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As other posts have said, the GFW isn’t just a whole heap of blocked IPs. There’s some of that (Google, FB, etc.), but a lot more of it is DPI and other inspect
by NamTaf 5y ago
As other posts have said, the GFW isn’t just a whole heap of blocked IPs. There’s some of that (Google, FB, etc.), but a lot more of it is DPI and other inspection techniques that also have the effect of slowing overseas data to a crawl. In that sense it is quite sophisticated.
I remember getting 300KB/sec at the best of times to overseas sites. VPNs didn’t really make a difference for speed (I believe I had poor routing on top of that), but I could use WG and SS to maintain access to blocked content for weeks on end.
The end result is that internet users are corralled into domestic services where the CCP can flex its power. If anything overseas continues to be too anti-government then it cops a more concrete block.
As also mentioned, the educated class might get VPN access but Joe Bloggs on the street won’t know how to. Also, it’s hard to get a VPN from within China, but once set up with one you can relatively easily keep using it.
- jfoster 5y agoHow does DPI work on encrypted traffic? Most of the web uses HTTPS now. Are they able to decrypt most of that?
- blahgeek 5y agoNo they don't. But they are able to classify the encrypted traffic (e.g. if it's used as VPN)
- Syonyk 5y agoSNI often allows you to discern the domain being accessed, and depending on how well you know that domain, the nature of the traffic flows can unwrap a lot more than most people would really like (timing and sizes of requests/responses - even wrapped with https, the size of a GET vs POST uploading data are pretty obvious). The GF doesn't care about 100% accuracy either. They won't always perfectly ban stuff. But they will hinder it often enough to make some "banned" service effectively useless inside China.