Do you wish to remain anonymous while surfing the web? AirVPN could be the perfect option for you if yes.
While anybody can declare to be unique nowadays, when it comes to VPN service providers, AirVPN shows that it really is.
AirVPN stands out from other VPN services because of its dedication to securing user privacy. From the start, the AirVPN website 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 anyone can declare to be distinct these days, when it comes to VPN suppliers, AirVPN shows that it really is.
They have actually been around a long period of time, since 2010, when it was begun with the help of 2 lawyers and a small group of hackers and activists. The satellite communications supplier Iridium formerly 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).
During the last years, it hasn’t been dogged by security scandals like some VPNs have. Nor has it been acquired by a larger organization either.
Throughout their About Us and Mission pages, the business’s history is discussed and details the personal privacy projects that AirVPN has established 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 developed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.
How does AirVPN stack up against its competitors with such strong privacy credentials?
AirVPN’s Key Features
Servers
AirVPN’s network is much smaller than many, with just 246 servers spread out throughout 23 countries.
The majority of servers are in Europe (aside from those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A small problem here is that the absence of diversity of servers reduces the number of international AirVPN users who might access geo-restricted services in their home country while keeping their personal privacy.
That said, Air is popular for its exceptional performance across its server network, with many nations having high-performance physical individual servers.
They use transparent bandwidth allocation methods to provide an accurate assessment of performance, without any overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are completely unlimited, with no 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 trusted and safe and secure method to create encrypted tunnels. It uses more security than the military.
Numerous ports and protocols are available; they use OpenVPN on the following ports: 80 TCP/UDP, 443 TCP/UDP, and 53 TCP/UDP. Moreover, every Air server directly supports OpenVPN over SSH, OpenVPN over SSL, and OpenVPN over Tor. So ignore PPTP and other hazardous protocols.
When it boils down to it, no choice is given to any protocol, application, or service. Net Neutrality is upheld. Importantly, you can overcome internet constraints such as avoiding censorship, geographical constraints, and traffic shaping.
The use is OpenVPN is a big plus as it immediately enhances users’ privacy and security and is highly reputable. However, the absence of WireGuard as standard may reveal Air isn’t rather staying up to date with its competitors. That stated, AirVPN says it is evaluating WireGuard, however it will not put the more recent protocol completely in place until a few of its technical and privacy concerns are resolved.
AirVPN has actually also added a lot for power users and tech-savvy individuals who like to experiment with things.
Switching is unlimited, so if you do not like one server, you can easily change servers as frequently as you like.
You can keep an eye on the present load on each server, any existing concerns, and a history of previous issues on AirVPN’s network status page (which opens in a new tab).
There is a detailed specs page for AirVPN’s servers, with info like the available ports, protocols, DNS server details (AirVPN has its own DNS server), and the IP addresses of each VPN server’s access points.
All of it is nice, but since there is no third-party audit, you need to trust that what is being provided will work. But looking at the active community forum or the comprehensive open-source clients puts your mind at ease.
A great aspect of this is that you can see what other individuals state about the service before 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 really clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online privacy and security are the outright priority, with security from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that attack 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 just gathers non-identifiable “technical data” to keep the server running and enhance services, however you can request this information to be deleted 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 worrying about your computer system and the Wi-Fi hotspot spying on your data.
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 stick to EU personal privacy regulations which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the very same or greater levels of personal privacy and information protection as those in the EU.
You can get a brand-new IP address to conceal your IP so that nobody can utilize it to discover who you are. You’ll remain safe with the high-level security offered.
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 present 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 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 third party.
Regarding security, AirVPN’s cryptography is arguably the best offered. It resembles that of some other companies, but still worth mentioning. The first exchange uses 4096-bit RSA to achieve 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 minimize this value. The main data channel uses AES-256-CBC encryption.
When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal info, not even your real email address. That’s fantastic because it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. But know that you won’t be able 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 countries that share intelligence information). But even if the government asked for user details, AirVPN would have absolutely nothing to give them.
Who Or What Is Eddie??
The Eddie UI is the name of AirVPN’s main open-source application, readily available on all major platforms and OSes, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Sadly, in spite of Eddie’s considerable ability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as good as those companies who utilize it as standard.
Setting up the app is easy, and it has all the info you require to connect to a VPN.
Regrettably, there are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to guide you. While it’s not hard to get things working, it doesn’t have the most easy to use interface, so it might be a more challenging learning curve for inexperienced users.
With Windows, there are a heap of download alternatives. There are builds for different 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 discuss what’s new and an archive of past releases in case the most existing does not operate on your setup.
After launching it, select ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest area. You simply click Disconnect when you’re finished. Easy enough for anyone, 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.
Two crucial AirVPN features through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN allows you to connect when your computer system launches, but you can’t select which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you picked last.
Even though it specifies “kill switch” throughout the settings, AirVPN has actually a tab called “network lock” that does the very same thing. The difference is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its secure tunnel. A lot of standard kill switches just 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 shows all available servers in the network, along with comprehensive information about each one, such as the server’s nickname, place, latency in milliseconds from your place, and existing 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 offered in each country at a glance, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. As with the Servers page, the amber/green sign is likewise shown. Numerous 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 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 pick as many nations as you like.
If you click the red “x”, that nation will be removed, successfully making it a blocklist/denylist. To get rid of the green checkmark from a country, click the empty box.
By selecting a nation, you are not immediately connected to a VPN server. To do so, go back to the Servers page and select the server you desire in a particular 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 also a checkmark, “X,” and blank box icons. There’s likewise a “refresh” button to get updated info on ping times and load times.
The Speed tab shows a simple 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 show your present VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also shows 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 much more.
Power users, in particular, should value the ability to use a VPN with all the info they might ever desire about the numerous locations, down to the variety of users on a specific server. It’s a valuable resource.
Finally, Logs is a detailed record of connections, routes, and other information.
A million and one other settings are hidden in the app’s Settings menu. 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. Or whether to try an SSH tunnel through more flexible ports such as 22, 80, and 443. Proxies, Tor assistance, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.
The genuinely skilled user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which allow, to name a few things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management User Interface via the Logs pane.
If the large function list appears scary, even if you are a VPN expert, it might be difficult to find out what particular settings do and how to get the preferred outcomes. In addition, it differs from any other service in terms of personalization.
Don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just because of its complexity. Remember that the program usually functions fine on its own, and you’ll never see the settings up until you look for them. If you occasionally long for power or configurability, the app will offer 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?
Although there isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can use a very feature-rich Android VPN app rather. This software application supplies the same extensive configuration options as its desktop sibling and useful status info.
Separate pages for country and server lists are what the Android app does not have that the desktop versions provides. Rather, you can expand a nation and select a particular city on the exact same page. Some useful text additions make the details more reasonable, but it’s still rather tough to understand in some spots.
Android does not have as many settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still a lot more than many people will ever require. The software application also tries a little more to assist you, with extra text subtitles to discuss what each choice does.
Speeds/Performance
Utilizing OpenVPN, the Eddie Windows app from AirVPN usually connects rapidly and is ready to enter less than 10 seconds.
Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was excellent, with the app finding when the VPN tunnel drops, informing us with a desktop alert, and reconnecting us in seconds.
In terms of 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.
Due to the fact that AirVPN just supports OpenVPN, it was always going to be slower than the WireGuard-equipped competition.
Reviewers have actually reported speeds to be excellent. One said there wasn’t a single nation where they might grumble about the speed. On the contrary, it was really excellent overall.
While it wasn’t quite on top tier for VPNs that use WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for most people, and situations like HD video gaming, streaming, and video conferencing absolutely won’t slow you down.
What AirVPN does not have is a more comprehensive number of server places. This might limit the accessibility of close-by servers for some users (which will constantly lead to much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an excellent choice for many people in the United States and Europe, however possibly 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 actually 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.
Indeed, some report that Air is pretty bad for streaming and doesn’t work with any of the major streaming services. Nevertheless, it appears to deal with less-popular streaming apps like Peacock and Sony Crackle.
Another reviewer states services like BBC iPlayer and United States Netflix rarely work, and when they do, finding the ideal server requires prolonged trial and error. This is probably due to the fact that, unlike other service providers, AirVPN does not offer servers that are optimised for accessing streaming sites.
The good news is, 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 certainly not an area in which AirVPN excels, simply since that’s not what the service is about, as they are more concentrated on privacy and security.
Does AirVPN Allow P2P?
Yes, it does; every web protocol, including peer-to-peer, is welcome. Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. There’s nothing to configure, no hoops to leap through. Just connect to the VPN server of your choice and get going.
Plus, you can utilize port forwarding to enhance your file-sharing performance. Numerous 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 at the same time (which lets you connect to more peers for faster speeds), and works with leading torrenting clients like qBitTorrent and uTorrent.
AirVPN’s integrated kill switch, triggered by default, will block all traffic from leaving your gadget if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you will not be sending unencrypted packets to the Web. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is extremely convenient, particularly if you need to leave your connection unattended.
Reviewers have revealed torrenting to be outstanding, smooth running with quick download and upload speeds, and with no concerns whatsoever.
AirVPN Plans & Pricing
AirVPN offers a broader variety of plans than many VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect as much as 5 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 choice for individuals who reside in a family house or want to utilize a VPN on a public network. While 5 should suffice for many people, other VPN service providers offer 7 or even 10 if you need more.
Prices varies based upon the subscription length, and each plan consists of the exact same features. Most plans offer good value; nevertheless, longer subscriptions use the best offer.
The standard pricing is in Euros. Nevertheless, they use the European Central Bank to offer 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 current 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 likewise accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.
AirVPN offers a three-day free trial, which can be obtained by sending out 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 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 assistance offering than lots of other VPNs. While it does not have live chat, it provides e-mail assistance and frequently asked questions (FAQs) and has a very active assistance forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.
Significantly, AirVPN’s email support isn’t contracted out however 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 useful and friendly, but the thorough responses can be pretty technical, which might put off those brand-new to VPNs.
AirVPN’s website has a great deal of details, consisting of a large FAQs area that is separated by topic.
AirVPN’s community forums cover many different subjects, however newbies will have the exact 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 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 setup and use.
Many, many advanced settings and customization options in the client app.
Strong Client Service.
Active Community Online Forums and In-depth Guides.
Good 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 pretty like other services.
Client app may overwhelm newer users.
It is extremely hit and miss with streaming services.
No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.
Possibly there are too many advanced options.
Found in 14-Eyes Country.
Server numbers are relatively 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 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 provider. 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 a lot of its rival VPN competitors.
This VPN service is more focused on safeguarding your privacy than unblocking streaming services like Netflix or Hulu when it comes down to it.
Although it might not guarantee the exact same level of privacy and privacy as a service like Mullvad, which assigns you a random account number and allows you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still a great 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 option for online filesharing.
Highly recommended!
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