My First Hurdle!!! VPN

[Willy The Londoner]

What I like about Express is the fact they have really good customer service if you have any problems and when things do get blocked they are on the ball and they get the blockage bypassed in next to no time.

I get the choice of UK, USA or Amsterdam connections at the flick of the mouse.

Willy

[Mikael_Shim]

Not sure about your problems Willy, or what may have caused them but i believe they are related to to other things then simply the service, from the problem you describe it sounds 99.9% as the proxy setting has been left for some reason in your browser after the uninstall it would generate this exact behavior. It may also work differently depending on where in China you are and what ISP (Operator) you are using. I have nevr had a issue with Astrill in Beijing, they also have very good and fast support. Current speedtest to same server as before in this thread:

China Unicom without Astrill: DL: 0.6mbps UL: 0.3MBPS
China Unicom with Astrill using Hong Kong Node: DL: 1.4MBPS UL: 1.1MBPS
China Unicom with Astrill using Japan Node: DL: 2.3MBPS UL: 1.5MBPS
China Unicom with Astrill using Moldavia Node: DL: 3.86MBPS UL: 1.55MBPS
China Unicom with Astrill using Russia Node: DL: 2.36MBPS UL: 0.9MBPS
China Unicom with Astrill using Korea Node: DL: 1.8mbps UL: 0.92MBPS
China Unicom with Astrill using Luxembourg Node: DL: 3.79mbps UL: 1.42MBPS


From our work office in downtown Beijing (we use Astrill professionally as they have business services also):

China Unicom 20mbps Leased Line no VPN: DL: 8.21MBPS UL: 4.13MBPS
China Unicom 20mbps Leased Line W/Astrill Luxembourg Node: DL: 16.84MBPS UL: 9.11MBPS

Uploads will never go above ~1.5MBPS on DSL lines here. It is capped. I have also used StrongVPN, ExpressVPN and FBVPN. All have worked fine but none have been able to get anywhere close to the speeds of the Astrill servers here in Beijing.

As for paying online and overseas when ur here in China. Get a Chinese Paypal, these can use the Unison Pay bank-cards. You can not use the Unison Pay bank cards with your international paypal account, you need to register a Chinese Paypal account. Or use a Visa/Mastercard Debit or Creditcard with your international Paypal.

[Pineau]

Mikael,

we don't get anywhere near those transfer rates down south here. I bet it varies all over china.

Can you sen a link to the Chinese paypal account? Do you think they will allow transfers (payments) from USA paypal accounts to Chinese paypal account. That would solve a lot of problems for a lot of people needing to send money to China.

Fiona's sister needs to send Child support from the USA to here ex husband here in China. Right now they are sending the money to my USA paypal account and we send RMB to her ex. It would be great if she could send direct to him without us in the middle. That way no one needs to even leave the house. All done on-line using paypal.

[Mikael_Shim]

Hi Pineau!

Yeah, like i said. It will probably vary alot on where you are, and also on the actual operator (ISP). Shanghai, Beijing and Dalian have some of the best from what i understand. For the Chinese paypal, there are 2 different ones. DONT get the wrong one . Just go to www.paypal.com/c2 and register an account, you have to use your Chinese Bank Account to get it verified. When its verified (takes a few days, paypal makes 2 small deposits in your bank account in RMB you will have to state those 2 exact values) you can transfer up to 1500us$ /month without any further verification. There is also a Chinese paypal account that only works in China, dont use it!. Only register on the link above.

However, there is a slight issue here. Whilst a Chinese paypal account will let you buy stuff online or send money to other paypal accounts from your Chinese Unison Bank card, others can also send you money to your Chinese paypal (ONLY in US$). The problem arises if you want to actually withdraw them in cash, because you cannot wire from paypal to your chinese bank, when you do a withdrawal they will send you a CHEQUE in US$, it takes 7-12 days to receive it in the mail and there will be fees when you exchange it to cash here. So whilst a Chinese paypal is great for online (international) shopping, and/or sending money to other paypal accounts. It is not a superb solution for receiving funds and cashing them out.

[Mikael_Shim]

Theres an alternative if you want to send funds (and cash them out). And That is AliPay, which is similar to Paypal but for the Chinese. Most online sellers here in China use AliPay. If you are chinese, you can register an account at www.alipay.com and you can use it similar to Paypal to request money from someone and they can pay by creditcard.

[Pineau]

I just got an email from expressVPN.

You may have noticed that our ExpressVPN.com website has become inaccessible from China if you're not connected to the VPN. Our VPN service itself is unaffected, but some customers have had problems accessing our website such as to manage their subscription, or to refer friends.

We recommend the following solutions:

1. Visit our .NET address: www.expressvpn.net
It's the same site, just under a different domain name that's accessible from China. We suggest you mention this address when referring friends who don't have a VPN yet.

2.  Alternatively, you can connect to the VPN first, then access our website www.expressvpn.com as usual.

Thank you and best regards,
 - The ExpressVPN Team

[Mikael_Shim]

StrongVPN was blocked also in China last weekend but should be working again. I have limited ideas as to why Astrill never seem to be blocked (atleast for the last 8 months).

Blocking a VPN service entirely is actually something technically very challenging due to the nature of the architecture behind it. Blocking the providers homepage is a quite easy task however.

[Pineau]

Corporations and governments depend onthe internet. China can shut it down or take control anytime they want. 

[Willy The Londoner]

There was a reason that website such as Express and others were blocked before last weekend in particular. 

However I cherish my home and family here so will not go into it on an open forum.

Willy

[Axiom]

Hmmm, I wont ask... but I cant help but be curious now

[Mikael_Shim]

There was a reason that website such as Express and others were blocked before last weekend in particular. 

However I cherish my home and family here so will not go into it on an open forum.

Willy

I know what you mean Willy, and amen to that. Astrill was unaffected though . Axiom, you are in China by now ... how bout following whats happening here .... 

[Pineau]

http://www.greatfirewall.biz/blocked-websites
This site identifies and publishes the websites and searches that are blocked in China. I have read stories that some websites are blocked even if you are using V P N. I dont know how they are doing that.

If you are in China and dont have V P N. You can try to reach it here.  https://122.248.216.0  you will get a warning about and invalid security certificate ....ignore it and proceed/

Their blog is and interesting read. Gmail now 45 times slower than QQ, 8 times slower than Yahoo.

[Mikael_Shim]

http://www.greatfirewall.biz/blocked-websites
This site identifies and publishes the websites and searches that are blocked in China. I have read stories that some websites are blocked even if you are using V P N. I dont know how they are doing that.

If you are in China and dont have V P N. You can try to reach it here.  https://122.248.216.0  you will get a warning about and invalid security certificate ....ignore it and proceed/

Their blog is and interesting read. Gmail now 45 times slower than QQ, 8 times slower than Yahoo.

This usually happens because different VPN solutions and methods work differently. For instance it does not matter what VPN solution or method you are using if it does not support autoconfig and pulls the network configuration from the VPN gateway, in this case you would still be using the Chinese DNS servers for lookups and obviously that will not work. Another, kinda "cool" but nasty thing that happens now and then in China is, even if you are using independent DNS servers like OpenDNS or Comodo Secure DNS the ISP can actually hijack your request and patch the response with something else , we have seen it happening here several times. A full IPSEC VPN with remote config can not be altered, and it is simply not technically possible to block sites if you are tunneling this way because there is simply no way for a 3:rd party to see whats inside the tunnel, even less tamper with that data. Decrypting an IPSEC tunnel on the fly requires such n ridiculous amount of processing power behind the attack that it is extremely unlikely that a single individual would ever come to experience that

[Pineau]

Hey guys still in China. My cousin in Shanghai says she no longer needs VPN to get to Facebook.

Can you check your local area and see if it is true for you?  Maybe China has let a few evil sites through the wall.

[Willy The Londoner]

I have just tried to go to Facebook with my VPN turned off but it just says page unavailable which is normal for these blocked sites.

Our daughter uses it OK here but that is by VPN.

Willy