Do you wish to stay anonymous while surfing the web? AirVPN could be the perfect service for you if yes.
While anyone can claim to be special these days, when it pertains to VPN service providers, AirVPN shows that it truly is.
AirVPN stands out from other VPN services because of its dedication to protecting user privacy. From the start, the AirVPN site starts 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 declare to be special nowadays, when it pertains to VPN providers, AirVPN shows that it really is.
They’ve been around a long period of time, since 2010, when it was begun with the aid of two lawyers and a little group of activists and hackers. The satellite communications company Iridium formerly ran it, but AirVPN took over in November 2012. According to the owner’s listing, AirVPN, based in Perugia, is presently owned by Paolo Brini (Italy).
Throughout the last decade, it hasn’t been dogged by security scandals like some VPNs have. Nor has it been acquired by a bigger business either.
Throughout their About Us and Mission pages, the company’s history is explained and details 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 unconventional route and breaks the mold by offering a VPN designed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.
How does AirVPN stack up against its competitors with such strong personal privacy qualifications?
AirVPN’s Key Features
Servers
AirVPN’s network is much smaller sized than many, with only 246 servers spread out across 23 nations.
Most servers are in Europe (aside from those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A minor concern here is that the absence of diversity of servers lowers the number of international AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home country while maintaining their privacy.
That said, Air is popular for its impressive performance throughout its server network, with lots of countries having high-performance physical individual servers.
They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation strategies to offer an accurate evaluation of performance, with no 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 use OpenVPN and WireGuard (in beta). OpenVPN is the most secure and dependable way to create encrypted tunnels. It uses more security than the military.
Various ports and protocols are readily 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.
No choice is given to any service, application, or protocol when it comes down to it. Net Neutrality is maintained. Significantly, you can get rid of web constraints such as avoiding censorship, geographical constraints, and traffic shaping.
The usage is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it instantly enhances users’ privacy and security and is extremely trusted. Nevertheless, the absence of WireGuard as standard might reveal Air isn’t quite staying up to date with its competitors. That stated, AirVPN states it is testing WireGuard, but it won’t put the newer protocol completely in place till a few of its technical and personal privacy concerns are addressed.
AirVPN has likewise included a lot for power users and tech-savvy people who like to experiment with things.
Switching is limitless, so if you don’t like one server, you can easily switch servers as often as you like.
You can keep an eye on 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 new tab).
There is an in-depth specifications page for AirVPN’s servers, with details like the readily 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 have to trust that what is being used will work. However taking a look at the active community 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 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 business is very clear. Online personal privacy and security are the outright concern, with defense 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, but you can request for this details to be erased at any time. This makes it among the most privacy-friendly VPN services.
As a result, nobody can identify you online; not even your ISP can tell 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 system and the Wi-Fi hotspot spying on your information.
Even the most ruthless surveillance, censoring, throttling, and traffic shaping tactics will fail against AirVPN due to the fact that your ISP and government will just see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.
They also state they adhere to EU personal privacy regulations and that any servers outside the EU will be treated with the same or higher levels of personal privacy and information protection as those in the EU.
You can get a new IP address to conceal your IP so that no one can use it to discover who you are. You’ll stay safe with the top-level security offered.
You can still connect to an AirVPN server through OpenVPN over SSH, SSL, or Tor if your ISP or nation obstructs OpenVPN.
Open-source clients and a lively community online forum enable you to get a sense of what current users are stating about the service prior to registering.
All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a huge plus. This implies 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 been examined by a third party.
Regarding security, AirVPN’s cryptography is arguably the best readily available. It resembles that of some other suppliers, however still worth discussing. The first exchange utilizes 4096-bit RSA to accomplish Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) by means of Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Following the first key negotiation, re-keying happens every 60 minutes, and the user can minimize this value. The main information channel utilizes AES-256-CBC encryption.
When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal details, not even your genuine e-mail address. That’s excellent given that it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. Be aware that you won’t be able to alter your account’s password if you do not utilize one.
Italy, where AirVPN is based, belongs to the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliances (a group of countries that share intelligence data). Even if the federal government asked for user info, AirVPN would have nothing to offer 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, consisting of Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Despite Eddie’s substantial ability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t rather as great as those providers who utilize it as standard.
Setting up the app is easy, and it has all the details you need to connect to a VPN.
Sadly, there are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to guide you. While it’s not difficult to get things working, it doesn’t have the most easy to use user interface, so it may be a more challenging learning curve for inexperienced users.
With Windows, there are a load of download choices. There are builds for various running systems (from Windows XP to Windows 11), in 32- and 64-bit tastes, and in installable or portable formats. In addition, there’s a changelog to describe what’s new and an archive of past releases in case the most existing doesn’t operate on your setup.
After launching it, select ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest area. When you’re finished, you just click Disconnect. Easy enough for anybody, however Eddie can do so much more considering that AirVPN offers more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we have actually seen.
Two crucial AirVPN functions through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN enables you to connect when your computer launches, but you can’t pick which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you selected last.
Although it specifies “kill switch” anywhere in the settings, AirVPN has 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 protected tunnel. Many standard 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 layout 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 displays all readily available servers in the network, together with in-depth info about each one, such as the server’s label, place, latency in milliseconds from your location, and current users and server load. Impressive 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 glimpse, together with an indicator of server load and user numbers. Similar to the Servers page, the amber/green sign is also shown. 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 country will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is basically a favorites list; you may pick as lots of nations as you like.
If you click the red “x”, that country will be gotten rid of, efficiently making it a blocklist/denylist. To get rid of the green checkmark from a country, click the empty box.
By selecting a nation, you are not instantly 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 also a checkmark, “X,” and blank box icons. There’s also a “refresh” button to get updated details on ping times and load times.
The Speed tab shows an easy 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 display 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 a lot more.
Power users, in particular, should value the capability to utilize a VPN with all the info they might ever want about the different locations, down to the variety of users on a particular server. It’s a priceless resource.
Logs is a comprehensive 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 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 via more versatile ports such as 22, 80, and 443. Proxies, Tor support, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.
The genuinely experienced user can go 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 vast feature list appears frightening, even if you are a VPN professional, it might be tough to find out what specific settings do and how to get the wanted results. In addition, it differs from any other service in terms of customization.
Don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie simply due to the fact that of its complexity. Remember that the program usually functions fine on its own, and you’ll never see the settings up until you look for them. If you occasionally crave power or configurability, the app will offer it.
Suppose you do not wish to utilize 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 utilize an extremely feature-rich Android VPN app rather. This software offers the exact same substantial configuration choices as its desktop sibling and useful status information.
Separate pages for country and server lists are what the Android app does not have that the desktop versions provides. Rather, you can expand a country and pick a particular city on the very same page. Some useful text additions make the info more understandable, but it’s still quite tough to understand in some spots.
Android does not have as numerous settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still many more than the majority of people will ever require. The software application likewise tries a bit more to assist you, with additional text subtitles to describe what each alternative does.
Speeds/Performance
Using OpenVPN, the Eddie Windows app from AirVPN generally 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, informing us with a desktop alert, and reconnecting us in seconds.
In regards to privacy, leak tests revealed 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.
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 excellent. Undoubtedly, one stated there wasn’t a single nation where they could grumble about the speed. On the contrary, it was really remarkable overall.
While it wasn’t rather on top tier for VPNs that use WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for the majority of people, and situations like HD video, streaming, and gaming conferencing definitely will not slow you down.
What AirVPN does not have is a wider variety of server places. This might restrict the availability of close-by servers for some users (which will always result in much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an exceptional choice for many people in the United States and Europe, however perhaps 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 used by Netflix in the U.S.A., whereas others do not.
Some report that Air is quite bad for streaming and doesn’t 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 United States Netflix rarely work, and when they do, finding the ideal server needs prolonged experimentation. This is most likely since, unlike other companies, AirVPN does not provide servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.
Fortunately, 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 certainly not an area in which AirVPN stands out, simply because that’s not what the service is about, as they are more focused on privacy and security.
Does AirVPN Permit 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 nothing to configure, no hoops to jump 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. Numerous 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, permits port forwarding for as much as 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, 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 really hassle-free, particularly if you need to leave your connection unattended.
Reviewers have actually shown torrenting to be excellent, smooth running with fast download and upload speeds, and without any issues whatsoever.
AirVPN Plans & Rates
AirVPN uses a broader variety of plans than the majority of VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect up to 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 exceptional option for people who reside in a family house or wish to use a VPN on a public network. While 5 should be enough for most people, other VPN companies provide 7 or even 10 if you need more.
Prices varies based on the membership length, and each plan consists of the same features. The majority of plans provide good value; however, longer subscriptions offer the very best deal.
The standard pricing is in Euros. They use the European Central Bank to provide real-time exchange rates for those overseas, so it can be quickly converted to and paid for in the currency of your option.
The current 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 global options 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 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 used more than 5 GB of data throughout that time.
AirVPN Customer Support
AirVPN has a different customer assistance offering than lots of other VPNs. While it doesn’t have live chat, it offers 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.
Notably, AirVPN’s email assistance isn’t contracted out however can be a little inconsistent with the time it takes to get a reaction. That said, the e-mail assistance is high quality, and the representatives are friendly and practical, however the thorough responses can be pretty technical, which may put off those new to VPNs.
AirVPN’s site has a great deal of details, including a big Frequently asked questions area that is broken up by topic.
AirVPN’s community forums cover many different subjects, however beginners will have the exact same problems understanding a lot of the tech jargon in the posts.
AirVPN Pros & Cons
Pros:
No logging Whatsoever.
Outstanding speeds with minimal loss.
Unlimited 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 choices in the client app.
Strong Customer Care.
Active Community Forums and Detailed Guides.
Good prices, particularly for longer-term plans.
Optional block lists protect you from advertisements, 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 newer users.
It is very hit and miss with streaming services.
No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.
Maybe there are too many advanced options.
Located in 14-Eyes Country.
Server numbers are relatively low.
Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Best Option?
The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, reputable, and safe VPN service with excellent pricing. It’s clearly geared towards more power and advanced users, so those brand-new to VPNs will be better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN company. 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 much better results than many of its rival 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 guarantee the 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 a great choice for customers 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 excellent choice for online filesharing.
Highly recommended!
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AirVPN 101 – A New User’s Guide To Deciding Upon The Right VPN Company
