AirVPN Tor Guide

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Do you want to remain anonymous while surfing the web? AirVPN could be the ideal solution for you if yes.

While anybody can claim to be special these days, when it concerns VPN suppliers, AirVPN reveals that it genuinely is.

AirVPN sticks out from other VPN services because of its dedication to protecting user privacy. Right from the start, the AirVPN site 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 anyone can declare to be unique these days, when it comes to VPN providers, AirVPN shows that it truly is.

AirVPN Home Page

They have actually been around a long time, since 2010, when it was started with the aid of 2 lawyers and a little group of activists and hackers. The satellite communications provider Iridium previously ran it, however 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 decade, it hasn’t been dogged by security scandals like some VPNs have. Nor has it been acquired by a larger business either.

Throughout their About Us and Mission pages, the business’s history is described and details the personal 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 unconventional route and breaks the mold by providing a VPN designed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

How does AirVPN stack up versus its competitors with such strong privacy credentials?

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

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

A lot of servers are in Europe (other than those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A minor issue here is that the absence of diversity of servers lowers the number of worldwide AirVPN users who might access geo-restricted services in their home nation while maintaining their privacy.

AirVPN Servers

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

They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation strategies to offer an accurate assessment of performance, without any overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are entirely 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 reliable and secure way to create encrypted tunnels. It offers more security than the military.

Many 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 forget about PPTP and other hazardous protocols.

When it boils down to it, no choice is given to any protocol, service, or application. Net Neutrality is upheld. Importantly, you can overcome internet constraints such as avoiding censorship, geographical constraints, and traffic shaping.

The usage is OpenVPN is a big plus as it immediately enhances users’ privacy and security and is extremely reliable. The lack of WireGuard as standard may show Air isn’t quite keeping up with its competitors. That said, AirVPN says it is testing WireGuard, but it will not put the more recent protocol totally in place till some of its technical and personal privacy issues are resolved.

AirVPN has actually also added 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 quickly change servers as frequently as you like.

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

There is an in-depth specifications page for AirVPN’s servers, with info like the available ports, protocols, DNS server information (AirVPN has its own DNS server), and the IP addresses of each VPN server’s gain access to points.

All of it is nice, however since there is no third-party audit, you have to trust that what is being offered will work. Looking at the active community online forum or the in-depth open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A good feature of this is that you can see what other individuals say about the service before 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?

When it concerns AirVPN’s no-logging policy, the business is really clear. Online privacy and security are the outright concern, with defense from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that invade personal privacy. There is no personal 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 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 tell what sort 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 tactics will fail against AirVPN because your ISP and government will only see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.

They also state they abide by EU privacy guidelines which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the exact same or greater levels of personal privacy and information protection as those in the EU.

You can get a brand-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 security supplied.

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 current users are saying about the service before signing up.

All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a huge 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 been examined by a 3rd party.

Relating to security, AirVPN’s cryptography is arguably the best available. It’s similar to that of some other suppliers, but still worth pointing out. The first exchange utilizes 4096-bit RSA to achieve Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) through Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Following the first key negotiation, re-keying occurs every 60 minutes, and the user can minimize this value. The primary data channel uses AES-256-CBC encryption.

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal information, not even your real e-mail address. That’s excellent since it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. Be conscious 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 nations that share intelligence data). However even if the government requested for user info, 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. Regrettably, regardless of Eddie’s significant ability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as good as those companies who use it as standard.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

Establishing the app is easy, and it has all the details 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 may be a more difficult learning curve for inexperienced users.

With Windows, there are a ton of download options. There are builds for numerous 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 current doesn’t work on your setup.

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

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

Two essential AirVPN features through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN permits 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 selected last.

Although it defines “kill switch” throughout 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 secure tunnel. Many standard kill switches only do this when the VPN is on, but you can establish 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 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 available servers in the network, together with comprehensive information about every one, such as the server’s nickname, place, 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 know whether a server is recommended for you.

The Countries page shows the number of servers offered in each nation at a glimpse, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. Just like the Servers page, the amber/green indicator is also shown. Many 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 country will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is basically a favorites list; you may choose as lots of countries as you like.

If you click the red “x”, that nation will be removed, effectively 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 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 most apps display your present VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also reveals fine-grained information, 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 information they could ever desire about the different locations, down to the number of users on a specific server. It’s a valuable resource.

Finally, Logs is a detailed record of connections, routes, and other data.

This enables you to tweak 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 support, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

The truly experienced user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which allow, among other things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management Interface through the Logs pane.

If the vast feature list appears scary, even if you are a VPN specialist, it might be hard to find out what particular settings do and how to get the desired outcomes. In addition, it differs from any other service in terms of customization.

However, don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie even if of its intricacy. Remember that the program typically operates fine on its own, and you’ll never see the settings until you try to find them. However, if you sometimes long for power or configurability, the app will supply it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

Suppose you don’t 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 utilize an incredibly feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software application provides the exact same extensive setup choices as its desktop sibling and practical status info.

Different pages for nation and server lists are what the Android app lacks that the desktop versions provides. Rather, you can expand a nation and choose a specific city on the same page. Some handy text additions make the information more understandable, but it’s still quite difficult to comprehend in some spots.

Android does not have as many settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still many more than the majority of people will ever require. The software application likewise tries a little more to help you, with extra text subtitles to explain what each option does.

Speeds/Performance

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

Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was good, with the app discovering when the VPN tunnel drops, notifying us with a desktop alert, 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 shows 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 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 actually impressive overall.

While it wasn’t quite on top tier for VPNs that utilize WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for many people, and circumstances like HD video, streaming, and video gaming conferencing definitely will not slow you down.

What AirVPN does not have is a more comprehensive number of server locations. This might restrict the accessibility of close-by servers for some users (which will always result in much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an excellent choice for most people in the United States and Europe, but possibly less so for other areas.

Streaming

Streaming the big 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 USA, whereas others do not.

Indeed, some report that Air is pretty bad 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 states services like BBC iPlayer and US Netflix seldom work, and when they do, finding the ideal server requires lengthy experimentation. This is most likely because, unlike other service providers, AirVPN does not provide servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.

The good news is, on AirVPN’s website, 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 certainly not an area in which AirVPN stands out, merely since that’s not what the service is about, as they are more focused on personal privacy and security.

Does AirVPN Allow Torrenting?

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 leap through. Simply connect to the VPN server of your choice and get going.

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

File sharing has good speeds on local servers, enables port forwarding for up to 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 obstruct all traffic from leaving your gadget 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 really convenient, specifically if you need to leave your connection unattended.

Reviewers have actually revealed torrenting to be impressive, smooth running with fast download and upload speeds, and without any issues whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Prices

AirVPN offers a wider range of plans than most VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect up to 5 devices concurrently, 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 reside in a family home or wish to use a VPN on a public network. While five really should suffice for many people, other VPN service providers offer 7 or even 10 if you require more.

Prices varies based on the membership length, and each plan includes the same features. Most plans use good value; nevertheless, longer memberships provide the very best deal.

The standard pricing is in Euros. They use the European Central Bank to offer real-time exchange rates for those abroad, so it can be easily 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 alternatives are also accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.

AirVPN offers a three-day totally free trial, which can be obtained by sending out a message to the support team and using the coupon code they send you.

There’s also a 30-day money-back guarantee, as long as they haven’t broken the terms of service or utilized 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 does not have live chat, it provides email support and frequently asked questions (Frequently asked questions) and has an extremely active support forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.

Notably, AirVPN’s e-mail support isn’t contracted out but can be a little irregular with the time it requires to get a reaction. That said, the e-mail assistance is high quality, and the representatives are friendly and handy, but the extensive responses can be quite technical, which might put off those brand-new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s website has a great deal of information, including a big Frequently asked questions section that is separated by topic.

AirVPN’s community forums cover several subjects, however novices will have the exact same difficulties understanding a lot of the tech lingo in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Exceptional speeds with very little loss.

Unrestricted 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 installation and use.

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

Strong Customer Service.

Active Community Online Forums and Comprehensive Guides.

Good prices, particularly for longer-term plans.

Optional block lists protect you from advertisements, adware, trackers, and hazardous sources.

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

Client app isn’t really 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.

Maybe 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 Choice?

So the bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, trusted, and safe VPN service with good rates. It’s clearly geared 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 might do much, much worse.

While it could be challenging to use if you’re brand-new to VPNs, you’ll get much quicker speeds and much better results than many of its rival VPN rivals.

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 exact 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 a good alternative for consumers who value their personal privacy.

While it does not hit the speed heights of a WireGuard service, performance-wise, it’s definitely the very best purely OpenVPN service out there. In addition to being an excellent choice for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

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