Do you want 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 providers, AirVPN shows that it really is.
AirVPN stands apart from other VPN services because of its dedication to protecting 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 anyone can claim to be special nowadays, when it comes to VPN service providers, AirVPN shows that it really is.
They have actually been around a very long time, since 2010, when it was started with the help of two lawyers and a little group of activists and hackers. The satellite communications service provider 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 company either.
Throughout their About Us and Mission pages, the business’s history is described and details the personal privacy projects that AirVPN has established or supported. These consist of 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 developed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.
How does AirVPN stack up versus its rivals with such strong privacy qualifications?
AirVPN’s Key Features
Servers
AirVPN’s network is much smaller sized than many, with only 246 servers spread out throughout 23 countries.
Many servers are in Europe (besides those in the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong). A minor problem here is that the absence of variety of servers lowers the number of global AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home country while keeping their personal privacy.
That said, Air is well known for its exceptional performance across its server network, with numerous countries having high-performance physical individual servers.
They use transparent bandwidth allocation strategies to provide an accurate evaluation of performance, with no overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are entirely unlimited, without any 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 safe and secure and reputable method to create encrypted tunnels. It provides more security than the military.
Numerous ports and protocols are readily available; 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. Notably, you can get rid of web restrictions 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 trustworthy. The absence of WireGuard as standard might reveal Air isn’t quite keeping up with its rivals. That stated, AirVPN states it is evaluating WireGuard, but it won’t put the newer protocol fully in place until some of its technical and personal privacy issues are resolved.
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 frequently as you like.
You can monitor the present load on each server, any existing issues, and a history of previous issues 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 offered 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 considering that there is no third-party audit, you have to trust that what is being provided will work. But looking at the active community forum or the detailed open-source clients puts your mind at ease.
A good feature of this is that you can see what other individuals state about the service before registering. 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?
When it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy, the business is extremely clear. Online 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 just collects non-identifiable “technical information” to keep the server running and improve services, but you can request for this details 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 sort of traffic or protocol you’re using.
There’s no listening in, so you can connect to any wi-fi network without worrying about your computer system and the Wi-Fi hotspot spying on your data.
Even the most ruthless surveillance, censoring, throttling, and traffic shaping methods will fail against AirVPN since your ISP and government will just see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.
They also state they abide by EU personal privacy guidelines and that any servers outside the EU will be treated with the exact same or greater levels of privacy and information protection as those in the EU.
You can get a new IP address to conceal your IP so that nobody can utilize it to find out who you are. You’ll stay 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 country obstructs OpenVPN.
Open-source clients and a lively community forum allow you to get a sense of what existing users are stating about the service prior to signing up.
All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a big plus. This implies that anybody can look into 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 probably the finest readily available. The very first exchange utilizes 4096-bit RSA to accomplish Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) via Diffie-Hellman key exchange.
When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal info, not even your real e-mail address. That’s great because it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. But understand that you will not 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 government asked for user information, AirVPN would have absolutely nothing to give them.
Who Or What Is Eddie??
The Eddie UI is the name of AirVPN’s main open-source application, readily available on all significant platforms and OSes, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. In spite of Eddie’s significant ability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as great as those service providers who utilize it as standard.
Establishing the app is easy, 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 does not have the most easy to use interface, so it might be a more challenging learning curve for inexperienced users.
With Windows, there are a heap of download options. There are builds for numerous 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 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. When you’re ended up, you just click Disconnect. Simple enough for anyone, however Eddie can do so much more since 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 starts up, however you can’t select which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you selected last.
Although it defines “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 safe tunnel. Most 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 6 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 available servers in the network, together with comprehensive details about every one, such as the server’s nickname, place, latency in milliseconds from your place, and current users and server load. Excellent stuff!
This tab also has an amber/green signal that lets you know whether a server is recommended for you.
The Countries page shows the number of servers available in each country at a glimpse, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. Similar to the Servers page, the amber/green sign 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 country will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is essentially a favorites list; you may choose as lots of nations as you like.
If you click the red “x”, that nation will be gotten rid of, efficiently making it a blocklist/denylist. To remove the green checkmark from a nation, click the empty box.
By selecting a country, 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 simple 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 show your current VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also reveals 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, information downloaded and uploaded, and far more.
Power users, in particular, should value the ability to use a VPN with all the details they could ever desire about the various locations, down to the number of users on a specific server. It’s a priceless resource.
Logs is a detailed record of connections, routes, and other data.
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 utilize between UDP and TCP, and which port number. Or whether to attempt an SSH tunnel by means of 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 by means of the Logs pane.
If the large feature list appears scary, even if you are a VPN specialist, it might be hard to find out what particular settings do and how to get the preferred results. In addition, it differs from any other service in regards to personalization.
Don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just because of its intricacy. Bear in mind that the program typically operates fine on its own, and you’ll never ever see the settings up until you search for them. If you sometimes long for 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 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 a very feature-rich Android VPN app rather. This software application provides the exact same comprehensive setup options as its desktop sibling and useful status information.
Separate pages for country and server lists are what the Android app lacks that the desktop versions provides. Rather, you can expand a country and select a particular city on the same page. Some useful text additions make the information more easy to understand, but it’s still quite tough to comprehend in some spots.
Android does not have as numerous settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still many more than most people will ever need. The software also attempts a little more to assist you, with additional text subtitles to discuss what each option does.
Speeds/Performance
Utilizing OpenVPN, the Eddie Windows app from AirVPN typically connects rapidly and is ready to go in less than 10 seconds.
Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was excellent, with the app discovering when the VPN tunnel drops, informing us with a desktop notification, and reconnecting us in seconds.
In regards to 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.
Reviewers have actually reported speeds to be exceptional. Certainly, one stated there wasn’t a single country where they could grumble about the speed. On the contrary, it was actually impressive overall.
While it wasn’t rather on top tier for VPNs that use WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for most people, and circumstances like HD video, streaming, and gaming conferencing absolutely won’t slow you down.
What AirVPN does not have is a broader variety of server locations. This might limit the availability of neighboring servers for some users (which will always result in much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an exceptional option for many people in the United States and Europe, but 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 actually been a mixed bag for reviewers. Some report that AirVPN is effective enough to bypass the VPN blocks utilized by Netflix in the USA, whereas others do not.
Indeed, some report that Air is pretty poor for streaming and does not work with any of the significant streaming services. 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 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.
Fortunately, on AirVPN’s website, there is a list of ‘blocked websites’ that users can inspect to see if the situation with these streaming websites 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?
Yes, it does; every internet protocol, including peer-to-peer, is welcome. Undoubtedly, 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 get going.
Plus, you can utilize port forwarding to enhance 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 regional servers, enables port forwarding for up to 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, triggered by default, will obstruct all traffic from exiting your gadget if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you won’t be sending out unencrypted packets to the Web. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is extremely hassle-free, specifically if you need to leave your connection unattended.
Reviewers have shown torrenting to be excellent, smooth running with quick download and upload speeds, and without any issues whatsoever.
AirVPN Plans & Prices
AirVPN offers a wider range of plans than a lot of VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect up to 5 gadgets all at once, so you can connect your PC, phone, tablet, and a couple of other gadgets all at the same time.
This makes it an excellent choice for people who reside in a family home or want to utilize a VPN on a public network. While 5 should suffice for most people, other VPN service providers offer 7 or even 10 if you need more.
Pricing differs based on the membership length, and each plan consists of the exact same features. The majority of plans use good value; nevertheless, longer memberships use the very best offer.
The standard pricing is in Euros. They utilize the European Central Bank to offer real-time exchange rates for those overseas, so it can be easily converted to and paid 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 international alternatives are also accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.
AirVPN offers a three-day totally 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 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 during that time.
AirVPN Customer Support
AirVPN has a different customer support offering than lots of 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 online forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.
Importantly, AirVPN’s e-mail support isn’t contracted out however can be a little irregular with the time it requires to get an action. That stated, the email support is high quality, and the agents are useful and friendly, however the thorough responses can be quite technical, which may put off those brand-new to VPNs.
AirVPN’s site has a lot of details, including a large Frequently asked questions section that is broken up by subject.
AirVPN’s community forums cover various topics, however beginners will have the very same difficulties understanding a lot of the tech lingo in the posts.
AirVPN Pros & Cons
Pros:
No logging Whatsoever.
Excellent speeds with very little loss.
Unlimited 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 setup and usage.
Many, many advanced settings and customization choices in the client app.
Solid Customer Support.
Active Community Forums and Detailed Guides.
Excellent rates, particularly for longer-term plans.
Optional block lists protect 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 may overwhelm more recent users.
It is really 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 Best Option?
The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, reliable, and safe VPN service with great prices. It’s clearly 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. Even 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 much better results than a lot of its rival VPN competitors.
When it comes down to it, this VPN service is more concentrated on protecting your privacy than unblocking streaming services like Netflix or Hulu.
It might not ensure the exact same level of personal privacy and privacy as a service like Mullvad, which appoints you a random account number and permits you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still a good alternative for consumers who value their personal privacy.
While it doesn’t hit the speed heights of a WireGuard service, performance-wise, it’s definitely the very best purely OpenVPN service out there. In addition to being an outstanding option for online filesharing.
Highly recommended!
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AirVPN 101 – A Newbie’s Guide To Deciding On The Right VPN Provider
