14 ms·

I only represent about 0.00000013% of all Chinese Internet users, but let me chime in: EVERY website that uses Google CDNs for js or fonts just doesn't work her

by mstaoru 10y ago

I only represent about 0.00000013% of all Chinese Internet users, but let me chime in: EVERY website that uses Google CDNs for js or fonts just doesn't work here. It just keeps loading and loading, and loading forever. In most cases it's jQuery, and in most cases it's in the <head> so the page just never shows. Cloudflare (cdnjs), Amazon CDNs, Akamai CDNs also occasionally get blocked and take entire Internet segments with them. If you use 3rd party CDNs, please consider implementing client-side failover strategy so you don't leave out 50% of the Internet "population".

this-dang-guy 10y ago
For my new site, what I'm doing is a full fallback - local, cdn font, served from my site, then regular font-family fallback. Not sure if that works properly in China, if it just spins. It might never 'fail' and fall back. I'd need to test that. Like so: src: local('Slabo 13px'), local('Slabo13px-Regular'), url(https://fonts.gstatic.com/s/slabo13px/v3/B9U01_cNwYDvIHK04hXMriEAvth_LlrfE80CYdSH47w.woff2 https://fonts.gstatic.com/s/slabo13px/v3/B9U01_cNwYDvIHK04hX...) format('woff2'), url(https://fonts.gstatic.com/s/slabo13px/v3/fScGOqovO8xyProgHURSR_k_vArhqVIZ0nv9q090hN8.woff2 https://fonts.gstatic.com/s/slabo13px/v3/fScGOqovO8xyProgHUR...) format('woff2'), url("/fonts/Slabo13px-Regular.ttf"); }
pritambarhate 10y ago
Thanks for sharing this. Is there a list of big domains such as Google which don't work in China? Does adding social logins like FB and G+ also makes the login pages to break?
- samhamilton 10y ago
  Yep social logins do break or make pages very very slow to load. (Expat in Shanghai)
9248 10y ago
Funny thing, most if not all 'client-side failover' strategies you might find through google or the likes won't work either. This is because the loaded resource will 'fail' anywhere between x seconds up to minutes, or never! In the meantime the user just sees a blank page, or best case, some 80-90% page that keeps trying to load something... I've experienced this myself a couple times. Most probably my ISP messed up some stuff taking down whole chunks of 'internet' :)
- romaniv 10y ago
  The fact that browsers don't have any built-in mechanisms to load-balance resources it disappointing, but not surprising. Think about who are the main drivers of HTML specs. There is probably a way to implement such balancing manually, though. Either through loading parallel documents and exploiting cahcing or through using setTimeout and loading a different set of resources.
throwawasiudy 10y ago
I don't like the censorship policies of the Chinese government. I'm not going to go out of my way to make sure my site is compatible with their censorship, use a VPN.
- banhfun 10y ago
  Enjoy losing tons of potential users over your stubbornness for something that you could easily fix.
  - di4na 10y ago
    Cost of having principles? Well not that bad then.
  - throwawasiudy 10y ago
    I'm sure Google, Uber, and countless other tech companies thought the same before they pulled out of China's market. Turns out China's government policies can be so hostile to outside tech companies that even the Mighty Google has decided it's not worth it. If I did make my site work great it could break again tomorrow or get banned for no apparent reason with no recourse.
- zp-j 10y ago
  Didn't get it, put your jQuery in another CDN provider has anything to do with censorship?
  - throwawasiudy 10y ago
    spend time and resources making sure my site works and keeps working in a marketplace I have no interest in due to the government policies there? The reason I don't care has everything to do with censorship, and censorship ironically is the only reason the site wouldn't work right in the first place.
- deno 10y ago
  You care about Chinese government’s censorship, but you don’t care about privacy from multinational corporations and governments?
samhamilton 10y ago
I feel your pain, when building my sites and if I use a 3rd party js/css cdn I use the only one I have found that has ICP and a damn good list of western nodes - jsdelivr.com
- dsl 10y ago
  Funny, Privacy Badger blocks enough of www.jsdelivr.com that the site content fails to load.
en 10y ago
Maybe not the best solution, but for the js CDN of Google, I'am using a self hosted mirror with this list https://github.com/euh/googleapis-libraries-list https://github.com/euh/googleapis-libraries-list Unfortunately in HTTPS, I need to bypass HSTS protection and for Firefox it's annoying (I don't know for Chrome). For the fonts I tried to create a self hosted mirror too, but Google does not offer to download exactly the exact fonts they host.
- annnnd 10y ago
  How is that possible? You just download them and save them on your server... Unless you are worried about breaking some TOS?
unhammer 10y ago
Local fallbacks also make it easier to do web dev when e.g. your wifi drops out and you can't see where it landed or you're on a boat or whatever. I do things like http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7383163/how-to-fallback-to-local-stylesheet-not-script-if-cdn-fails http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7383163/how-to-fallback-t...
laktak 10y ago
Try https://github.com/Synzvato/decentraleyes https://github.com/Synzvato/decentraleyes
danielrhodes 10y ago
Is this a DNS block or an IP block? For example: if you serve assets from your domain but CloudFlare sits in front, do the assets still load?
- cmdrfred 10y ago
  I assume that Chinese censorship is not escaped just by using https, thus without DPI I assume it has to be IP related.
- yyhhsj0521 10y ago
  A combination of DNS pollution, HTTP Reset attack and IP ban.
- huxflux 10y ago
  Cloudflare work terrible in China! Actually it doesn't work at all as long as you don't buy there enterprise plan (and have an ICP)
danielrhodes 10y ago
Is this a DNS block or an IP block? For example: if you serve assets from your domain but CloudFlare sits in front, do the assets still load?
andruby 10y ago
Do you know of a way for a non-Chinese to test a website from your end? Is there a VPN or Bowser testing site that we can use?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- huxflux 10y ago
  Take a look at http://en.chinanetcenter.com/pages/technology/g4-speed-test.php http://en.chinanetcenter.com/pages/technology/g4-speed-test....
- duckmysick 10y ago
  Try ViewDNS.info: http://viewdns.info/chinesefirewall http://viewdns.info/chinesefirewall
saddestcatever 10y ago
I'm curious - do you know of any chrome plugins / client-side tools to help solve this problem? Seems like it could be very infuriating for the semi-competent Chinese internet user. Wouldn't be too bad to write a plugin that finds dependencies from "allowed"/"works-in-China" CDNs.
- lisivka 10y ago
  uMatrix
herbst 10y ago
Really glad about your comment, i honestly havent thought about this a single time yet. I guess i am missing out on a lot of traffic.

by mstaoru 10y ago

this-dang-guy 10y ago

For my new site, what I'm doing is a full fallback - local, cdn font, served from my site, then regular font-family fallback. Not sure if that works properly in China, if it just spins. It might never 'fail' and fall back. I'd need to test that. Like so: src: local('Slabo 13px'), local('Slabo13px-Regular'), url(https://fonts.gstatic.com/s/slabo13px/v3/B9U01_cNwYDvIHK04hXMriEAvth_LlrfE80CYdSH47w.woff2 https://fonts.gstatic.com/s/slabo13px/v3/B9U01_cNwYDvIHK04hX...) format('woff2'), url(https://fonts.gstatic.com/s/slabo13px/v3/fScGOqovO8xyProgHURSR_k_vArhqVIZ0nv9q090hN8.woff2 https://fonts.gstatic.com/s/slabo13px/v3/fScGOqovO8xyProgHUR...) format('woff2'), url("/fonts/Slabo13px-Regular.ttf"); }

pritambarhate 10y ago

Thanks for sharing this. Is there a list of big domains such as Google which don't work in China? Does adding social logins like FB and G+ also makes the login pages to break?

samhamilton 10y ago
Yep social logins do break or make pages very very slow to load. (Expat in Shanghai)

9248 10y ago

Funny thing, most if not all 'client-side failover' strategies you might find through google or the likes won't work either. This is because the loaded resource will 'fail' anywhere between x seconds up to minutes, or never! In the meantime the user just sees a blank page, or best case, some 80-90% page that keeps trying to load something... I've experienced this myself a couple times. Most probably my ISP messed up some stuff taking down whole chunks of 'internet' :)

romaniv 10y ago
The fact that browsers don't have any built-in mechanisms to load-balance resources it disappointing, but not surprising. Think about who are the main drivers of HTML specs. There is probably a way to implement such balancing manually, though. Either through loading parallel documents and exploiting cahcing or through using setTimeout and loading a different set of resources.

throwawasiudy 10y ago

I don't like the censorship policies of the Chinese government. I'm not going to go out of my way to make sure my site is compatible with their censorship, use a VPN.

banhfun 10y ago
Enjoy losing tons of potential users over your stubbornness for something that you could easily fix.
- di4na 10y ago
  Cost of having principles? Well not that bad then.
- throwawasiudy 10y ago
  I'm sure Google, Uber, and countless other tech companies thought the same before they pulled out of China's market. Turns out China's government policies can be so hostile to outside tech companies that even the Mighty Google has decided it's not worth it. If I did make my site work great it could break again tomorrow or get banned for no apparent reason with no recourse.
zp-j 10y ago
Didn't get it, put your jQuery in another CDN provider has anything to do with censorship?
- throwawasiudy 10y ago
  spend time and resources making sure my site works and keeps working in a marketplace I have no interest in due to the government policies there? The reason I don't care has everything to do with censorship, and censorship ironically is the only reason the site wouldn't work right in the first place.
deno 10y ago
You care about Chinese government’s censorship, but you don’t care about privacy from multinational corporations and governments?

samhamilton 10y ago

I feel your pain, when building my sites and if I use a 3rd party js/css cdn I use the only one I have found that has ICP and a damn good list of western nodes - jsdelivr.com

dsl 10y ago
Funny, Privacy Badger blocks enough of www.jsdelivr.com that the site content fails to load.

en 10y ago

Maybe not the best solution, but for the js CDN of Google, I'am using a self hosted mirror with this list https://github.com/euh/googleapis-libraries-list https://github.com/euh/googleapis-libraries-list Unfortunately in HTTPS, I need to bypass HSTS protection and for Firefox it's annoying (I don't know for Chrome). For the fonts I tried to create a self hosted mirror too, but Google does not offer to download exactly the exact fonts they host.

annnnd 10y ago
How is that possible? You just download them and save them on your server... Unless you are worried about breaking some TOS?

unhammer 10y ago

Local fallbacks also make it easier to do web dev when e.g. your wifi drops out and you can't see where it landed or you're on a boat or whatever. I do things like http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7383163/how-to-fallback-to-local-stylesheet-not-script-if-cdn-fails http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7383163/how-to-fallback-t...

laktak 10y ago

Try https://github.com/Synzvato/decentraleyes https://github.com/Synzvato/decentraleyes

danielrhodes 10y ago

Is this a DNS block or an IP block? For example: if you serve assets from your domain but CloudFlare sits in front, do the assets still load?

cmdrfred 10y ago
I assume that Chinese censorship is not escaped just by using https, thus without DPI I assume it has to be IP related.
yyhhsj0521 10y ago
A combination of DNS pollution, HTTP Reset attack and IP ban.
huxflux 10y ago
Cloudflare work terrible in China! Actually it doesn't work at all as long as you don't buy there enterprise plan (and have an ICP)

danielrhodes 10y ago

Is this a DNS block or an IP block? For example: if you serve assets from your domain but CloudFlare sits in front, do the assets still load?

andruby 10y ago

Do you know of a way for a non-Chinese to test a website from your end? Is there a VPN or Bowser testing site that we can use?

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
huxflux 10y ago
Take a look at http://en.chinanetcenter.com/pages/technology/g4-speed-test.php http://en.chinanetcenter.com/pages/technology/g4-speed-test....
duckmysick 10y ago
Try ViewDNS.info: http://viewdns.info/chinesefirewall http://viewdns.info/chinesefirewall

saddestcatever 10y ago

I'm curious - do you know of any chrome plugins / client-side tools to help solve this problem? Seems like it could be very infuriating for the semi-competent Chinese internet user. Wouldn't be too bad to write a plugin that finds dependencies from "allowed"/"works-in-China" CDNs.

lisivka 10y ago
uMatrix

herbst 10y ago

Really glad about your comment, i honestly havent thought about this a single time yet. I guess i am missing out on a lot of traffic.