Do you want to remain anonymous while surfing the web? If yes, then AirVPN could be the perfect solution for you.
While anybody can declare to be special these days, when it pertains to VPN suppliers, AirVPN reveals that it really is.
AirVPN sticks out from other VPN services because of its commitment to protecting user privacy. From the start, the AirVPN site begins 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 declare to be distinct nowadays, when it pertains to VPN suppliers, AirVPN shows that it genuinely is.
They’ve been around a very long time, since 2010, when it was begun with the help of 2 lawyers and a little group of activists and hackers. The satellite communications provider 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 years, 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 company’s history is described and information the personal privacy projects that AirVPN has actually 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 offering a VPN developed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.
So how does AirVPN compare to its competitors with such strong privacy qualifications?
AirVPN’s Key Features
Servers
AirVPN’s network is much smaller sized than many, with only 246 servers spread out throughout 23 countries.
Most servers are in Europe (aside from those in the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong). A small issue here is that the absence of variety of servers decreases the number of worldwide AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home country while maintaining their privacy.
That said, Air is popular for its outstanding performance across its server network, with lots of countries having high-performance physical individual servers.
They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation methods to provide an accurate evaluation of performance, without any overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are totally 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 protected and trusted way to create encrypted tunnels. It provides more security than the military.
Various ports and protocols are offered; 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 PPTP and other hazardous protocols.
When it comes down to it, no preference is given to any service, protocol, or application. Net Neutrality is upheld. Significantly, you can overcome internet constraints such as avoiding censorship, geographical restrictions, and traffic shaping.
The usage is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it automatically improves users’ privacy and security and is extremely reputable. Nevertheless, the absence of WireGuard as standard might show Air isn’t rather keeping up with its rivals. That said, AirVPN says it is evaluating WireGuard, but it will not put the more recent protocol completely in place until a few of its technical and personal privacy concerns are resolved.
AirVPN has actually also added a lot for power users and tech-savvy people who like to try out things.
Switching is limitless, so if you don’t like one server, you can easily change servers as often as you like.
You can monitor the present load on each server, any existing issues, and a history of previous problems on AirVPN’s network status page (which opens in a brand-new tab).
There is a detailed specs page for AirVPN’s servers, with details like the readily 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, but given that there is no third-party audit, you have to rely on that what is being used will work. But taking a look 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 people 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?
When it pertains to AirVPN’s no-logging policy, the company is really clear. Online privacy and security are the absolute top priority, with protection from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that attack privacy. There is no personal 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 just collects non-identifiable “technical information” to keep the server running and enhance services, but you can request this information to be deleted at any time. This makes it among the most privacy-friendly VPN services.
As a result, nobody can identify you online; not even your ISP can determine what sort of traffic or protocol you’re utilizing.
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 information.
Even the most ruthless surveillance, censoring, throttling, and traffic shaping techniques will fail against AirVPN because your ISP and government will just 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 same or greater levels of privacy and information 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 security provided.
If your ISP or nation obstructs 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 present users are saying about the service prior to signing up.
All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a huge plus. This suggests that anybody can look into 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.
Relating to security, AirVPN’s cryptography is arguably the very best offered. It’s similar to that of some other companies, however still worth pointing out. The very first exchange utilizes 4096-bit RSA to attain 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 lower this value. The main information channel utilizes AES-256-CBC encryption.
When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal information, not even your real email address. That’s great since 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 utilize one.
Italy, where AirVPN is based, belongs to the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliances (a group of countries that share intelligence data). But even if the government requested for user information, AirVPN would have nothing to provide.
Who Or What Is Eddie??
The Eddie UI is the name of AirVPN’s primary open-source application, readily available on all significant platforms and OSes, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. In spite of Eddie’s substantial capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t rather as excellent as those service providers who utilize it as standard.
Establishing the app is easy, and it has all the details you need to connect to a VPN.
Unfortunately, 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 may be a more tough 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 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 operate on your setup.
After introducing it, choose ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest location. When you’re completed, you simply click Disconnect. Simple enough for anybody, but Eddie can do a lot more given that AirVPN provides more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we have actually seen.
2 crucial AirVPN features through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN permits you to connect when your computer system starts up, 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 defines “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 secure tunnel. Many 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 layout is easy to understand. Along the top, there are six tabs: Overview, Servers, Countries, Speed, Stats, and Logs.
The Overview just 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 readily available servers in the network, along with detailed details about every one, such as the server’s nickname, location, latency in milliseconds from your location, and present users and server load. Impressive stuff!
This tab also has an amber/green signal that lets you know whether a server is recommended for you.
The Countries page displays the number of servers offered in each nation at a glimpse, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. As with the Servers page, the amber/green sign is also shown. Many 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 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 might choose as many countries 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 choosing a nation, 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 a simple 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 many apps show your existing VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also shows fine-grained info, such as the server’s location, load, present user count, protocol, port, encryption algorithm, session start time and length, IPv6 exit address, information uploaded and downloaded, and a lot 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.
Lastly, Logs is a detailed record of connections, routes, and other data.
This allows you to fine-tune the setup, such as whether it ought to constantly connect when opened, which protocol to use between UDP and TCP, and which port number. 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 Interface via the Logs pane.
If the huge function list appears scary, even if you are a VPN specialist, it might be tough to determine what particular settings do and how to get the preferred results. In addition, it differs from any other service in terms of customization.
Don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie simply due to the fact that of its complexity. Remember that the program usually works fine on its own, and you’ll never see the settings until you look for them. If you sometimes long for power or configurability, the app will supply it.
Suppose you don’t wish 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?
Although there isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can utilize an extremely feature-rich Android VPN app rather. This software provides the very same comprehensive configuration choices as its desktop sibling and practical status details.
Different pages for nation and server lists are what the Android app does not have that the desktop versions provides. Instead, you can expand a country and select a specific city on the same page. Some handy text additions make the details more reasonable, however it’s still quite difficult to understand in some spots.
Android does not have as many settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still many more than most people will ever require. The software application likewise attempts a bit more to assist you, with extra text subtitles to describe what each choice 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 excellent, with the app identifying when the VPN tunnel drops, informing 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 since AirVPN just supports OpenVPN.
Reviewers have reported speeds to be excellent. One said there wasn’t a single nation where they could complain about the speed. On the contrary, it was truly outstanding overall.
While it wasn’t quite on top tier for VPNs that utilize WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for most people, and situations like HD gaming, video, and streaming conferencing certainly will not slow you down.
What AirVPN does not have is a wider number of server areas. This might limit the accessibility of close-by servers for some users (which will constantly lead to better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an exceptional option for most people in the United States and Europe, but maybe less so for other areas.
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 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 United States Netflix seldom work, and when they do, discovering the best server needs lengthy experimentation. This is most likely due to the fact that, unlike other suppliers, AirVPN does not use servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.
Luckily, on AirVPN’s site, there is a list of ‘blocked websites’ that users can examine to see if the situation with these streaming websites ever changes.
Streaming is definitely not an area in which AirVPN excels, merely because that’s not what the service is about, as they are more focused on personal privacy and security.
Does AirVPN Permit Torrenting?
Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. Just connect to the VPN server of your choice and get going.
Plus, you can utilize 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 Internet.
File sharing has decent speeds on regional servers, permits port forwarding for as much as 20 ports at once (which lets you connect to more peers for faster speeds), and deals with leading torrenting clients like qBitTorrent and uTorrent.
AirVPN’s integrated kill switch, activated by default, will obstruct all traffic from exiting 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 really hassle-free, especially if you need to leave your connection unattended.
Reviewers have revealed torrenting to be remarkable, smooth running with quick download and upload speeds, and without any problems whatsoever.
AirVPN Plans & Rates
AirVPN offers a broader variety of plans than a lot of VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect up to 5 gadgets concurrently, so you can connect your PC, phone, tablet, and a couple of other devices all at the same time.
This makes it an outstanding choice for people who live in a family house or wish to use a VPN on a public network. While five really should suffice for many people, other VPN providers offer 7 or even 10 if you need more.
Prices varies based on the membership length, and each plan includes the same features. The majority of plans offer good value; nevertheless, longer memberships offer the best deal.
The standard pricing is in Euros. However, they utilize the European Central Bank to supply real-time exchange rates for those abroad, so it can be quickly transformed to and spent 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 worldwide choices are likewise 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 voucher 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 during that time.
AirVPN Customer Support
AirVPN has a different customer assistance offering than many other VPNs. While it doesn’t have live chat, it provides email support and frequently asked questions (FAQs) and has a very active assistance forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.
Notably, AirVPN’s email assistance isn’t contracted out but can be a little irregular with the time it takes to get a response. That stated, the email support is high quality, and the representatives are friendly and helpful, however the thorough responses can be quite technical, which might put off those new to VPNs.
AirVPN’s website has a lot of info, including a large FAQs section that is separated by topic.
AirVPN’s community forums cover many different topics, but beginners will have the exact same problems understanding a lot of the tech jargon in the posts.
AirVPN Pros & Cons
Pros:
No logging Whatsoever.
Exceptional speeds with minimal loss.
Unlimited P2P permitted 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 setup and use.
Many, many advanced settings and customization options in the client app.
Strong Client Service.
Active Community Forums and In-depth Guides.
Good prices, particularly for longer-term plans.
Optional block lists shield you from advertisements, adware, trackers, and harmful sources.
Cons:
Only fully supports OpenVPN.
Client app isn’t extremely 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.
Perhaps there are too many advanced alternatives.
Located in 14-Eyes Nation.
Server numbers are fairly low.
Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Very Best Option?
The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, trustworthy, and safe VPN service with good rates. 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 company. However even brand-new users could do much, much worse.
While it could be challenging to use if you’re new to VPNs, you’ll receive much quicker speeds and better results than a lot of its competing VPN rivals.
This VPN service is more focused on securing your personal privacy than unblocking streaming services like Netflix or Hulu when it comes down to it.
Although it might not ensure the 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 choice for customers 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 choice for online filesharing.
Highly recommended!
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10 Features We Like About AirVPN, But #7 Is My Fave
