Lantern (free VPN-like app/system)

[onebir]

https://www.getlantern.org/faq/index.html

 

It was easy to install & get running on Ubuntu (install a .deb) & has installers for the main OSs:

https://github.com/getlantern/lantern/blob/devel/README.md

 

Has a lot of Chinese activity in the forum:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/lantern-users-en

 

So I assume it works well there.

 

To check it's working:

1) Check your IP (eg at https://www.whatismyip.com/)

2) Start Lantern (it was in my 'Programs-Other' menu). A browser window opens, with a 'Gear Wheel' at bottom right. There should also be a little icon in your task bar.

3) Click gear wheel & make sure 'Proxy all traffic is ticked. (Otherwise only problematic sites are proxied.)

4) Set up your browser to use a Lantern as a proxy, eg like this:

(The defaulr settings are:

HTTP 127.0.0.1 port 8787
Socks5 127.0.0.1 port 8788)

5) Check your IP again, it should be totally different.

 

Curious to know how well this works in China

 

CLI method for testing is given here:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/lantern-users-en/dwunyx9HAYY

[ChTTay]

It worked at first and had a good connection but recently hasn't worked at all for me in Beijing. I've kept trying for the past week but no luck.

Another one bites the dust

[onebir]

Argh - thanks for the info...

[ChTTay]

It worked again yesterday.

I guess it's worth having but is a bit patchy for me in BJ. Likely better in smaller cities

[onebir]

Ah - great

It might be quite easy to block. It looks like all the servers are hired from Amazon (Cloudfront*) & contained in a few IP ranges (see lantern.yaml; it's in ~/.lantern on Linux, not sure when Windows keeps config files) - which seems a strange setup given its usage...

 

*EDIT: Cloudfront is a major CDN: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_delivery_network

Blocking all the servers would affect access to loads of unproblematic sites that happen to use it, which might discourage a heavy-handed approach.

[markhascole]

Thanks for the helpful information onebir 

[ChTTay]

Helpful in 2016! 

[snltjy]

Hey guys, is it possible to use Lantern on CentOS 7? The Alien command converting from .deb to .rpm failed, should I compile from the source code? Thanks a lot.

[nozak]

On 7/31/2020 at 9:11 AM, snltjy said:

Hey guys, is it possible to use Lantern on CentOS 7? The Alien command converting from .deb to .rpm failed, should I compile from the source code? Thanks a lot.

just try another program like ssr ,v2ray .