Search the Community

Hello ! Introduction Welcome To AirVPN! This is a guide meant to help new people. Whether you're new to VPNs in general or just new to AirVPN. I've tried to keep it fairly short, by using bullet points & spoiler tags. This hopefully also makes it more readable and less scary. I think AirVPN is a FANTASTIC VPN and while I don't own or have any stake in AirVPN myself, I'm a huge supporter of it. However, it can be quite scary and confusing to use when you first get started, so hopefully my little guide willl help you! This guide also includes links to resources provided by Air and other users, but I don't mean to take credit for these things. So please feel free to scroll to the bottom of this guide! Index: Introduction First Questions Getting Started With AirVPN After Downloading The Eddie Client [includes Troubleshooting tips] AirVPN Guides Section [Look here to find guides about: Security/Torrenting/Port-forwarding/Plex/etc.] Other Noteworthy resources Credits Why I made this guide: AirVPN was said to be very technical and thus hard to use. But since it's such a quality VPN, I don't want that to always be the main bad side to this great service. Therefore, this guide is also a response to this problem, so that newcomers can hopefully feel less overwhelmed about the idea of the air to breathe the real Internet. The Air staff clearly put in a lot of work every day and are extremely knowledgeable people, from all that I've seen. It's just that for newcomers, it can be hard and overwhelming finding all the relevant pieces of information and it can easily be too technical, so I hope my little guide will also be useful in that regard. This is also why, I collect other people's guides and put them in this guide, so that they're easier to find. However, Thank you to AirVPN, Staff and the many knowledgeable members of this community who help out people like myself quite a lot, through their contributions to the site everyday :] Feel free to leave feedback on this guide, both good and bad, if you want to, because I'll happily read it ! First Questions Do I have to be really technical to use this VPN stuff? AirVPN is one of the more technical VPNs out there and this is pretty much its only major drawback, when it gets reviewed. However, it offers unmatched attention to security and privacy. Not all reviews are entirely accurate either, sadly. Which the AirVPN Staff haven't hesitated to remark on though. So in short: No. But if you're new to VPNs in general and not a tech-savvy user, you do have to accept that you might be confused in the start. But this forum is here to help :]. Due to all the marketing and sometimes paid reviews, it can be hard to find out which VPN to trust at all. This is without even getting to the technical features. Air tends to somewhat pride itself on not overselling things however and so on the face of it, AirVPN can seem like it's no match for other, apparently bigger VPNs, but AirVPN has a lot to offer if you take a look. Will I become totally anonymous or completely secure? Please be aware that when using AirVPN or any VPN, while signed in to things such as your e-mail or other online accounts, you might get incorrect notices of being hacked. You have not been hacked most likely, it's just that when services see you log in from several different IP addresses, they get suspicious. Simply keep calm and investigate the issue. No, definitely not. But in terms of steps you can take to reach very high levels of privacy and security, this is one of the best steps you can take. Privacy and security are hard things. To achieve even higher levels involves sorting out things like your operating system, browser, various habits and using networks like Tor, in addition to a VPN like this. Security is hard. It's rarely, if ever, just a one-off solution. Often, security is as much a process, as it is about a single good product, like this VPN. However. just because a VPN doesn't do everything, it doesn't mean it's useless. A lot depends on what you're trying to do/achieve and who your "enemies" are. Yet it should be said, that AirVPN is quite extreme about security. For Air, it's "all or nothing" in many ways. AirVPN is so focused about security, that they even fix issues before they're published! However, VPNs and others technologies are becoming more and more important, as new spy laws like the UK Snoopers Charter & US Rule 41 Amendment crop up. Please check the question "What does AirVPN do to make it safe to use and does it log or track people?" further down, for more details. VPNs A & B have features X & Y, how does AirVPN compare? For this, check out the forum made specifically for that. It's often the case that features from other VPNs are either already included in AirVPN, aren't included because they're unsafe or just aren't as good as they sound. For instance, a rival VPN might say "We offer PPTP and many other secure protocols!", while Air doesn't, because Air knows PPTP is unsafe. Or they might say they offer a "multi-hop" VPN, which may or may not be useful, according to AirVPN Staff. Support for the protocol known as IKEv2 is another example of where Air doesn't support something, but has good reasons for not doing so. As a final example, you will sometimes see competitors speak of their super-secret "camouflage", "4Dstealth" or "hidden" protocols or servers. This is just marketing for gullible customers . But such aforementioned marketing can greatly confuse efforts to compare Airs product with the competitors. So if in doubt, ask the competitor who is offering "stealth"-something, what it is. If I use AirVPN, will I be able to use service XYZ with it? Please be aware that when using AirVPN or any VPN, while signed in to things such as your e-mail or other online accounts, you might get incorrect notices of being hacked. You have not been hacked most likely, it's just that when services see you log in from several different IP addresses, they get suspicious. Simply keep calm and investigate the issue. Please also be aware that it is NOT the main purpose of AirVPN to get access to geo-restricted content because it's a losing battle and Air cannot control how companies such as the BBC and Netflix act. Being able to get access to a site, generally depends on which service you want and which country it's in. AirVPN doesn't have servers in every country. In general, you can get access to everything. Although services like BBC iPlayer and Netflix actively try to block VPNs. Even services as normal as payment processors, such as PayPal don't always make things easy. This means it's not always possible for a VPN provider to do anything about it. But we do have forums to discuss and notify AirVPN on, so that AirVPN can try to solve it as best as it can. But before you post in that forum, make sure to Read This First, as it might help you & will make your posts more helpful to others. AirVPN has a very useful tool called the Route Checking tool. It allows you to test access to a website from ALL AirVPN servers. Just put in a full link in the search field and click the search button. Then press F5 or hit the refresh button in your browser. Green results usually mean there's access; red results mean the opposite. This is useful for seeing if it's only you who has a problem or only the server you're on. As well as which servers don't have a problem, so that you can switch to using those ones instead. It's most important that it's green in the "HTTP" column. There's many different HTTP Codes, so here's a list. VPNs generally slow down your connection a little. But AirVPN is so good that it's still possible to play Multiplayer games through it, without your connection slowing down too much, in my own experience. What does AirVPN do to make it safe to use and does it log or track people? AirVPN isn't just safe because it promises to be so in its marketing. Instead, it backs things up with hard technical specifications and high standards, that you can verify yourself. AirVPN is logless and can't be forced to log surreptitiously, fully supports P2P on all servers & as per #5 ignores all DMCA requests. Remotely-forwarded ports aren't logged either. Here's additional things Air does to increase its security and privacy: AirVPNs infrastructure conforms to a high degree of openness & transparency. This helps show that none of Airs locations are fake, but only bare-metal & lets users compare with one another. AirVPNs encryption standards are military grade and so for all intents and purposes unbreakable. It also only uses the most secure VPN protocol too: OpenVPN. No PPTP/SSTP/L2TP/IKEv2. AirVPN doesn't use any third party tracking on its website, such as Google Analytics or Social buttons, because they leak. Instead, it uses open-source analytics Matomo, which is closed loop. AirVPNs website meets the highest SSLabs security standards: A+. AirVPN takes its mission to fight censorship and manipulation of the Internet extremely seriously. This also means being highly willing to help out journalists and human-rights defenders. AirVPN only uses FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) in its Eddie client. Therefore the software running on your system is not a security "blackbox", but can be independently verified. AirVPNs Eddie client supports a wide selection of protocols. Including SSL and SSH. As well as anonymising services such as Tor; so that you can "partition trust" and need not trust AirVPN. AirVPN fully accepts crypto-currencies. Including to the point where it accepts Bitcoin directly. No middlemen. So if done right, you can use AirVPN with Air knowing nothing about you. AirVPN explains how it doesn't need to inspect or monitor traffic in order to check for breaches of ToS. AirVPN is against security through obscurity, including in its client software Eddie and so shows all the information it can; which leads some users to erroneously think there's logging going on. AirVPN has since then expanded on this point. AirVPN uses in-house support technicians and not outsourced third-party technicians and external packages such as Zendesk. So as with #3, it's closed-loop. No leakage. AirVPN has a strict location policy, so that it doesn't just set up servers in a new, potentially unsafe or questionable, location. One which can't supply the performance required, either. AirVPN has its own DNS servers and "killswitch" feature. With Network Lock on, any accidental loss of connection from Airs servers won't leak anything about you; including WebRTC. AirVPN is run by extremely knowledgeable technical people and not just businessmen. So they're easily able to both explain, defend and attack subjects on a purely technical level. AirVPN supports the auditing of some of the crucial security software that underlies different systems and also supports other projects/groups/services such as Tor, Edri and OpenNIC. AirVPN runs this forum, which can seem like a small thing, but it's actually really important, as it allows for the open sharing of knowledge, providing of technical support and mythbusting. AirVPN already acts as a "multi-hop" VPN and takes many other measures to increase security, such as separate entry & exit IPs, Perfect Forward Secrecy and HMAC SHA1. AirVPN has a strong focus on avoiding marketing fluff and overselling. Which means you know exactly what you're getting and don't need to deal with deceptive use of technical details. AirVPN is highly consistent with staying constantly on top of any security issue. AirVPN is based in Italy and is therefore within the EU. This has a range of other benefits too. That's 20+ ways in which Air has extremely high security "by default". All made nice and easy for you to use. If you want more, there's a simple 3 step guide for that. But seriously, there's always more you can do yourself. When will AirVPN add country or server XYZ? AirVPN Staff do not usually tell the community when a new country or server will be added. They simply add them. So it's easy to miss. The Eddie client will automatically show them. AirVPN frequently adds new countries/locations. This can be seen in the announcement forum, so please try to check this and the Eddie client (if you use it) before asking. Thank you. Requests for a specific location or addition to an existing one, are fine. But demands to know when something will happen, are futile, since AirVPN follows a strict location policy. The technical specifications regarding security/encryption for the Air servers that are used, can be found here. Further, those technologies and standards allows Air to pursue its Mission. Please remember that even if a country you want hasn't been added, you may still be able to get access to the web-content of that country, thanks to Airs micro-routing feature. Here's some old posts regarding different locations, so that you may not need to ask. Please note that some, such as Japan as of 2018 & Austria, were already added: Italian Servers? Japan/Korea Servers? [staff Comment] Russian Servers? Danish Servers? Middle-East/North African Servers? Indian Servers? Panama Servers? Australian/New Zealand Servers? Latvian Servers? French & Belgian Servers?[uPDATE: French Servers Momentarily Withdrawn] Austrian Servers? Central/South American Servers? AirVPN now allows 5 connections per account instead of 3, but is it possible to buy more connections? AirVPN has increased the limit from 3 to 5 connections. Thus it's unlikely to be possible to buy more connections at any point. But you can use a modified router if you still need more than 5. If you change your router firmware(software) to something like DD-WRT or Tomato for instance, you can make all devices on your Wi-Fi/Router go through AirVPN. However running a VPN on a router is quite hardwork for most routers. So you either need high-grade commercial ones or computers like the ZBOX Nano, converted into routers. That ZBOX Nano PC would be excellent for a VPN to run on, as the hardware is very good; even more than the commercial routers. Only savvy users should consider this. Who runs AirVPN & moderates the forums? The Staff account is the Official voice of AirVPN. Private messages cannot be sent to them. Clodo & pj are the most visible AirVPN employees. Clodo is the developer of AirVPNs "Eddie" client software, while pj is a co-founder of AirVPN. Community moderators: zhang888, giganerd and LZ1. Note that we are NOT AirVPN employees, have no access to Air infrastructure and do NOT speak for Air in an official way. Instead, zhang888, giganerd and LZ1 are a part of what the Air Staff call the Air "forum Staff". Note that member profiles can't be accessed by others by default, unless you add them as friends or they made their profile public. Air itself is based in Italy and so that's where their staff will be sourced from. What are some of the "Status" page functions for & how do I use AirVPNs "Micro-routing" feature? The first page you see when you go to the Status page, is an overview of Airs servers & service. Useful for seeing if any server is down or very busy, downloads and how many users there are. The Ping Matrix shows the latency between Air servers and if there's any (severe) packet loss somewhere. No packets = no connection. The Top Users page can help you verify if others are still getting good or bad performance, compared to yourself. The Checking Route page is for seeing if Air servers can or can't connect to a website you select. Unlike the Ping Matrix. There's also the special AirVPN "Micro-routing" service. To use it, simply make sure you connect to Airs servers & DNS. (Automatic when you use Airs Eddie client). Without the micro-routing, if you want to watch French TV for example, you would have to connect to a French server. But with micro-routing, you can connect to ANY Air server and still watch French TV, as long as the TV's website is on the "Website support" list. It's possible to make requests to get sites added to these lists. Anyway, this micro-routing is very very useful ! Because it means that EVEN IF Air takes all French servers offline for some reason, you will still be able to access French content! Is it free and if not, why should I pay for it? AirVPN is not free, but you can get a short trial if you ask nicely. The Trial has unlimited data and full speed. But you can only get a refund if you have used less than 5GB. Free services don't offer many of the very nice features which let you get around website/service blocks. But it can be hard to market these features to non-technical people, because they're not always easy to explain. Yet once you try them, you will appreciate them. AirVPN has quality servers & connections, as well as guarantees a certain speed, with no limits. So it's possible to play multiplayer games through it. Free services often have to exploit their users in order to survive. This is normally done by tracking you, possibly undermining your security and selling your data to 3rd parties. If a free service is leaking your data due to poor practices and technology by accident or selling it on purpose, what's the point in using it then? VPN means Virtual Private Network. Even if a free service doesn't exploit you, you still don't have the same level of security or assurances, because how would a free service pay for that? Real security is hard and costly. Would you rather go through 5 bad free services, risking your security and privacy or would you rather take your privacy and security seriously the first time, for a small fee? If you only need a VPN 1 time, then it's probably not worth it to use a paid service. But if you know you'll need it often, it's worth the investment. Air has a very cheap 3 day plan too though. Free services often have many limits. But AirVPN is logless, allows 5 devices per account, allows P2P and other protocols, has no data/bandwidth limits & very high security. So basically, you need to be able to Trust your provider, yet why would a free service be trustworthy? They don't owe you anything. But a paid one at least does - not that all paid services are great either though. Not all services on the web offer the same level of protection either, whether free or not. Many services, paid & unpaid, lie to you about where they have servers. Fake GeoIP addresses. Since AirVPN isn't free, is it possible to buy a Lifetime subscription, as with other VPNs? Does AirVPN hold sales at all? This question has received its own dedicated topic, so please click the link below All sales related questions are answered in this dedicated thread. Getting Started With AirVPN If you run into a problem with Airs software for some reason, then please make sure to check if there's an experimental version of the Eddie client you can download. Experimental versions aren't always available. How do I start using AirVPN? There's 3 simple steps: Create Account Choose a Plan Choose your setup Creating an account: You don't need a valid e-mail address. The site software, called IPB, just needs the field to be filled with something. Remember that password recovery will NOT work without a valid address. If you can, don't use something which uniquely identifies you. So even if you name your account ninja10834, that's still better than something about your real name, location or even interests. With this account, you can also post on the forums. However in the beginning, you won't be able to post on these forums immediately. This is because a moderator has to make sure that whatever you post, is both genuine and from a person. So when you click the "post" button, your own post will NOT show up immediately; so just be patient, when asking a question. After around 5-10 posts being accepted, your account will increase in level and you will be able to post things immediately, without any supervision. There's 2 names associated with your account. The first is your login name, which cannot be changed and can't be seen by others. You would need to make a new account, to change it. The second name is your forum display name. In my case, it's LZ1. This can be changed by you at any time, but only matters in the forum. NOTE: it's your login name you use for logging into the Eddie software, together with your login password. Choose a plan: At this stage, you pick both how you wish to pay and how much. It's possible to pay in currencies known as "cryptocurrencies". These cryptocurrencies, most famously Bitcoin, have a range of benefits when it comes to things like security and privacy, if used correctly. If you want to pay using a cryptocurrency, there's some guidance on what to do, further down, in the guides section. However if you're just starting out, it's fine if you just use your credit card or whatever method which suits you. It's also possible to ask for a short trial. You can also scroll back up to the "First Questions" section and look for the information on Air's sales, if you want to wait for a discount. After paying, you will be a "Premium User" and will be able to see how many days you have left of your subscription, at the top of the screen, when you're logged into your account. Choose your setup: AirVPN provides a mobile version of its Eddie app for Android. An iOS version is NOT available due to Apple's restrictive policies. This stage is pretty straightforward. Just make sure you select the right versions and hit Download. Your OS: Find out which Windows Operating System you're running or which GNU/Linux you're running. Mac users must use either Mavericks or something newer. Your Architecture: Most will be locked into 64-bit here, as 32-bit is outdated. Your Format: Windows users should select "Installer" & MacOS users select "PKG Package Installer". Ubuntu/Linux users pick according to distro; adding a PPA will enable auto-updates of Eddie. Your User Interface: Most people should pick Graphical UI. Unless you want to run some kind of headless install, as some technical users do. Then click the big blue Download button and follow regular installation procedures. Now you will be downloading the AirVPN software. DONE. No further reading is required from here. Just open Eddie and click "Connect to Recommended Server". Unless you need a guide for something or want to know some of the finer details. This software is called a "client". This "client" is called "Eddie", because that's what AirVPN calls it. So when you hear talk of "Eddie", it's referring to the software you downloaded. If you don't want to use Eddie for some reason, there's ways of getting around it. But for new and casual users, it's recommended that you use it. If normal Installer Formats create problems, you can sometimes fix them by using the portable formats. A portable download is also useful if you want to store Eddie on a USB stick. If the latest Stable or Experimental release doesn't work for you, then you can download an earlier version, by clicking the "Other versions" link under the blue download button. How and where do I manage my AirVPN settings? You do that in the Client Area Some of the most important things in this area include: Configuration Generator Ports Referrals Number 1 is where you automatically generate the files that your VPN needs to work (if you don't use the Eddie Client, such as if you use Android), after you tick some boxes. Number 2 allows you to tell the VPN which "ports" or "virtual doors" to open, which can speed up things such as your Bittorent client (qBittorent, uTorrent, Vuze, Transmission, etc.) Even though it looks confusing, the only thing you actually need to change, is putting the right number in the "Local Port" field. So if your torrent program uses port 7634 for instance, then you put 7634 into the "Local Port" field and simply click the green add button. Then a number will automatically be generated and put into the big white box at the top. All done. Number 3 shows you the link you can share with other people. If they buy an AirVPN plan, you get 20% of what they pay. Then you can use this money to pay for your own plan. What if I need help during the process? If you need help from Air, you can easily contact them. If you're wondering why AirVPN doesn't have "Livechat" or might take a little longer to reply than other providers, then this is why. However you can also just come to these forums. If you can't post yet, then you can read the various guides which exist. In the AirVPN program called Eddie, there's a tab called "logs", which lists various information about what's happening. You can copy this and post it on the forums so we can help. But when you post your logs, MAKE SURE you post them inside "spoiler tags". If you don't use spoiler tags, you will annoy and make things more difficult for everyone, including yourself. I've used untold numbers of spoilers in this guide, as an example. What are logs, where are they and how do I use spoiler tags? When the AirVPN Eddie software is running, it creates a list of what it is doing. What's connecting, when, where, if something went wrong and so on. A log of events. So when you ask for help on these forums, we will often ask about your logs, because without logs, we do NOT know what is happening, in your specific situation . If you open the AirVPN "Eddie" client software, you will see a "Logs" tab. On the top right-hand side of the window, the 2nd button from the top, lets you copy your logs quickly. After copying the logs from Eddie, paste them into your posts when you need help. Do so by typing the short codes necessary; which we call using "Spoiler tags". This makes it much more convenient for everyone; just like this question and answer, is inside a spoiler . Please try to do it, thank you! Is there anything in my AirVPN account I should change? Go to the top-right corner of the screen and click your account username. Then click "My Settngs" in the drop-down box. Under "Profile Privacy", you might wish to un-check the checkbox, if you want others to be able to view your profile when clicking your name. Under the "Notification Options" tab and then under the header "Topics & Posts", check the box which lets you auto-follow things you reply to. This is very useful. Because then you'll get a little notification in the top-right corner, every time someone replies to a thread you made. This makes getting help more convenient. It's also good for following what's happening in threads that you post in. Remember to check the boxes on the right-hand side, so that you can choose if you want to be notified via the forum or via E-mail . You can also enable notifications for when people "like" your posts, since that can be quite encouraging! Under "Profile Settings", you might be curious about who visited your profile. So you can make it show the last 5 visitors. Everything else such as signatures, allowing others to add you as a friend and so on, are up to you. Enjoy! Is there an Experimental or Beta version of the AirVPN Eddie Client I can try? If so, where is it and why would I want to try it? Note that whenever you download the Beta/Experimental Client, you'll always receive the latest one. You can check your version number after you open Eddie and go to its "About" page. There aren't always any Experimental clients to download and new clients are continuously released. So keep an eye on the announcement section, for Beta/Experimental clients. Just because a release is called the "Stable" version, it doesn't mean the Beta/Experimental client is "Unstable". However don't be surprised if you run into issues . You can find the Beta versions [if one is available] on the download page of your OS, under "Other versions": If for some reason an Eddie client doesn't work, try downloading a "portable" version on the OS download page, under "Format". Being Beta/Experimental, you might run into some bugs. However I use the latest all the time, with no problems really. For more information on what features are added and bugs taken away, go straight to the changelog The Beta/Experimental client often includes fixes for bugs which the "Stable" version of Eddie has, as well as various extra features and changes. This helps all platforms. For example, for Windows, a prior Beta release used WFP (Windows Filtering Platform), instead of Windows Firewall, which meant it became easier to use 3rd party security software. 3rd party security software, are things such as Comodo firewall or Avast anti-virus. Things which you install yourself. In addition, it also comes with the latest software updates "out-of-the-box", such as the latest TAP drivers and OpenVPN patches, so you don't have to update them yourself. It may enable some things by default, which a current Stable version requires you to change yourself (as explained in the next section of this guide). By using the Beta, you can also help AirVPN by providing feedback, which means Air can then make things even better . Each Beta release has its own feedback thread. Just remember to describe the problem, tell us which system you use (Linux/Windows/MacOS/etc.), the client version (Go to Eddie client "About" page) and some logs in spoilers! : D. Thanks! After Downloading The Eddie Client Please remember to share your Eddie logs and use spoiler tags, when you need help from the community. How to do so, is answered in the previous section, thank you! What's "Network Lock" & should I use it? Please be aware that using Network Lock with Tor can be contradictory to try. It's not currently planned for. Please also note that it's expected that Eddie turns off Network Lock, when Eddie is shut down. Network Lock in AirVPN, is what many other VPN providers normally call a "killswitch". So this is Airs own "killswitch". Network Lock (NL) is a way for the AirVPN software to force all of your computers network communications through the AirVPN service, so that nothing "leaks out" about your identity. For new users, I don't recommend using it too soon. I recommend waiting a few days and just getting comfortable with the day-to-day running of the software and then using it later. With NL on, your internet connection will stop entirely, if you lose connection to the Air servers. This is great for preventing information from leaking & is a feature, not a bug. Why is this important? Well, I don't want to name & shame other providers, but one poster showed that his last provider leaked his real IP address during server changes. This shouldn't happen. But with NL on, this won't happen to you, because changing servers in Eddie will mean disconnecting from server A to go to server B. Thus the connection is stopped first & then resumed. No leaks. But if you want maximum security right away and aren't afraid of small technical issues, you can start using it right away. It can always be changed back.. How can I test that AirVPN is hiding my IP and DNS addresses correctly? Turning on Network Lock in the Eddie client will protect you from WebRTC leaks. You can use AirVPNs own service called ipleak.net. Make sure it's .net and NOT .com. Since ipleak.net is run by Air, it has now received its own sub-forum, where you can ask questions, give suggestions and receive information on any changes made to ipleak. Un-configured, browsers like Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome will "leak" (show) your real IP address through a technology called "WebRTC". To stop WebRTC, scroll to the bottom of the ipleak page and read the very short and simple instructions on how to fix it. It's not overly technical, don't worry. If you torrent files, there's also a torrent on the same website, which you can download in order to test which IP other torrenters would see if you torrented a real file. It's recommended you use Free & Open Source Software(FOSS). With this client, you can make it bind itself to whichever network adapter is using the VPN, which is convenient, so that it only torrents when using a VPN. I can recommend setting ipleak.net as your browser start page, so that every time you start your browser, you'll quickly be able to see if everything is working as intended. Eddie can't connect or is very slow, what can I do? If none of the below solutions work, then it's time to ask the forums or Air support. In BOTH cases, please supply your logs, as detailed before. Otherwise no one can help you. First, please make sure your client is updated to the latest Stable or Beta release. You can see your version number in Eddie>Top Left Corner Menu>About. Head to download page if not. Please try different protocols, at Eddie>Menu>Preferences>Protocols>Uncheck "Automatic">Select a protocol, such as SSL or TCP 443> Save>re-connect to an Air server. Please try connecting to not just different servers, but different countries too. Proximity to your location does not automatically mean better connections; due to routing technicalities. If you're an online gamer, you may benefit from changing the buffer sizes, as mentioned by Staff. If you're a Linux, MacOS or Windows user and webpages aren't loading fully or there's less than optimum speed, you can try the so-called "mssfix". If it's simply a problem with connecting to airvpn.org, then please try the alternate entry: airvpn.info - note that sometimes Air comes under attack from within and so you get an error page. If Eddie, such as in its Logs, says there's problems with route checking, please refer here for a solution. Note: disabling Preferences>DNS>Check Air DNS can be tried at the same time too. If you enabled Network Lock and can't connect to the web without Eddie turned on, then please disable Network Lock or reset your firewall and/or DNS, as shown in the two posts here. If torrenting speeds are slow, then please remember to port-forward and configure your torrent client correctly. For detailed guides on this, please go to the Guides Section below. For some ISPs, such as Virgin Media, please check the Guides Section below, for specific tutorials on how to optimize speeds. In some cases, especially if you run Air directly on your router, it's possible that your computer hardware isn't new enough to handle the encryption quickly enough. For Windows users, updating or downgrading the TAP adapter may work. But this shouldn't be tried as the first thing, as it's often not necessary now. For Windows users, you can try downloading a program called TCPOptimizer. Which other steps can I take to increase my privacy and security? Using AirVPN with Tor is a strong answer, among many other good ones. Here's a further explanation of how AirVPN & Tor work, when together. There's also many other ways to handle privacy and security on multiple fronts. If you're looking for a technical challenge, you can install pfSense on a very powerful computer, to make it act like a router, so that all devices connected to your Wi-Fi will be covered by the VPN. Why not just use an expensive commercial router? Because even expensive ones struggle to handle the protocol known as "OpenVPN" efficiently enough to give excellent performance. You can change the software & hardware you use & support the organisations which try to make things better; such as the FSF/EFF. If you're a geek or networking enthusiast, you can also check out things such as the Turris Omnia router, which offers very powerful hardware & software. AirVPN Guides Section Make sure to check the date of the posts you read below. Hope you like it ! Guides, How To's & Troubleshooting Amazon devices like the Fire Stick, Fire TV Cube and others can be used with Android Eddie without sideloading, according to Staff. Mini-guide by Staff on how to test if your connection is being shaped/throttled [How-To] Use AirVPN with Network Manager on Ubuntu/Mint [How-To] AirVPN via SSL/stunnel on Android 6/7/8 [How-To] fix Virgin Media Connection Drops/Bandwidth Issues Plex Server Guidance (Until someone makes an actual Plex guide) Paying with Bitcoin/Cryptocurrency Guidance. (Until someone makes an actual Cryptocurrency guide) Mini-guides On How To Improve Torrent Speeds Mini-guide On Torrenting With Tixati Client How To Autostart AirVPN As Root With No Password (Linux) Note: security risk & What Staff Says(OSX/MacOS) How To Setup The Eddie Client On Raspberry Pi 3 How To Port-Forward & Use A Torrent Client Guide To pfSense 2.3 For AirVPN Guide to pfSense 2.1 For AirVPN Firefox Extensions Guide Guide To Setting Up VPN For Torrenting On Windows Guide - What To Do When A Site Is Blocked AirVPN Forum Styleguide How To Improve Smartphone Security How To Block Non-VPN Traffic With Windows Firewall How To Connect To AirVPN With Your Fritz!box Router Using AirVPN Through Stunnel On Android Using AirVPN Over Tor Using AirVPN on iOS Check Your TAP Driver Version Explaining The Use Of AirVPN With Tor How To Configure A Synology Device For AirVPN AirVPN & iOS Other Noteworthy Resources Links Please be aware that AirVPN, unlike most, does NOT buy or otherwise use paid-for reviews. An alternative VPN client to Eddie, for Linux. Best VPNs 2016 & AirVPNs results Advanced Networking & Computing How To Break The Internet (Cory Doctorow) (Recommended Watch) Why the OpenVPN protocol that Air uses is good Guide to all things privacy Five Eyes Countries Schneier on Encryption CGP Grey explaining Encryption 10 Myths About VPNs (Ignore the self-advertising) (Recommended Read) The Eternal Value Of Privacy (Recommended Read) Credits Thank you to: AirVPN & Staff for their excellent service and explanations. inradius for his guide on how to use Air with Network Manager on Ubuntu/Mint Omninegro for his pertinent guide on extensions. The always crazily knowledgeable and helpful zhang888, whom I owe a lot to for all his work here. Thanks man. Omniferums excellent guide on securing Windows. pfSense_fans guide on how to use the excellent pfSense firewall software. The always very friendly and helpful giganerd! NaDre for his excellent torrenting guide. neolefort for his Synology guide. sheivoko's guide on using AirVPN through stunnel on Android bigbrosbitch for starting a guide on mobile security Zensen for his guide on how to autostart Eddie on Linux with Root sagarbehere for his nice guide on how to set up Eddie on a Raspberry Pi 3 rainmakerraw for his mini-guides on improving torrent speeds and how to torrent. lewisisonfire for his guide to fixing out Virgina Media-related issues and with nice pictures too. Khariz, giganerd and ~Daniel~ for their helpful posts. I hope the guide was of use! If you find any inaccuracies, feel free to tell me. I worked hours on this tiny guide, so I want it to be perfect haha. I hope your experience with AirVPN will be a good one! Mine certainly has been. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. Thank you for reading :] P.S. I consider myself pretty savvy, but I remember being confused when I got here. So I can only imagine how it is for less savvy individuals. P.P.S. I know it lacks images, but images do evil things to my spoilers, lol.

I watched One Piece on Netflix Japan using some Japan server on AirVpn. Today wanted to continue watching but when I turn on the VPN, Netflix won't show One Piece anymore as well as all the other shows that should be available. I tried connecting to some American server and it shows the right shows but for some reason only the Japan server don't. I tried restarting my PC, deleted my browser cache, relogging into Netflix, using a different browser, trying all the other Japan servers, yet nothing works. I use the default settings in AirVPN. Any ideas what else I could try?

Hi! I noticed that in the last couple of days, maybe weeks, DE Netflix usually works through AirVPN. This is great! Were there any changes to the routing server or is just Netflix being lax?

Hello! Possible causes: Streaming services (Netflix, YouTube, etc.) often rate-limit or deprioritize known VPN exit IP addresses, or IP addresses assigned to specific ASNs. Speed tests don’t trigger this, but video streams do. Try different AirVPN servers. Too large virtual network interface MTU causing excessive fragmentation, optionally with broken MTU path discovery. Streaming uses sustained flows that are more sensitive to MTU mismatches than bursty speed tests. Shrink MTU to 1280 bytes to check whether you get any improvement. If not, consider MSS clamping, just in case the PMTU discovery is broken upstream (not an uncommon case). Set MSS to 40 bytes less than MTU, for example MTU 1320 bytes, MSS 1280 bytes. On Asus routers you'll need to do this via iptables: as far as we know there's no option to do it on the Web UI. Asus Adaptive QoS or Bandwidth Limiter on the router. Check and disable such tools if they are active. If DNS is outside the VPN but traffic is inside you can hit far-away CDN nodes, causing slow streams. Make sure to enforce strict DNS settings on the router so that it will query only VPN DNS. Kind regards

I'm on the US server and I'm getting this error on netflix. I deleted the cookies and here is this event https://i.imgur.com/MHzHg3x.jpg

Hello! You could also consider FreeBSD. In certain respects, such as documentation, uniformity, internal consistency, security, and compliance with the Unix philosophy (no systemd here, for example!), it is vastly superior to most Linux distributions. Kernel is in several fields (but not all) remarkably faster than Linux kernel. Think about this: while in Linux we have a kernel that is the foundation for hundreds (or thousands) of different distributions, each with its own standards, package managers, directory hierarchies, and init systems, in FreeBSD we have a unified development model where the kernel and the operating system are developed together by a single, large team, with contributions from the broader community. This ensures a more cohesive and consistent experience across the entire system. For software developers (just in case you will like to develop), it means that releasing applications for FreeBSD is simpler. No need to worry about the variations between different Linux distributions, with differing conventions, package managers, libraries, init systems, directory structures, making FreeBSD a more predictable and streamlined platform for development. However, hardware support is much more limited, and several DRM tools are missing, so you cannot directly enjoy various streaming services, which is paradoxical in a way when you consider that various Internet giants such as Netflix prefer FreeBSD (Netflix also actively contributes back to the FreeBSD project, with over a thousand commits documented, and is committed to upstreaming customizations that have general applicability). Furthermore, we have not yet released dedicated software for FreeBSD but we are seriously thinking about it. FreeBSD is also the 1st and exclusive choice for major gaming platforms by Sony (PS4, PS5), running customized versions of the old FreeBSD 9, and Nintendo (Wii, Switch, Switch 2...). My 2 cents pushed by renewed enthusiasm towards FreeBSD (since 2019 I dropped Linux and I don't run anymore any Linux system on my desktop computers). 😋 Kind regards

Reading in the newspaper this morning about a possible workaround for the upcoming Netflix rules by using a VPN and router and adding a Smart tv to your network. Is this possible with my Linksys EA7500 and AirVPN and if so how would I go about it?.

Hello, I'm interested to know if it is possible to access and see all RaiPlay videos and the Italian Netflix catalogue. Thank you

Connected to Cervantes. The result is.. peculiar. On second thought, though, netflix.com is being redirected through one of the US rerouting servers because Netflix is good with blocking VPNs. $ host netflix.com 192.168.21.1 Using domain server: Name: 192.168.21.1 Address: 192.168.21.1#53 Aliases: netflix.com has address 52.50.200.100 netflix.com has address 52.50.212.245 netflix.com has address 52.16.231.43 netflix.com has address 34.251.239.113 netflix.com has address 54.171.187.60 netflix.com has address 52.31.246.79 netflix.com has address 52.49.6.246 netflix.com has address 34.246.63.0 netflix.com has IPv6 address 2a01:578:3::36ab:7445 netflix.com has IPv6 address 2a01:578:3::3431:db4b netflix.com has IPv6 address 2a01:578:3::22fd:6807 netflix.com has IPv6 address 2a01:578:3::3411:e3ae netflix.com has IPv6 address 2a01:578:3::3413:2893 netflix.com has IPv6 address 2a01:578:3::22f2:3bbd netflix.com has IPv6 address 2a01:578:3::22f9:3e16 netflix.com has IPv6 address 2a01:578:3::36ab:1b0e netflix.com mail is handled by 10 aspmx2.googlemail.com. netflix.com mail is handled by 5 alt2.aspmx.l.google.com. netflix.com mail is handled by 5 alt1.aspmx.l.google.com. netflix.com mail is handled by 1 aspmx.l.google.com. netflix.com mail is handled by 10 aspmx3.googlemail.com. $ host netflix.com 10.4.0.1 Using domain server: Name: 10.4.0.1 Address: 10.4.0.1#53 Aliases: netflix.com has address 140.82.30.128

been connected to Virgo for 100+gb of traffic since last week. been streaming Netflix just fine. today around 2pm. this stopped working and is now being stopped as Netflix detects a VPN in use

I agree, how is the average consumer supposed to know that 302 means https but not http? I also think that a revision would be very good. It would be great if the tool simply requested both automatically, just like the browser does when you enter reddit.com and the tool looks directly at http or https and then delivers the correct result. I think that would be the easiest way and clear for everyone to understand. I just tested it, and I don't know why, but I have no problems at all with the Fuyue server in Germany. On the contrary, as I type this, I'm watching Designated Survivor on Netflix. Well, BBC iPlayer puts a geo-block on me, which is okay, but the BBC player via Amazon Prime Video works great. Yes, in order for the post to be pinned at the top, I would have to significantly expand the list, and without the help of this community, that would be a Herculean task. That's why I thought it would be child's play if everyone who has problems accessing a website simply tested which server works and wrote a quick note here saying “Page xy works with ServerXY.” Just like they used to do in forums, that would be great. Until the tool works for dummies and you don't need a degree in technology, a simple list where you can look things up would be great. I mean, as I'm typing this, there are 37,000 people online. If everyone named just one site, we would already have a list of 37,000 different sites and servers.

I think you will find after some more experimentation that, if you type in www.reddit.com, the HTTP code you get back is actually 302, a redirect to HTTPS. Which is correct and corresponds with best practices for HTTPS redirects. Typing in https://www.reddit.com instead will yield the correct result. It doesn't help that the route checker deems those redirects as errors, too, and so colors the cell's background red, so I agree in so far as one of two things could happen to remedy this: The background color should be yellow to indicate a redirect which doesn't have to be a block. But that tool is actually there to tell you "yep, works" or "nope, not from here" at a glance. Yellow as in "meh, maybe, check yourself" is beyond unhelpful. If a web server returns a 301 or 302, follow the Location header once to cater to the common case of a HTTPS redirect and print the result for that new URL. But this could produce false positive results: If a website viewed from the server returns a 302 to a webpage basically saying "sorry, you've been blocked", that webpage will of course have a green 200 return code. What a sweet dream. Check out OneDrive/Outlook, Netflix, Hulu, BBC iPlayer, etc. and maybe all those sites sitting behind a Sucuri WAF. What you could do is to keep track of the Blocked websites warning forum and update your list with every new thread and post. It'd be a help, but would demand work from you alone, continuously even. But if effective, such as thread could be pinned in this forum for visibility and be a boon for the community, I'm sure.

Yes, I've seen that many people are still asking questions even though there is a thread on this topic. But I have to be honest, I also found the instructions very confusing, especially the point: “Try checking out the AirVPN Route Checking tool. Put the name of the website, such as www.netflix.com, into the search field. Click search. Then refresh the page and look at the HTTP column.” That is simply factually incorrect. I don't know if something has changed in the technology in recent years or why it says that. But the fact is, if you look at www.reddit.com, for example, according to the list with the route checker tool, not a single server would work with Reddit. Which is wrong, as mentioned above, Server Arion works fine. I also thought it would help people to create a list like this here, but it seems to me that no one is really interested in participating, or maybe it's just because the guys at AIRVPN have such a great infrastructure that hardly any websites are blocked. That's why I haven't been able to expand the list yet. So far, I haven't come across any sites that I visit daily that I couldn't access with my standard server.

Netflix is not supported officially since the service is quite good at restricting VPNs, so whatever you did, it was a streak of good luck. Specifically for One Piece, it can be streamed on Crunchyroll which is much more lenient about VPN usage (or maybe not lenient, but still no comparison to the thoroughness of Netflix).

I am stuck overseas in the Dominican republic because of the Covid crisis, and airports are closed again for another month until July 9. I saw that you can use a VPN to show that you are in the United States and watch your paid for subscriptions that you have while overseas, however this does not work with airVPN. At least the configurations I created from Miami, Illinois and was hoping someone here could give advice how to configure airVPN. so I can use my subscriptions to see all that I have paid for. I paid for another subscriptions of airVPN for nothing, as I can’t use it here that was promoted that it could do. in fact, Netflix and prime video in broad bold letters at the top says please turn off your VPN and try again. I can’t even watch anything if airVPN is turned on. Any advice on how to get access to Netflix, Amazon prime, and Disney+ from the Dominican republic would be much appreciate it if it is possible with AirVPN. Other VPN services were promoted as being able to do this so it seems that AirVPN should be able to do this as well, but it is not working and both Amazon and Netflix immediately knoW I’m using a VPN and say I can’t access their service at all when it’s turned on and tells me to turn it off. So I can’t even watch Netflix with airVPN turned on my iOS device, my iPad and my iPhone 11 which is all I have here for What I thought was to be a short visit in March for my wife’s mothers death, and return 25 March, but all was canceled by that time. Now we have been stuck here over three months having to pay each day stay here and it’s become an incredible financial burden with all money going out on our credit cards and no money coming in. Our jobs are open and functional at this time, but we cannot attend because we can’t get to Miami. We can fly within the states, but we can’t get to Miami from here until July 9. Thanks in advance for any assistance, Zephar

https://i.imgur.com/0wCxZHU.png As you can see I routed out netflix, but It keeps saying I'm through a VPN. I also bloqued IPv6 just in case. Please help, the internet has no info, just only advices like "use this shitty VPN to unblock netflx". Fucking netflix, I'm connecting from the same country, why the fuck they block it.

UPDATE 04-DEC-2019: Netflix USA is currently NOT accessible, we are investigating. Hello! After a remarkable amount of inquiries we have been receiving in the last couple of months, we are glad to inform you that currently we managed to restore access to Netflix USA. Remember that you need to use VPN DNS in order to be able to access that service from our servers. Access to Netflix USA is now possible from all of our servers. Please see here for more details: https://airvpn.org/topic/9223-netflix Please feel free to test. Your feedback is appreciated. Kind regards AirVPN Staff

Previously I was able to access Netflix from AirVPN servers no problem (I am using default AirVPN DNS by the way), but I tried tonight from 5 or 6 different servers in the US and Canada and all of them showed me the message about using a VPN or proxy whenever I try to watch something. I am wondering is the rerouting still working or has Netflix cracked down on it? I have included an image of the error I am getting Image of Netflix error

How can I exclude netflix(I want netflix to run using my original IP) when my vpn is connected?

Hi Guys, I know this is a recurrent topic, but after reading the "Is A Website Blocked?.." thread and I'd say that there is a problem. I am testing AirVPN from two days ago and so far so good. But today Netflix service stoped... the same old statement "Oops something went wrong.... Proxy Detected" popped up on the screen. I tried 3 different server: Dallas Texas-Ran Miami Yildun Miami Acamar Netflix works the first 2 or 3 hours and then boom... just stop. I have no DSN leak or ISP problem. When I check the Netflix URL into the Route Checking tool all server has a red light in the HTTP column... is that OK? Is that related to the Netflix problem?

Hello I have this weird problem. where Netflix doesnt work when im connected to AirVPN through my Pfsense with vpn. However, if i just start eddie and connect to any server netflix works again :S! My pfsense is not leaking dns and i have locked the dns to Airvpn's dns. Any ideas to fix this problem?

Hey all, I've noticed that all servers default to US Netflix on Air and I was wondering if it was possible to actually connect to other country versions of Netflix through the diffirent servers available on Airvpn and if so how to do this. I've noticed that it is the Air DNS that allows for US netflix on all servers so I assume it is the DNS settings that will ultimately allow this. I look forward to hearing from anyone who could help. Thank you. Regards,

This is only a solution for people in their home country willing/wanting to bypass the VPN to access their Netflix account. Does not help for out-of-country Netflix access. I was surprised to not see this in the forum, as it's very simple and works. It is a very short script added to the Custom Configuration which pulls the current IP addresses for a domain name (Netflix.com, Hulu.com) and routes those addresses "around" the VPN. allow-pull-fqdn route www.netflix.com 255.255.255.255 net_gateway So far I've been using this for a day, and had to restart things one time to get it to pick up new addresses. I would like to find a way to run this at regular intervals to add to the IP list (without duplicating addresses already in the list).

Since a few days I have a problem getting netflix.com resolved via 10.4.0.1 (other domains work just fine: C:\>nslookup netflix.com 10.4.0.1 Server: UnKnown Address: 10.4.0.1 DNS request timed out. timeout was 2 seconds. DNS request timed out. timeout was 2 seconds. *** Request to UnKnown timed-out C:\>nslookup google.com 10.4.0.1 Server: UnKnown Address: 10.4.0.1 Non-authoritative answer: Name: google.com Addresses: 2a00:1450:4001:81d::200e 172.217.22.110 If I try it using the pushed DNS server it works - however since I'm using a pihole and can't update the upstream DNS server dynamically I would ideally like just use the 10.4.0.1 one. Is there something I'm missing or could be doing wrong?

I want to use AirVPN on my Shield but I can't connect to Netflix with it on, is there a way to exclude the Netflix app from using the VPN? Also, would using the VPN on there affect gamestream or my Plex NAS? I plan to buy a new router and use AirVPN on it with OpenVPN to put all the network traffic in my house through a VPN, could the same thing be done with that configuration?