Do you want to stay anonymous while surfing the web? If yes, then AirVPN could be the perfect service for you.
While anyone can claim to be distinct these days, when it concerns VPN service providers, AirVPN shows that it truly is.
AirVPN stands out from other VPN services because of its dedication to securing 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 anybody can claim to be unique these days, when it comes to VPN providers, AirVPN shows that it genuinely is.
They’ve been around a very long time, since 2010, when it was begun with the aid of 2 lawyers and a small group of hackers and activists. The satellite communications provider Iridium previously ran it, however AirVPN took control of in November 2012. According to the owner’s listing, AirVPN, based in Perugia, is presently owned by Paolo Brini (Italy).
During the last decade, it hasn’t been dogged by security scandals like some VPNs have. Nor has it been acquired by a larger company either.
Across their About Us and Mission pages, the business’s history is discussed and information the personal privacy projects that AirVPN has actually 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 providing a VPN designed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.
So how does AirVPN stack up against its competitors with such strong privacy credentials?
AirVPN’s Key Features
Servers
AirVPN’s network is much smaller than most, with only 246 servers spread throughout 23 nations.
The majority of servers are in Europe (besides those in the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong). A small concern here is that the absence of variety of servers reduces the number of international AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home nation while maintaining their personal privacy.
That stated, Air is popular for its outstanding performance throughout its server network, with numerous nations having high-performance physical individual servers.
They use transparent bandwidth allocation strategies to provide an accurate assessment of performance, without any overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are entirely 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 safe and secure and trustworthy way to create encrypted tunnels. It uses more security than the military.
Various 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 protocol, application, or service when it comes down to it. Net Neutrality is upheld. Importantly, you can get rid of web constraints such as avoiding censorship, geographic constraints, and traffic shaping.
The use is OpenVPN is a big plus as it automatically improves users’ privacy and security and is highly reputable. The lack of WireGuard as standard may show Air isn’t rather keeping up with its rivals. That stated, AirVPN states it is testing WireGuard, however it will not put the more recent protocol totally in place until a few of its technical and privacy problems are resolved.
AirVPN has actually also included 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 often as you like.
You can monitor 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 new tab).
There is a comprehensive specs page for AirVPN’s servers, with info like the readily available ports, protocols, DNS server information (AirVPN has its own DNS server), and the IP addresses of each VPN server’s access points.
All of it is nice, but because there is no third-party audit, you need to trust that what is being used will work. Looking at the active community online forum or the in-depth open-source clients puts your mind at ease.
A good thing about this is that you can see what other people say about the service before signing up. You do not need to take their word for it or the word of an audit.
Just How Private Is AirVPN, & Does It Keep Logs?
The business is very clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online personal privacy and security are the absolute priority, with defense from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that attack personal 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 collects non-identifiable “technical information” to keep the server running and improve services, but you can request this info to be deleted 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 wireless 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 tactics will fail against AirVPN since your ISP and government will only see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.
They also state they follow EU privacy guidelines and that any servers outside the EU will be treated with the same or higher levels of privacy and information protection as those in the EU.
You can get a new IP address to hide your IP so that no one can use it to learn who you are. You’ll stay safe with the top-level security provided.
If your ISP or country blocks OpenVPN, you can still connect to an AirVPN server through OpenVPN over SSH, SSL, or Tor.
Open-source clients and a lively community forum allow 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 suggests that anyone can check out AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, however only ProtonVPN’s apps have actually been checked by a third party.
Concerning security, AirVPN’s cryptography is probably the best available. It’s similar to that of some other companies, but still worth mentioning. The first exchange uses 4096-bit RSA to accomplish Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) by means of Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Following the first key negotiation, re-keying takes place every 60 minutes, and the user can decrease this value. The main information channel uses AES-256-CBC encryption.
When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal details, 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 have the ability to change your account’s password if you do not utilize one.
Italy, where AirVPN is based, is a member of the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliances (a group of countries that share intelligence data). Even if the government asked for user information, AirVPN would have nothing to provide them.
Who Or What Is Eddie??
The Eddie UI is the name of AirVPN’s main open-source application, offered on all significant platforms and OSes, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Regardless of Eddie’s significant ability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as great as those companies who utilize it as standard.
Setting up the app is simple, and it has all the information you require to connect to a VPN.
Sadly, there are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to assist you. While it’s not tough to get things working, it doesn’t have the most user-friendly user interface, so it may 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 discuss what’s new and an archive of past releases in case the most current doesn’t work 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. Simple enough for anybody, but Eddie can do so much more because AirVPN uses more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we have actually seen.
Two crucial 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 picked last.
Despite the fact that it defines “kill switch” throughout the settings, AirVPN has actually a tab called “network lock” that does the exact 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, but 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 six 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 offered servers in the network, together with in-depth info about each one, such as the server’s label, place, latency in milliseconds from your place, and present users and server load. Remarkable stuff!
This tab also has an amber/green signal that lets you understand whether a server is suggested for you.
The Countries page displays the variety of servers readily available in each nation at a look, together with an indicator of server load and user numbers. Just like the Servers page, the amber/green indicator is likewise revealed. Many 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 nation will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is basically a favorites list; you might choose as many nations as you like.
If you click the red “x”, that nation will be eliminated, successfully making it a blocklist/denylist. To eliminate the green checkmark from a nation, click the empty box.
By selecting a nation, you are not instantly 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 changed, so you can see traffic from the last 10 seconds to one day.
While many apps show your current VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also reveals fine-grained information, such as the server’s location, load, current 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 capability to use a VPN with all the details they might ever want about the different locations, down to the variety of users on a specific server. It’s a valuable resource.
Lastly, 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 use between UDP and TCP, and which port number. Or whether to try an SSH tunnel through more versatile 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, to name a few things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management User Interface through the Logs pane.
If the vast feature list appears scary, even if you are a VPN professional, it might be difficult 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.
Nevertheless, do not dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just because of its complexity. Remember that the program typically functions fine by itself, and you’ll never ever see the settings till you search for them. If you sometimes crave 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 exceptionally feature-rich Android VPN app rather. This software provides the same extensive setup choices as its desktop sibling and valuable status info.
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 country and pick a specific city on the exact same page. Some practical text additions make the details more reasonable, 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 many more than many people will ever need. The software application likewise attempts a little bit more to help you, with additional text subtitles to describe what each option does.
Speeds/Performance
Utilizing OpenVPN, the Eddie Windows app from AirVPN typically connects quickly and is ready to go in less than 10 seconds.
Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was great, with the app discovering when the VPN tunnel drops, informing 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.
Since AirVPN just supports OpenVPN, it was always going to be slower than the WireGuard-equipped competitors.
Nevertheless, reviewers have actually reported speeds to be exceptional. Indeed, one stated there wasn’t a single country where they might complain about the speed. On the contrary, it was really outstanding overall.
While it wasn’t quite at the top tier for VPNs that utilize WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for many people, and scenarios like HD streaming, video, and gaming conferencing certainly will not slow you down.
What AirVPN does not have is a broader variety of server areas. This may restrict the accessibility of neighboring servers for some users (which will constantly lead to better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an outstanding option 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 actually been a mixed bag for reviewers. Some report that AirVPN is powerful enough to bypass the VPN blocks utilized by Netflix in the USA, whereas others do not.
Some report that Air is quite poor 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 hardly ever work, and when they do, discovering the right server requires lengthy experimentation. This is most likely because, unlike other suppliers, AirVPN doesn’t provide servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.
Thankfully, 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.
Streaming is absolutely not an area in which AirVPN excels, merely since that’s not what the service is about, as they are more focused on privacy and security.
Does AirVPN Allow Torrenting?
Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. Just connect to the VPN server of your choice 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 system’s shares might be inaccessible from the Web.
File sharing has decent speeds on local servers, permits port forwarding for up to 20 ports at once (which lets you connect to more peers for faster speeds), and works with top torrenting clients like qBitTorrent and uTorrent.
AirVPN’s built-in kill switch, triggered by default, will block all traffic from leaving your gadget if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you will not be sending unencrypted packets to the Web. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is very practical, especially if you need to leave your connection unattended.
Reviewers have actually revealed torrenting to be excellent, smooth running with quick download and upload speeds, and without any concerns whatsoever.
AirVPN Plans & Rates
AirVPN uses a broader range of plans than most VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect as much as five gadgets simultaneously, so you can connect your PC, phone, tablet, and a couple of other gadgets all at the same time.
This makes it an excellent option for people who reside in a household house or want to use a VPN on a public network. While five should suffice for the majority of people, other VPN suppliers provide 7 or even 10 if you need more.
Pricing differs based upon the subscription length, and each plan consists of the exact same features. A lot of plans provide good value; nevertheless, longer memberships use the best deal.
The standard pricing is in Euros. Nevertheless, they use the European Central Bank to provide real-time currency exchange rate for those overseas, so it can be easily transformed to and spent for in the currency of your choice.
The existing 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 free trial, which can be obtained by sending out a message to the support team and using the discount coupon 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 utilized more than 5 GB of data throughout that time.
AirVPN Customer Assistance
AirVPN has a different customer support offering than numerous other VPNs. While it does not have live chat, it provides email assistance and frequently asked questions (Frequently asked questions) and has a very active assistance forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.
Importantly, AirVPN’s email support isn’t outsourced however can be a little irregular with the time it takes to get a response. That stated, the e-mail support is high quality, and the agents are helpful and friendly, but the comprehensive responses can be quite technical, which may put off those brand-new to VPNs.
AirVPN’s site has a great deal of info, consisting of a big FAQs section that is separated by subject.
AirVPN’s community forums cover various topics, however novices will have the same problems comprehending a lot of the tech lingo in the posts.
AirVPN Pros & Cons
Pros:
No logging Whatsoever.
Exceptional speeds with minimal loss.
Unrestricted 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 installation and usage.
Many, many advanced settings and customization choices in the client app.
Strong Customer Service.
Active Community Forums and Comprehensive Guides.
Excellent costs, particularly for longer-term plans.
Optional block lists shield you from advertisements, adware, trackers, and hazardous sources.
Cons:
Only fully supports OpenVPN.
Client app isn’t very user-friendly or attractive like other services.
Client app might overwhelm more recent users.
It is very hit and miss with streaming services.
No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.
Possibly there are too many advanced options.
Found in 14-Eyes Country.
Server numbers are relatively low.
Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Best Choice?
The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, reputable, and safe VPN service with great prices. 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 provider. However even new users might 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 much better results than a number of its competing VPN competitors.
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 may not ensure the very same level of privacy and anonymity as a service like Mullvad, which assigns you a random account number and allows you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still an excellent 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 excellent choice for online filesharing.
Highly recommended!
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