Do you want to stay anonymous while surfing the web? If yes, then AirVPN could be the ideal service for you.
While anybody can claim to be special these days, when it comes to VPN providers, AirVPN shows that it truly is.
AirVPN stands apart from other VPN services because of its dedication to safeguarding user privacy. Right from the start, the AirVPN website begins 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 unique nowadays, when it pertains to VPN suppliers, AirVPN reveals that it genuinely is.
They’ve been around a long time, since 2010, when it was started with the help of two lawyers and a small group of hackers and activists. The satellite communications provider Iridium previously 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).
Throughout 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.
Across their About Us and Mission pages, the business’s history is discussed and details 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 unconventional route and breaks the mold by providing a VPN developed 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 throughout 23 countries.
A lot of servers are in Europe (besides those in the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong). A small issue here is that the lack of diversity of servers minimizes the number of international AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home country while preserving their privacy.
That said, Air is popular for its impressive performance across its server network, with many countries having high-performance physical individual servers.
They use transparent bandwidth allocation techniques to provide a precise evaluation of performance, with no overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are completely unlimited, with no 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 reliable and secure way to create encrypted tunnels. It provides more security than the military.
Numerous 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. So forget about PPTP and other hazardous protocols.
No choice is given to any application, service, or protocol when it comes down to it. Net Neutrality is maintained. Notably, you can get rid of web restrictions such as avoiding censorship, geographic constraints, and traffic shaping.
The usage is OpenVPN is a big plus as it instantly improves users’ privacy and security and is highly reputable. However, the lack of WireGuard as standard might show Air isn’t quite staying up to date with its rivals. That stated, AirVPN states it is testing WireGuard, however it will not put the more recent protocol completely in place up until a few of its technical and personal privacy problems are addressed.
AirVPN has actually likewise added a lot for power users and tech-savvy individuals who like to try out things.
Switching is limitless, so if you do not like one server, you can quickly switch 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 issues on AirVPN’s network status page (which opens in a new tab).
There is a comprehensive specs page for AirVPN’s servers, with information like the available ports, protocols, DNS server info (AirVPN has its own DNS server), and the IP addresses of each VPN server’s access points.
All of it is nice, but given that there is no third-party audit, you need to trust that what is being provided will work. Looking at the active community online forum or the in-depth open-source clients puts your mind at ease.
A good aspect of this is that you can see what other individuals state about the service prior to registering. You do not 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 personal privacy and security are the absolute top priority, with protection from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that invade personal privacy. There is no personal 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 just gathers non-identifiable “technical data” to keep the server running and enhance services, but you can ask for this info 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 tell what sort 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 and the Wi-Fi hotspot spying on your data.
Even the most ruthless surveillance, censoring, throttling, and traffic shaping techniques will fail versus AirVPN since your ISP and government will only see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.
They likewise state they stick to EU personal privacy policies and that any servers outside the EU will be treated with the very same or greater levels of privacy and data protection as those in the EU.
You can get a new IP address to conceal your IP so that no one can use it to learn who you are. You’ll remain safe with the high-level security provided.
You can still connect to an AirVPN server through OpenVPN over SSH, SSL, or Tor if your ISP or country blocks OpenVPN.
Open-source clients and a lively community forum enable you to get a sense of what existing users are saying about the service before signing up.
All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a huge plus. This suggests that anybody can check out AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, however just ProtonVPN’s apps have actually been inspected by a 3rd party.
Concerning security, AirVPN’s cryptography is perhaps the finest offered. The first exchange utilizes 4096-bit RSA to attain 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 e-mail address. That’s great considering that it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. But know that you won’t be able to alter your account’s password if you don’t use one.
Italy, where AirVPN is based, belongs to the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliances (a group of nations that share intelligence information). Even if the 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 main open-source application, available on all significant platforms and OSes, consisting of Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. In spite of Eddie’s significant ability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t rather as excellent as those providers who use it as standard.
Setting up the app is easy, and it has all the information you need to connect to a VPN.
Unfortunately, there are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to assist 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 tough learning curve for inexperienced users.
With Windows, there are a load of download choices. There are builds for different running 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 brand-new and an archive of past releases in case the most current doesn’t operate on your setup.
After introducing it, choose ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest area. You simply click Disconnect when you’re completed. Easy enough for anybody, however Eddie can do so much more because AirVPN offers more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we have actually seen.
Two essential AirVPN features through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN allows you to connect when your computer starts up, however you can’t pick which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you selected last.
Despite the fact that it specifies “kill switch” anywhere in the settings, AirVPN has 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 safe tunnel. Many basic kill switches only 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 six tabs: Overview, Servers, Countries, Speed, Stats, and Logs.
The Overview merely 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, in addition to comprehensive information about every one, such as the server’s nickname, area, latency in milliseconds from your place, and existing users and server load. Remarkable stuff!
This tab likewise has an amber/green signal that lets you understand whether a server is suggested for you.
The Countries page shows the variety of servers readily available in each nation at a glimpse, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. Just like the Servers page, the amber/green indicator is likewise 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 may pick as numerous nations as you like.
If you click the red “x”, that country will be eliminated, effectively making it a blocklist/denylist. To remove the green checkmark from a country, click the empty box.
By choosing a country, you are not right away connected to a VPN server. To do so, go back to the Servers page and select the server you want in a particular nation. 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 changed, so you can see traffic from the last 10 seconds to one day.
While a lot of apps display your present VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also shows fine-grained information, such as the server’s location, load, present user count, protocol, port, encryption algorithm, session start time and length, IPv6 exit address, data downloaded and uploaded, and a lot more.
Power users, in particular, should value the capability to use a VPN with all the information they might ever want about the numerous locations, down to the number of users on a particular server. It’s a priceless resource.
Finally, Logs is an in-depth 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 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 support, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.
The really skilled user can enter into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which allow, among other things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management Interface through the Logs pane.
If the large feature list appears scary, even if you are a VPN specialist, it might be hard to figure out what particular settings do and how to get the preferred results. In addition, it is unlike any other service in regards to personalization.
Nevertheless, do not dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just because of its intricacy. Bear in mind that the program generally operates fine on its own, and you’ll never ever see the settings up until you look for them. If you occasionally yearn for power or configurability, the app will provide it.
Suppose you don’t wish 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?
Although there isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can use an extremely feature-rich Android VPN app rather. This software application offers the same extensive setup choices as its desktop sibling and practical status details.
Different 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 pick a particular city on the same page. Some helpful text additions make the info more understandable, however it’s still quite difficult to understand in some spots.
Android does not have as many settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still a lot more than the majority of people will ever need. The software likewise attempts a little bit more to help you, with extra text subtitles to explain what each choice does.
Speeds/Performance
Utilizing 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 good, with the app identifying when the VPN tunnel drops, notifying us with a desktop notification, and reconnecting us in seconds.
In regards to personal 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.
It was always going to be slower than the WireGuard-equipped competitors since AirVPN just supports OpenVPN.
Nevertheless, reviewers have reported speeds to be excellent. Indeed, one stated there wasn’t a single country where they could grumble about the speed. On the contrary, it was really remarkable overall.
While it wasn’t rather at the 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 definitely won’t slow you down.
What AirVPN lacks is a wider variety of server places. This may limit the availability of close-by servers for some users (which will constantly lead to better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an exceptional option for most people in the United States and Europe, but maybe less so for other areas.
Streaming
Streaming the huge 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 bad for streaming and does not work with any of the major streaming services. However, it appears to work with less-popular streaming apps like Peacock and Sony Crackle.
Another reviewer states services like BBC iPlayer and US Netflix seldom work, and when they do, finding the ideal server requires lengthy experimentation. This is most likely because, unlike other companies, AirVPN does not offer servers that are optimised for accessing streaming sites.
The good news is, 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.
Streaming is definitely not an area in which AirVPN excels, just because that’s not what the service is about, as they are more focused 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 absolutely nothing to configure, no hoops to jump through. Just connect to the VPN server of your option 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 Internet.
File sharing has good speeds on regional servers, permits port forwarding for up to 20 ports at once (which lets you connect to more peers for faster speeds), and deals with leading torrenting clients like qBitTorrent and uTorrent.
AirVPN’s built-in kill switch, activated by default, will obstruct 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 hassle-free, specifically if you need to leave your connection unattended.
Reviewers have revealed torrenting to be impressive, smooth running with quick download and upload speeds, and without any problems whatsoever.
AirVPN Plans & Prices
AirVPN offers a wider range of plans than most VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect as much as 5 gadgets 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 excellent choice for people who live in a household home or wish to utilize a VPN on a public network. While five should be enough for the majority of people, other VPN companies offer 7 or even 10 if you require more.
Pricing varies based upon the subscription length, and each plan includes the exact same features. Most plans offer good value; however, longer subscriptions use the best deal.
The standard pricing is in Euros. They use 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 current plans readily 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 out 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 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 lots of other VPNs. While it does not have live chat, it offers email assistance and frequently asked questions (FAQs) and has an extremely active assistance online 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 irregular with the time it requires to get an action. That stated, the email assistance is high quality, and the agents are friendly and practical, however the detailed responses can be pretty technical, which may put off those brand-new to VPNs.
AirVPN’s website has a lot of details, including a large Frequently asked questions section that is broken up by topic.
AirVPN’s community forums cover many different topics, but beginners will have the same difficulties understanding a great deal of the tech jargon in the posts.
AirVPN Pros & Cons
Pros:
No logging Whatsoever.
Exceptional speeds with minimal loss.
Unrestricted P2P allowed 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 options in the client app.
Solid Customer Care.
Active Community Online Forums and In-depth Guides.
Excellent prices, especially for longer-term plans.
Optional block lists protect you from advertisements, adware, trackers, and damaging sources.
Cons:
Only fully supports OpenVPN.
Client app isn’t very user-friendly or pretty like other services.
Client app may overwhelm newer users.
It is extremely hit and miss with streaming services.
No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.
Possibly there are too many advanced alternatives.
Found in 14-Eyes Country.
Server numbers are reasonably low.
Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Best Choice?
So the bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, dependable, and safe VPN service with great pricing. It’s plainly 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 supplier. Even brand-new users could do much, much worse.
While it could be challenging to utilize if you’re new to VPNs, you’ll receive much quicker speeds and better results than a lot of its competing VPN rivals.
This VPN service is more focused on protecting your privacy than unblocking streaming services like Netflix or Hulu when it comes down to it.
It might not guarantee the same level of personal 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 an excellent alternative for consumers who value their privacy.
While it does not 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 exceptional option for online filesharing.
Highly recommended!
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