Using AirVPN On Linux

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Do you wish to remain anonymous while surfing the web? AirVPN could be the perfect service for you if yes.

While anybody can declare to be special nowadays, when it pertains to VPN companies, AirVPN shows that it really is.

AirVPN sticks out from other VPN services because of its dedication to securing user privacy. From the start, the AirVPN site starts with an appeal for your trust, specifying, “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 unique nowadays, when it concerns VPN service providers, AirVPN shows that it truly is.

AirVPN Home Page

They’ve been around a long time, since 2010, when it was started with the aid of two lawyers and a little group of hackers and activists. 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 currently 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 larger company either.

Across their About Us and Mission pages, the business’s history is described and details the 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 providing a VPN created by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

How does AirVPN stack up against its competitors with such strong personal privacy credentials?

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

AirVPN’s network is much smaller sized than a lot of, 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 small concern here is that the absence of variety of servers reduces the number of worldwide AirVPN users who might access geo-restricted services in their home nation while maintaining their privacy.

AirVPN Servers

That stated, Air is popular for its outstanding performance across its server network, with numerous nations having high-performance physical individual servers.

They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation techniques to provide 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 utilize OpenVPN and WireGuard (in beta). OpenVPN is the most reliable and safe way to create encrypted tunnels. It offers 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.

When it comes down to it, no preference is given to any service, application, or protocol. Net Neutrality is maintained. Notably, you can get rid of internet constraints such as avoiding censorship, geographical restrictions, and traffic shaping.

The use is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it instantly enhances users’ personal privacy and security and is highly reliable. The lack of WireGuard as standard may show Air isn’t rather keeping up with its rivals. That said, AirVPN states it is evaluating WireGuard, however it will not put the newer protocol completely in place till a few of its technical and privacy problems are attended to.

AirVPN has also included a lot for power users and tech-savvy people who like to try out things.

Switching is unlimited, 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 current 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 an in-depth specs page for AirVPN’s servers, with information 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 because there is no third-party audit, you have to trust that what is being offered will work. Looking at the active community forum or the in-depth open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A great feature of this is that you can see what other individuals say about the service prior to registering. 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?

The business is very clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online personal privacy and security are the absolute concern, with defense from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that attack personal privacy. There is no individual details 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 gathers non-identifiable “technical data” to keep the server running and enhance services, however you can request this details to be deleted at any time. This makes it one of 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 using.

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 strategies will fail versus AirVPN since your ISP and government will just see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.

They likewise state they adhere to EU privacy guidelines which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the very same or greater levels of personal privacy and information protection as those in the EU.

You can get a new IP address to hide your IP so that nobody can use it to discover who you are. You’ll stay safe with the high-level security supplied.

You can still connect to an AirVPN server through OpenVPN over SSH, SSL, or Tor if your ISP or nation blocks 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 before registering.

All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a big plus. This suggests that anybody can check out AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, but only ProtonVPN’s apps have actually been checked by a third party.

Relating to security, AirVPN’s cryptography is probably the very best readily available. It’s similar to that of some other companies, however still worth discussing. The first exchange uses 4096-bit RSA to achieve 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 reduce this value. The main information channel utilizes AES-256-CBC encryption.

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal info, not even your genuine e-mail address. That’s terrific considering that it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. But be aware that you won’t be able to change your account’s password if you don’t utilize one.

Italy, where AirVPN is based, is a member of the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliances (a group of nations that share intelligence data). Even if the 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 primary open-source application, offered on all significant platforms and OSes, consisting of Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Regardless of Eddie’s significant capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t rather as good as those companies who utilize it as standard.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

Establishing the app is easy, and it has all the information you require to connect to a VPN.

Unfortunately, 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 interface, so it might be a more difficult learning curve for inexperienced users.

With Windows, there are a ton of download options. There are builds for numerous 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 current does not work on your setup.

After launching it, choose ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest area. When you’re ended up, you simply click Disconnect. Simple enough for anyone, however Eddie can do so much more because AirVPN provides more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we’ve seen.

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

2 essential AirVPN functions through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN allows you to connect when your computer system starts up, but you can’t choose which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you selected last.

Although it defines “kill switch” throughout the settings, AirVPN has 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 safe tunnel. Most basic kill switches only do this when the VPN is on, however 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 simply 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 offered servers in the network, together with in-depth information about each one, such as the server’s nickname, location, 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 shows the number of servers readily available in each country at a glance, together with an indicator of server load and user numbers. Just like the Servers page, the amber/green sign 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 discovered 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 basically a favorites list; you might choose as numerous countries as you like.

If you click the red “x”, that country will be gotten rid of, successfully making it a blocklist/denylist. To remove the green checkmark from a nation, click the empty box.

By choosing 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 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 the majority of apps show your existing VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also shows fine-grained details, such as the server’s location, load, existing user count, protocol, port, encryption algorithm, session start time and length, IPv6 exit address, data uploaded and downloaded, and much more.

Power users, in particular, should value the ability to use a VPN with all the details they could ever want about the different locations, down to the variety of users on a specific server. It’s a valuable resource.

Lastly, Logs is an in-depth record of connections, routes, and other data.

This allows you to fine-tune the setup, such as whether it needs to constantly connect when opened, which protocol to utilize between UDP and TCP, and which port number. Proxies, Tor assistance, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

The genuinely proficient user can enter into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which enable, among other things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management Interface through the Logs pane.

If the large feature list appears frightening, even if you are a VPN specialist, it might be hard to figure out what particular settings do and how to get the preferred results. In addition, it differs from any other service in terms of personalization.

However, don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just because of its intricacy. Remember that the program usually functions fine by itself, and you’ll never see the settings till you look for them. Nevertheless, if you occasionally long for power or configurability, the app will offer it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

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 a very feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software application provides the exact same extensive configuration options as its desktop sibling and useful status info.

Separate pages for country and server lists are what the Android app lacks that the desktop versions provides. Instead, you can expand a country and choose a specific city on the very same page. Some useful text additions make the information more easy to understand, but it’s still quite challenging 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 need. The software likewise attempts a little bit more to assist you, with additional text subtitles to describe what each choice does.

Speeds/Performance

Using OpenVPN, the Eddie Windows app from AirVPN generally connects rapidly 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, notifying us with a desktop notification, 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.

Due to the fact that AirVPN just supports OpenVPN, it was always going to be slower than the WireGuard-equipped competition.

However, reviewers have actually reported speeds to be outstanding. Indeed, one stated there wasn’t a single nation where they could grumble about the speed. On the contrary, it was truly outstanding overall.

While it wasn’t rather on top tier for VPNs that utilize WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for many people, and scenarios like HD video, streaming, and video gaming conferencing certainly will not slow you down.

What AirVPN does not have is a wider number of server places. This might restrict the ease of access of neighboring servers for some users (which will always lead to much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an excellent option for the majority of people in the United States and Europe, but maybe less so for other regions.

Streaming

Streaming the big 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 powerful enough to bypass the VPN blocks utilized by Netflix in the U.S.A., whereas others do not.

Some report that Air is pretty bad for streaming and does not work with any of the major streaming services. It appears to work with less-popular streaming apps like Peacock and Sony Crackle.

Another reviewer says services like BBC iPlayer and US Netflix rarely work, and when they do, finding the ideal server requires prolonged trial and error. This is most likely because, unlike other suppliers, AirVPN doesn’t use servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.

Luckily, on AirVPN’s website, there is a list of ‘blocked websites’ that users can inspect to see if the situation with these streaming sites ever changes.

Streaming is certainly 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 web protocol, including peer-to-peer, is welcome. Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. There’s nothing to configure, no hoops to leap through. Just connect to the VPN server of your option and start.

Plus, you can use 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 Web.

File sharing has decent speeds on regional 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 integrated kill switch, activated by default, will obstruct all traffic from exiting your device if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you will not be sending unencrypted packets to the Internet. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is really practical, specifically if you need to leave your connection unattended.

Reviewers have shown torrenting to be excellent, smooth running with fast download and upload speeds, and without any issues whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Pricing

AirVPN offers a wider variety of plans than the majority of VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect up to five 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 exceptional option for people who reside in a household house or wish to utilize a VPN on a public network. While five really should be enough for many people, other VPN companies offer 7 or even 10 if you need more.

Prices differs based on the subscription length, and each plan includes the exact same features. A lot of plans use good value; however, longer subscriptions provide the very best offer.

The standard pricing is in Euros. Nevertheless, they use 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 option.

The present plans 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 choices are also accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.

AirVPN offers a three-day totally free trial, which can be obtained by sending 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 haven’t broken the terms of service or utilized more than 5 GB of data throughout that time.

AirVPN Customer Support

AirVPN has a different customer assistance offering than numerous other VPNs. While it does not have live chat, it uses e-mail support and frequently asked questions (FAQs) and has an extremely active support forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.

Significantly, AirVPN’s e-mail assistance isn’t outsourced however can be a little inconsistent with the time it requires to get a response. That said, the email support is high quality, and the agents are friendly and valuable, however the extensive responses can be quite technical, which might put off those brand-new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s site has a lot of details, consisting of a large FAQs area that is broken up by topic.

AirVPN’s community forums cover various subjects, however novices will have the very same troubles understanding a great deal of the tech lingo in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Outstanding 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 setup and use.

Many, many advanced settings and customization options in the client app.

Strong Client Service.

Active Community Online Forums and Comprehensive Guides.

Excellent costs, especially for longer-term plans.

Optional block lists protect 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 really hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Possibly there are too many advanced choices.

Found in 14-Eyes Country.

Server numbers are relatively low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Very Best Choice?

So the bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, trustworthy, and safe VPN service with good pricing. It’s clearly tailored towards more power and advanced users, so those new to VPNs will be better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN service provider. However even brand-new users could do much, much worse.

While it could be challenging to utilize if you’re new to VPNs, you’ll receive much quicker speeds and much better results than many of its competing VPN rivals.

This VPN service is more focused on protecting your personal privacy than unblocking streaming services like Netflix or Hulu when it comes down to it.

It may not ensure the very same level of personal privacy and privacy as a service like Mullvad, which assigns you a random account number and allows you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still a good option for customers who value their 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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