Do you want to remain anonymous while surfing the web? If yes, then AirVPN could be the best option for you.
While anybody can claim to be unique these days, when it comes 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 site 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 anybody can declare to be distinct nowadays, when it pertains to VPN providers, AirVPN reveals that it truly is.
They have actually been around a very long time, since 2010, when it was started with the help of two lawyers and a little group of activists and hackers. The satellite communications service provider Iridium formerly ran it, however AirVPN took over in November 2012. According to the owner’s listing, AirVPN, based in Perugia, is presently owned by Paolo Brini (Italy).
Throughout 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 company’s history is described and information the 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 created by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.
How does AirVPN stack up versus its competitors with such strong privacy credentials?
AirVPN’s Key Features
Servers
AirVPN’s network is much smaller than many, with only 246 servers spread across 23 countries.
The majority of servers are in Europe (other than those in the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong). A small issue here is that the absence of variety of servers decreases the number of worldwide AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home nation while preserving their personal privacy.
That stated, Air is well known for its exceptional performance across its server network, with many nations having high-performance physical individual servers.
They use transparent bandwidth allocation methods to offer a precise evaluation of performance, with no overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are totally 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 reputable and secure method to create encrypted tunnels. It provides more security than the military.
Various ports and protocols are 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.
When it comes down to it, no preference is given to any service, protocol, or application. Net Neutrality is upheld. Importantly, you can get rid of internet restrictions such as avoiding censorship, geographical limitations, and traffic shaping.
The usage is OpenVPN is a big plus as it immediately improves users’ personal privacy and security and is extremely reputable. The absence of WireGuard as standard may reveal Air isn’t quite keeping up with its competitors. That said, AirVPN says it is evaluating WireGuard, but it won’t put the newer protocol totally in place until some of its technical and privacy problems are addressed.
AirVPN has also 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 easily switch servers as frequently as you like.
You can keep track of the existing load on each server, any existing concerns, and a history of previous issues on AirVPN’s network status page (which opens in a brand-new tab).
There is a detailed specs page for AirVPN’s servers, with information 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 considering that there is no third-party audit, you need to rely on that what is being provided will work. But taking a look at the active community forum or the detailed open-source clients puts your mind at ease.
A nice thing about 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 business is extremely clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online privacy and security are the absolute priority, with security from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that invade privacy. There is no personal 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 just gathers non-identifiable “technical data” to keep the server running and improve services, but you can ask for this info to be erased at any time. This makes it among the most privacy-friendly VPN services.
As a result, no one can identify you online; not even your ISP can determine what kind of traffic or protocol you’re utilizing.
There’s no listening in, so you can connect to any wireless 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 because your ISP and government will only see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.
They likewise say they follow EU privacy regulations which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the exact same or greater levels of personal privacy and data protection as those in the EU.
You can get a new IP address to hide your IP so that nobody can utilize it to learn who you are. You’ll stay safe with the high-level protection provided.
You can still connect to an AirVPN server through OpenVPN over SSH, SSL, or Tor if your ISP or nation blocks OpenVPN.
Open-source clients and a lively community forum allow you to get a sense of what existing users are stating about the service before signing up.
All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a big plus. This suggests that anyone can check out AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, but just ProtonVPN’s apps have been checked by a third party.
Relating to security, AirVPN’s cryptography is probably the very best available. It resembles that of some other providers, however still worth mentioning. The first exchange utilizes 4096-bit RSA to accomplish Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) through Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Following the first key negotiation, re-keying takes place every 60 minutes, and the user can lower this value. The main information channel employs AES-256-CBC encryption.
When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal information, not even your real e-mail address. That’s excellent because 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 countries that share intelligence information). Even if the government asked for user details, AirVPN would have nothing to give 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, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. In spite of Eddie’s substantial capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as excellent as those suppliers who use it as requirement.
Establishing the app is easy, and it has all the info 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 interface, so it may be a more challenging learning curve for inexperienced users.
With Windows, there are a ton of download options. There are builds for numerous operating 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 new and an archive of past releases in case the most present does not operate on your setup.
After launching it, choose ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest location. You just click Disconnect when you’re ended up. Easy enough for anybody, but Eddie can do a lot more because AirVPN provides 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 enables 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 picked last.
Although it defines “kill switch” throughout the settings, AirVPN has actually a tab called “network lock” that does the same thing. The difference is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its secure tunnel. Many standard kill switches just 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 6 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 shows all available servers in the network, in addition to in-depth info about every one, such as the server’s label, place, latency in milliseconds from your place, and present users and server load. Excellent stuff!
This tab likewise has an amber/green signal that lets you understand whether a server is recommended for you.
The Countries page displays the number of servers offered in each country at a look, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. Similar to the Servers page, the amber/green indicator is also revealed. Lots of 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 might choose as many nations as you like.
If you click the red “x”, that nation will be gotten rid of, effectively making it a blocklist/denylist. To remove the green checkmark from a nation, click the empty box.
By choosing 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 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 most apps display your current 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, information downloaded and uploaded, and much more.
Power users, in particular, should value the ability to utilize a VPN with all the details 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 comprehensive record of connections, routes, and other data.
This allows you to tweak the setup, such as whether it needs to always 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 competent user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which enable, to name a few things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management User Interface by means of the Logs pane.
If the vast feature list appears frightening, even if you are a VPN specialist, it might be hard to find out what particular settings do and how to get the wanted outcomes. In addition, it differs from any other service in terms of customization.
Do not dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie simply because of its complexity. Keep in mind that the program usually functions fine by itself, and you’ll never see the settings till you look for them. If you occasionally yearn for power or configurability, the app will offer 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 use an exceptionally feature-rich Android VPN app rather. This software application provides the exact same substantial configuration choices as its desktop sibling and practical status info.
Different pages for country and server lists are what the Android app does not have that the desktop versions provides. Rather, you can expand a nation and select a particular city on the very same page. Some handy text additions make the information more understandable, but it’s still rather tough to understand in some spots.
Android does not have as numerous settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still many more than most people will ever require. The software application also attempts a little bit more to help you, with additional text subtitles to describe what each alternative does.
Speeds/Performance
Using OpenVPN, the Eddie Windows app from AirVPN normally connects quickly and is ready to go in less than 10 seconds.
Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was good, with the app finding when the VPN tunnel drops, informing us with a desktop notification, and reconnecting us in seconds.
In regards to 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.
Since AirVPN only supports OpenVPN, it was always going to be slower than the WireGuard-equipped competition.
Reviewers have actually reported speeds to be outstanding. One said there wasn’t a single nation where they could complain about the speed. On the contrary, it was truly remarkable overall.
While it wasn’t rather at the top tier for VPNs that utilize WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for most people, and circumstances like HD video gaming, video, and streaming conferencing definitely will not slow you down.
What AirVPN lacks is a wider number of server locations. This might restrict the availability of nearby servers for some users (which will constantly result in better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an outstanding option for many people in the United States and Europe, but perhaps 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 USA, whereas others do not.
Certainly, some report that Air is pretty poor for streaming and doesn’t 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 rarely work, and when they do, discovering the ideal server requires lengthy trial and error. This is most likely since, unlike other suppliers, AirVPN doesn’t offer servers that are optimised for accessing streaming sites.
Thankfully, on AirVPN’s site, there is a list of ‘blocked websites’ that users can examine to see if the situation with these streaming sites ever changes.
Nevertheless, streaming is absolutely not an area in which AirVPN stands out, merely because 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, including peer-to-peer, is welcome. Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. There’s absolutely nothing to set up, no hoops to leap through. Merely connect to the VPN server of your choice and get going.
Plus, you can utilize port forwarding to enhance your file-sharing performance. Numerous applications, such as BitTorrent and eMule clients, would run badly without it, and your computer’s shares might be inaccessible from the Web.
File sharing has good speeds on local servers, allows port forwarding for as much as 20 ports simultaneously (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, activated by default, will obstruct all traffic from leaving your device if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you won’t be sending out unencrypted packets to the Web. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is extremely convenient, specifically if you need to leave your connection unattended.
Reviewers have shown torrenting to be remarkable, smooth running with quick download and upload speeds, and with no problems whatsoever.
AirVPN Plans & Pricing
AirVPN uses a wider range of plans than a lot of VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect as much as five devices all at once, so you can connect your PC, phone, tablet, and a couple of other devices all at the same time.
This makes it an exceptional choice for people who reside in a family house or wish to utilize a VPN on a public network. While 5 really should suffice for most people, other VPN suppliers provide 7 or even 10 if you require more.
Prices differs based upon the subscription length, and each plan includes the exact same features. A lot of plans provide good value; nevertheless, longer subscriptions offer the best deal.
The standard pricing is in Euros. Nevertheless, they use the European Central Bank to provide real-time exchange rates for those abroad, so it can be quickly converted 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 choices are also accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.
AirVPN offers a three-day totally free trial, which can be obtained by sending a message to the support team and using the discount coupon code they send you.
There’s likewise 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 support offering than numerous other VPNs. While it doesn’t have live chat, it offers e-mail assistance and frequently asked questions (FAQs) and has a really active support forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.
Notably, AirVPN’s email support isn’t contracted out however can be a little irregular with the time it requires to get an action. That said, the e-mail support is high quality, and the representatives are valuable and friendly, however the detailed answers can be quite technical, which might put off those brand-new to VPNs.
AirVPN’s site has a great deal of information, consisting of a large FAQs area that is separated by subject.
AirVPN’s community forums cover several subjects, however novices will have the same problems understanding a great deal of the tech jargon 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 Online Forums and In-depth Guides.
Excellent 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 extremely easy to use or pretty like other services.
Client app may overwhelm newer users.
It is very hit and miss with streaming services.
No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.
Perhaps there are a lot of advanced alternatives.
Found in 14-Eyes Nation.
Server numbers are reasonably low.
Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Best Option?
The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, reliable, and safe VPN service with good prices. It’s plainly geared towards more power and advanced users, so those brand-new to VPNs will be better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN service provider. But even brand-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 better results than many of its rival VPN rivals.
When it boils down to it, this VPN service is more focused on securing your personal privacy than unblocking streaming services like Netflix or Hulu.
Although it might not ensure the very same level of personal 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 a great choice for customers who value their personal privacy.
While it does not 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 outstanding option for online filesharing.
Highly recommended!
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