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Internet Blocks, the Great Firewall and VPNs


roddy

How are you getting round Internet blocks in China?  

69 members have voted

  1. 1. How are you getting round Internet blocks in China?

    • I just give up and read the China Daily
      20
    • Free web proxy like Anonymouse
      21
    • Paid web proxy like Proxify
      3
    • A browser plug in like Gladder
      12
    • I installed a bit of software, like Tor
      21
    • Something else which I will detail below . . .
      4
    • Port forwarding over SSH to a remote proxy, like Imron
      10
    • VPN, like Witopia
      57


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Made some edits on this (ooh, the previous) page as something was triggering internet filters - I suspect it was Gato's link to the Free Gate site, but I removed lots of vowels from elsewhere too . . .

Seems to be working ok now anyway. If you're still having problems, let me know.

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Hello,

In Nanjing, and Frgate doesn't work for me?

Tested it before I left (Australia) and work then, so not working is a new thing (ie. on the 26th it worked in Australia, on the 28th in Nanjing, not so).

I have v2.8 (could not find the v7 one).

System is Win7 64.

Any ideas?

Troy

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For the first time in years, FG is only working intermittently. At approximately 7 pm yesterday (27th Aug 2010) evening it crashed and has been unpredictable ever since. This applies to all recent versions. 

It worked fine again most of today until around 5:30 pm. It is unavailable at the moment.

Whether this is due to a fault at FG's end or is the result of an attack by the censors is, for now, unclear (although I suspect the latter).

Note:the functionality appears to differ in different provinces - a classic sign of censor interference.

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Interesting. I can confirm that the same is here in Xiamen, Fujian - tested all versions from 6.98 to 7.02, and even the extra few secondary applications the updates occasionally give you. I keep all my old versions because I find that sometimes if a new version stops, an older version usually works again. The error is a Windows prompt explaining that a problem has occurred and the software needs to close. That's different, since in the past the connection would just hang if it was blocked.

The guys behind it tend to be quite fast in sorting things out, so hopefully we'll have it back soon. Last National Day however, Freegate stopped for ages here. If you can't find anywhere to download new versions, go to VeryCD.com, grab the Easymule P2P software and do a custom search. I was surprised to find hundreds of downloads available including new versions (it's how I got 6.99, since Freegate only self-updated sporadically).

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I'd wait till after the weekend and see what happens - though I'm not optimistic.

Alternative free ones - forget it.

Freegate is heavily funded (partly by the CIA). If they can't hold it together, some bunch of amateurs, however well intentioned isn't going to hack it. 

You have to go the VPN route.

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Lots of others are experiencing the same problem. See here

http://tieba.baidu.com/f?z=873364395&ct=335544320&lm=0&sc=0&rn=30&tn=baiduPostBrowser&word=%C0%EE%D2%E3&pn=0

A new beta of FG has been released. Try downloading it here (hit "点击这里下载"):

http://d.namipan.com/downfile/f_g703xb2.rar/84fab8663c14dab394348ab15fdd669c30e92c10d3531800

Sorry, had to use an ad-laden mainland filesharing site. Rapidshare doesn't have the free mass sharing option any more.

By the way, Google Docs seems to be blocked completely now. It used to be that only its HTTPS (encrypted) version was blocked.

Are they getting ready for Mr. Xi's big promotion, or what?

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 Gato already linked to FG 7.03 Beta.

I've been running it for two days and it seems stable at the moment. But then 7.02 was stable for a long time, as were previous versions.

I wouldn't rely solely on any one method. They can all be blocked - including VPN*s - at the whim of the censors. The more choices you have the better. 

*Paid for VPNs are less likely to be blocked.

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The fact that the FG team came out with fix within 24 hours of the latest GFW upgrade is quite impressive. So far the FG team has been to overcome everything that the Chinese government has thrown at them. The Chinese government spends billions of dollars on the GFW every year. The FG team is just a few people working on it part time. They receive some funding from Voice of America, but probably not a lot. Compared to the spending on the GFW, it's nothing.

You can read about the story behind FG here:

http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/chinese-censors-internet-face-%E2%80%9Chacktivists%E2%80%9D-us

Chinese Censors of Internet Face “Hacktivists” in US

Geoffrey A. Fowler

The Wall Street Journal , 14 February 2006

Those who have access to a UNIX server can consider using SSH tunneling, which is virtually impossible to block, unless the government blocks all traffic with the outside world (which they did do in Xinjiang for a year after the riots there last year).

You can read more about SSH tunneling here:

http://www.applematters.com/article/using-ssh-secure-tunnels-for-the-common-man-part-i/

http://thedaneshproject.com/posts/ssh-tunneling-with-putty-linux/

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