Do you want to stay anonymous while surfing the web? If yes, then AirVPN could be the perfect option for you.
While anyone can claim to be distinct nowadays, when it pertains to VPN service providers, AirVPN reveals 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 anybody can declare to be distinct these days, when it concerns VPN service providers, AirVPN reveals that it truly is.
They’ve been around a very long time, since 2010, when it was started with the aid of 2 lawyers and a little group of activists and hackers. The satellite communications service provider 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).
Throughout the last years, it hasn’t been dogged by security scandals like some VPNs have. Nor has it been acquired by a bigger company either.
Throughout their About Us and Mission pages, the company’s history is discussed and details the privacy projects that AirVPN has established or supported. These include 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 designed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.
So how does AirVPN compare to 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 nations.
Most servers are in Europe (besides those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A minor problem here is that the lack of diversity of servers reduces the number of global AirVPN users who might access geo-restricted services in their home nation 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 utilize transparent bandwidth allocation methods to supply an accurate evaluation of performance, without any overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are completely unlimited, without any 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 way to create encrypted tunnels. It uses 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. Every Air server directly supports OpenVPN over SSH, OpenVPN over SSL, and OpenVPN over Tor. Forget about PPTP and other unsafe protocols.
No preference is given to any protocol, service, or application when it comes down to it. Net Neutrality is maintained. Significantly, you can get rid of internet constraints such as avoiding censorship, geographical constraints, and traffic shaping.
The use is OpenVPN is a big plus as it instantly improves users’ personal privacy and security and is extremely trusted. The absence of WireGuard as standard may show Air isn’t quite keeping up with its rivals. That stated, AirVPN states it is testing WireGuard, however it will not put the more recent protocol fully in place till a few of its technical and privacy problems are resolved.
AirVPN has likewise included a lot for power users and tech-savvy individuals who like to try out things.
Switching is unlimited, so if you don’t like one server, you can quickly change servers as frequently as you like.
You can keep track of the current 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 detailed specifications page for AirVPN’s servers, with info like the available ports, protocols, DNS server details (AirVPN has its own DNS server), and the IP addresses of each VPN server’s gain access to points.
All of it is nice, but given that there is no third-party audit, you have to trust that what is being provided will work. Looking at the active community online forum or the detailed open-source clients puts your mind at ease.
A great feature of this is that you can see what other people say about the service before signing up. 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 very clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online personal privacy and security are the absolute top priority, with security 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 information” to keep the server running and enhance services, however 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, no one can identify you online; not even your ISP can determine 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 information.
Even the most ruthless surveillance, censoring, throttling, and traffic shaping methods will fail versus AirVPN due to the fact that your ISP and government will only see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.
They also say they comply with EU personal privacy guidelines which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the very same or greater levels of personal privacy and data protection as those in the EU.
You can get a brand-new IP address to conceal your IP so that no one can utilize it to discover who you are. You’ll remain safe with the top-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 online forum allow you to get a sense of what present users are saying about the service prior to registering.
All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a huge plus. This means that anyone 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.
Relating to security, AirVPN’s cryptography is perhaps the finest offered. The first exchange uses 4096-bit RSA to accomplish Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) through Diffie-Hellman key exchange.
When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal details, not even your genuine e-mail address. That’s terrific considering that it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. However be aware that you will not 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 countries that share intelligence information). However even if the federal government requested user details, AirVPN would have nothing to provide.
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. Despite Eddie’s significant capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as good as those suppliers who utilize it as requirement.
Establishing the app is simple, and it has all the information you require to connect to a VPN.
There are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to guide you. While it’s not tough to get things working, it does not have the most easy to use interface, so it might be a more tough learning curve for unskilled users.
With Windows, there are a lot of download choices. There are builds for different 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 explain what’s brand-new and an archive of past releases in case the most existing doesn’t function on your setup.
After launching it, select ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest place. You simply click Disconnect when you’re completed. Simple enough for anyone, however Eddie can do so much more because 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 system starts up, but you can’t pick 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 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. Most 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 layout 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 readily 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 area, and existing users and server load. Remarkable 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 available in each country at a look, together with an indicator of server load and user numbers. Similar to the Servers page, the amber/green sign is likewise shown. 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 might select as many nations as you like.
If you click the red “x”, that country will be eliminated, successfully making it a blocklist/denylist. To remove the green checkmark from a nation, click the empty box.
By selecting a country, you are not immediately connected to a VPN server. To do so, go back to the Servers page and pick the server you want in a specific country. Then, 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 likewise a checkmark, “X,” and blank box icons. There’s also a “refresh” button to get updated information on ping times and load times.
The Speed tab shows 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 the majority of apps display your existing VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also reveals fine-grained info, such as the server’s location, load, existing user count, protocol, port, encryption algorithm, session start time and length, IPv6 exit address, data downloaded and uploaded, and far more.
Power users, in particular, should value the capability to utilize a VPN with all the info they might ever desire about the different locations, down to the number of users on a particular server. It’s a priceless resource.
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 permits you to tweak the setup, such as whether it should always connect when opened, which protocol to utilize between UDP and TCP, and which port number. Or whether to try 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 genuinely proficient user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which allow, among other things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management User Interface by means of the Logs pane.
If the vast function list appears frightening, even if you are a VPN expert, it might be hard to figure out what particular settings do and how to get the desired outcomes. In addition, it differs from any other service in terms of personalization.
Nevertheless, don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie even if of its intricacy. Remember that the program generally functions fine by itself, and you’ll never see the settings till you try to find them. Nevertheless, if you periodically long for power or configurability, the app will provide it.
Suppose you do not want to use 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?
There isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can use an extremely feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software application provides the exact same comprehensive setup choices as its desktop sibling and valuable status details.
Separate pages for country and server lists are what the Android app lacks that the desktop versions provides. Instead, 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 challenging to comprehend in some spots.
Android does not have as numerous settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still much more than many people will ever require. The software application also tries a bit more to assist you, with extra text subtitles to explain what each option does.
Speeds/Performance
Utilizing OpenVPN, the Eddie Windows app from AirVPN normally connects quickly and is ready to enter less than 10 seconds.
Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was excellent, with the app identifying when the VPN tunnel drops, notifying 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.
It was always going to be slower than the WireGuard-equipped competition since AirVPN only supports OpenVPN.
Reviewers have reported speeds to be excellent. One stated 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 use WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for most people, and scenarios like HD streaming, gaming, and video conferencing definitely will not slow you down.
What AirVPN does not have is a broader variety of server locations. This may restrict the accessibility of nearby servers for some users (which will always result in much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an excellent option for most people in the United States and Europe, but maybe less so for other regions.
Streaming
Streaming the huge 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.
Certainly, some report that Air is quite poor for streaming and does not 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 US Netflix hardly ever work, and when they do, finding the right server requires prolonged experimentation. This is most likely since, unlike other companies, AirVPN does not offer 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.
Nevertheless, streaming is absolutely not an area in which AirVPN excels, merely because that’s not what the service is about, as they are more focused on personal privacy and security.
Does AirVPN Allow Torrenting?
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 configure, no hoops to leap through. Just connect to the VPN server of your choice and get going.
Plus, you can use port forwarding to enhance 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, enables port forwarding for as much as 20 ports at the same time (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, activated by default, will block 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 practical, especially if you need to leave your connection unattended.
Reviewers have actually revealed torrenting to be remarkable, smooth running with quick download and upload speeds, and without any issues whatsoever.
AirVPN Plans & Pricing
AirVPN uses a wider range of plans than many VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect up to five 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 reside in a family home or wish to use a VPN on a public network. While 5 should be enough for the majority of people, other VPN suppliers provide 7 or even 10 if you need more.
Pricing varies based upon the subscription length, and each plan consists of the exact same features. A lot of plans use good value; nevertheless, longer memberships use the very best offer.
The standard pricing is in Euros. They utilize the European Central Bank to offer real-time exchange rates for those overseas, so it can be quickly transformed to and paid for in the currency of your choice.
The present 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, consisting of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Doge. Lots of global options 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 utilizing the discount coupon code they send you.
There’s likewise a 30-day money-back guarantee, as long as they haven’t broken the terms of service or utilized more than 5 GB of data during that time.
AirVPN Customer Assistance
AirVPN has a different customer assistance offering than lots of other VPNs. While it does not have live chat, it provides email support and frequently asked questions (FAQs) and has an extremely active assistance online forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.
Importantly, AirVPN’s email assistance isn’t contracted out however can be a little irregular with the time it takes to get a response. That said, the e-mail assistance is high quality, and the representatives are practical and friendly, but the thorough responses can be quite technical, which might put off those new to VPNs.
AirVPN’s website has a lot of details, including a big FAQs area that is separated by subject.
AirVPN’s community forums cover many different topics, however beginners will have the same difficulties understanding a lot of the tech jargon in the posts.
AirVPN Pros & Cons
Pros:
No logging Whatsoever.
Excellent speeds with very little loss.
Unrestricted P2P allowed 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 Client Service.
Active Community Online Forums and Comprehensive Guides.
Excellent prices, especially for longer-term plans.
Optional block lists shield you from advertisements, adware, trackers, and harmful sources.
Cons:
Only fully supports OpenVPN.
Client app isn’t extremely user-friendly or pretty like other services.
Client app may overwhelm more recent users.
It is really hit and miss with streaming services.
No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.
Possibly there are too many advanced alternatives.
Located in 14-Eyes Country.
Server numbers are fairly low.
Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Best Choice?
So the bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, reputable, and safe VPN service with good pricing. It’s plainly tailored towards more power and advanced users, so those new to VPNs will be much better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN company. Even brand-new users might do much, much worse.
While it could be challenging to use if you’re brand-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 safeguarding your personal privacy than unblocking streaming services like Netflix or Hulu when it comes down to it.
Although it might not guarantee the same level of privacy and anonymity as a service like Mullvad, which assigns you a random account number and enables you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still a great alternative for customers who value their 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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