How has the internet situation changed for you?

[joshuawbb]

I know we have a big topic discussing the Great Firewall, but I'm curious to see how your internet experience has changed in general over the past few years, for those living in China long-term. What trends have you noticed aside from the obvious blockings?

For me, the biggest issue I've noticed here in Xiamen for the past 12 months or so is an almost total clamp on upload speed. Most domestic sites aren't affected too much, but uploading to practically anything outside China has become almost impossible. During the past 12 I've lived in 3 different addresses and the problem seems to be universal to China Telecom connections in Xiamen at least.

Doing a speed test at speedtest.net also shows the issue - a normal download speed according to my 4MB plan, but an upload of anything between 0.02MB and 0.25MB. Trying to use Facetime between my iPad and my family's devices back home results in perfect video quality arriving at my end but still frames at their end; using internet call apps such as Viber to call home ends up with the same result; using torrents means download but no upload, etc... the conclusion is fairly clear. It's a bit of a shame but not too big of an influence on life here.

Download speed from sites outside China is often throttled too, though that's been happening since 2010 here and I'm sure many others here have always had the same issue. I could still get the maximum speed in a certain way though if I downloaded multiple things. If the download is throttled at 25kb/s, for example, I can open as many downloads as I like at that same speed until the combined speed hits my real upper limit of around 500kb/s; only then does each individual download start to slow down. This used to work for most sites, not sure about now.

Regarding the difficulty in using VPNs (particularly free ones), some old versions of FG still work and when a new version is blocked, sometimes more older versions will work again. One version still works 60% to 80% of the time with varying quality - PM if you'd like it. I suppose writing version numbers makes it more likely a VPN will get plugged.

To sum things up, in the past few years I've noticed on Xiamen and using China Telecom:

-Heavier throttling on download speeds for websites/services outside China.

-Almost total blocking on uploads to anything other than domestic websites, which also affects audio/video transfer on webcam/calling services

-Heavier blocking on VPNs

-Indefinite intermittent blocking of Google services - e.g. an iPad app I use to remotely connect to my computer is now practically unusable as it uses Gmail to connect

[gato]

I think the upload limit applies within China, too. I am seeing only 0.43 Mbps upload for domestic sites, using speedtest.net. I see roughly the same upload speed, even if I choose a server in HK or LA on speedtest.test. The upload limit, even for domestic use, might be done to prevent the widespread use of P2P file sharing from overwhelming the network.

It's the latency caused by the extra filtering of the GFW that's more of a problem for cross-border communication. The extra latency has made Skype virtually unusable, too, even though Skype voice calls need much less bandwidth than video calls.

See here where someone else also notes the upload speed limit within China:

http://zhidao.baidu..../456169089.html

大陆的光纤都这样，上行下行速度不对称，上行速度被有关部门限制了。我的20M光纤上行也才620kbps而已。

[ChTTay]

I haven't lived here "long term" in the true sense of the word but compared to many "students" I'm doing okay...

I've noticed any VPN's I sign up for don't last long. When I first arrived I used the same service for 8 months but now I can't really find a decent one. The biggest issue for me is just having better search results that you get if you use a VPN service.

I was in Yinchuan then Beijing so maybe that has something to do with it.