AirVPN seems to suck for torrents?

VPN
1

I moved from ExpressVPN to AirVPN because I wanted port forwarding for torrents, but I see two big problems with AirVPN:

  1. I get slower speeds (like a total of a couple of mbps) on AirVPN than I did on ExpressVPN

  2. The Eddie client absolutely sucks compared to the ExpressVPN one - like it asks me for my password every time I open it :frowning: and it seems quite unreliable and requires a reboot to get it to connect

Am I doing something wrong, or does AirVPN just suck?

2

I used AirVPN with wire guard, and did some torrenting myself and got great download speeds. Of course depending on the download size some took longer than others, but I was able to download many. Not sure if that plays a factor. Just my experience

3

It might depend on which server you’re using. I also recommend what the other people in here are saying and try using the open source WireGuard client

4

I’m using wireguard on my router and has been my primary gateway to torrent. I average about 30TB every month in this connecting torrenting. Speeds are dependent on seeds and server connected and if things are ideal I get up to 500Mbps while downloading. So no issues with AirVPN

Check your native wifi speed. And see how much of a drop is when connected to VPN. Check the same with connected to LAN. Go by process of elimination

5

The best experience I’ve had with any vpn for torrents is with docker. A little hard to learn at first but well worth it.

6

I assume you are using Windows.

Set up an AirVPN WireGuard configuration. Install and use the Windows WireGuard app. Import your AirVPN configuration.

7

I’ve had AirVPN for over a year now, previously a Mullvad user until they dropped port forwarding.

Eddie client is messy for sure. Sometimes, latencies won’t show even if you refresh the servers or close and reopen Eddie, this seems worse on Windows. Sometimes, it won’t disconnect, you have to Force Quit it and all related processes, and then reopen it, otherwise your computer’s Internet will stay offline, and I’ve had this happen when rebooting the computer and didn’t realize what the problem was for several minutes.

The upsides are you get a UI with lots of configuration options, an effective network-lock (though I don’t use that because it’s best to bind qBittorrent/similar to Eddie because network locks can fail), and it’s convenient, plus AirVPN’s prices, and for 5 simultaneous ports, are unbeatable. I would also rank them close to Mullvad and Proton in terms of privacy.

If you’d rather use it over the official WireGuard app or a similar app like Passerpartout, make sure to select one of the WireGuard options under Protocols in the settings, unchecking Automatic first.

Under General under Settings/Preferences, there’s an option to skip asking for elevated privileges/password when launching it, which requires installing a Launchd daemon, but that doesn’t work on my new Mac. It still asks for a password every time. Maybe I need to add Eddie to my Login Items in macOS’ System Settings.

As for the speed, it’s inconsistent, and from what I recall, Mullvad has always had better speeds (?). I often use the New York servers, they’re closest to me with the lowest latency, but they recently switched server providers, and the new servers are very noticeably slower, to the point where I considered leaving AirVPN for Proton. Torrenting is pretty much working as expected speeds now, so it’s no longer a huge issue.

Some torrenting tips: As for binding, you may already know this, but in Terminal, type in ifconfig, and look for whatever network interface has the IP address starting with “10.” Usually, it’s utun4 or utun5. Bind your torrent client to this. It can change between system restarts, so run the command again if your client isn’t connecting. If you use qBittorrent, I had issues with it freezing when closing. If you want it to close immediately, disable the OS cache settings in the Advanced Preferences. Set the Disk IO read mode and Disk IO write mode options to Disable OS cache. If you want to potentially increase torrenting speeds, change Asynchronous I/O threads to the amount of threads close to or at the number of threads your Intel/M processor has.

8

I think you should use wireguard as your connection to Airvpn. The Eddie client isn’t as nice GUI compared to the other VPNs but it is functional but it has a lot of stats to see which servers has less users and latency, so I can choose which server I should connect to.

I would definitely setup port forwarding and bind to qbit app for torrenting. Yes, it has for the password every time on my Mac too, it is a security feature of the Mac OS unfortunately. I get way better speeds on Airvpn than Nordvpn.

9

Don’t use Eddie. Use Wireguard.

10

Wiresock is also a great alternative to wireguard, it’s basically the same thing but supports app + folder path split tunneling if that’s something you need.

11

I agree, there are certain servers that are much better than others.

12

What server do you use on AirVPN?

My torrent machine is connected via 2.5gbps ethernet hard-wire to a Unifi Pro HD switch, which is hardwired via SFP+ to Unifi Dream Machine Pro, so I don’t think any of that is the problem.

13

genuine question - what advantage does doing it in Docker provide?

14

Needs to run in Linux environment, right? I tried to set this up but it didn’t work because the setup scripts were Windows CRLF style files. I would have had to convert them all to Linux LF or whatever, which seemed daunting. I’m on Windows

15

My Eddie client never asks for a sign in. I think there’s a remember be box somewhere no?

To be fair I’m on windows so it could be an os discrepancy

16

Wiresock is incredibly unreliable for me. Idk what the fuck it is Eddie will run fine but wiresock will go great for a couple minutes then start with massive packet loss and ping every time. No matter the server. Extremely replicable

17

I use servers in Arizona. Sheratan.

18
  1. Everything about docker is contained; this is why you will often hear docker images referred to as a container. Giving you security and peace of mind. They can not communicate with the host or with other containers unless given permission to.
  2. Everything runs as a service, meaning it is accessible through a browser. I can access services (including qBittorent) from any device on my LAN. Moreover, using a reverse proxy, or something like Tailscale I can access it from anywhere in the world.
  3. Configuration. When you set up a container to use a VPN, there is no possible way the container will work without the VPN being active.
  4. Docker community. Docker has thousands of apps / images to pick from. The arr stack is a powerful way to manage torrents, and all the containers work with each other. There are apps that work with your phone, desktop, and more. I use an app called LunaSea to pick out a new show on my iPhone, and I am done; it grabs the torrents, tracks all future releases of the show, and downloads them when available. It organizes it in all the right folders and adds it to my Plex Server.
  5. Like I said, it’s hard to learn at first, but once you do, you’ll never go back–and it becomes a more hands-off experience to gathering and experiencing media and technology.
19

If you’re on windows 11 is comes with a Linux environment already. Just have to enable it. You can also mount drives from the host, such as c. There are tons of YouTube videos about it. Once you get a feel for it, buying a cheap n100 mini pc running as a ‘server’ to do torrents, and so many other things is well worth it. Then you can get into arr stack, automate all your torrents, shows, moves and more.

20

Do the same thing, it all applies.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wireguard/id1451685025