Do you want to stay anonymous while surfing the web? If yes, then AirVPN could be the best solution for you.
While anyone can declare to be distinct these days, when it comes to VPN service providers, AirVPN shows that it truly is.
AirVPN stands apart 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, specifying, “A VPN based on OpenVPN and operated by activists and hacktivists in defence of net neutrality, privacy and against censorship”.While anyone can declare to be special nowadays, when it pertains to VPN service providers, AirVPN shows that it truly is.
They have actually been around a long period of time, since 2010, when it was started with the aid of 2 lawyers and a small group of activists and hackers. The satellite communications supplier Iridium formerly ran it, however AirVPN took over 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 organization either.
Across their About Us and Mission pages, the business’s history is explained 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 non-traditional route and breaks the mold by offering a VPN developed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.
So 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 most, with only 246 servers spread throughout 23 countries.
Many servers are in Europe (besides those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A minor concern here is that the absence of variety of servers reduces the number of global AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home nation while keeping their privacy.
That said, Air is well known for its exceptional performance throughout its server network, with numerous nations having high-performance physical individual servers.
They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation methods to provide an accurate assessment 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 utilize OpenVPN and WireGuard (in beta). OpenVPN is the most protected and trusted way to create encrypted tunnels. It provides more security than the military.
Many ports and protocols are offered; they use OpenVPN on the following ports: 80 TCP/UDP, 443 TCP/UDP, and 53 TCP/UDP. Additionally, every Air server directly supports OpenVPN over SSH, OpenVPN over SSL, and OpenVPN over Tor. So forget about PPTP and other unsafe protocols.
When it boils down to it, no choice is given to any service, protocol, or application. Net Neutrality is maintained. Importantly, you can overcome web restrictions such as avoiding censorship, geographic restrictions, and traffic shaping.
The usage is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it instantly improves users’ privacy and security and is extremely trustworthy. However, the lack of WireGuard as standard may show Air isn’t quite staying up to date with its rivals. That said, AirVPN states it is testing WireGuard, but it won’t put the newer protocol fully in place until some of its technical and personal privacy concerns are dealt with.
AirVPN has likewise 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 change 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 new tab).
There is an in-depth specifications 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 gain access to 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 online forum or the comprehensive open-source clients puts your mind at ease.
A nice aspect of this is that you can see what other people state about the service before 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 company is really clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online personal privacy and security are the absolute priority, with security from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that attack personal privacy. There is no personal info 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 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 among the most privacy-friendly VPN services.
As a result, no one can identify you online; not even your ISP can figure out what kind of traffic or protocol you’re using.
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 since your ISP and government will only see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.
They likewise say they comply with EU privacy guidelines and that any servers outside the EU will be treated with the very same or greater levels of privacy and data protection as those in the EU.
You can get a new IP address to conceal your IP so that no one can utilize it to discover who you are. You’ll remain safe with the top-level protection offered.
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 online 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 huge plus. This indicates that anyone can check out AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, however just ProtonVPN’s apps have actually been examined by a third party.
Concerning security, AirVPN’s cryptography is arguably the finest offered. The first exchange uses 4096-bit RSA to attain Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) through Diffie-Hellman key exchange.
When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal details, not even your genuine email address. That’s excellent considering that it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. Be aware that you will not be able to alter 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 countries that share intelligence information). But even if the federal government requested user information, 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, readily available on all major platforms and OSes, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Regrettably, in spite of Eddie’s substantial capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as good as those companies who use it as standard.
Setting up 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 assist you. While it’s not hard to get things working, it doesn’t have the most easy to use user interface, so it may be a more difficult learning curve for inexperienced users.
With Windows, there are a load of download alternatives. There are builds for numerous running systems (from Windows XP to Windows 11), in 32- and 64-bit flavors, and in portable or installable formats. In addition, there’s a changelog to describe what’s new and an archive of past releases in case the most present doesn’t operate on your setup.
After launching it, choose ‘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 anybody, however Eddie can do a lot more because AirVPN provides 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 permits you to connect when your computer starts up, but you can’t choose which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you chosen last.
Even though it specifies “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 protected tunnel. A lot of standard 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 6 tabs: Overview, Servers, Countries, Speed, Stats, and Logs.
The Overview just 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 readily available servers in the network, along with in-depth info about each one, such as the server’s label, area, latency in milliseconds from your area, and current users and server load. Excellent 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 available in each nation at a glimpse, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. As with the Servers page, the amber/green sign is also revealed. Lots of 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 pick as many countries as you like.
If you click the red “x”, that country will be removed, successfully making it a blocklist/denylist. To remove the green checkmark from a nation, click the empty box.
By selecting a nation, you are not immediately 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 changed, so you can see traffic from the last 10 seconds to one day.
While many apps show your existing VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also reveals fine-grained details, 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 far more.
Power users, in particular, should value the capability to utilize a VPN with all the info they might ever desire about the numerous locations, down to the variety of users on a particular server. It’s an invaluable resource.
Logs is an in-depth 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 fine-tune 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 attempt 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 genuinely competent user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which permit, to name a few things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management Interface through the Logs pane.
If the vast feature list appears frightening, even if you are a VPN professional, it might be hard to find out what particular settings do and how to get the desired results. In addition, it differs from any other service in terms of personalization.
Don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just because of its complexity. Keep in mind that the program normally functions fine by itself, and you’ll never ever see the settings up until you look for them. If you sometimes crave power or configurability, the app will provide it.
Suppose you do not want 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?
There isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can use an exceptionally feature-rich Android VPN app rather. This software provides the exact same extensive configuration choices as its desktop sibling and helpful status information.
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 particular city on the exact same page. Some practical text additions make the info more easy to understand, however it’s still rather tough 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 the majority of people will ever need. The software likewise tries a little more to help you, with additional text subtitles to explain what each choice does.
Speeds/Performance
Utilizing 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 great, with the app discovering when the VPN tunnel drops, notifying us with a desktop notification, and reconnecting us in seconds.
In terms of personal 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.
Due to the fact that AirVPN only supports OpenVPN, it was always going to be slower than the WireGuard-equipped competitors.
Nevertheless, reviewers have reported speeds to be outstanding. One said there wasn’t a single nation where they could grumble about the speed. On the contrary, it was really impressive overall.
While it wasn’t rather at the top tier for VPNs that utilize WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for the majority of people, and circumstances like HD video gaming, streaming, and video conferencing certainly will not slow you down.
What AirVPN does not have is a broader number of server locations. This might restrict the accessibility of neighboring servers for some users (which will constantly lead to better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an excellent option for the majority of people in the United States and Europe, but perhaps less so for other areas.
Streaming
Streaming the big 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 utilized by Netflix in the USA, whereas others do not.
Certainly, some report that Air is quite poor for streaming and doesn’t work with any of the significant streaming services. Nevertheless, it appears to work 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, discovering the ideal server requires lengthy trial and error. This is most likely since, unlike other suppliers, AirVPN doesn’t provide servers that are optimised for accessing streaming sites.
Luckily, on AirVPN’s site, 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 because that’s not what the service is about, as they are more focused on privacy and security.
Does AirVPN Allow P2P?
Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. Simply connect to the VPN server of your option and get going.
Plus, you can utilize port forwarding to enhance your file-sharing performance. A number of applications, such as BitTorrent and eMule clients, would run badly without it, and your computer’s shares might be inaccessible from the Internet.
File sharing has good speeds on regional servers, enables 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 obstruct all traffic from leaving your device 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 practical, specifically 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 with no issues whatsoever.
AirVPN Plans & Rates
AirVPN offers a broader range of plans than most VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect as much as five gadgets at the same time, so you can connect your PC, phone, tablet, and a couple of other devices all at the same time.
This makes it an excellent option for individuals who live in a household home or wish to utilize a VPN on a public network. While five really should be enough for many people, other VPN service providers offer 7 or even 10 if you require more.
Pricing differs based upon the membership length, and each plan consists of the same features. A lot of plans offer good value; however, longer memberships provide the very best deal.
The standard pricing is in Euros. Nevertheless, they use the European Central Bank to provide real-time exchange rates for those abroad, so it can be easily transformed to and spent for in the currency of your option.
The current 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, consisting of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Doge. Lots of international 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 voucher 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 Assistance
AirVPN has a different customer assistance offering than many other VPNs. While it does not have live chat, it offers e-mail support and frequently asked questions (FAQs) and has a very active support online forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.
Importantly, AirVPN’s e-mail assistance isn’t contracted out but can be a little irregular with the time it requires to get a reaction. That stated, the e-mail support is high quality, and the representatives are friendly and valuable, but the detailed responses can be quite technical, which may put off those brand-new to VPNs.
AirVPN’s site has a great deal of details, including a large FAQs section that is separated by subject.
AirVPN’s community forums cover several topics, but newbies will have the very same troubles comprehending a great deal of the tech jargon in the posts.
AirVPN Pros & Cons
Pros:
No logging Whatsoever.
Excellent speeds with minimal loss.
Unlimited 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 usage.
Many, many advanced settings and customization choices in the client app.
Strong Customer Support.
Active Community Online Forums and Detailed Guides.
Great prices, especially 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 very user-friendly or attractive like other services.
Client app may overwhelm newer users.
It is really hit and miss with streaming services.
No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.
Perhaps there are too many advanced alternatives.
Located in 14-Eyes Country.
Server numbers are fairly low.
Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Very Best Option?
So the bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, trusted, and safe VPN service with good 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 supplier. However even brand-new users might 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 a lot of its rival VPN rivals.
When it boils down to it, this VPN service is more concentrated on securing your privacy than unblocking streaming services like Netflix or Hulu.
Although it may not guarantee the exact 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 option 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 exceptional choice for online filesharing.
Highly recommended!
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