email address. That’s excellent given that it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. But be aware that you won’t have the ability 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 nations that share intelligence data). Even if the federal government asked for user details, 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, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Despite Eddie’s significant capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t rather as great as those companies who use it as standard.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

Establishing the app is simple, and it has all the information you require to connect to a VPN.

Sadly, there are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to guide you. While it’s not difficult to get things working, it doesn’t have the most user-friendly user interface, so it might be a more tough learning curve for unskilled users.

With Windows, there are a ton of download options. There are builds for various operating systems (from Windows XP to Windows 11), in 32- and 64-bit tastes, and in installable or portable formats. In addition, there’s a changelog to describe what’s new and an archive of past releases in case the most existing doesn’t function on your setup.

After introducing it, select ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest location. When you’re ended up, you simply click Disconnect. Simple enough for anybody, but Eddie can do a lot more since AirVPN uses more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we have actually seen.

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

2 essential AirVPN functions through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN enables you to connect when your computer system launches, however you can’t choose 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 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 secure tunnel. Many basic kill switches only do this when the VPN is on, however you can establish the “network lock” to filter your traffic at all times.

Eddie’s layout is easy to understand. Along the top, there are six tabs: Overview, Servers, Countries, Speed, Stats, and Logs.

The Overview just 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 displays all available servers in the network, along with detailed information about each one, such as the server’s label, location, latency in milliseconds from your location, and present users and server load. Outstanding stuff!

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

The Countries page displays the variety of servers offered in each nation at a look, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. Similar to the Servers page, the amber/green indicator is also shown. Numerous 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 nation, click the green checkmark, and the servers for that country will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is essentially a favorites list; you may select as many nations as you like.

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

By selecting 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 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 a lot of apps display your existing VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also reveals fine-grained details, such as the server’s location, load, existing user count, protocol, port, encryption algorithm, session start time and length, IPv6 exit address, data 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 various locations, down to the variety of users on a specific server. It’s an invaluable resource.

Logs is an in-depth record of connections, routes, and other data.

This enables you to tweak the setup, such as whether it needs to always connect when opened, which protocol to utilize between UDP and TCP, and which port number. Proxies, Tor assistance, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

The genuinely competent user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which allow, to name a few things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management User Interface by means of the Logs pane.

If the vast feature list appears frightening, even if you are a VPN expert, it might be hard to determine what particular settings do and how to get the preferred results. In addition, it differs from any other service in regards to personalization.

However, do not dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just because of its intricacy. Keep in mind that the program generally operates fine by itself, and you’ll never see the settings up until you try to find them. If you sometimes crave power or configurability, the app will provide it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

Suppose you don’t want 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 utilize an exceptionally feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software supplies the very same comprehensive setup choices as its desktop sibling and valuable status info.

Different pages for nation and server lists are what the Android app does not have that the desktop versions provides. Rather, you can expand a nation and pick a specific city on the same page. Some helpful text additions make the information more understandable, however it’s still rather difficult to comprehend in some spots.

Android does not have as numerous settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still much more than many people will ever need. The software application also attempts a little more to assist you, with additional text subtitles to describe what each choice does.

Speeds/Performance

Utilizing 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 spotting when the VPN tunnel drops, informing us with a desktop notice, and reconnecting us in seconds.

In terms of 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.

Since AirVPN just supports OpenVPN, it was always going to be slower than the WireGuard-equipped competition.

However, reviewers have reported speeds to be outstanding. Undoubtedly, one stated there wasn’t a single nation where they might grumble about the speed. On the contrary, it was actually outstanding overall.

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

What AirVPN does not have is a wider variety of server places. This might restrict the ease of access of close-by servers for some users (which will always result in better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an exceptional option for many people in the United States and Europe, however perhaps less so for other regions.

Streaming

Streaming the big 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 utilized by Netflix in the U.S.A., whereas others do not.

Some report that Air is pretty poor 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 United States Netflix seldom work, and when they do, finding the right server requires prolonged trial and error. This is most likely since, unlike other service providers, 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 inspect to see if the situation with these streaming sites ever changes.

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

Does AirVPN Allow Torrenting?

Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. Simply connect to the VPN server of your option and get going.

Plus, you can use port forwarding to improve your file-sharing performance. Several applications, such as BitTorrent and eMule clients, would run badly without it, and your computer system’s shares might be inaccessible from the Web.

File sharing has good speeds on regional servers, enables port forwarding for as much as 20 ports simultaneously (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 obstruct all traffic from leaving your gadget 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 very practical, particularly if you need to leave your connection unattended.

Reviewers have actually shown torrenting to be impressive, smooth running with quick download and upload speeds, and with no issues whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Prices

AirVPN provides a broader range of plans than a lot of 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 excellent option for people who live in a household home or wish to utilize a VPN on a public network. While five should be enough for many people, other VPN providers offer 7 or even 10 if you need more.

Pricing differs based upon the subscription length, and each plan consists of the same features. The majority of plans offer good value; however, longer subscriptions offer the very best offer.

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 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 choices 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 using 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 during that time.

AirVPN Customer Assistance

AirVPN has a different customer assistance offering than lots of other VPNs. While it doesn’t have live chat, it uses email support and frequently asked questions (Frequently asked questions) and has a very active assistance online forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.

Importantly, AirVPN’s e-mail support isn’t contracted out but can be a little inconsistent with the time it requires to get an action. That stated, the email support is high quality, and the agents are handy and friendly, but the extensive answers can be pretty technical, which may put off those new to VPNs.

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

AirVPN’s community forums cover several subjects, however newbies will have the exact same troubles comprehending a lot of the tech jargon in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Excellent speeds with very little loss.

Unrestricted P2P allowed 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 options in the client app.

Strong Customer Service.

Active Community Online Forums and Detailed Guides.

Great costs, particularly 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 might overwhelm more recent users.

It is very hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Maybe there are a lot of advanced options.

Found in 14-Eyes Country.

Server numbers are relatively low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Best Option?

So the bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, trustworthy, and safe VPN service with excellent prices. It’s plainly geared towards more power and advanced users, so those new to VPNs will be much better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN provider. But 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 much better results than much of its competing VPN rivals.

When it comes down to it, this VPN service is more focused on protecting your personal privacy than unblocking streaming services like Netflix or Hulu.

It might not guarantee the 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 great choice 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 exceptional choice for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

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AirVPN 101 – A Newcomer’s Guide To Selecting The Ideal VPN Service Provider