Review on Witopia and other "Anti-Wall" apps

[zozzen]

I've heard about Witopia in this forums and the company seems to know we're their potential target and start placing an ad here.

I'm wondering how many people here use it?

can anyone compare the performance between witopia and other free alternatives like ultrasurf and freegate? Is it worth paying US$59,9?

http://www.personalvpn.com/index.php?mktsrc=cfwitopia

Edited July 12, 2009 at 05:54 PM by zozzen
to make the post more useful

[Xiao Kui]

I've been using it for abt 8 months now and absolutely love it. It's a heck of a lot faster than some free stuff I've used such as gladder and anonymouse and Tor. have never tried ultrasurf or freegate so don't know abt that. For me the money is worth it - I got it for $40 but for me it would be well worth renewing at the higher $60 price.

[roddy]

Not sure exactly where you're seeing the ad, but it's possibly me placing the affiliate link we have rather than Witopia themselves. I've also edited it into your post, Zozzen, hope you don't mind .

There's some mention of Witopia's products here, later on in the topic. I won't merge this though as I think Witopia and possibly the other paid VPN options deserve a seperate topic.

I've been paying for Witopia for the best part of two years, and use it pretty much daily - wouldn't be without it. Easy to install, connects quickly, and once you're connected everything pretty much works. Online video (Youtube basically) is a bit slow, but I don't think it's much worse than it was without the VPN when not blocked. MSN sometimes drops the connection, but logs immediately back in. Rarely, the connection to the VPN itself will drop and have to be restarted.

As for the free alternatives, tried it once. Can't remember how successful it was, but ended up paying for a VPN. Even at $60 a year, Witopia is only just over one yuan a day - the cost hardly even registers.

There aren't many products for which I'll say 'I use it, it's great', but this is one of them. Pleco is probably the only other one I can think of. I can also see that around a dozen or so people have purchased it through the affiliate link, so at least a few people have presumably found it convincing. Google 'VPN' or similar and you'll find other options.

[imron]

It's also worth pointing out that they have a 30-day money back guarantee so you could always try it out to see if it meets your needs.

[zozzen]

Roddy, the ad is shown on the head of front page when i'm not logged in. Hope this thread can drive a little more pocket money to you.

I think it'll be greater if you can work with the company to offer 7-day free demo account to CF users whose have made more than 500 posts. (abuse of free demo account is nearly impossible for this criteria). Not more than 600 posts anyway, so that I'm qualified for this.

[roddy]

As Imron has pointed out, there's a 30 day money back guarantee, which is surely better than a seven day free trial.

[gato]

Free gate is very reliable and is fast enough for watching Youtube. The download site for free gate is blocked, however, so you will have to use another proxy first to download it.

Here is an article about free gate

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/18/opinion/18kristof.html

Tear Down This Cyberwall!

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: June 17, 2009

[gerri]

I want to mention one complication though:

If you have to use RuiJie supplicant software to connect, you can only use Witopia's PPTP; on some WiFi routers, nothing seems to work (neither personal VPN nor PPTP version).

I always used that, now I can't, probably because the net connection is too slow where I'm now, and that means that PPTP won't connect... (also happens back home with Ruijie).

I'll have to ask for my login/order number to try personalVPN again; the support has always (not needed it too much except for above issues) been quick and good.

[zozzen]

I'm wondering if witopia can outperform freegate and other anti-wall software? If their performance is more or less the same, i think i won't bother to register for 30-day trial (credit card is needed i guess? )

the problem i have with freegate is it seems not to be able to proxify the ftp transmission. I can't connect to a ftp site which is blocked by china.

and as it's too popular, some websites (like wikipedia and some big forums) seem to take it as a bot and ban it.

[edensands]

I'm new to China and I'm trying to get on facebook, etc. I've heard about Witopia and FG from the forum as a way around the block. Out of interest and before I part with any cash for these proxies or VPNs, what are the chances of the government firewall coming down on them and blocking them?

[muyongshi]

By my understanding it's impossible to block a VPN. They can block manually entered DNS servers but the way I understand it is that rather than you manually entering the DNS for witopia the software connects to those DNS as you attempt to connect making them harder to block. If they were able to block them- it would just really slow down the connection.

But I could be completely wrong here....

[imron]

It's always technically possible to block them (but in a game of cat and mouse kind of way - or a scorched earth, shut down the Internet kind of way), but VPNs have so many legitimate uses that it would probably cripple large segments of the economy to do so, and so they don't. You also need to realise the main purpose of the blocks - to make it enough of a hassle that the vast majority of Chinese users don't bother to find ways around them. They don't appear to really care that much about whether foreigners (who have already been exposed to material beyond the blocks) get around them.

I would say that the chances of the government shutting down access to the VPNs without say shutting down the Internet, and without there being a workaround of some sort, is close to zero.

[gerri]

Well, using Witopia's PPTP-VPN (SSL-VPN cannot be used, and programs like HotspotShield also cannot be used, because I have to use a Supplicant program) is not possible anymore. - I can still connect, but then nothing happens. I asked them, and there is no solution.

Interestingly, connecting to my former university through VPN still works alright...

[muyongshi]

What do you mean cannot be used? I use the SSL all the time.

[gerri]

What do you mean cannot be used? I use the SSL all the time.

Do you have to use Ruijie Supplicant, though? When I tried to use openVPN, it tries to change my IP, and the supplicant program crashes...

[muyongshi]

Nope no issues what so ever.

[gerri]

Retried it but no luck whatsoever on my part - as soon as I start openVPN, Ruijie Supplicant tells me that it's in a system environment it can't work with and it gets stopped. Ergo, no internet connection anymore, at all.

[muyongshi]

Have you done the whole uninstall, redownload the install package, reinstall method?

{not trying to make you feel like an idiot if you have done it- just curious}

[imron]

What is Ruijie Supplicant? Have you contacted Witopia's support to see if they can help you?

[imron]

Ok, I've done a bit of digging, and it seems that a supplicant is a program that provides port level authentication for access to a given network. In order to connect to your local area network, you need the Ruijie supplicant to be running. In order to connect to Witopia, you need to first be connected to you LAN, however then is a conflict between Ruijie and Witopia meaning that Ruijie can't run if Witopia is running. This means you can't connect to your LAN and therefore Witopia can't run either.

It's worth pointing out that this is not a GFW problem, but rather access restrictions placed on your LAN by whoever manages it (presumably to prevent random strangers from being able to connect to it).

If you have access to multiple computers, one possible way to get around it would be to use the first computer to connect to the LAN with Ruijie Supplicant, and then share its Internet connection. You would then connect to the first computer with your second computer, and from the second computer run Witopia.