Do you wish to stay anonymous while surfing the web? If yes, then AirVPN could be the perfect service for you.
While anyone can declare to be distinct nowadays, when it pertains to VPN suppliers, AirVPN reveals that it really 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, mentioning, “A VPN based on OpenVPN and operated by activists and hacktivists in defence of net neutrality, privacy and against censorship”.While anybody can claim to be special these days, when it concerns VPN companies, AirVPN shows that it genuinely is.
They’ve 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 service provider Iridium formerly 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).
During 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 business’s history is discussed and details the personal privacy projects that AirVPN has actually 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 offering a VPN developed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.
So 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 than a lot of, with only 246 servers spread throughout 23 countries.
The majority of servers are in Europe (aside from those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A small concern here is that the lack of variety of servers minimizes the number of international AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home country while preserving their privacy.
That stated, Air is popular for its impressive performance across its server network, with lots of countries having high-performance physical individual servers.
They use transparent bandwidth allocation strategies to offer a precise assessment of performance, with no overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are totally unlimited, with no speed constraints or time limits.
To establish a connection between your machine and their servers, they utilize OpenVPN and WireGuard (in beta). OpenVPN is the most trusted and protected 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. Additionally, every Air server directly supports OpenVPN over SSH, OpenVPN over SSL, and OpenVPN over Tor. Forget about PPTP and other hazardous protocols.
No preference is given to any protocol, service, or application when it comes down to it. Net Neutrality is upheld. Notably, you can get rid of internet constraints such as avoiding censorship, geographic limitations, and traffic shaping.
The usage is OpenVPN is a big plus as it automatically improves users’ personal privacy and security and is extremely trustworthy. The absence of WireGuard as standard may show Air isn’t rather keeping up with its competitors. That said, AirVPN states it is evaluating WireGuard, but it will not put the newer protocol fully in place up until a few of its technical and privacy issues are addressed.
AirVPN has also added a lot for power users and tech-savvy people who like to experiment with things.
Switching is limitless, so if you do not like one server, you can quickly change servers as frequently as you like.
You can keep track of the existing load on each server, any existing problems, and a history of previous problems on AirVPN’s network status page (which opens in a new tab).
There is a comprehensive specs page for AirVPN’s servers, with details like the readily available ports, protocols, DNS server details (AirVPN has its own DNS server), and the IP addresses of each VPN server’s access points.
All of it is nice, however because there is no third-party audit, you need to rely on that what is being offered will work. But looking at the active community forum or the in-depth open-source clients puts your mind at ease.
A great aspect of this is that you can see what other individuals say about the service prior to registering. You don’t have to take their word for it or the word of an audit.
Just How Private Is AirVPN, & Does It Keep Logs?
The company is really clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online privacy and security are the absolute priority, with defense from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that invade personal privacy. There is no individual info 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 gathers non-identifiable “technical information” to keep the server running and enhance services, however you can ask 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 determine what kind of traffic or protocol you’re using.
There’s no listening in, so you can connect to any wi-fi network without worrying 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 only see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.
They likewise say they stick to EU privacy policies which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the exact same or greater levels of privacy and data protection as those in the EU.
You can get a brand-new IP address to conceal your IP so that nobody can utilize it to discover who you are. You’ll remain safe with the high-level security offered.
You can still connect to an AirVPN server through OpenVPN over SSH, SSL, or Tor if your ISP or country obstructs OpenVPN.
Open-source clients and a lively community online 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 means that anyone can look into AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, but only ProtonVPN’s apps have been examined by a third party.
Relating to security, AirVPN’s cryptography is arguably the best available. The very first exchange uses 4096-bit RSA to achieve Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) via Diffie-Hellman key exchange.
When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal info, not even your real email address. That’s excellent since it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. Be aware that you will not be able to change 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 nations that share intelligence information). Even if the federal government asked for user info, AirVPN would have absolutely nothing to offer them.
Who Or What Is Eddie??
The Eddie UI is the name of AirVPN’s primary open-source application, offered on all significant 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 good as those suppliers who use it as standard.
Establishing the app is easy, and it has all the info you require to connect to a VPN.
Unfortunately, there are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to guide you. While it’s not difficult to get things working, it doesn’t have the most user-friendly user interface, so it might be a more difficult learning curve for unskilled users.
With Windows, there are a heap of download options. There are builds for numerous running systems (from Windows XP to Windows 11), in 32- and 64-bit flavors, and in installable or portable formats. In addition, there’s a changelog to describe what’s brand-new and an archive of past releases in case the most current doesn’t work on your setup.
After launching it, choose ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest location. You simply click Disconnect when you’re finished. Simple enough for anyone, 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 essential AirVPN features through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN enables you to connect when your computer starts up, however you can’t choose which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you chosen 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 protected tunnel. A lot of 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 design is easy to understand. Along the top, there are six tabs: Overview, Servers, Countries, Speed, Stats, and Logs.
The Overview merely 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 comprehensive info about each one, such as the server’s nickname, location, latency in milliseconds from your location, and existing users and server load. Remarkable stuff!
This tab likewise has an amber/green signal that lets you know whether a server is recommended for you.
The Countries page displays the number of servers offered 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 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 found 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 choose as numerous nations 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 nation, click the empty box.
By picking a country, you are not right away 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 displays a simple 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 present VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also reveals 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 far more.
Power users, in particular, should value the capability to utilize a VPN with all the details they could ever desire about the numerous locations, down to the number of users on a particular server. It’s a valuable resource.
Finally, Logs is a detailed record of connections, routes, and other information.
A million and one other settings are hidden in the app’s Settings menu. This enables you to tweak 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 really skilled user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which enable, among other things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management Interface through the Logs pane.
If the huge feature list appears scary, even if you are a VPN professional, it might be difficult to determine what specific settings do and how to get the wanted results. In addition, it differs from any other service in terms of customization.
Nevertheless, do not dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just because of its complexity. Keep in mind that the program typically functions fine on its own, and you’ll never ever see the settings up until you look for them. If you sometimes yearn for power or configurability, the app will provide it.
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 an extremely feature-rich Android VPN app rather. This software supplies the same substantial setup options as its desktop sibling and practical 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 country and pick a particular city on the very same page. Some helpful text additions make the information more understandable, however it’s still rather challenging to comprehend 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 need. The software likewise attempts a little bit more to help you, with extra text subtitles to discuss what each option does.
Speeds/Performance
Using OpenVPN, the Eddie Windows app from AirVPN usually connects quickly 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 notice, and reconnecting us in seconds.
In terms of 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 only supports OpenVPN.
Reviewers have reported speeds to be exceptional. One said there wasn’t a single country where they might grumble about the speed. On the contrary, it was truly remarkable 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 scenarios like HD streaming, video gaming, and video conferencing definitely will not slow you down.
What AirVPN does not have is a wider variety of server places. This may limit the accessibility of neighboring servers for some users (which will always lead to much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an excellent choice for many people in the United States and Europe, but perhaps 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 effective enough to bypass the VPN blocks used by Netflix in the USA, whereas others do not.
Some report that Air is pretty poor for streaming and doesn’t work with any of the major streaming services. Nevertheless, 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 since, unlike other providers, AirVPN does not offer servers that are optimised for accessing streaming sites.
Thankfully, 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.
However, streaming is definitely not an area in which AirVPN excels, simply because that’s not what the service is about, as they are more concentrated on personal privacy and security.
Does AirVPN Permit 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 configure, no hoops to jump through. Just 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 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 simultaneously (which lets you connect to more peers for faster speeds), and works with top 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 out unencrypted packets to the Internet. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is extremely convenient, particularly if you need to leave your connection unattended.
Reviewers have revealed torrenting to be outstanding, smooth running with quick download and upload speeds, and with no problems whatsoever.
AirVPN Plans & Prices
AirVPN uses a larger range of plans than a lot of VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect up to five 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 people who live in a household home or want to use a VPN on a public network. While five really should be enough for many people, other VPN companies offer 7 or even 10 if you need more.
Pricing varies based upon the subscription length, and each plan consists of the exact same features. Most plans provide good value; however, longer subscriptions use the very best offer.
The standard pricing is in Euros. However, they utilize the European Central Bank to supply real-time exchange rates for those abroad, so it can be quickly converted to and paid for in the currency of your choice.
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 global 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 discount 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 during that time.
AirVPN Customer Support
AirVPN has a different customer assistance offering than many other VPNs. While it doesn’t have live chat, it offers email assistance and frequently asked questions (FAQs) and has an extremely active assistance forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.
Importantly, AirVPN’s e-mail assistance isn’t outsourced but can be a little irregular with the time it requires to get a reaction. That stated, the e-mail assistance is high quality, and the agents are useful and friendly, but the extensive responses can be pretty technical, which might put off those new to VPNs.
AirVPN’s site has a lot of details, consisting of a large Frequently asked questions section that is separated by topic.
AirVPN’s community forums cover many different subjects, but newbies will have the exact same troubles understanding a great deal of the tech lingo in the posts.
AirVPN Pros & Cons
Pros:
No logging Whatsoever.
Outstanding speeds with minimal loss.
Unrestricted 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 setup and usage.
Many, many advanced settings and customization options in the client app.
Solid Customer Care.
Active Community Forums and Detailed Guides.
Good costs, especially for longer-term plans.
Optional block lists shield you from advertisements, adware, trackers, and hazardous sources.
Cons:
Only fully supports OpenVPN.
Client app isn’t very easy to use or pretty like other services.
Client app may overwhelm more recent users.
It is extremely hit and miss with streaming services.
No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.
Possibly there are too many advanced choices.
Located 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, trustworthy, and safe VPN service with great pricing. It’s plainly geared 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 provider. However even new users might 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 much of its competing VPN rivals.
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 very same level of privacy and anonymity 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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