Do you wish to stay anonymous while surfing the web? AirVPN could be the best option for you if yes.
While anyone can declare to be distinct these days, when it concerns VPN companies, AirVPN shows that it really is.
AirVPN sticks out from other VPN services because of its dedication to safeguarding user privacy. Right from the start, the AirVPN site begins with an appeal for your trust, stating, “A VPN based on OpenVPN and operated by activists and hacktivists in defence of net neutrality, privacy and against censorship”.While anyone can claim to be distinct nowadays, when it pertains to VPN suppliers, AirVPN shows that it genuinely is.
They have actually been around a long period of time, since 2010, when it was started with the help of two lawyers and a small group of hackers and activists. The satellite communications service provider Iridium previously 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 organization either.
Throughout their About Us and Mission pages, the business’s history is explained and information the personal 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.
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 most, with just 246 servers spread throughout 23 nations.
A lot of servers are in Europe (aside from those in the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong). A minor problem here is that the lack of variety of servers reduces the number of international AirVPN users who might access geo-restricted services in their home nation while maintaining their privacy.
That stated, Air is popular for its outstanding performance throughout its server network, with numerous nations having high-performance physical individual servers.
They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation techniques to offer a precise assessment of performance, without any overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are completely unlimited, with no speed restrictions or time limits.
To establish a connection between your machine and their servers, they use OpenVPN and WireGuard (in beta). OpenVPN is the most safe and secure and dependable method to create encrypted tunnels. It provides more security than the military.
Numerous ports and protocols are offered; 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 hazardous protocols.
No preference is given to any application, service, or protocol when it comes down to it. Net Neutrality is upheld. Importantly, you can get rid of web constraints such as avoiding censorship, geographic limitations, and traffic shaping.
The usage is OpenVPN is a big plus as it automatically enhances users’ 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 says it is testing WireGuard, but it will not put the newer protocol totally in place till a few of its technical and privacy issues are dealt with.
AirVPN has actually also added 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 switch servers as often as you like.
You can keep an eye on the present load on each server, any existing problems, 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 info 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, however given that there is no third-party audit, you have to trust that what is being used will work. Looking at the active community forum or the in-depth open-source clients puts your mind at ease.
A nice feature 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?
The company is very clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online privacy and security are the absolute top priority, with protection from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that invade personal privacy. There is no individual 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 only gathers non-identifiable “technical information” to keep the server running and improve services, however you can ask for this details 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 sort of traffic or protocol you’re using.
There’s no listening in, so you can connect to any wireless network without fretting about your computer 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 also say they adhere to EU privacy policies and that any servers outside the EU will be treated with the very same or higher levels of personal privacy and data protection as those in the EU.
You can get a brand-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.
If your ISP or nation blocks OpenVPN, you can still connect to an AirVPN server through OpenVPN over SSH, SSL, or Tor.
Open-source clients and a lively community online forum enable you to get a sense of what existing users are saying about the service prior to signing up.
All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a big plus. This implies 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 actually been checked by a third party.
Concerning security, AirVPN’s cryptography is perhaps the very best available. It’s similar to that of some other service providers, however still worth mentioning. The first exchange uses 4096-bit RSA to accomplish Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) via Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Following the first key negotiation, re-keying occurs every 60 minutes, and the user can reduce this value. The main information channel utilizes AES-256-CBC encryption.
When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal information, not even your genuine email address. That’s excellent given that it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. But know that you will not have the ability 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 countries that share intelligence data). But even if the federal government asked for user information, 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, available on all major platforms and OSes, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Despite Eddie’s substantial ability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t rather as excellent as those service providers who use it as requirement.
Setting up the app is simple, and it has all the details you need 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 user-friendly user interface, so it might be a more challenging 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 current doesn’t function on your setup.
After launching it, select ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest location. You simply click Disconnect when you’re finished. Easy enough for anybody, however Eddie can do a lot more because AirVPN uses more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we’ve seen.
Two essential AirVPN features through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN allows you to connect when your computer system launches, but you can’t select which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you selected last.
Even though it defines “kill switch” throughout the settings, AirVPN has a tab called “network lock” that does the exact same thing. The distinction is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its safe and secure tunnel. Many standard 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 design 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 shows all readily available servers in the network, together with comprehensive details about each one, such as the server’s nickname, area, latency in milliseconds from your area, and existing users and server load. Impressive 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 glance, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. Similar to the Servers page, the amber/green indicator is likewise revealed. 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 discovered on the right rail of the Countries tab. Highlight a country, 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 choose as many nations as you like.
If you click the red “x”, that country will be removed, 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 immediately connected to a VPN server. To do so, return to the Servers page and choose the server you desire in a specific country. 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 displays 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 many 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, information downloaded and uploaded, and a lot more.
Power users, in particular, should value the ability to use 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.
Lastly, 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 permits you to fine-tune 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 through more flexible ports such as 22, 80, and 443. Proxies, Tor support, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.
The truly proficient user can enter into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which permit, among other things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management User Interface through the Logs pane.
If the huge function list appears frightening, even if you are a VPN professional, it might be hard to determine what particular settings do and how to get the preferred results. In addition, it is unlike any other service in regards to personalization.
Do not dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just since of its intricacy. Remember that the program usually works fine by itself, and you’ll never ever see the settings till you try to find them. Nevertheless, if you periodically long for power or configurability, the app will supply 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?
Although there isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can use an incredibly feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software supplies the same extensive configuration options as its desktop sibling and valuable status details.
Separate pages for nation and server lists are what the Android app does not have that the desktop versions provides. Instead, you can expand a nation and select a specific city on the same page. Some useful text additions make the details more understandable, however it’s still quite challenging to comprehend in some spots.
Android does not have as many settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still much more than many people will ever require. The software application likewise attempts a little bit more to help you, with extra text subtitles to discuss what each choice does.
Speeds/Performance
Utilizing 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 good, with the app finding when the VPN tunnel drops, informing us with a desktop notification, and reconnecting us in seconds.
In terms of 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.
Since AirVPN only supports OpenVPN, it was always going to be slower than the WireGuard-equipped competition.
Reviewers have actually reported speeds to be excellent. Undoubtedly, one stated there wasn’t a single nation where they could complain about the speed. On the contrary, it was really excellent overall.
While it wasn’t rather at the top tier for VPNs that utilize WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for many people, and situations like HD video, video gaming, and streaming conferencing absolutely will not slow you down.
What AirVPN lacks is a broader variety of server areas. This might restrict the availability of nearby servers for some users (which will always lead to better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an excellent choice for most people in the United States and Europe, however possibly less so for other areas.
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 powerful enough to bypass the VPN blocks used by Netflix in the USA, whereas others do not.
Some report that Air is quite bad 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 US Netflix hardly ever work, and when they do, discovering the ideal server needs prolonged trial and error. This is probably since, unlike other suppliers, AirVPN doesn’t use servers that are optimised for accessing streaming sites.
Thankfully, on AirVPN’s website, there is a list of ‘blocked websites’ that users can check to see if the situation with these streaming websites ever changes.
Nevertheless, streaming is absolutely not an area in which AirVPN stands out, just because that’s not what the service is about, as they are more concentrated on personal privacy and security.
Does AirVPN Allow Torrenting?
Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. Simply connect to the VPN server of your option and get going.
Plus, you can utilize port forwarding to improve your file-sharing performance. Several applications, such as BitTorrent and eMule clients, would run poorly without it, and your computer’s shares might be inaccessible from the Internet.
File sharing has decent speeds on local servers, allows 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 top torrenting clients like qBitTorrent and uTorrent.
AirVPN’s integrated 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 unencrypted packets to the Internet. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is very practical, especially if you need to leave your connection unattended.
Reviewers have shown torrenting to be remarkable, smooth running with quick download and upload speeds, and without any concerns whatsoever.
AirVPN Plans & Pricing
AirVPN provides a larger range of plans than many VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect as much as 5 gadgets at the same time, so you can connect your PC, phone, tablet, and a couple of other gadgets all at the same time.
This makes it an outstanding choice for individuals who live in a household house or wish to utilize a VPN on a public network. While five should be enough for many people, other VPN service providers offer 7 or even 10 if you need more.
Pricing varies based upon the membership length, and each plan consists of the exact same features. The majority of plans use good value; nevertheless, longer subscriptions use the very best deal.
The standard pricing is in Euros. They utilize 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 option.
The present plans offered 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 options are also 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 using the voucher 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 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 provides email support and frequently asked questions (Frequently asked questions) and has an extremely active assistance forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.
Significantly, AirVPN’s e-mail support isn’t contracted out but can be a little irregular with the time it requires to get a reaction. That said, the e-mail assistance is high quality, and the agents are valuable and friendly, however the extensive responses can be quite technical, which may put off those new to VPNs.
AirVPN’s website has a lot of info, consisting of a big FAQs section that is separated by topic.
AirVPN’s community forums cover various subjects, however novices will have the exact same problems comprehending 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 installation and use.
Many, many advanced settings and customization choices in the client app.
Strong Client Service.
Active Community Online Forums and Comprehensive Guides.
Great costs, particularly 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 user-friendly or attractive like other services.
Client app may overwhelm more recent users.
It is very hit and miss with streaming services.
No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.
Maybe there are too many advanced options.
Found in 14-Eyes Country.
Server numbers are relatively low.
Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Very Best Choice?
The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, trusted, and safe VPN service with excellent pricing. It’s clearly geared towards more power and advanced users, so those new to VPNs will be better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN company. Even brand-new users could do much, much worse.
While it could be challenging to use if you’re brand-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 concentrated on safeguarding your privacy than unblocking streaming services like Netflix or Hulu.
It may not guarantee the 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 alternative for consumers who value their privacy.
While it doesn’t hit the speed heights of a WireGuard service, performance-wise, it’s absolutely the best purely OpenVPN service out there. In addition to being an outstanding option for online filesharing.
Highly recommended!
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