4 ms·

There's a small minority of college educated youth that speak english and are able to use VPNs to bypass GFW.

flohofwoe 5y ago
I might be wrong, or it may changed in the meantime, but I had the impression that VPN traffic is also slowed down extremely. While it allows you to connect to any foreign service, it's so slow as to be nearly useless. I only tried VPN services that were located outside China though. Maybe there are Chinese VPN services which have a 'fast route' to the outside world (I'd be very surprised if this is legal though).
- ChemSpider 5y ago
  > VPN traffic is also slowed down extremely. Exactly that. It took me >30 minutes just load my emails - if I found a spot where the VPN would connect at all. Basically I needed two coffees. One for the time to load the email, and the 2nd coffee to wait while my repliess were sending. At the same time, access to Chinese websites was super-fast.
- mrjin 5y ago
  It depends on how your VPN services are hosted. I actually tried to host VPN myself on google app engine and the first time lasted a day or so before it was blocked. The second time lasted 1 hour or so. The I changed the strategy to create a VM in azure and it was never blocked for years, the only down time was M$ trying to save me some credit by automatically shutting it down as the load of the VM had always been almost 0%.
- netheril96 5y ago
  Wrong protocol. If GFW suspects that you are trying to bypass it without confidence, it slows you down instead.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  Only if the GFW identifies you as likely VPN traffic do they throttle. I used Googles VPN service thingy and kept switching hosts everytime it slowed.
- idxoutofbounds 5y ago
  When I lived in China I rented a server in Hong Kong and ran OpenVPN, that pretty much worked fine. Back then VPNs weren't technically illegal I believe but that's changed in recent years. Major VPN providers would stop working for periods of time because China would keep blocking IPs.

I might be wrong, or it may changed in the meantime, but I had the impression that VPN traffic is also slowed down extremely. While it allows you to connect to any foreign service, it's so slow as to be nearly useless. I only tried VPN services that were located outside China though. Maybe there are Chinese VPN services which have a 'fast route' to the outside world (I'd be very surprised if this is legal though).

ChemSpider 5y ago
> VPN traffic is also slowed down extremely. Exactly that. It took me >30 minutes just load my emails - if I found a spot where the VPN would connect at all. Basically I needed two coffees. One for the time to load the email, and the 2nd coffee to wait while my repliess were sending. At the same time, access to Chinese websites was super-fast.
mrjin 5y ago
It depends on how your VPN services are hosted. I actually tried to host VPN myself on google app engine and the first time lasted a day or so before it was blocked. The second time lasted 1 hour or so. The I changed the strategy to create a VM in azure and it was never blocked for years, the only down time was M$ trying to save me some credit by automatically shutting it down as the load of the VM had always been almost 0%.
netheril96 5y ago
Wrong protocol. If GFW suspects that you are trying to bypass it without confidence, it slows you down instead.
whimsicalism 5y ago
Only if the GFW identifies you as likely VPN traffic do they throttle. I used Googles VPN service thingy and kept switching hosts everytime it slowed.
idxoutofbounds 5y ago
When I lived in China I rented a server in Hong Kong and ran OpenVPN, that pretty much worked fine. Back then VPNs weren't technically illegal I believe but that's changed in recent years. Major VPN providers would stop working for periods of time because China would keep blocking IPs.