Do you want to stay anonymous while surfing the web? AirVPN could be the perfect service for you if yes.
While anyone can claim to be special nowadays, when it concerns VPN service providers, AirVPN shows that it really is.
AirVPN sticks out from other VPN services because of its dedication to safeguarding user privacy. From the start, the AirVPN site begins 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 special these days, when it concerns VPN providers, AirVPN reveals that it really is.
They’ve been around a very long time, since 2010, when it was started with the help of 2 lawyers and a small group of activists and hackers. 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 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 company’s history is described and information the personal privacy projects that AirVPN has 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 unconventional route and breaks the mold by supplying a VPN created 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 sized than most, with just 246 servers spread out across 23 nations.
Most servers are in Europe (aside from those in the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong). A minor issue here is that the absence of diversity of servers minimizes the number of worldwide AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home nation while keeping their personal privacy.
That stated, Air is popular for its exceptional performance throughout its server network, with numerous nations having high-performance physical individual servers.
They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation strategies to offer an accurate assessment 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 utilize OpenVPN and WireGuard (in beta). OpenVPN is the most secure and trusted method to create encrypted tunnels. It offers 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 unsafe protocols.
No preference is given to any service, protocol, or application when it comes down to it. Net Neutrality is maintained. Significantly, you can overcome internet restrictions such as avoiding censorship, geographic restrictions, and traffic shaping.
The use is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it automatically enhances users’ privacy and security and is highly trustworthy. The lack of WireGuard as standard may show Air isn’t rather keeping up with its competitors. That said, AirVPN says it is evaluating WireGuard, but it will not put the newer protocol totally in place up until some of its technical and privacy problems are addressed.
AirVPN has actually also included a lot for power users and tech-savvy people who like to try out things.
Switching is limitless, so if you don’t like one server, you can quickly switch servers as often as you like.
You can monitor the existing load on each server, any existing issues, 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 details like the offered 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 since 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 aspect of this is that you can see what other individuals state about the service prior to signing up. You don’t need to take their word for it or the word of an audit.
Just How Private Is AirVPN, & Does It Keep Logs?
When it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy, the company is really clear. Online privacy and security are the absolute top priority, with defense from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that invade personal privacy. There is no individual details 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 collects non-identifiable “technical information” to keep the server running and enhance services, but you can request for this info to be erased at any time. This makes it one of the most privacy-friendly VPN services.
As a result, nobody can identify you online; not even your ISP can figure out what kind 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 system and the Wi-Fi hotspot spying on your information.
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 adhere to EU personal privacy regulations which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the very same or greater levels of privacy and information protection as those in the EU.
You can get a brand-new IP address to hide 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 obstructs OpenVPN.
Open-source clients and a lively community forum enable you to get a sense of what present users are stating about the service prior to registering.
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 been inspected by a 3rd party.
Concerning security, AirVPN’s cryptography is perhaps the best offered. It’s similar to that of some other providers, but still worth pointing out. The very first exchange uses 4096-bit RSA to attain Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) via Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Following the first key negotiation, re-keying happens every 60 minutes, and the user can lower this value. The main data 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 because it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. Be mindful that you won’t be able to change your account’s password if you do not use one.
Italy, where AirVPN is based, belongs to the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliances (a group of countries 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 main open-source application, available on all significant platforms and OSes, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. In spite of Eddie’s significant capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t rather as great as those service providers who use it as requirement.
Establishing the app is simple, and it has all the details you require to connect to a VPN.
Sadly, there are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to direct you. While it’s not tough to get things working, it doesn’t have the most user-friendly user interface, so it might be a more tough learning curve for inexperienced users.
With Windows, there are a lot of download alternatives. There are builds for numerous operating systems (from Windows XP to Windows 11), in 32- and 64-bit tastes, and in portable or installable formats. In addition, there’s a changelog to explain what’s new and an archive of past releases in case the most present doesn’t function 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 simply click Disconnect. Easy enough for anyone, but 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.
2 essential AirVPN functions through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN allows you to connect when your computer system launches, but you can’t pick which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you picked last.
Although it specifies “kill switch” anywhere in the settings, AirVPN has actually 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 protected tunnel. Many standard kill switches just do this when the VPN is on, but 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 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 shows all available servers in the network, along with comprehensive info about every one, such as the server’s nickname, location, latency in milliseconds from your area, and current users and server load. Outstanding stuff!
This tab likewise has an amber/green signal that lets you understand whether a server is recommended for you.
The Countries page shows the variety of servers readily available in each country at a look, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. As with the Servers page, the amber/green indicator is likewise revealed. Lots of 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 country, click the green checkmark, and the servers for that nation will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is essentially a favorites list; you may pick as lots of countries as you like.
If you click the red “x”, that nation will be removed, effectively making it a blocklist/denylist. To get rid of the green checkmark from a nation, click the empty box.
By picking a country, you are not right away 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 displays a simple 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 most apps show your current VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also shows fine-grained info, 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 a lot more.
Power users, in particular, should value the ability to utilize a VPN with all the details they could ever desire about the various locations, down to the variety of users on a particular server. It’s an invaluable resource.
Finally, Logs is a comprehensive record of connections, routes, and other information.
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 try an SSH tunnel by means of more flexible ports such as 22, 80, and 443. Proxies, Tor assistance, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.
The really experienced user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which enable, to name a few things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management Interface by means of the Logs pane.
If the huge function list appears frightening, even if you are a VPN expert, it might be tough to figure out what particular settings do and how to get the desired results. In addition, it differs from any other service in terms of personalization.
Do not dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just since of its intricacy. Remember that the program typically works fine by itself, and you’ll never ever see the settings till you search for them. Nevertheless, if you sometimes long for power or configurability, the app will provide it.
Suppose you do not 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?
There isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can utilize an exceptionally feature-rich Android VPN app rather. This software offers the very same substantial setup options as its desktop sibling and valuable status details.
Separate pages for country and server lists are what the Android app does not have that the desktop versions provides. Instead, you can expand a nation and choose a specific city on the exact same page. Some helpful text additions make the details more reasonable, however it’s still rather difficult to understand in some spots.
Android does not have as many settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still much more than the majority of people will ever require. The software application likewise attempts a bit more to help you, with extra text subtitles to describe what each option does.
Speeds/Performance
Using 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 detecting when the VPN tunnel drops, informing us with a desktop notification, and reconnecting us in seconds.
In terms of privacy, leak tests revealed 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.
It was always going to be slower than the WireGuard-equipped competition because AirVPN just supports OpenVPN.
Reviewers have reported speeds to be exceptional. One said there wasn’t a single country where they might grumble about the speed. On the contrary, it was actually outstanding overall.
While it wasn’t quite at the top tier for VPNs that utilize WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for most people, and circumstances like HD streaming, gaming, and video conferencing definitely will not slow you down.
What AirVPN does not have is a more comprehensive number of server places. This might limit the availability of close-by servers for some users (which will constantly result in much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an outstanding choice for most people in the United States and Europe, however maybe less so for other regions.
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 used 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 deal with less-popular streaming apps like Peacock and Sony Crackle.
Another reviewer says services like BBC iPlayer and United States Netflix rarely 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 sites.
Luckily, on AirVPN’s website, there is a list of ‘blocked websites’ that users can examine to see if the situation with these streaming sites ever changes.
Nevertheless, streaming is definitely not an area in which AirVPN stands out, simply since that’s not what the service is about, as they are more focused on privacy and security.
Does AirVPN Allow Torrenting?
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 enhance your file-sharing performance. Numerous applications, such as BitTorrent and eMule clients, would run badly without it, and your computer’s shares might be inaccessible from the Web.
File sharing has decent speeds on regional 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 top torrenting clients like qBitTorrent and uTorrent.
AirVPN’s built-in kill switch, triggered by default, will obstruct all traffic from exiting your gadget if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you will not be sending out unencrypted packets to the Web. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is really convenient, particularly if you need to leave your connection unattended.
Reviewers have actually shown torrenting to be remarkable, smooth running with quick download and upload speeds, and without any issues whatsoever.
AirVPN Plans & Pricing
AirVPN provides a broader variety of plans than most VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect as much as 5 devices simultaneously, so you can connect your PC, phone, tablet, and a couple of other devices all at the same time.
This makes it an exceptional option for individuals who reside in a household home or wish to utilize a VPN on a public network. While five really should suffice for most people, other VPN suppliers offer 7 or even 10 if you need more.
Rates varies based upon the subscription length, and each plan includes 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 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 international options are likewise accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.
AirVPN offers a three-day free trial, which can be obtained by sending 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 during that time.
AirVPN Customer Assistance
AirVPN has a different customer assistance offering than many other VPNs. While it does not have live chat, it provides 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.
Significantly, AirVPN’s e-mail support isn’t contracted out however can be a little irregular with the time it takes to get a reaction. That stated, the email assistance is high quality, and the agents are valuable and friendly, however the detailed answers 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 area that is separated by topic.
AirVPN’s community forums cover several subjects, however newbies will have the same difficulties comprehending a great deal of the tech jargon in the posts.
AirVPN Pros & Cons
Pros:
No logging Whatsoever.
Exceptional speeds with very little loss.
Unrestricted P2P permitted 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 Support.
Active Community Online Forums and Detailed Guides.
Good costs, particularly for longer-term plans.
Optional block lists protect you from ads, adware, trackers, and hazardous sources.
Cons:
Only fully supports OpenVPN.
Client app isn’t very easy to use or attractive like other services.
Client app might overwhelm newer users.
It is extremely hit and miss with streaming services.
No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.
Maybe there are a lot of advanced options.
Located in 14-Eyes Nation.
Server numbers are relatively low.
Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Best Option?
The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, trustworthy, and safe VPN service with good rates. 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 receive much quicker speeds and better results than a lot 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 same level of personal privacy and anonymity as a service like Mullvad, which appoints you a random account number and permits you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still a great alternative for customers who value their personal 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 excellent choice for online filesharing.
Highly recommended!
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