AirVPN Vs Norton VPN (2022) – “The Winner Is”

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Do you wish to stay anonymous while surfing the web? If yes, then AirVPN could be the perfect option for you.

While anyone can declare to be unique these days, when it comes to VPN suppliers, AirVPN shows that it truly is.

AirVPN stands out from other VPN services because of its commitment to safeguarding user privacy. Right 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 claim to be unique nowadays, when it comes to VPN companies, AirVPN shows that it really is.

AirVPN Home Page

They have actually been around a long time, since 2010, when it was begun with the help of 2 lawyers and a little group of activists and hackers. The satellite communications service provider Iridium previously ran it, however 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 bigger organization either.

Throughout their About Us and Mission pages, the business’s history is discussed and information 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 non-traditional route and breaks the mold by supplying a VPN developed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

So how does AirVPN compare to its rivals with such strong privacy credentials?

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

AirVPN’s network is much smaller sized than most, with just 246 servers spread throughout 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 absence of variety of servers reduces the number of worldwide AirVPN users who might access geo-restricted services in their home nation while keeping their personal privacy.

AirVPN Servers

That said, Air is popular for its impressive performance throughout its server network, with many countries having high-performance physical individual servers.

They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation strategies to offer a precise assessment of performance, without any overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are entirely 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 secure and reliable way to create encrypted tunnels. It offers more security than the military.

Numerous ports and protocols are offered; 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 hazardous protocols.

When it comes down to it, no choice is given to any application, service, or protocol. Net Neutrality is maintained. Significantly, you can get rid of web restrictions such as avoiding censorship, geographical constraints, and traffic shaping.

The usage is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it automatically enhances users’ personal privacy and security and is extremely trustworthy. The lack of WireGuard as standard may show Air isn’t rather keeping up with its competitors. That stated, AirVPN states it is evaluating WireGuard, but it will not put the newer protocol totally in place till a few of its technical and privacy problems are addressed.

AirVPN has actually likewise 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 quickly switch servers as often as you like.

You can monitor the present 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 a detailed specs page for AirVPN’s servers, with details like the 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 need to rely on that what is being used will work. Looking at the active community forum or the detailed open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A nice aspect of this is that you can see what other people 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?

When it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy, the business is very clear. Online personal privacy and security are the outright top priority, with security from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that invade privacy. There is no individual information 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 only collects non-identifiable “technical information” to keep the server running and improve services, but you can request for this info 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 utilizing.

There’s no listening in, so you can connect to any wireless network without fretting about your computer and the Wi-Fi hotspot spying on your data.

Even the most ruthless surveillance, censoring, throttling, and traffic shaping techniques will fail versus AirVPN because your ISP and government will only see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.

They likewise state they adhere to EU personal privacy policies 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 new IP address to conceal your IP so that no one can utilize it to learn who you are. You’ll remain safe with the top-level protection supplied.

You can still connect to an AirVPN server through OpenVPN over SSH, SSL, or Tor if your ISP or nation obstructs OpenVPN.

Open-source clients and a lively community forum enable you to get a sense of what present users are stating about the service prior to signing up.

All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a huge plus. This suggests that anybody 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.

Concerning security, AirVPN’s cryptography is arguably the best available. The very first exchange uses 4096-bit RSA to accomplish Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) by means of 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 great considering that it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. Be mindful that you won’t be able 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 federal government asked for user details, AirVPN would have nothing to offer them.

Who Or What Is Eddie??

The Eddie UI is the name of AirVPN’s primary open-source application, readily available on all major platforms and OSes, consisting of Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Regrettably, in spite of Eddie’s substantial capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as good as those suppliers who utilize it as standard.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

Setting up the app is easy, and it has all the info you require to connect to a VPN.

Sadly, there are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to direct you. While it’s not difficult to get things working, it does not have the most easy to use interface, so it might be a more difficult 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 flavors, and in portable or installable formats. In addition, there’s a changelog to describe what’s 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 place. You just click Disconnect when you’re finished. Simple enough for anyone, however Eddie can do a lot more given that AirVPN provides more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we’ve seen.

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

Two key AirVPN functions through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN permits you to connect when your computer starts up, however you can’t select which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you selected last.

Although it defines “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. Many standard 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 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 displays all offered servers in the network, together with comprehensive details about every one, such as the server’s label, area, latency in milliseconds from your location, and present users and server load. Outstanding stuff!

This tab also has an amber/green signal that lets you know whether a server is suggested for you.

The Countries page shows the number of servers available in each nation at a glimpse, together with an indicator of server load and user numbers. Just like the Servers page, the amber/green indicator is also shown. Numerous 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 discovered on the right rail of the Countries tab. Highlight a nation, click the green checkmark, and the servers for that country will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is essentially a favorites list; you may select as many countries as you like.

If you click the red “x”, that nation will be eliminated, efficiently making it a blocklist/denylist. To remove the green checkmark from a country, click the empty box.

By picking a country, you are not immediately 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 an easy 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 existing VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also shows fine-grained details, such as the server’s location, load, present 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 utilize a VPN with all the info they might ever want about the different locations, down to the variety of users on a particular server. It’s a priceless resource.

Lastly, Logs is a detailed 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 flexible ports such as 22, 80, and 443. Proxies, Tor assistance, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

The truly experienced user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which allow, among other things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management User Interface via the Logs pane.

If the vast function list appears scary, even if you are a VPN specialist, it might be difficult to determine what particular settings do and how to get the desired results. In addition, it differs from any other service in regards to personalization.

Don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just due to the fact that of its intricacy. Keep in mind that the program generally functions fine on its own, and you’ll never ever see the settings until you look for them. If you sometimes yearn for power or configurability, the app will supply it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

Suppose you do not want 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 supplies the exact same comprehensive setup choices as its desktop sibling and practical status information.

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 country and pick a particular city on the same page. Some useful text additions make the information more easy to understand, but it’s still rather difficult to comprehend 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 need. The software application also tries a bit more to assist you, with additional text subtitles to discuss what each option does.

Speeds/Performance

Utilizing OpenVPN, the Eddie Windows app from AirVPN typically connects quickly and is ready to go in less than 10 seconds.

Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was excellent, with the app discovering when the VPN tunnel drops, alerting us with a desktop notice, and reconnecting us in seconds.

In terms of 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.

Since AirVPN only supports OpenVPN, it was always going to be slower than the WireGuard-equipped competitors.

Reviewers have actually reported speeds to be excellent. Undoubtedly, one stated there wasn’t a single nation where they could complain about the speed. On the contrary, it was really impressive overall.

While it wasn’t quite on top tier for VPNs that utilize WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for the majority of people, and circumstances like HD video, streaming, and video gaming conferencing absolutely won’t slow you down.

What AirVPN lacks is a broader variety of server places. This may limit the ease of access of close-by servers for some users (which will always lead to better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an exceptional option for many people in the United States and Europe, but possibly less so for other areas.

Streaming

Streaming the big services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Apple TV, 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 USA, whereas others do not.

Some report that Air is quite poor 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 says services like BBC iPlayer and US Netflix seldom work, and when they do, finding the right server requires lengthy experimentation. 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 examine to see if the situation with these streaming sites ever changes.

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 Allow P2P?

Yes, it does; every web protocol, consisting of peer-to-peer, is welcome. Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. There’s nothing to set up, no hoops to jump through. Simply connect to the VPN server of your option and start.

Plus, you can utilize port forwarding to enhance your file-sharing performance. A number of applications, such as BitTorrent and eMule clients, would run badly without it, and your computer system’s shares might be inaccessible from the Internet.

File sharing has good speeds on regional servers, enables port forwarding for as much as 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 built-in kill switch, triggered by default, will block all traffic from leaving your gadget 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 outstanding, smooth running with fast download and upload speeds, and without any concerns whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Prices

AirVPN uses a wider variety of plans than most VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect as much as 5 devices 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 family home or wish to utilize a VPN on a public network. While five really should be enough for most people, other VPN companies offer 7 or even 10 if you require more.

Prices differs based upon the membership length, and each plan includes the same features. A lot of plans offer good value; nevertheless, longer subscriptions offer the best offer.

The standard pricing is in Euros. However, they use the European Central Bank to offer real-time currency exchange rate for those abroad, so it can be easily transformed to and paid for in the currency of your option.

The present plans 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 complimentary 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 Assistance

AirVPN has a different customer support offering than numerous other VPNs. While it doesn’t have live chat, it provides email support and frequently asked questions (FAQs) and has an extremely active assistance forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.

Notably, AirVPN’s e-mail assistance isn’t outsourced however can be a little inconsistent with the time it takes to get an action. That stated, the e-mail support is high quality, and the agents are useful and friendly, however the detailed answers can be pretty technical, which may put off those brand-new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s website has a great deal of details, consisting of a large FAQs area that is broken up by subject.

AirVPN’s community forums cover various topics, however beginners will have the exact same difficulties comprehending a lot of the tech lingo in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Exceptional speeds with very little 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 setup and use.

Many, many advanced settings and customization choices in the client app.

Solid Customer Service.

Active Community Forums and In-depth Guides.

Good costs, especially for longer-term plans.

Optional block lists shield you from ads, 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.

Maybe there are too many advanced choices.

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, trusted, and safe VPN service with great rates. It’s plainly tailored towards more power and advanced users, so those brand-new to VPNs will be better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN provider. Even brand-new users could do much, much worse.

While it could be challenging to use if you’re new to VPNs, you’ll get much quicker speeds and better results than a number of its rival VPN rivals.

This VPN service is more focused on securing your personal privacy than unblocking streaming services like Netflix or Hulu when it comes down to it.

Although it may not guarantee the exact same level of privacy and anonymity as a service like Mullvad, which assigns 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 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 outstanding choice for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

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AirVPN Review 2022 – Not Bad, But What’s The Drawback?