Jump to content
Not connected, Your IP: 44.222.134.250
LZ1

Guide To Getting Started + Links For Advanced Users

Recommended Posts

Thanks for putting this guide together, I certainly hope that it gives new users a running start to the service

 

PS: I would add something regarding the fact that server geolocation, particularly with Google is almost never accurate due to the nature of VPN's and Googles shitty IP database system (as well as some errors with maxmind and other services aka server vendor country instead of physical location etc.)

Share this post


Link to post
Guest

Useful guide, I'm sure it'll come in quite handy for new users 

Share this post


Link to post

Thanks guys.

 

@giganerd It's an honor!

@mehāniskākaravīrs935  Maybe that's a little too advanced, hahaha. But thanks for adding it.

@EdenSpire I hope so! I'll probably be updating it as I go along, to add more details. I hope it'll help make it easier for new people.


Moderators do not speak on behalf of AirVPN. Only the Official Staff account does. Please also do not run Tor Exit Servers behind AirVPN, thank you.
Did you make a guide or how-to for something? Then contact me to get it listed in my new user guide's Guides Section, so that the community can find it more easily.

Share this post


Link to post

Super guide to start with VPN. When i choose the connection mode TOR how can I test if it is connected ?? Where do I find the Test button?

 

...AirVPN client needs access to Tor Control to works properly. To check if it already works, use the Test button in Preferences > Mode...

 

Thanks, PinoPrince

Share this post


Link to post

Super guide to start with VPN. When i choose the connection mode TOR how can I test if it is connected ?? Where do I find the Test button?

 

...AirVPN client needs access to Tor Control to works properly. To check if it already works, use the Test button in Preferences > Mode...

 

 

Hello !

Thanks, PinoPrince

Welcome to AirVPN. Thank you for the compliment :]

 

That confused me too. But if you download the Tor browser bundle, go to the Eddie settings and click "tor", you're fine.

 

At the end there's a Test button. I've attached an image. Oh and Tor has its own testing service:

 

https://check.torproject.org/?lang=en_US

 

Then you can check if an AirVPN server IP shows up or not.


Moderators do not speak on behalf of AirVPN. Only the Official Staff account does. Please also do not run Tor Exit Servers behind AirVPN, thank you.
Did you make a guide or how-to for something? Then contact me to get it listed in my new user guide's Guides Section, so that the community can find it more easily.

Share this post


Link to post

LZ1 - sensational work. I wish I'd had this when I first starting looking into VPNs! For some time I've been thinking it would be sooooo useful for so many people to have a guide like this. And now it's here! N00bs will be very grateful, as will the rest of the community, which won't have to be reading the same newbie questions, repeated over and over again. This needs to be stickied for sure.

 

Hat's off sir.

Share this post


Link to post

Awesome work cheers and thanks for mentioning pfsense_fan and his latest 2.3 guide, without his hard work and dedication many of us could not enjoy full speeds on air servers !

 

Not sure if its my end but these links here:

 

http://https//airvpn.org/topic/17747-why-we-should-abandon-google-their-services-and-broken-apis/

 

http://https//airvpn.org/topic/18229-firefox-extensions-how-to-guides/

 

Did not work, maybe the sites are down or just my end.

Share this post


Link to post

@ocelot

Thank you very much! :]. That was very much the intention as well. Sorry I couldn't be there for you, lol. I'm honored that it did in fact get stickied!

 

@refresh

Thank you doubly bro! I fixed it. I appreciate the feedback :]. His guide is indeed very comprehensive too. Can't afford to let these things slide into oblivion.


Moderators do not speak on behalf of AirVPN. Only the Official Staff account does. Please also do not run Tor Exit Servers behind AirVPN, thank you.
Did you make a guide or how-to for something? Then contact me to get it listed in my new user guide's Guides Section, so that the community can find it more easily.

Share this post


Link to post

Awesome work cheers and thanks for mentioning pfsense_fan and his latest 2.3 guide, without his hard work and dedication many of us could not enjoy full speeds on air servers !

 

Not sure if its my end but these links here:

 

http://https//airvpn.org/topic/17747-why-we-should-abandon-google-their-services-and-broken-apis/

 

http://https//airvpn.org/topic/18229-firefox-extensions-how-to-guides/

 

Did not work, maybe the sites are down or just my end.

Firefox, https everywhere, u block, nosuite, self destructing cookies, badger, and most importantly WEBRTC.

Share this post


Link to post

By the way, @LZ1, we discussed browser addons in the past and listed many of them.

 

About funding browser extensions


NOT AN AIRVPN TEAM MEMBER. USE TICKETS FOR PROFESSIONAL SUPPORT.

LZ1's New User Guide to AirVPN « Plenty of stuff for advanced users, too!

Want to contact me directly? All relevant methods are on my About me page.

Share this post


Link to post

@giganerd

Thank you, I added it. I've already added a ton of links since I first started the thread 2 days ago. Mostly at the later stages of the guide. I'm almost satisfied lol. Almost...There's so many good threads which have relevant and interesting content, which have been left to die. So it's nice to be able to list some of them. It's great that Air funds various other projects. I really like that they run their own Tor nodes.


Moderators do not speak on behalf of AirVPN. Only the Official Staff account does. Please also do not run Tor Exit Servers behind AirVPN, thank you.
Did you make a guide or how-to for something? Then contact me to get it listed in my new user guide's Guides Section, so that the community can find it more easily.

Share this post


Link to post

They run relays, and fund nodes. See their mission page.

 

(Sent via Tapatalk - this generally means I'm not sitting in front of my PC)


NOT AN AIRVPN TEAM MEMBER. USE TICKETS FOR PROFESSIONAL SUPPORT.

LZ1's New User Guide to AirVPN « Plenty of stuff for advanced users, too!

Want to contact me directly? All relevant methods are on my About me page.

Share this post


Link to post

I mostly just lurk, but wanted to mention that this guide should prove to be a pretty useful index for individuals who are new to the topic of VPNs and their usage generally. Thanks for putting it together.

Share this post


Link to post

I mostly just lurk, but wanted to mention that this guide should prove to be a pretty useful index for individuals who are new to the topic of VPNs and their usage generally. Thanks for putting it together.

Well I thank you for breaking the silence to tell me this, as I put a lot of effort into making it. I'm glad the number of edits don't seem to show, as it's criminally high lol. I hope the guide

helps more advanced users too, in terms of finding stuff, since it easily gets lost around here. Anyhow, thanks a lot !!


Moderators do not speak on behalf of AirVPN. Only the Official Staff account does. Please also do not run Tor Exit Servers behind AirVPN, thank you.
Did you make a guide or how-to for something? Then contact me to get it listed in my new user guide's Guides Section, so that the community can find it more easily.

Share this post


Link to post

Hello and thank you for posting this.

 

As I get more familiar with the options and configurations, I do have one more question in addition to the great summaries above. When using the configure generator and selecting individual servers vice countries, what are the most important stats to look at to determine the how fast the connection would be if a particular server is selected? There is a wealth of data available on each server and not sure I am paying attention to the right things as I try to evaluate what might work best.

 

Right now I tend to default to those with a higher in/out bits per second average rating in the traffic graph, but have know idea if this really means anything as far as the speed of that connection.

 

Thank you

Share this post


Link to post

Thanks for posting this guide! As a newbie (7 days), I've been working with the default settings. Following your advice, I've decided to implement the "Connect at Startup", "Activate Network Lock at Startup" and "Start with Windows" options, and I've also increased the TCP/UDP send/receive buffer sizes to 256 KB. More importantly, perhaps, I've fixed the leaky connection in Firefox, so my true IP address is now properly hidden, as confirmed by the test page. As you say in your guide, the instructions are very simple to follow! Now I need to check whether my default browser - Internet Explorer - is leaky. (I know... but I grew up with it, and I'm still fond of it.)

Share this post


Link to post

@stef_wilvpn

Apologies for taking so long. I recommend just picking a category, such as a region of the world and going with that. The Air client will then automatically select the best server at the time (it fluctuates).

It should be said that it's hard, if not impossible perhaps, to give precise numbers for speeds.But in general, you would want to:

  • Pick the server/region or country closest to you, because distance matters. However there's also cases where some countries simply have better infrastructure than others. Korea might have good internal networking for instance,
  • Yet still not be a country which is good to connect to or via, speed-wise, due to how they and their various companies, like ISPs, handle connections.
  • Then you should look at the load/state of a server, if you're picking individual servers; although I don't recommend this. Go for ones with lower amounts of load.
  • Time of day also plays a part, since many ISPs have bottlenecks during daytime, while at night the connection might improve a lot.
  • You also select the server with more bits per second (usage), when you should be doing the exact opposite .
  • Do also pick the UDP protocol to start with and check out the other tips for optimizing the connection, as seen in the "After downloading Eddie" section.
  • Naturally there's also your own hardware setup & internet speeds to consider. Things like whether or not your router is good enough; especially if you run the VPN on it directly.
  • There's also the software. Windows has a lot of issues with TAP drivers. So do check out the section on if Eddie is slow.
  • At any rate, I urge you to just go for it. You can always change your confirguation later. Especially after having done a few speedtests on the site .

I hope this helps. Welcome to AirVPN

 

@after_lunch

Hello ! I'm very pleased to see that! I did hope that it was simple to follow. Also, you could disable IE entirely if you wish, haha. Then just run Windows in a Virtual Machine, for when you miss it haha!

Although you might be interested in knowing there's actually a Firefox extension that apparently makes FF look like IE, haha. Something to consider!

Do feel free to share your experiences later on, as I hope it's smooth sailing for you, here on out. Welcome to AirVPN, enjoy the ride!


Moderators do not speak on behalf of AirVPN. Only the Official Staff account does. Please also do not run Tor Exit Servers behind AirVPN, thank you.
Did you make a guide or how-to for something? Then contact me to get it listed in my new user guide's Guides Section, so that the community can find it more easily.

Share this post


Link to post

@LZI

According to ipleak.net, IE is not leaky, so I won't have to abandon it just yet! I will certainly check out the Firefox extension, though.

I had my first "connect to Air VPN at startup" this morning, which went very well. I was expecting to see a blank screen for ages, but the system went straight to the Windows (8.1) desktop as quickly as before, and only then was there a slight delay while Air VPN launched. Definitely safer, given my poor memory!

Share this post


Link to post

If I read this recommendation in my first weeks at AirVPN, I would definitely go with the servers closer to my location. Today I would connect to servers with the least hops to my ISP, because the less hops you've got in between the better your latency is. Geographic distance (I think it's called euklidean distance?) does not play a very important role in times of fibre cables.

 

(Sent via Tapatalk - this generally means I'm not sitting in front of my PC)


NOT AN AIRVPN TEAM MEMBER. USE TICKETS FOR PROFESSIONAL SUPPORT.

LZ1's New User Guide to AirVPN « Plenty of stuff for advanced users, too!

Want to contact me directly? All relevant methods are on my About me page.

Share this post


Link to post

@LZI

According to ipleak.net, IE is not leaky, so I won't have to abandon it just yet! I will certainly check out the Firefox extension, though.

I had my first "connect to Air VPN at startup" this morning, which went very well. I was expecting to see a blank screen for ages, but the system went straight to the Windows (8.1) desktop as quickly as before, and only then was there a slight delay while Air VPN launched. Definitely safer, given my poor memory!

Haha, this is good to hear! I'm glad it worked out for you! :]

Have you done a speed test yet? The results can be quite positively surprising.


Moderators do not speak on behalf of AirVPN. Only the Official Staff account does. Please also do not run Tor Exit Servers behind AirVPN, thank you.
Did you make a guide or how-to for something? Then contact me to get it listed in my new user guide's Guides Section, so that the community can find it more easily.

Share this post


Link to post

@LZ1

Actually, I found the speed test on the first day of my trial. I was impressed with the test results, and they've held up in the real world! With VPN off, I get a fairly constant 55 Mbps from my up to 70 Mbps service. With AirVPN on, I can download from filehosts at a top speed of about 45 Mbps. That's almost twice the speed I was getting from HMA, and, since I've recently been starting with 40-50 GB in the download queue, it is a very welcome improvement. An unexpected bonus, too: I switched to Air just for the added security.

 

As regards Internet Explorer, the Firefox extension is a bust - it's not updated for the current Firefox version. However, I've decided to dump IE anyway: two sites I visit regularly are written for Firefox; several others seem to become unstable with IE (frozen screens; disappearing tabs). I've even discovered that the AirVPN forums don't work properly with IE: I can't copy and paste text into posts when using IE, but there's no problem when using Firefox. So I've set Firefox as my default browser, imported my IE favourites, and synced my two main PCs - only a temporary measure while I'm still constructing Bookmarks Menu folders.

Share this post


Link to post

Oh damn, that's excellent. It's quite funny when reading articles on VPNs and they're like "Your speed will suffer" and then you do a speedtest here and it's almost better than your non-VPN speeds lol.

I don't know which version of IE you use, but it's generally a hated browser; especially old versions. In the old days, it was a complete nightmare coding for IE. Windows 10 has the next evolution of

IE, called Edge. Maybe you'd like that. Although you'll rarely get much support for using any browser from MS I think. Most people are either firmly on Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox these days.

For the maximum amount of privacy, it should go without saying that Google should be avoided whenever possible, generally speaking . You could set ipleak.net as your FF start page too if you want,

so that you'll be able to confirm everything is likely working fine; just a suggestion. Enjoy.


Moderators do not speak on behalf of AirVPN. Only the Official Staff account does. Please also do not run Tor Exit Servers behind AirVPN, thank you.
Did you make a guide or how-to for something? Then contact me to get it listed in my new user guide's Guides Section, so that the community can find it more easily.

Share this post


Link to post

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Security Check
    Play CAPTCHA Audio
    Refresh Image

×
×
  • Create New...