Do you wish to stay anonymous while surfing the web? If yes, then AirVPN could be the ideal option for you.
While anyone can declare to be unique these days, when it pertains to VPN suppliers, AirVPN shows that it truly is.
AirVPN sticks out from other VPN services because of its dedication to safeguarding user privacy. 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 anyone can declare to be distinct nowadays, when it concerns VPN service providers, AirVPN reveals that it genuinely is.
They have actually been around a long period of time, since 2010, when it was started with the help of 2 lawyers and a small group of activists and hackers. The satellite communications service provider Iridium formerly ran it, but AirVPN took control of in November 2012. According to the owner’s listing, AirVPN, based in Perugia, is currently 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.
Across their About Us and Mission pages, the company’s history is explained and information 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 non-traditional route and breaks the mold by providing a VPN designed 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 sized than a lot of, 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 minor problem here is that the lack of diversity of servers minimizes the number of international AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home nation while maintaining their personal privacy.
That said, 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 supply a precise evaluation of performance, with no overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are entirely 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 secure and trustworthy method 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. Additionally, every Air server directly supports OpenVPN over SSH, OpenVPN over SSL, and OpenVPN over Tor. Forget about PPTP and other unsafe protocols.
No preference is given to any application, protocol, or service when it comes down to it. Net Neutrality is maintained. Importantly, you can overcome web restrictions such as avoiding censorship, geographical constraints, and traffic shaping.
The usage is OpenVPN is a big plus as it immediately enhances users’ personal privacy and security and is extremely reputable. The lack of WireGuard as standard may reveal Air isn’t rather keeping up with its rivals. That stated, AirVPN says it is testing WireGuard, however it won’t put the more recent protocol completely in place until some of its technical and privacy issues are resolved.
AirVPN has likewise included a lot for power users and tech-savvy individuals who like to try out things.
Switching is limitless, so if you don’t like one server, you can quickly switch servers as often as you like.
You can monitor 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 brand-new tab).
There is an in-depth specifications page for AirVPN’s servers, with information like the offered 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, but since there is no third-party audit, you need to rely on that what is being offered will work. Looking at the active community forum or the in-depth open-source clients puts your mind at ease.
A good aspect of this is that you can see what other people say 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?
The company is extremely clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online privacy and security are the absolute top priority, with defense from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that attack personal privacy. There is no personal information 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 only gathers non-identifiable “technical data” to keep the server running and enhance services, however you can request for this details 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 tell what type of traffic or protocol you’re utilizing.
There’s no listening in, so you can connect to any wi-fi network without fretting about your computer system and the Wi-Fi hotspot spying on your data.
Even the most ruthless surveillance, censoring, throttling, and traffic shaping strategies will fail versus AirVPN due to the fact that your ISP and government will just see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.
They also say they stick to EU privacy policies and that any servers outside the EU will be treated with the same or higher levels of personal privacy and data protection as those in the EU.
You can get a new IP address to hide your IP so that no one can utilize it to learn who you are. You’ll remain safe with the top-level protection offered.
If your ISP or country 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 stating about the service before registering.
All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a big plus. This suggests that anyone can check out AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, however only ProtonVPN’s apps have been checked by a 3rd party.
Relating to security, AirVPN’s cryptography is probably the finest available. The first exchange uses 4096-bit RSA to accomplish Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) through Diffie-Hellman key exchange.
When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal information, not even your genuine email address. That’s excellent because it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. But understand that you will not be able to alter your account’s password if you do not utilize one.
Italy, where AirVPN is based, belongs to the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliances (a group of countries that share intelligence data). Even if the 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, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Regardless of Eddie’s considerable capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as excellent as those service providers who use it as standard.
Establishing the app is simple, and it has all the information you need to connect to a VPN.
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 user interface, so it may be a more tough learning curve for unskilled users.
With Windows, there are a lot of download options. There are builds for different running 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 explain what’s brand-new and an archive of past releases in case the most existing does not function on your setup.
After launching it, select ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest location. You simply click Disconnect when you’re completed. Simple enough for anyone, however Eddie can do a lot more considering that AirVPN offers more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we’ve seen.
Two essential AirVPN functions through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN permits you to connect when your computer system starts up, however you can’t select 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 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 safe and secure tunnel. Many basic kill switches just do this when the VPN is on, but 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 simply 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 readily available servers in the network, along with detailed info about every one, such as the server’s nickname, place, latency in milliseconds from your area, and existing users and server load. Impressive stuff!
This tab likewise has an amber/green signal that lets you understand whether a server is recommended for you.
The Countries page displays the number of servers readily available in each nation at a glance, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. As with the Servers page, the amber/green sign is also revealed. 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 nation will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is basically a favorites list; you may select as lots of countries as you like.
If you click the red “x”, that country will be gotten rid of, successfully making it a blocklist/denylist. To remove the green checkmark from a nation, click the empty box.
By picking a country, you are not instantly 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 a basic 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 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 a lot more.
Power users, in particular, should value the capability to utilize a VPN with all the info they might ever want about the various locations, down to the number of users on a specific server. It’s an invaluable resource.
Logs is a comprehensive 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 use between UDP and TCP, and which port number. Proxies, Tor assistance, custom-made DNS servers, and routes can be modified.
The truly 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 via the Logs pane.
If the vast function list appears frightening, even if you are a VPN specialist, it might be difficult to figure out what specific settings do and how to get the desired outcomes. In addition, it is unlike any other service in regards to customization.
Don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie simply due to the fact that of its complexity. Remember that the program generally operates fine by itself, and you’ll never ever see the settings till you search for them. Nevertheless, if you periodically crave power or configurability, the app will supply it.
Suppose you do not wish to utilize 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 a very feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software application provides the very same comprehensive setup options as its desktop sibling and helpful status info.
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 nation and choose a particular city on the same page. Some handy text additions make the details more easy to understand, however it’s still rather 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 also tries a bit more to assist you, with additional text subtitles to describe what each option does.
Speeds/Performance
Utilizing OpenVPN, the Eddie Windows app from AirVPN typically 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, notifying us with a desktop alert, 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.
It was always going to be slower than the WireGuard-equipped competition since AirVPN only supports OpenVPN.
Reviewers have actually reported speeds to be outstanding. Undoubtedly, one said there wasn’t a single nation where they could 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 the majority of people, and situations like HD video gaming, video, and streaming conferencing certainly won’t slow you down.
What AirVPN lacks is a more comprehensive variety of server places. This might limit the availability of nearby servers for some users (which will always lead to better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an exceptional option for most people in the United States and Europe, but perhaps less so for other regions.
Streaming
Streaming the big 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 powerful enough to bypass the VPN blocks used by Netflix in the U.S.A., whereas others do not.
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, finding the right server requires lengthy experimentation. This is most likely because, unlike other companies, AirVPN doesn’t use 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 websites ever changes.
Streaming is absolutely 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 P2P?
Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. Merely connect to the VPN server of your choice 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 poorly without it, and your computer’s shares might be inaccessible from the Internet.
File sharing has decent speeds on local servers, permits port forwarding for as much as 20 ports simultaneously (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 very practical, particularly 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 issues whatsoever.
AirVPN Plans & Pricing
AirVPN uses a larger range of plans than a lot of VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect up to 5 devices at the same time, 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 household home or wish to use a VPN on a public network. While five should be enough for most people, other VPN providers provide 7 or even 10 if you require more.
Prices varies based upon the subscription length, and each plan includes the exact same features. Most plans provide good value; nevertheless, longer subscriptions use the best deal.
The standard pricing is in Euros. Nevertheless, they utilize the European Central Bank to supply real-time currency exchange rate for those abroad, so it can be easily transformed to and paid for in the currency of your choice.
The current 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, including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Doge. Lots of international choices are likewise accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.
AirVPN offers a three-day complimentary trial, which can be obtained by sending a message to the support team and using the coupon 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 throughout 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 offers e-mail support and frequently asked questions (Frequently asked questions) and has a really active support forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.
Importantly, AirVPN’s email support isn’t contracted out but can be a little inconsistent with the time it requires to get an action. That said, the e-mail assistance is high quality, and the representatives are friendly and useful, however the thorough responses can be pretty technical, which may put off those new to VPNs.
AirVPN’s website has a great deal of information, including a large FAQs area that is separated by subject.
AirVPN’s community forums cover several topics, however newbies will have the very same problems comprehending a lot of the tech lingo in the posts.
AirVPN Pros & Cons
Pros:
No logging Whatsoever.
Exceptional speeds with minimal 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 installation and usage.
Many, many advanced settings and customization options in the client app.
Strong Customer Service.
Active Community Forums and Comprehensive Guides.
Excellent prices, especially 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 really hit and miss with streaming services.
No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.
Possibly there are a lot of advanced alternatives.
Found in 14-Eyes Country.
Server numbers are relatively low.
Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Very Best Option?
So the bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, reliable, and safe VPN service with good pricing. It’s clearly 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 new users could do much, much worse.
While it could be challenging to utilize if you’re new to VPNs, you’ll get much quicker speeds and much better results than a number of its competing VPN competitors.
This VPN service is more focused on safeguarding your personal privacy than unblocking streaming services like Netflix or Hulu when it comes down to it.
It might not guarantee the exact same level of personal privacy and privacy as a service like Mullvad, which designates 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 very best purely OpenVPN service out there. In addition to being an excellent choice for online filesharing.
Highly recommended!
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AirVPN 101 – A New User’s Guide To Choosing The Right VPN Service Provider
