Do you wish to stay anonymous while surfing the web? If yes, then AirVPN could be the best option for you.
While anyone can claim to be special nowadays, when it pertains to VPN companies, AirVPN shows that it truly is.
AirVPN stands apart from other VPN services because of its dedication to securing user privacy. From the start, the AirVPN site starts with an appeal for your trust, mentioning, “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 special these days, when it comes to VPN service providers, AirVPN shows that it genuinely is.
They have actually been around a very long time, since 2010, when it was begun with the aid of 2 lawyers and a little group of hackers and activists. The satellite communications supplier Iridium previously ran it, but AirVPN took over 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 larger company either.
Throughout their About Us and Mission pages, the company’s history is discussed and details the privacy projects that AirVPN has actually 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 compare to its competitors with such strong privacy qualifications?
AirVPN’s Key Features
Servers
AirVPN’s network is much smaller than most, with only 246 servers spread out across 23 nations.
The majority of servers are in Europe (aside from those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A small concern here is that the absence of diversity of servers decreases the number of international AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home country while keeping their personal privacy.
That said, Air is well known for its impressive performance throughout its server network, with lots of nations having high-performance physical individual servers.
They use transparent bandwidth allocation methods to provide an accurate evaluation of performance, with no overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are totally unlimited, with no speed constraints or time limits.
To establish a connection between your machine and their servers, they use OpenVPN and WireGuard (in beta). OpenVPN is the most trustworthy and safe way to create encrypted tunnels. It uses 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. Furthermore, every Air server directly supports OpenVPN over SSH, OpenVPN over SSL, and OpenVPN over Tor. So forget PPTP and other risky protocols.
No preference is given to any service, protocol, or application when it comes down to it. Net Neutrality is maintained. Notably, you can overcome internet restrictions such as avoiding censorship, geographic limitations, and traffic shaping.
The usage is OpenVPN is a big plus as it immediately enhances users’ privacy and security and is extremely dependable. The absence of WireGuard as standard may reveal Air isn’t quite keeping up with its competitors. That stated, AirVPN states it is evaluating WireGuard, however it will not put the more recent protocol fully in place up until a few of its technical and personal privacy issues are addressed.
AirVPN has actually also added 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 quickly change servers as often as you like.
You can keep track of the present 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 specs 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 considering that there is no third-party audit, you have to trust that what is being used will work. But looking at the active community forum or the detailed open-source clients puts your mind at ease.
A great thing about this is that you can see what other people state about the service before registering. 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 very clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online privacy and security are the outright concern, with defense from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that attack personal privacy. There is no individual details 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 collects non-identifiable “technical data” to keep the server running and enhance services, however you can request for this information to be deleted at any time. This makes it one of the most privacy-friendly VPN services.
As a result, no one can identify you online; not even your ISP can tell 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 and the Wi-Fi hotspot spying on your information.
Even the most ruthless surveillance, censoring, throttling, and traffic shaping tactics will fail versus AirVPN because your ISP and government will just see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.
They likewise say they adhere to EU personal privacy policies which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the very same or greater levels of privacy and information protection as those in the EU.
You can get a new IP address to conceal your IP so that no one can use it to learn who you are. You’ll remain safe with the high-level protection supplied.
You can still connect to an AirVPN server through OpenVPN over SSH, SSL, or Tor if your ISP or country obstructs OpenVPN.
Open-source clients and a lively community online forum enable you to get a sense of what existing users are stating about the service prior to signing up.
All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a big plus. This indicates that anyone can look into AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, but just ProtonVPN’s apps have been checked by a third party.
Relating to security, AirVPN’s cryptography is perhaps the best readily available. It’s similar to that of some other suppliers, but still worth mentioning. The first exchange uses 4096-bit RSA to achieve Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) through Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Following the first key negotiation, re-keying takes place every 60 minutes, and the user can lower this value. The primary information channel uses 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 excellent since it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. But understand that you won’t have the ability to alter 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 information). Even if the federal government asked for user information, AirVPN would have absolutely nothing to offer them.
Who Or What Is Eddie??
The Eddie UI is the name of AirVPN’s main open-source application, offered on all major platforms and OSes, consisting of Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Regrettably, despite Eddie’s significant ability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as good as those companies who utilize it as standard.
Establishing the app is easy, and it has all the details you need to connect to a VPN.
There are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to assist you. While it’s not tough to get things working, it does not have the most user-friendly interface, so it may be a more tough learning curve for unskilled users.
With Windows, there are a heap of download options. There are builds for numerous running systems (from Windows XP to Windows 11), in 32- and 64-bit flavors, 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 function on your setup.
After introducing it, choose ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest place. When you’re completed, you simply click Disconnect. Simple enough for anybody, but Eddie can do a lot more considering that AirVPN offers more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we have actually seen.
2 key AirVPN features 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.
Although it specifies “kill switch” anywhere in the settings, AirVPN has a tab called “network lock” that does the exact same thing. The difference 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 establish 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 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 offered servers in the network, along with comprehensive info about every one, such as the server’s nickname, area, latency in milliseconds from your location, and existing users and server load. Excellent 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 variety of servers available in each nation at a look, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. As with the Servers page, the amber/green indicator is likewise revealed. 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 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 numerous countries as you like.
If you click the red “x”, that nation will be eliminated, efficiently making it a blocklist/denylist. To eliminate the green checkmark from a nation, 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 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 most 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, existing user count, protocol, port, encryption algorithm, session start time and length, IPv6 exit address, information uploaded and downloaded, and far more.
Power users, in particular, should value the ability to utilize a VPN with all the info they might ever want about the various locations, down to the variety of users on a particular server. It’s an invaluable resource.
Lastly, Logs is an in-depth record of connections, routes, and other data.
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 utilize between UDP and TCP, and which port number. Or whether to attempt an SSH tunnel through more versatile ports such as 22, 80, and 443. Proxies, Tor support, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.
The really proficient user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which permit, 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 expert, it might be hard to figure out what specific 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 even if of its complexity. Bear in mind that the program normally works fine by itself, and you’ll never see the settings until you search for them. Nevertheless, if you sometimes crave power or configurability, the app will provide it.
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 use an extremely feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software application offers the same extensive configuration options as its desktop sibling and practical status details.
Different pages for country 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 particular city on the very same page. Some helpful text additions make the details more easy to understand, but it’s still quite tough 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 most people will ever need. The software application likewise attempts a little more to assist you, with extra text subtitles to discuss what each option does.
Speeds/Performance
Using OpenVPN, the Eddie Windows app from AirVPN generally connects quickly and is ready to enter less than 10 seconds.
Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was good, with the app spotting when the VPN tunnel drops, notifying us with a desktop notification, 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.
Since AirVPN only supports OpenVPN, it was always going to be slower than the WireGuard-equipped competition.
Reviewers have reported speeds to be outstanding. One said there wasn’t a single nation where they could complain about the speed. On the contrary, it was really impressive overall.
While it wasn’t quite at the top tier for VPNs that utilize WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for the majority of people, and circumstances like HD streaming, gaming, and video conferencing certainly won’t slow you down.
What AirVPN lacks is a more comprehensive number of server locations. This may limit the ease of access of close-by servers for some users (which will always result in much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an excellent option for many people in the United States and Europe, but maybe 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 effective enough to bypass the VPN blocks used 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 says services like BBC iPlayer and US Netflix rarely work, and when they do, discovering the right server needs prolonged experimentation. This is probably due to the fact that, unlike other suppliers, AirVPN doesn’t use servers that are optimised for accessing streaming sites.
Fortunately, on AirVPN’s site, there is a list of ‘blocked websites’ that users can check to see if the situation with these streaming websites ever changes.
Streaming is definitely not an area in which AirVPN stands out, merely since that’s not what the service is about, as they are more focused on privacy and security.
Does AirVPN Allow P2P?
Yes, it does; every web protocol, consisting of peer-to-peer, is welcome. Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. There’s nothing to set up, no hoops to leap through. Merely connect to the VPN server of your choice and start.
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 Internet.
File sharing has good speeds on regional servers, enables port forwarding for up to 20 ports at the same time (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, triggered by default, will obstruct all traffic from exiting 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, particularly if you need to leave your connection unattended.
Reviewers have actually shown torrenting to be excellent, smooth running with quick download and upload speeds, and with no concerns whatsoever.
AirVPN Plans & Prices
AirVPN provides a larger variety of plans than the majority of VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect as much as five devices at the same time, 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 home or want to utilize a VPN on a public network. While five should suffice for many people, other VPN providers provide 7 or even 10 if you require more.
Pricing varies based upon the subscription length, and each plan includes the exact same features. Many plans provide good value; however, longer subscriptions provide the very best offer.
The standard pricing is in Euros. Nevertheless, they use the European Central Bank to provide real-time currency exchange rate for those abroad, so it can be easily converted to and paid for in the currency of your choice.
The present plans 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 alternatives are likewise accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.
AirVPN offers a three-day complimentary trial, which can be obtained by sending out 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 haven’t broken the terms of service or utilized more than 5 GB of data throughout that time.
AirVPN Customer Support
AirVPN has a different customer support offering than many other VPNs. While it doesn’t have live chat, it offers e-mail support and frequently asked questions (FAQs) and has a really active assistance forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.
Notably, AirVPN’s email assistance isn’t outsourced but can be a little irregular with the time it takes to get a response. That stated, the e-mail support is high quality, and the agents are friendly and helpful, but the extensive responses can be quite technical, which may put off those new to VPNs.
AirVPN’s website has a lot of information, including a big FAQs area that is broken up by topic.
AirVPN’s community forums cover various subjects, however novices will have the very same troubles comprehending a great deal of the tech jargon in the posts.
AirVPN Pros & Cons
Pros:
No logging Whatsoever.
Outstanding speeds with minimal loss.
Unrestricted P2P enabled 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 use.
Many, many advanced settings and customization options in the client app.
Strong Customer Support.
Active Community Online Forums and Detailed Guides.
Good prices, 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 user-friendly or attractive like other services.
Client app might overwhelm newer users.
It is very hit and miss with streaming services.
No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.
Perhaps there are too many advanced options.
Found in 14-Eyes Country.
Server numbers are relatively low.
Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Best Option?
The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, dependable, and safe VPN service with good pricing. It’s plainly tailored towards more power and advanced users, so those new to VPNs will be much better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN supplier. But even brand-new users might do much, much worse.
While it could be challenging to utilize 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 comes down to it, this VPN service is more focused on protecting your privacy than unblocking streaming services like Netflix or Hulu.
Although it might not ensure 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 an excellent alternative for customers who value their 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 exceptional choice for online filesharing.
Highly recommended!
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AirVPN Reviews: 10 Key Things To Look At In 2022
