Do you wish to remain 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 concerns VPN providers, AirVPN shows that it truly is.
AirVPN stands apart from other VPN services because of its dedication to securing 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 claim to be unique these days, when it pertains to VPN providers, AirVPN shows that it really is.
They have actually 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 supplier Iridium formerly ran it, but AirVPN took control of in November 2012. According to the owner’s listing, AirVPN, based in Perugia, is currently 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 larger business either.
Throughout their About Us and Mission pages, the business’s history is explained and details the personal privacy projects that AirVPN has actually developed 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 providing a VPN developed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.
How does AirVPN stack up versus its rivals with such strong personal privacy qualifications?
AirVPN’s Key Features
Servers
AirVPN’s network is much smaller than a lot of, with only 246 servers spread out across 23 nations.
Most 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 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 outstanding performance throughout its server network, with numerous countries having high-performance physical individual servers.
They use transparent bandwidth allocation methods to provide an accurate assessment of performance, with no overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are completely unlimited, without any 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 safe and trusted way to create encrypted tunnels. It provides more security than the military.
Many ports and protocols are available; they use OpenVPN on the following ports: 80 TCP/UDP, 443 TCP/UDP, and 53 TCP/UDP. In addition, every Air server directly supports OpenVPN over SSH, OpenVPN over SSL, and OpenVPN over Tor. So ignore PPTP and other unsafe protocols.
When it comes down to it, no choice is given to any service, protocol, or application. Net Neutrality is upheld. Notably, you can overcome web constraints such as avoiding censorship, geographical limitations, and traffic shaping.
The use is OpenVPN is a big plus as it instantly enhances users’ privacy and security and is extremely trusted. However, the absence of WireGuard as standard might reveal Air isn’t quite keeping up with its rivals. That said, AirVPN states it is evaluating WireGuard, but it won’t put the newer protocol completely in place till some of its technical and privacy issues are attended to.
AirVPN has likewise added a lot for power users and tech-savvy individuals who like to experiment with things.
Switching is limitless, so if you do not like one server, you can easily switch servers as often as you like.
You can monitor the existing load on each server, any existing issues, and a history of previous problems on AirVPN’s network status page (which opens in a brand-new tab).
There is an in-depth 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 access points.
All of it is nice, but considering that there is no third-party audit, you need to rely on that what is being used will work. But taking a look at the active community forum or the detailed open-source clients puts your mind at ease.
A great aspect of this is that you can see what other people state about the service before signing up. 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?
When it concerns AirVPN’s no-logging policy, the company is really clear. Online personal privacy and security are the absolute top priority, with protection from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that attack privacy. There is no individual 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 only gathers non-identifiable “technical information” to keep the server running and improve services, however you can request 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 figure out what sort of traffic or protocol you’re utilizing.
There’s no listening in, so you can connect to any wi-fi network without stressing over your computer and the Wi-Fi hotspot spying on your information.
Even the most ruthless surveillance, censoring, throttling, and traffic shaping methods will fail against AirVPN due to the fact that your ISP and government will only see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.
They likewise state they stick to EU privacy policies and that any servers outside the EU will be treated with the exact same or higher levels of personal 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 utilize it to find out who you are. You’ll remain safe with the top-level security supplied.
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 saying about the service before registering.
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, but just ProtonVPN’s apps have actually been checked by a 3rd party.
Concerning security, AirVPN’s cryptography is perhaps the best available. The very first exchange uses 4096-bit RSA to achieve Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) through Diffie-Hellman key exchange.
When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal information, not even your real email address. That’s fantastic because it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. But understand that you won’t be able to change your account’s password if you don’t utilize 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 federal 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. Regrettably, in spite of 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.
Setting up the app is simple, and it has all the information you need to connect to a VPN.
There are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to direct you. While it’s not difficult to get things working, it doesn’t have the most easy to use user interface, so it might be a more difficult learning curve for inexperienced users.
With Windows, there are a load of download options. There are builds for different 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 discuss what’s brand-new and an archive of past releases in case the most present does not work on your setup.
After launching it, choose ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest area. When you’re completed, you just click Disconnect. Simple enough for anyone, however Eddie can do a lot more since AirVPN provides more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we have actually seen.
Two essential AirVPN functions through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN permits you to connect when your computer launches, but you can’t select which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you picked last.
Even though it defines “kill switch” anywhere in the settings, AirVPN has 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 safe tunnel. A lot of basic 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 6 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 available servers in the network, along with detailed details about each one, such as the server’s nickname, place, latency in milliseconds from your location, and existing users and server load. Remarkable 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 country at a glance, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. Just like the Servers page, the amber/green indicator is likewise revealed. 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 basically a favorites list; you may select as many countries as you like.
If you click the red “x”, that country will be gotten rid of, efficiently making it a blocklist/denylist. To eliminate the green checkmark from a nation, click the empty box.
By choosing a nation, 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 basic 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 display your present 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 much more.
Power users, in particular, should value the ability to utilize a VPN with all the details they might ever want about the various locations, down to the variety of users on a particular server. It’s a priceless resource.
Logs is a detailed record of connections, routes, and other information.
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. Proxies, Tor support, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.
The truly skilled user can enter into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which enable, among other things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management User Interface by means of the Logs pane.
If the vast feature list appears scary, even if you are a VPN specialist, it might be hard to determine what specific settings do and how to get the desired results. In addition, it is unlike any other service in terms of customization.
Do not dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie simply because of its complexity. Remember that the program generally functions fine by itself, and you’ll never ever see the settings up until you look for them. If you periodically long for power or configurability, the app will supply it.
Suppose you don’t wish to use 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 utilize an extremely feature-rich Android VPN app rather. This software supplies the exact same comprehensive configuration options as its desktop sibling and useful status information.
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 select a specific city on the very same page. Some valuable text additions make the details more easy to understand, but it’s still quite difficult to understand 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 need. The software application likewise tries a little more to assist you, with extra text subtitles to discuss what each alternative does.
Speeds/Performance
Utilizing OpenVPN, the Eddie Windows app from AirVPN typically connects rapidly and is ready to enter less than 10 seconds.
Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was excellent, with the app discovering 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 shows that the Network Lock/Kill Switch works well.
Now let’s get to those speeds.
Because AirVPN only supports OpenVPN, it was always going to be slower than the WireGuard-equipped competition.
Nevertheless, reviewers have actually reported speeds to be exceptional. One stated there wasn’t a single country where they could complain about the speed. On the contrary, it was actually remarkable overall.
While it wasn’t rather on 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 certainly won’t slow you down.
What AirVPN does not have is a wider number of server locations. This may restrict the availability of neighboring servers for some users (which will constantly result in better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an outstanding choice for many people in the United States and Europe, but maybe less so for other areas.
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 powerful enough to bypass the VPN blocks used by Netflix in the USA, whereas others do not.
Indeed, 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 says services like BBC iPlayer and United States Netflix seldom work, and when they do, discovering the best server requires prolonged experimentation. This is most likely because, unlike other companies, AirVPN does not use servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.
Luckily, on AirVPN’s site, there is a list of ‘blocked websites’ that users can check to see if the situation with these streaming sites ever changes.
However, streaming is absolutely 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 Allow Torrenting?
Yes, it does; every internet 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 leap through. Merely connect to the VPN server of your choice and start.
Plus, you can utilize port forwarding to improve your file-sharing performance. Numerous 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 local servers, allows port forwarding for as much as 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 integrated kill switch, activated by default, will block all traffic from exiting your gadget if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you will not be sending out unencrypted packets to the Internet. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is really practical, specifically 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 issues whatsoever.
AirVPN Plans & Rates
AirVPN provides a broader variety of plans than most VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect as much as 5 devices concurrently, so you can connect your PC, phone, tablet, and a couple of other devices all at the same time.
This makes it an outstanding choice for people who reside in a household home or want to utilize a VPN on a public network. While 5 should be enough for many people, other VPN service providers offer 7 or even 10 if you require more.
Pricing varies based upon the subscription length, and each plan consists of the exact same features. Many plans provide good value; nevertheless, longer subscriptions offer the best offer.
The standard pricing is in Euros. However, they use the European Central Bank to supply real-time exchange rates for those abroad, so it can be easily 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, including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Doge. Lots of global alternatives 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 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 during that time.
AirVPN Customer Support
AirVPN has a different customer assistance offering than many other VPNs. While it does not have live chat, it uses email support and frequently asked questions (Frequently asked questions) and has an extremely active support online forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.
Significantly, AirVPN’s email assistance isn’t contracted out however can be a little inconsistent with the time it takes to get a response. That said, the email assistance is high quality, and the representatives are valuable and friendly, however the comprehensive answers can be pretty technical, which might put off those brand-new to VPNs.
AirVPN’s website has a great deal of information, consisting of a big Frequently asked questions area that is broken up by subject.
AirVPN’s community forums cover many different subjects, but novices will have the very same problems understanding a great deal of the tech jargon in the posts.
AirVPN Pros & Cons
Pros:
No logging Whatsoever.
Exceptional speeds with minimal loss.
Unlimited P2P permitted 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 choices in the client app.
Solid Client Service.
Active Community Forums and In-depth Guides.
Great costs, especially for longer-term plans.
Optional block lists shield you from ads, adware, trackers, and harmful sources.
Cons:
Only fully supports OpenVPN.
Client app isn’t really easy to use or attractive like other services.
Client app might overwhelm newer users.
It is very hit and miss with streaming services.
No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.
Possibly there are too many advanced options.
Located in 14-Eyes Nation.
Server numbers are fairly low.
Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Best Choice?
The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, trustworthy, and safe VPN service with great prices. It’s clearly 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 new users might do much, much worse.
While it could be challenging to utilize if you’re new to VPNs, you’ll receive much quicker speeds and much better results than many of its competing VPN competitors.
This VPN service is more focused on safeguarding your privacy than unblocking streaming services like Netflix or Hulu when it comes down to it.
Although it might not ensure the very 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 a good choice for consumers 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 outstanding option for online filesharing.
Highly recommended!
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