Do you wish to remain anonymous while surfing the web? If yes, then AirVPN could be the best solution for you.
While anyone can claim to be special these days, when it pertains to VPN suppliers, AirVPN reveals that it really is.
AirVPN stands out from other VPN services because of its dedication to protecting user privacy. Right from the start, the AirVPN website begins 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 unique these days, when it pertains to VPN companies, AirVPN shows that it really is.
They’ve been around a very long time, since 2010, when it was started with the aid of two lawyers and a little group of activists and hackers. The satellite communications supplier Iridium previously ran it, however 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 years, it hasn’t been dogged by security scandals like some VPNs have. Nor has it been acquired by a bigger business either.
Across their About Us and Mission pages, the company’s history is described and details the personal 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 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 personal privacy credentials?
AirVPN’s Key Features
Servers
AirVPN’s network is much smaller sized than many, with just 246 servers spread out across 23 nations.
A lot of servers are in Europe (other than those in the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong). A small concern here is that the lack of variety of servers lowers the number of worldwide 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 many countries having high-performance physical individual servers.
They use transparent bandwidth allocation strategies to supply a precise assessment of performance, without any overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are entirely unlimited, with no speed restrictions 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 protected way to create encrypted tunnels. It uses more security than the military.
Various ports and protocols are readily available; they use OpenVPN on the following ports: 80 TCP/UDP, 443 TCP/UDP, and 53 TCP/UDP. In addition, every Air server directly supports OpenVPN over SSH, OpenVPN over SSL, and OpenVPN over Tor. Forget about PPTP and other unsafe protocols.
No choice is given to any protocol, application, or service when it comes down to it. Net Neutrality is upheld. Importantly, you can get rid of web constraints such as avoiding censorship, geographical constraints, and traffic shaping.
The use is OpenVPN is a big plus as it automatically enhances users’ privacy and security and is extremely trustworthy. The absence of WireGuard as standard may reveal Air isn’t rather keeping up with its rivals. That said, AirVPN states it is testing WireGuard, however it will not put the newer protocol totally in place till a few of its technical and privacy concerns are addressed.
AirVPN has also included 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 quickly change servers as often as you like.
You can keep track of the existing load on each server, any existing concerns, and a history of previous problems on AirVPN’s network status page (which opens in a new tab).
There is a comprehensive specifications page for AirVPN’s servers, with information 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 since there is no third-party audit, you have to rely on that what is being provided will work. Looking at the active community online forum or the comprehensive open-source clients puts your mind at ease.
A nice feature of this is that you can see what other individuals state about the service before signing up. You do not 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 company is really clear. Online privacy and security are the outright 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 does not track what you do when you’re connected to the VPN, date/time stamps, or your IP address. It only collects 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 kind 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 against AirVPN because your ISP and government will only see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.
They also state they follow EU privacy policies which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the same or higher levels of privacy and data protection as those in the EU.
You can get a new IP address to conceal your IP so that nobody can utilize it to learn who you are. You’ll stay safe with the top-level protection supplied.
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 existing users are stating about the service before registering.
All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a big plus. This implies that anybody can check out AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, but just ProtonVPN’s apps have actually been inspected by a 3rd party.
Regarding security, AirVPN’s cryptography is probably the finest available. The first exchange uses 4096-bit RSA to achieve Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) through Diffie-Hellman key exchange.
When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal details, not even your real e-mail address. That’s fantastic given that 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, belongs to the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliances (a group of countries that share intelligence information). Even if the federal government asked for user info, 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, consisting of Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Regrettably, regardless of Eddie’s significant capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as good as those service providers who utilize it as requirement.
Establishing the app is easy, and it has all the info you require to connect to a VPN.
There are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to direct you. While it’s not hard to get things working, it does not have the most easy to use user interface, so it may be a more tough learning curve for inexperienced users.
With Windows, there are a lot of download choices. There are builds for numerous 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 work 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 just click Disconnect. Simple 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’ve seen.
2 essential AirVPN functions through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN permits you to connect when your computer system launches, however you can’t select 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 actually a tab called “network lock” that does the same thing. The distinction is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its secure tunnel. A lot of basic 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 simply 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 available servers in the network, along with detailed info about each one, such as the server’s nickname, area, latency in milliseconds from your area, and current users and server load. Remarkable stuff!
This tab also has an amber/green signal that lets you know whether a server is recommended for you.
The Countries page shows the variety of servers offered in each nation at a glance, together with an indicator of server load and user numbers. Similar to the Servers page, the amber/green sign is likewise 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 nations as you like.
If you click the red “x”, that country will be removed, efficiently making it a blocklist/denylist. To get rid of the green checkmark from a nation, click the empty box.
By picking a country, you are not immediately connected to a VPN server. To do so, return to the Servers page and pick the server you want in a specific country. 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 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 the majority of apps show your current VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also reveals fine-grained details, such as the server’s location, load, existing 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 utilize a VPN with all the information they might ever want about the numerous locations, down to the variety of users on a particular server. It’s an invaluable resource.
Logs is a comprehensive record of connections, routes, and other data.
A million and one other settings are hidden in the app’s Settings menu. This allows you to fine-tune 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 attempt an SSH tunnel via more versatile ports such as 22, 80, and 443. Proxies, Tor assistance, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.
The truly experienced user can enter into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which enable, to name a few things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management Interface by means of the Logs pane.
If the vast feature list appears frightening, even if you are a VPN expert, it might be hard to figure out what particular settings do and how to get the desired results. In addition, it differs from any other service in regards to customization.
Nevertheless, don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie even if of its intricacy. Remember that the program generally works fine on its own, and you’ll never ever see the settings until you try to find them. If you occasionally yearn for power or configurability, the app will offer it.
Suppose you don’t wish 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 a very feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software offers the same extensive setup choices as its desktop sibling and practical status info.
Different pages for country and server lists are what the Android app lacks that the desktop versions provides. Instead, you can expand a country and pick a particular city on the exact same page. Some practical text additions make the information more easy to understand, but it’s still quite tough to comprehend 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 most people will ever need. The software application likewise tries a little bit more to help you, with extra text subtitles to explain 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 detecting when the VPN tunnel drops, alerting us with a desktop notice, 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 due to the fact that AirVPN just supports OpenVPN.
Reviewers have actually reported speeds to be excellent. Certainly, one stated there wasn’t a single country where they might complain about the speed. On the contrary, it was truly impressive overall.
While it wasn’t quite at the top tier for VPNs that use WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for many people, and scenarios like HD video, streaming, and video gaming conferencing definitely won’t slow you down.
What AirVPN does not have is a more comprehensive number of server places. This might limit the ease of access of neighboring servers for some users (which will constantly lead to much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an excellent choice for the majority of 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 powerful enough to bypass the VPN blocks utilized by Netflix in the U.S.A., whereas others do not.
Certainly, some report that Air is quite bad for streaming and doesn’t work with any of the significant streaming services. However, it appears to work with less-popular streaming apps like Peacock and Sony Crackle.
Another reviewer states services like BBC iPlayer and US Netflix hardly ever work, and when they do, finding the best server needs prolonged trial and error. This is probably due to the fact that, unlike other companies, AirVPN does not provide servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.
Luckily, on AirVPN’s site, 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 absolutely not an area in which AirVPN excels, merely because that’s not what the service is about, as they are more focused on privacy and security.
Does AirVPN Permit Torrenting?
Yes, it does; every internet 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 jump through. Merely connect to the VPN server of your option 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 Web.
File sharing has decent 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 leading torrenting clients like qBitTorrent and uTorrent.
AirVPN’s integrated kill switch, triggered by default, will block all traffic from exiting your device if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you won’t be sending unencrypted packets to the Internet. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is extremely hassle-free, particularly if you need to leave your connection unattended.
Reviewers have actually revealed torrenting to be impressive, smooth running with quick download and upload speeds, and with no issues whatsoever.
AirVPN Plans & Pricing
AirVPN offers a larger variety of plans than a lot of VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect as much as five gadgets 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 outstanding choice for people who reside in a family home or want to use a VPN on a public network. While five should suffice for most people, other VPN suppliers provide 7 or even 10 if you need more.
Rates differs based on the subscription length, and each plan consists of the same features. A lot of plans offer good value; however, longer memberships offer the best deal.
The standard pricing is in Euros. They use the European Central Bank to provide real-time exchange rates for those overseas, 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, including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Doge. Lots of worldwide alternatives are also 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 coupon 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 throughout that time.
AirVPN Customer Support
AirVPN has a different customer support offering than lots of other VPNs. While it doesn’t have live chat, it provides e-mail assistance and frequently asked questions (FAQs) and has an extremely active support online forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.
Importantly, AirVPN’s email assistance isn’t outsourced but can be a little inconsistent with the time it takes to get a reaction. That stated, the e-mail assistance is high quality, and the agents are friendly and useful, however the extensive answers can be quite technical, which might put off those new to VPNs.
AirVPN’s website has a lot of details, consisting of a big Frequently asked questions section that is broken up by subject.
AirVPN’s community forums cover various topics, however beginners will have the very same problems comprehending a great deal of the tech jargon in the posts.
AirVPN Pros & Cons
Pros:
No logging Whatsoever.
Outstanding 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 Support.
Active Community Online Forums and Detailed 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 very easy to use or attractive like other services.
Client app might overwhelm more recent users.
It is extremely 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?
The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, trusted, and safe VPN service with great prices. 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 provider. Even new users might do much, much worse.
While it could be challenging to utilize if you’re new to VPNs, you’ll receive much quicker speeds and better results than many of its rival VPN rivals.
This VPN service is more focused on protecting your personal privacy than unblocking streaming services like Netflix or Hulu when it comes down to it.
It may not ensure the same level of privacy and privacy as a service like Mullvad, which appoints you a random account number and enables you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still a good choice for customers who value their privacy.
While it doesn’t 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 option for online filesharing.
Highly recommended!
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AirVPN 101 – A Newcomer’s Guide To Deciding On The Ideal VPN Company
