Do you wish to stay anonymous while surfing the web? AirVPN might be the ideal option for you if yes.
While anyone can declare to be distinct nowadays, when it concerns VPN suppliers, AirVPN shows that it truly is.
AirVPN stands apart from other VPN services because of its commitment to securing user privacy. From the start, the AirVPN website starts 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 anyone can declare to be special nowadays, when it comes to VPN companies, AirVPN reveals that it really is.
They have actually been around a very long time, since 2010, when it was begun with the help of 2 lawyers and a small group of hackers and activists. The satellite communications company 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).
During the last decade, it hasn’t been dogged by security scandals like some VPNs have. Nor has it been acquired by a larger organization either.
Across their About Us and Mission pages, the business’s history is described and information the 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 non-traditional route and breaks the mold by supplying a VPN created by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.
So how does AirVPN stack up against its rivals 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 across 23 countries.
A lot of servers are in Europe (aside from those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A small problem here is that the lack of diversity of servers reduces the number of worldwide AirVPN users who might access geo-restricted services in their home nation while keeping their personal privacy.
That stated, Air is popular for its exceptional performance across its server network, with lots of nations having high-performance physical individual servers.
They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation strategies to supply a precise assessment of performance, with no overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are completely unlimited, without any speed restrictions or time limits.
To establish a connection between your machine and their servers, they use OpenVPN and WireGuard (in beta). OpenVPN is the most dependable and secure method to create encrypted tunnels. It provides more security than the military.
Many ports and protocols are readily available; they use OpenVPN on the following ports: 80 TCP/UDP, 443 TCP/UDP, and 53 TCP/UDP. Every Air server directly supports OpenVPN over SSH, OpenVPN over SSL, and OpenVPN over Tor. Forget about PPTP and other risky protocols.
No choice is given to any service, protocol, or application when it comes down to it. Net Neutrality is maintained. Significantly, you can get rid of web constraints such as avoiding censorship, geographical restrictions, and traffic shaping.
The usage is OpenVPN is a big plus as it immediately enhances users’ privacy and security and is highly trustworthy. However, the lack of WireGuard as standard may reveal Air isn’t quite staying up to date with its rivals. That said, AirVPN states it is evaluating WireGuard, but it will not put the more recent protocol fully in place up until a few of its technical and privacy issues are dealt with.
AirVPN has also added a lot for power users and tech-savvy people who like to try out things.
Switching is unlimited, so if you don’t like one server, you can quickly change servers as frequently as you like.
You can monitor the current load on each server, any existing issues, and a history of previous problems 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 offered ports, protocols, DNS server details (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 need to rely on that what is being used will work. But looking at the active community forum or the in-depth open-source clients puts your mind at ease.
A nice thing about this is that you can see what other people say 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?
When it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy, the company is very clear. Online personal privacy and security are the absolute top priority, with protection from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that attack personal privacy. There is no individual 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 collects non-identifiable “technical information” to keep the server running and enhance services, however you can request this information to be erased 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 kind of traffic or protocol you’re using.
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 tactics will fail against AirVPN since your ISP and government will just see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.
They also state they comply with EU privacy guidelines which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the exact same or greater levels of privacy and information protection as those in the EU.
You can get a brand-new IP address to hide your IP so that no one can utilize it to find out who you are. You’ll remain safe with the top-level security 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 allow 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 anybody can look into 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.
Regarding security, AirVPN’s cryptography is arguably the best offered. The first exchange utilizes 4096-bit RSA to attain Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) by means of Diffie-Hellman key exchange.
When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal details, not even your genuine email address. That’s excellent since it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. Be aware that you won’t be able to alter your account’s password if you don’t utilize 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 info, AirVPN would have absolutely nothing to provide them.
Who Or What Is Eddie??
The Eddie UI is the name of AirVPN’s primary open-source application, available on all major platforms and OSes, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Regrettably, regardless of Eddie’s considerable capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as good as those suppliers who use it as requirement.
Setting up the app is easy, and it has all the details you require to connect to a VPN.
Regrettably, there are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to direct you. While it’s not hard to get things working, it doesn’t have the most easy to use user interface, so it might be a more tough learning curve for inexperienced users.
With Windows, there are a load of download choices. There are builds for numerous operating 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 current does not function on your setup.
After introducing it, choose ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest place. You simply click Disconnect when you’re completed. Simple enough for anybody, however Eddie can do so much more since AirVPN uses more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we’ve seen.
2 crucial 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 select which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you picked last.
Despite the fact that it specifies “kill switch” throughout 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 standard kill switches just do this when the VPN is on, however 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 6 tabs: Overview, Servers, Countries, Speed, Stats, and Logs.
The Overview just 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 shows all readily available servers in the network, along with in-depth info about every one, such as the server’s nickname, area, latency in milliseconds from your location, and existing users and server load. Impressive stuff!
This tab also has an amber/green signal that lets you understand whether a server is suggested for you.
The Countries page shows the variety of servers available in each country at a glimpse, together with an indicator of server load and user numbers. Just like 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 numerous nations as you like.
If you click the red “x”, that country will be eliminated, successfully making it a blocklist/denylist. To eliminate the green checkmark from a nation, click the empty box.
By choosing a country, you are not instantly connected to a VPN server. To do so, return to the Servers page and choose the server you want in a particular country. 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 details on ping times and load times.
The Speed tab displays 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 many apps show your current VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also shows fine-grained information, such as the server’s location, load, current 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 info they could ever desire about the different locations, down to the number of users on a specific server. It’s a valuable resource.
Logs is a detailed record of connections, routes, and other data.
This permits you to fine-tune the setup, such as whether it needs to constantly connect when opened, which protocol to use between UDP and TCP, and which port number. Proxies, Tor support, custom-made DNS servers, and routes can be modified.
The genuinely knowledgeable user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which permit, among other things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management User Interface by means of the Logs pane.
If the vast function list appears frightening, even if you are a VPN specialist, it might be tough to figure out what specific settings do and how to get the wanted results. In addition, it differs from any other service in terms of personalization.
Nevertheless, don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just because of its intricacy. Remember that the program normally functions fine on its own, and you’ll never see the settings up until you search for them. Nevertheless, if you occasionally long for power or configurability, the app will supply 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 instead. This software application supplies the same substantial setup options as its desktop sibling and valuable status info.
Separate pages for nation and server lists are what the Android app does not have that the desktop versions provides. Rather, you can expand a country and select a specific city on the very same page. Some handy text additions make the information more easy to understand, however it’s still quite challenging to understand in some spots.
Android does not have as numerous settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still a lot more than most people will ever require. The software also attempts a little more to assist you, with additional text subtitles to explain what each option does.
Speeds/Performance
Utilizing OpenVPN, the Eddie Windows app from AirVPN usually connects quickly and is ready to enter less than 10 seconds.
Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was great, with the app spotting when the VPN tunnel drops, alerting 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 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 only supports OpenVPN.
Reviewers have actually reported speeds to be excellent. One stated there wasn’t a single country where they might complain about the speed. On the contrary, it was truly outstanding overall.
While it wasn’t quite on top tier for VPNs that use WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for many people, and scenarios like HD streaming, video, and gaming conferencing definitely will not slow you down.
What AirVPN lacks is a more comprehensive number of server places. This may limit the ease of access of nearby servers for some users (which will constantly lead to much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an excellent option for most people in the United States and Europe, however maybe 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 been a mixed bag for reviewers. Some report that AirVPN is effective enough to bypass the VPN blocks utilized by Netflix in the U.S.A., whereas others do not.
Some report that Air is quite 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 states services like BBC iPlayer and United States Netflix hardly ever work, and when they do, finding the best server needs prolonged trial and error. This is probably because, unlike other service providers, 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 check to see if the situation with these streaming sites ever changes.
Nevertheless, streaming is certainly not an area in which AirVPN excels, just since that’s not what the service is about, as they are more focused on privacy and security.
Does AirVPN Permit Torrenting?
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 enhance your file-sharing performance. Numerous applications, such as BitTorrent and eMule clients, would run badly without it, and your computer system’s shares might be inaccessible from the Web.
File sharing has good speeds on local servers, allows port forwarding for up to 20 ports simultaneously (which lets you connect to more peers for faster speeds), and works with top torrenting clients like qBitTorrent and uTorrent.
AirVPN’s built-in kill switch, activated 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 practical, particularly if you need to leave your connection unattended.
Reviewers have actually shown torrenting to be impressive, smooth running with fast download and upload speeds, and without any problems whatsoever.
AirVPN Plans & Rates
AirVPN uses a wider variety of plans than most 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 gadgets all at the same time.
This makes it an outstanding option for people who live in a household home or want to utilize a VPN on a public network. While five should suffice for many people, other VPN providers offer 7 or even 10 if you need more.
Rates varies based on the subscription length, and each plan consists of the same features. Most plans provide good value; however, longer subscriptions use the very best deal.
The standard pricing is in Euros. Nevertheless, they utilize the European Central Bank to supply real-time exchange rates for those overseas, so it can be easily converted to and paid for in the currency of your choice.
The existing 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, 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 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 used 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 doesn’t have live chat, it uses 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 support isn’t outsourced however can be a little inconsistent with the time it requires to get a response. That said, the email assistance is high quality, and the agents are friendly and valuable, but the detailed answers can be quite technical, which might put off those new to VPNs.
AirVPN’s site has a great deal of info, consisting of a large FAQs area that is broken up by topic.
AirVPN’s community forums cover various topics, but beginners will have the same problems understanding a lot of the tech jargon in the posts.
AirVPN Pros & Cons
Pros:
No logging Whatsoever.
Exceptional speeds with minimal loss.
Unrestricted P2P permitted 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.
Solid Customer Support.
Active Community Forums and In-depth Guides.
Good costs, especially for longer-term plans.
Optional block lists protect you from advertisements, adware, trackers, and harmful sources.
Cons:
Only fully supports OpenVPN.
Client app isn’t very easy to use or pretty 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.
Perhaps there are too many advanced options.
Located in 14-Eyes Country.
Server numbers are reasonably low.
Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Best Option?
So the bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, trustworthy, and safe VPN service with good prices. 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 supplier. Even brand-new users could do much, much worse.
While it could be challenging to use if you’re brand-new to VPNs, you’ll receive much quicker speeds and much better results than a number of its competing 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.
Although it may not ensure the same level of privacy and anonymity as a service like Mullvad, which assigns you a random account number and allows you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still a good alternative for customers who value their personal privacy.
While it doesn’t hit the speed heights of a WireGuard service, performance-wise, it’s definitely the best purely OpenVPN service out there. In addition to being an excellent choice for online filesharing.
Highly recommended!
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