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We operate a Chinese server in China for our Chinese customers, but the Great Firewall make it almost impossible to maintain it from outside China. The speed of

We operate a Chinese server in China for our Chinese customers, but the Great Firewall make it almost impossible to maintain it from outside China. The speed of any ssh connection is so low that any command that outputs more than a few characters to the screen make the experience worse than dial-up via a GSM modem. It will literally take me minutes to ls -l a directory.

doctorshady 10y ago
If you don't mind me asking, why don't you set it up with a dial-up modem? Termination prices for Chinese phone calls are extremely cheap (meaning besides the obvious point of cheaper calls, you'll easily get higher quality routes that're more likely to reliably pass modem traffic), and SSH, let alone any sort of encrypted point to point serial data, over a modem isn't particularly painful to use unless you're transferring large files.
- danieltillett 10y ago
  The server is a dedicate machine located in a professional colo. I am not going to be able to put a dial-up into that server. The problem is getting into China from outside - not to the server once inside the Great Firewall.
  - doctorshady 10y ago
    Ahh, it's one of those datacenters that only give you ethernet? I know some will let you bring in POTS/DSx/whatever else, but they can be a little uncommon. My point was though, if it's as bad as you describe, an international phone call to the server would probably be cheap enough to work.
lunaru 10y ago
May I ask what provider you're using and how your process was for obtaining the license? We're in the same boat -- Chinese customers are just much better served if we can get a physical server in the country, but I've heard the experience is traumatic.
- danieltillett 10y ago
  I had my Chinese distributor set it up. It seems like you need to have a Chinese local there to get through all the red tape. Even for him it was a pain. The semi-intersting thing is this server does not even have any public face - it is purely just a back-end data processor for DNA sequences.
paradite 10y ago
Not directly applicable your case, but I will try my best to aid you by giving you my experience. I live in Singapore and I get very fast connections to some of the sites in China, such as taobao.com and zhihu.com, which I assued employed some additional mechanism to serve overseas users. In contrast, websites related baidu generally loads slower (>500ms), which I assume is because they have no need to serve overseas users. That's from a user's perspective. I also have a VPS on DigitalOcean in Singapore region. It is accessible in China and relatively fast when I tried to ssh into it within China (<100ms). My suggestion would be to get a consultant firm or tech firm that specializes in serving overseas users to get some insights on how to setup your infrastructure. Surely there are ways to it, Valve managed to stream Dota 2 Shanghai Major to millions of people outside China. But you need to start by really understanding how the Internet in China operates, not relying on prior knowledge of setting things up in other countries.
- ttflee 10y ago
  In Singapore it's most likely the distance that matters. Light travels fast, yet the delays are significantly sensible in a global scale.
  - rahimnathwani 10y ago
    Not just distance. Some ISPs and hosting providers have direct peering with PCCW. Latency between a China residential connection and a host outside China cannot be predicted knowing just the location of the host. It can vary by up to 5x just depending on the peering/route.
- danieltillett 10y ago
  I already use a professional provider in China to colo the server. The issue in not the server (it works well within China) or the colo, but connecting to it securely from outside China via ssh. I can’t just hand over the running of this server to a Chinese team since it is not a webserver, but the relatively complex backend for the custom processing of genetic data.

doctorshady 10y ago

If you don't mind me asking, why don't you set it up with a dial-up modem? Termination prices for Chinese phone calls are extremely cheap (meaning besides the obvious point of cheaper calls, you'll easily get higher quality routes that're more likely to reliably pass modem traffic), and SSH, let alone any sort of encrypted point to point serial data, over a modem isn't particularly painful to use unless you're transferring large files.

danieltillett 10y ago
The server is a dedicate machine located in a professional colo. I am not going to be able to put a dial-up into that server. The problem is getting into China from outside - not to the server once inside the Great Firewall.
- doctorshady 10y ago
  Ahh, it's one of those datacenters that only give you ethernet? I know some will let you bring in POTS/DSx/whatever else, but they can be a little uncommon. My point was though, if it's as bad as you describe, an international phone call to the server would probably be cheap enough to work.

lunaru 10y ago

May I ask what provider you're using and how your process was for obtaining the license? We're in the same boat -- Chinese customers are just much better served if we can get a physical server in the country, but I've heard the experience is traumatic.

danieltillett 10y ago
I had my Chinese distributor set it up. It seems like you need to have a Chinese local there to get through all the red tape. Even for him it was a pain. The semi-intersting thing is this server does not even have any public face - it is purely just a back-end data processor for DNA sequences.

paradite 10y ago

Not directly applicable your case, but I will try my best to aid you by giving you my experience. I live in Singapore and I get very fast connections to some of the sites in China, such as taobao.com and zhihu.com, which I assued employed some additional mechanism to serve overseas users. In contrast, websites related baidu generally loads slower (>500ms), which I assume is because they have no need to serve overseas users. That's from a user's perspective. I also have a VPS on DigitalOcean in Singapore region. It is accessible in China and relatively fast when I tried to ssh into it within China (<100ms). My suggestion would be to get a consultant firm or tech firm that specializes in serving overseas users to get some insights on how to setup your infrastructure. Surely there are ways to it, Valve managed to stream Dota 2 Shanghai Major to millions of people outside China. But you need to start by really understanding how the Internet in China operates, not relying on prior knowledge of setting things up in other countries.

ttflee 10y ago
In Singapore it's most likely the distance that matters. Light travels fast, yet the delays are significantly sensible in a global scale.
- rahimnathwani 10y ago
  Not just distance. Some ISPs and hosting providers have direct peering with PCCW. Latency between a China residential connection and a host outside China cannot be predicted knowing just the location of the host. It can vary by up to 5x just depending on the peering/route.
danieltillett 10y ago
I already use a professional provider in China to colo the server. The issue in not the server (it works well within China) or the colo, but connecting to it securely from outside China via ssh. I can’t just hand over the running of this server to a Chinese team since it is not a webserver, but the relatively complex backend for the custom processing of genetic data.