Internet Blocks, the Great Firewall and VPNs

[roddy]

Lets see . . .

Do a speed test on my broadband connection,

Speedtest.net (used Los Angeles, as that's where my Witopia gateway is set to)

No proxy.

Down 0.99Mb/s

Up 0.35 Mb/s

Fire up Witopia and . . .

LA:

Down 1.16Mb/s

Up 1.26 Mb/s

So the VPN actually seems to speed things up, in this case at least (note it's an overseas server, would expect very different results if it was in China.)

I'd just say you need to right click and reconnect - I do notice the connection failing now and then, but it's rare. If it was being blocked in some way I don't think it would be intermittent.

[muyongshi]

That's interesting. It seems to be working fine in my windows platform but NOT in OSX. I have tried every gateway, one stops working after 2 or 3 minutes and then I switch to another one with about the same results for the most part.

I tend to use it more on there. Just looked and I am in it right now on my windows platform and the speed to the forums seems fine.

[muyongshi]

My VPN 莫名其妙地 stopped working and booted me from the internet. I had to disconnect from the network and reconnect and even then I couldn't reconnect to my VPN. Odd.

[roddy]

Where are you getting online? If you're on a campus / office network it's quite possible a network admin has spotted what you're up to. A local ISP I would say less likely, but not impossible.

[muyongshi]

All local ISP's. I don't have any network admins at any place I connect from, except from the office and I am the network admin there.

And my other thought that keeps going through my head is.... I am in Mianyang... who knows how much different it is here...

[Guest realmayo]

I read somewhere that one reason the Great Firewall could be so effective is that for lots of people it's too much hassle to bother with proxies and so on, just to look at a few blocked sites. But I wonder whether, if more and more sites are blocked, people will start using proxies or whatever for their daily surfing, ie as a matter of course. If they do that, of course, then it'll be no additional hassle visiting the "blocked" sites ... so ... could over-zealous blocking end up being counter-productive?

[gato]

I read somewhere that one reason the Great Firewall could be so effective is that for lots of people it's too much hassle to bother with proxies and so on, just to look at a few blocked sites.

More people have been searching for ways to "翻墙“ since the Green Dam business:

http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=%E7%BF%BB%E5%A2%99&geo=CN&date=today%2012-m&cmpt=q

But you are right that only a small percentage of people in China know how to use proxies to get around the GFW.

[roddy]

The government could spend more money on blocking proxy traffic if it needs to - can't imagine it would be too hard to do.

More people have been searching for ways to "翻墙“ since the Green Dam business:

What's that February spike?

[gato]

What's that February spike?

Maybe people rushing to watch videos of the Feb. 9 CCTV building fire on youtube?

There was also the 躲躲猫 prison death incident in February, but that couldn't be it.

[westmeadboy]

If you just look at Liaoning in Jan and March the values are zero and I don't believe no one tried to access youtube in those months!

[gato]

If you just look at Liaoning in Jan and March the values are zero and I don't believe no one tried to access youtube in those months!

Zero is not the number of searches, but the relative frequency.

See here for Google's explanation

How is the data scaled?

The data is displayed on a scale of 0 to 100, after normalization; each point on the graph has been divided by the highest point, or 100.

For example, let's suppose that interest for the term skiing surged in the month of November in Sweden. Our system designates that peak as 100. Now let's suppose that interest decreased significantly in December, where the next highest peak was approximately half of what it was in November. That peak would then be designated as 50, and so on.

[westmeadboy]

Yeah sure - I realise that it doesnt mean literally zero people. Just seems a bit fishy to me. OK, I can understand how it goes from zero to one hundred so quickly, but I'd expect the fall off (wrong phrase maybe) to not go all the way back to zero so quickly unless relatively small numbers were involved.

For example, look at this:

http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=tsunami&cmpt=q

[paike]

I was going to sign up for the VPN today because I've seen a few times that for only 40 dollars a year you could get one from that Witopia site, but on the site I see this:

personalVPN PPTP

While PPTP is not as fast or as feature-rich as our SSL service, it is a good basic VPN for customers desiring simplicity and ease of use. Most computers and smartphones have compatible PPTP software already built in.

Please be aware, however, that PPTP VPNs are more easily blocked by not only local firewalls, but ISPs as a whole. If you are in Belize, Canada, China, UAE, Oman, Guyana, Morrocco, or any other country where you feel VPNs may be limited or blocked, order our SSL/openVPN service and not PPTP.

Additionally, PPTP VPN service customers can currently only connect through our Dulles, VA (Washington, DC Metro) gateway so if you are closer to one of our other VPN connection points, your performance will be much better with our openVPN/SSL service.

Price:

$39.99

Does this mean I should get the one that costs more, or does everyone else you the 40 dollar a year one for no problem at all?

Pai Ke

[imron]

No, you'll need the one that costs more (but that used to cost $40 before they raised their prices). Also worth pointing out, at least one person has reported that Witopia is currently not connecting so well. So you might want to hold off a couple of days to see the fallout from that.

[roddy]

Couple more sales through the affiliate links the last day or two, so thanks to whoever that was

[muyongshi]

I would like to say that I haven't had ANY problems either on my Mac or PC with witopia recently.

[Horchata]

Where's the Witopia affiliate link? I'll probably be getting it soon and spreading the wealth is always cool.

[roddy]

It's scattered through the topic in a few places. Here it is again.

[tortue]

Just to complete some previous posts: If you have ssh access somewhere there is no need to setup an additional proxy - ssh can act as a SOCKS server with the -D option:

ssh user@server_behind_the_wall.com -D 1080

and e.g. in firefox you check the manual proxy, 'SOCKS host' box, v5, and set localhost:1080 and port 1080. That's all.

Also there are other network applications that support SOCKS than web browsers, e.g. email clients like thunderbird.

[muyongshi]

I'm just curious if there is something like freegate for mac? Anyone know? Just curious as I am using my VPN most of the time...