Using the internet in China . . . sssllllllllooooooooooowwww

[Danski]

Does anyone else have problems surfing the net in China? Man it's so darned slow. I've got a broadband connection and my computer says the connection speed is 100mbps - that should be fast as lightning surely?

I've heard that all internet traffic is monitored by Chinese govt - is this true?

Cripes, even harmless web sites such as BBC can'tbe viewed. What a nightmare.

Anyone got any solutions?

[Claw]

I've got a broadband connection and my computer says the connection speed is 100mbps - that should be fast as lightning surely?

The connection is only as fast as the slowest link between you and the computer you're trying to reach. Even though you may have a 100 Mbps link between your computer and your cable/DSL modem, I can assure you that the link out of the cable/DSL modem to the rest of the Internet is much slower. I don't know the exact situation in China though.

[roddy]

How does it work on Chinese based sites? The weak link is often the international one - international sites load fairly well for me, but the local ones are virtually as fast as from a local drive.

Roddy

[Pravit]

I have broadband here in the US, and most sites on China-based servers load slowly for me.

[Jockster]

My experiences are similar to those of Roddy. I have an ADSL broadband connection, and most Chinese sites load in the blink of an eye. Surfing European sites is way slower, but bearable. A lot of the time, I can't view US sites, or then it is excruciatingly slow.

[Cyberian]

I have broadband.

Chinese links loads slow for me too. Regional links are lightning-fast. Europeans are okay.

[liuzhou]

Another problem in China (apart from the bottleneck on international access adequately explained above) is that the rapid exponential growth in the number of people connected has overwhelmed the local ISPs. More and more people are battling for the same bandwidth. They are happy to take the money, but much slower at upgrading their end!

I have two connections (home and office), each with a different provider and can really tell the difference. Also, I can tell, without looking at my watch, when the local college finishes classes and all the students go off to the internet bars to do research! (i.e. chat on QQ and play games!)

[roddy]

ISP seems to make a huge difference. At home I get decent surfing speeds and a local download might reach 70k/s. There's a slowdown on international sites, but it's still very usable. The two work connections I've used regularly were troublesome - one regularly timed out on international sites, you just couldn't get anything. The other is generally fine, but seems to take exception to some perfectly innocent sites (although I admit they aren't exactly essential for my work )

I"m currently experimenting with HK based webhosting in an attempt to guarantee decent surfing speeds for all - if it works out well for the two small sites I'm setting up now and I get decent service from the company, I may move the forums to HK later in the year. I know a number of people have said the site is irritatingly slow from within China.

Roddy

[trevelyan]

I have two connections (home and office), each with a different provider and can really tell the difference.

Amen. Also worth noting that there is a horde of different filtering software installed on different networks at the lowest level. I've seen sites inaccessible through some networks easily accessible through other less "public" networks (like Internet Cafes).

Oddly enough, the worst-offenders are often English schools.

[chengdude]

Welcome to my world. My university has some sort of sweetheart deal with CNC (China Netcom AKA Xiao Ling Tong) to provide phone/Internet service to the buildings housing postgrads, foreign teachers, and freshly hired Chinese staff. Internet service, offered free on a LAN, is absolutely wretched with slow international loading, downloading, and frequent outages (service works roughly 60% of the time). Definitely agree with liuzhou on the Battle for Bandwidth as it grows slower and slower as the afternoon and evening progress. Add to that the heavy censorship (anecdotally much heavier than other contributors have reported here and on other sites) and it's no wonder I've pretty much lost interest in visiting/contributing to forums like these and have pared my Internet use down to bare-bones news reading. Oh well, it is free...unlike the phones, which experience an equal number of issues all the while watching the credit on your prepaid card drain away. Suffice to say, CNC was not on my Christmas card list.

Note to Paramount Administrator: despite the gripes, the Forums have always loaded quite well here.

[Chappie]

First of all......

If you have/had a firewall that could greatly effect your internet connection!

Second... if you surf on non chinese sites. Its always slower. Sometimes very slow (I can visit my own homepage quite fast from china). Many sites are blocked (not completely) bbut there are a bit primitive blocked. (I can visited babelfish.altavista.com but not www.altavista.com).

[got_no_jaffas]

a year on & it seems still no change...

my supposedly broadband access at home is worse than dial-up! it's rubbish.

crowded & slow, like shopping in beijng!!

[roddy]

Do you know what ISP you are on? There's definitely something wrong somewhere - I've had great service via China Netcom from two different apartments, with downloads hitting 120Kb/s if I'm lucky, and normal surfing at excellent speeds - however, I do know of people who report similar problems.

Roddy

[gato]

hitting 120Kb/s if I'm lucky

You probably meant 120KB/s as in kilobytes, not bits. I've beeng getting about the same through China NetCom's adsl service.

[Language Guy]

And yes, there is definitely certain amounts of censorship on the internet in China, by both the government and other bodies.

But I'm not sure that's a huge factor in speed reduction.

[Bibytes]

I am also based in Chengdu and basically have no problem accessing US sites at an acceptable speed.

Where is this forum hosted? In the United States? It loads quite well for me. I am using the ADSL provided by local telecom company (China Telecom).