Do you want to stay anonymous while surfing the web? AirVPN could be the best service for you if yes.
While anyone can claim to be special nowadays, when it comes to VPN providers, AirVPN shows that it truly is.
AirVPN stands apart 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, stating, “A VPN based on OpenVPN and operated by activists and hacktivists in defence of net neutrality, privacy and against censorship”.While anyone can claim to be distinct these days, when it comes to VPN companies, AirVPN shows that it really is.
They’ve been around a long time, since 2010, when it was started with the help of 2 lawyers and a little group of hackers and activists. The satellite communications supplier Iridium formerly ran it, but AirVPN took control of 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 business either.
Throughout their About Us and Mission pages, the business’s history is discussed and details the 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 unconventional route and breaks the mold by supplying a VPN developed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.
So how does AirVPN stack up against its competitors with such strong privacy qualifications?
AirVPN’s Key Features
Servers
AirVPN’s network is much smaller sized than most, with only 246 servers spread out throughout 23 countries.
Many 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 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 popular for its outstanding performance across its server network, with numerous nations having high-performance physical individual servers.
They use transparent bandwidth allocation strategies to offer an accurate assessment of performance, without any overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are totally unlimited, without any 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 reputable and safe and secure method to create encrypted tunnels. It uses more security than the military.
Many ports and protocols are 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 risky protocols.
No preference is given to any application, protocol, or service when it comes down to it. Net Neutrality is upheld. Significantly, you can overcome web constraints such as avoiding censorship, geographical restrictions, and traffic shaping.
The usage is OpenVPN is a big plus as it immediately improves users’ personal privacy and security and is highly trusted. However, the absence of WireGuard as standard may show Air isn’t rather keeping up with its competitors. That stated, AirVPN states it is testing WireGuard, however it won’t put the newer protocol fully in place until some of its technical and personal privacy concerns are attended to.
AirVPN has likewise added a lot for power users and tech-savvy individuals who like to experiment with things.
Switching is limitless, so if you don’t like one server, you can quickly change servers as often as you like.
You can monitor the current load on each server, any existing issues, and a history of previous issues on AirVPN’s network status page (which opens in a brand-new tab).
There is a detailed specifications page for AirVPN’s servers, with details 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, however since there is no third-party audit, you have to rely on that what is being used will work. However taking a look 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 people state about the service prior to signing up. You don’t 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 business is very clear. Online privacy and security are the outright top priority, with security from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that attack privacy. There is no individual details 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 collects non-identifiable “technical data” to keep the server running and enhance services, but you can ask for this info 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 determine what type of traffic or protocol you’re utilizing.
There’s no listening in, so you can connect to any wireless 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 methods will fail against AirVPN because your ISP and government will just see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.
They likewise say they stick to EU privacy guidelines and that any servers outside the EU will be treated with the same or greater levels of 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 find out who you are. You’ll stay safe with the top-level security supplied.
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 existing users are saying about the service before registering.
All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a huge plus. This means that anybody can check out AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, however only ProtonVPN’s apps have been inspected by a 3rd party.
Concerning security, AirVPN’s cryptography is arguably the best offered. It resembles that of some other companies, but still worth discussing. 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 happens every 60 minutes, and the user can reduce this value. The primary information channel utilizes AES-256-CBC encryption.
When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal information, not even your genuine email address. That’s terrific because it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. But know that you will not have the ability to alter 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). Even if the 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, offered on all major platforms and OSes, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Regardless of Eddie’s significant ability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t rather as excellent as those suppliers who utilize it as standard.
Setting up 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 hard to get things working, it does not have the most user-friendly user interface, so it may be a more challenging learning curve for unskilled users.
With Windows, there are a load of download options. There are builds for different 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 existing 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 ended up, you simply click Disconnect. Easy enough for anybody, however Eddie can do a lot more since AirVPN uses more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we’ve seen.
2 key AirVPN functions through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN enables you to connect when your computer launches, but you can’t pick 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 exact same thing. The distinction is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its safe and secure tunnel. A lot of basic 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 design is easy to understand. Along the top, there are six tabs: Overview, Servers, Countries, Speed, Stats, and Logs.
The Overview just 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, in addition to detailed details about every one, such as the server’s nickname, place, latency in milliseconds from your location, and present users and server load. Impressive stuff!
This tab likewise has an amber/green signal that lets you know whether a server is suggested for you.
The Countries page displays the number of servers readily available 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 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 essentially a favorites list; you may pick as lots of nations as you like.
If you click the red “x”, that nation will be removed, successfully making it a blocklist/denylist. To remove the green checkmark from a country, click the empty box.
By picking a country, you are not instantly connected to a VPN server. To do so, return to the Servers page and pick the server you want in a particular country. Then, connect to a server by marking it and clicking 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 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 many apps show your existing VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also shows fine-grained information, such as the server’s location, load, existing user count, protocol, port, encryption algorithm, session start time and length, IPv6 exit address, data uploaded and downloaded, and much more.
Power users, in particular, should value the ability to use a VPN with all the info they could ever desire about the various locations, down to the variety of users on a particular server. It’s a priceless resource.
Logs is a comprehensive record of connections, routes, and other data.
This enables you to tweak the setup, such as whether it must always connect when opened, which protocol to utilize between UDP and TCP, and which port number. Proxies, Tor support, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.
The truly proficient user can enter into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which permit, to name a few things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management User Interface via the Logs pane.
If the huge feature list appears scary, even if you are a VPN professional, it might be difficult to determine what particular settings do and how to get the wanted results. In addition, it is unlike any other service in terms of customization.
Do not dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just because of its complexity. Keep in mind that the program usually works fine on its own, and you’ll never see the settings until you try to find them. Nevertheless, if you occasionally crave power or configurability, the app will supply it.
Suppose you don’t want to utilize Eddie. In that case, you can also set up a router or firewall to send 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 utilize an extremely feature-rich Android VPN app rather. This software provides the exact same comprehensive configuration options as its desktop sibling and helpful status information.
Different pages for nation and server lists are what the Android app lacks that the desktop versions provides. Rather, you can expand a nation and choose a particular city on the very same page. Some valuable text additions make the details more reasonable, however it’s still rather 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 a lot more than the majority of people will ever require. The software application also attempts a little bit more to help you, with extra text subtitles to describe what each option does.
Speeds/Performance
Using OpenVPN, the Eddie Windows app from AirVPN usually connects rapidly and is ready to go in 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 regards to 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.
Due to the fact that AirVPN just supports OpenVPN, it was always going to be slower than the WireGuard-equipped competitors.
Reviewers have reported speeds to be outstanding. One stated there wasn’t a single nation where they could complain about the speed. On the contrary, it was truly impressive 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 video, video gaming, and streaming conferencing certainly won’t slow you down.
What AirVPN does not have is a broader variety of server locations. This might restrict the accessibility of nearby servers for some users (which will constantly result in better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an exceptional choice for most people in the United States and Europe, however maybe less so for other areas.
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 effective enough to bypass the VPN blocks utilized by Netflix in the U.S.A., whereas others do not.
Some report that Air is pretty bad for streaming and doesn’t work with any of the major streaming services. However, it appears to deal with less-popular streaming apps like Peacock and Sony Crackle.
Another reviewer says services like BBC iPlayer and US Netflix seldom work, and when they do, discovering the best server needs lengthy experimentation. This is most likely due to the fact that, unlike other companies, AirVPN does not provide servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.
Fortunately, 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 certainly not an area in which AirVPN stands out, simply since that’s not what the service is about, as they are more focused on personal privacy and security.
Does AirVPN Permit Torrenting?
Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. Simply connect to the VPN server of your choice and get going.
Plus, you can utilize port forwarding to improve your file-sharing performance. Several applications, such as BitTorrent and eMule clients, would run badly without it, and your computer’s shares might be inaccessible from the Internet.
File sharing has good speeds on local servers, allows 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 integrated 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 very hassle-free, especially if you need to leave your connection unattended.
Reviewers have actually revealed torrenting to be impressive, smooth running with fast download and upload speeds, and without any issues whatsoever.
AirVPN Plans & Prices
AirVPN offers a broader range of plans than many VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect up to 5 gadgets all at once, so you can connect your PC, phone, tablet, and a couple of other gadgets all at the same time.
This makes it an excellent choice for individuals who live in a household home or wish to utilize a VPN on a public network. While 5 really should be enough for the majority of people, other VPN service providers offer 7 or even 10 if you need more.
Rates varies based upon the subscription length, and each plan includes the exact same features. A lot of plans use good value; however, longer memberships provide the very best deal.
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 quickly converted to and spent for in the currency of your choice.
The present 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 global 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 using 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 utilized more than 5 GB of data throughout that time.
AirVPN Customer Support
AirVPN has a different customer assistance offering than many other VPNs. While it does not have live chat, it offers e-mail support and frequently asked questions (FAQs) and has an extremely active assistance forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.
Significantly, AirVPN’s e-mail support isn’t contracted out but can be a little inconsistent with the time it takes to get a response. That said, the e-mail support is high quality, and the representatives are friendly and valuable, but the detailed answers can be quite technical, which may put off those new to VPNs.
AirVPN’s site has a great deal of information, consisting of a big FAQs area that is separated by topic.
AirVPN’s community forums cover many different subjects, however newbies will have the exact same problems understanding a great deal of the tech lingo in the posts.
AirVPN Pros & Cons
Pros:
No logging Whatsoever.
Exceptional speeds with very little 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 setup and usage.
Many, many advanced settings and customization choices in the client app.
Solid Client Service.
Active Community Online Forums and Detailed Guides.
Good prices, particularly for longer-term plans.
Optional block lists shield you from advertisements, adware, trackers, and damaging sources.
Cons:
Only fully supports OpenVPN.
Client app isn’t extremely easy to use or attractive like other services.
Client app might overwhelm newer users.
It is really hit and miss with streaming services.
No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.
Perhaps there are too many advanced alternatives.
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, reputable, and safe VPN service with excellent pricing. It’s clearly tailored towards more power and advanced users, so those brand-new to VPNs will be much better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN service provider. But even 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 much better results than a lot of its competing VPN rivals.
This VPN service is more focused on safeguarding your privacy than unblocking streaming services like Netflix or Hulu when it comes down to it.
It might not ensure the same level of privacy and anonymity as a service like Mullvad, which appoints you a random account number and enables you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still a good option for consumers 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 outstanding choice for online filesharing.
Highly recommended!
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AirVPN 101 – A Newbie’s Guide To Selecting The Best VPN Service Provider
