When did Google get blocked in China?

Since yesterday I've been struggling accessing Google.com through Firefox. I thought Google blocked my IP for some reason. But it didn't make sense because my Google Chrome was still getting through to Google.com. I also tried to access Google.com.au and it worked.

Now, the truth is revealed. Apparently Google.com was blocked in China. I didn't know the reason yet, but I attempted to use Google.cn and searched for "China block google.com" results withing last 24 hours, and here are the first 3 results I got:

• 09.06.25【双语新闻】谷歌国际网站昨晚在中国一度被封_爱词霸沙龙-英语 ...

  4 个帖子 - 3 个作者 - 新贴子： 10小时前

  China frequently blocked Google.com before the company set up a local subsidiary and a website in China in 2005 on which it decided to filter results in ...
  sl.iciba.com/viewthread-7-607069-1.shtml

• Skype中文论坛:: View topic - China Blocks Google Search, Apps ...

  3 个帖子 - 1 个作者 - 新贴子： 4小时前
  http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/24/censorship-20-china-blocks-google- ... 访问谷歌(Google.com)，但广州地区电信用户反映，Google.com和Gmail仍存在无法使用。 ...
  www.skypebbs.com/viewtopic.php?t=12680&sid...

• 玩聚SR | 编辑Windows 的Host 文件， 64.233.189.18 mail.google.com ...

  8小时前 - 突发：google.com众多产品无法从中国访问 · Censorship 2.0: China Blocks Google Search, Apps, Gmail, And More · google多项服务在中国不能访问 ...
  sr.ju690.com/meme/item/32137 

If you tried to open the results but see nothing, it's because China also blocked those sites.

My take on China blocking Google.com

It's no longer a surprise that China blocks some website, but Google.com??? In my mind I have no idea why would Google.com got blocked while Google.cn and other country specific Google are not blocked.

What I noticed is that Google.cn doesn't have any English, at all. But fortunately the results returned are from English websites so I could read it. So my another guess is that in the future China may block the whole English Internet communities and only allow censored Chinese sites. Or will China blocked the whole Internet and allow only sensored Chinese site? I think that will be very good fun because they won't know when some country want to get war against them, right?

Google is blocked in China and it affects only Internet surfer in China who use English. In other  words, China is pissing off the tourist in its country. I don't want to discuss anything about politics here, but economically China is destroying itself.

How to Access Blocked Google in China?

If you are in China right now, the best way to get through China is using this VPN solution. Other than that you can use Web proxy and other things, but those also may be blocked already.

I'm using Strong VPN right now and it worked

Goodluck with that.

The conditions

Over here the DSL is very fast connecting to local (China) websites. But to internationally websites, it's nearly impossible to get through. That's why I complained about that writing China DSL too slow.

Not only slow, China blocks almost anything in English. Seriously, WordPress.com, Blogspot.com, YouTube, MySpace, Flickr. What else that's famous in US and the whole world, is not blocked by China Firewall. They even blocked Facebook for some time.

Poor DNS is also a big problem in China and Vietnam. My own website is "address not found". At first I thought binh.name is blocked, and I was thinking "Why? Did I do anything against China?". Then when I changed the DNS to 203.12.160.35 I realized it's just China ISP has really poor DNS server that doesn't even know half of the World Wide Web. Same thing happened in Vietnam, too.

First attempts

Web proxy

I've been trying with different type of free web proxies. Those worked at first, but slowly the China Firewall start to block all the good ones. Other than that, they are displaying too much advertisement that obstruct my view.

USA-VPN.com

I once used USA-VPN.com for nearly a month. I was very satisfied with that VPN service while I was in China, when it worked really faster than normal DSL connection. And the pricing was really cheap, only $5/month pay by online money.

But it failed me when I came to Vietnam... totally not working at all.

Decision - Strong VPN

I've been suffering this problem for 2 year until now, when I decide to spend money and pay for a VPN solution. Strong VPN made my life better. Do you want to know more about VPN? See this Wikipedia VPN definition.

Pricing

Strong VPN is not cheap at the price of $15/month. A normal web hosting only charge $6/month. However, not facing financial loss of not being able to connect, is priceless. So as long as of my concern, Strong VPN is inexpensive.

Usage

I'm not using Strong VPN just in China, but also in Vietnam. For some reasons, the connection here also not so good to International sites. And I believe, as long as I have money to pay for Strong VPN, I will keep using the service as far as I go and whenever I need.

Advantages

There are 5 main advantages of Strong VPN in comparison with the previous services I used:

1. It has American IP. Perhaps this is the reason why I got through when the normal connection could not. So that's it's unblocked. Most of the time when I am stuck, I use Strong VPN to unblock it
2. It has multiple servers. At first attempt I failed to connect. After testing all the server I found out the vpn-in1 is the fastest, then I used it. For other people it maybe different server though.
3. It has lighting fast support. I got difficulty at first tries, and when I got on to the Live Support, I was surprise each time I got through in just < 1 minute. Even in the middle of the US night, or at US day time, they are still there to help.
4. It's easy to connect. Just a single click from the start menu, I got connected to Strong VPN. The initial VPN setup is straight forward too.
5. It takes Paypal. It was really hard for me to find a VPN that accepts PayPal. Strong VPN really saves me with this. Many VPN services only take other e-money that cost me a lot if I have to buy those currency.

Disadvantages

Life is like that, always there are things to be complained about. Especially it's me, the critics guy. There are also 5 disadvantages of Strong VPN, namely:

1. First attempt didn't work. The assigned me a server that I could not connect to. I freaked out and had to chat with their live-support immediately.
2. No automatic fast server assignment. With so many servers available, they could make a software to assign new users to the fastest connection automatically based on user IP.
3. No server comparisons. They have the speed test, but I'd preferred those test be done on one page instead of making so many clicks. I had to spend over 2 hours just to open and close the pages. So hard to note down the speed.
4. High monthly fee. The pricing for VPN as general is around $15 nowadays. For me that's very high because hosting only cost me $5/month, domain $10/year.
5. High setup fee. I was really freaked out at this, too. They charge $20 installation fee if I prepay less than 3 months. So I had to pay $45 for first 3 months, to get the $20 waved.

Recommendations

I never thought about paying that much for a VPN server just to connect to the US sites. But since I'm making a decent amount of money online, that cost is minimal compare to what VPN brings me.

If you face the same or similar problem I'm facing, I suggest you try Strong VPN. I'm trying it out for 3 months. If it still works as it is right now, I will keep using it for longer.

If you find out a better VPN solution, please share it with me. Thanks in advance.

Russel has changed her website to Used Car Buying Guide. She also listened to my suggestion and created a blog Dummies Guide To Car Stuff

If you want to buy cheap cars then here are new links:

• Cars Under 1000, a website that is for cars under 1000 dollars for US, pounds for UK
  
• Used Cars Under $500, a listing of used cars under 500 US dollars.
  
• Used Cars Under $1000, a site that provide information on how to buy cheap cars under 1k, also provide the listing of those cars too.
• Used Cars Under $2000, a listing of used cars under 2000 US dollars.
• Used Cars Under $3000, a listing of used cars under 3000 US dollars.
• Used Cars Under $4000, a listing of used cars under 4000 US dollars.
• Used Cars Under $5000, a listing of used cars under 5000 US dollars.

These auctions are applied to USA only though. If you are looking for cars over other places, please feel free to leave a comment here and I will adjust the links.

How cheap is a cheap car? If you buy from local area, I guess $2000 downward. That's right, a cheap cars is a car that's lower than $2000 if you buy offline. So that put car under $1000 to be super cheap.

What I can see is that a lot of cars are for auction online under $1000. So for online auction Cheap Used Cars are those used cars under 1000.

10 must-read articles

1. Getting Started with StumbleUpon by StumbleUpon

You can learn how to stumble from this article . This perhaps is the simplest and most essential guide to StumbleUpon you can find on the Internet. If you haven't read it (like me) you should start now.

2. 5 essential StumbleUpon power points by Blah Blah Tech

This article tell about 5 important characteristics of StumbleUpon. Included are:

• Community
• Reviews
• Trust and Reputation
• Votes
• Spam

I pay particular attention in the "Spammers beware!" section because that is the first thing blogger should learn.

3. 17 POWER Tips For StumbleUpon Beginners by Niche2

Whatever that 17 tips are, I found it really helpful and I will definitely comeback to read it. The post also include links to dozens of other articles which are helpful.

4. How to Become a Top StumbleUpon User (or Why You Really Shouldn’t Bother) by DoshDosh

I must agree with DoshDosh in that StumbleUpon should not be abused as a traffic generation tool. Especially appreciate him for pointing out that "the law of diminishing returns" apply here.

5. Top Ten Blog Posts that Guarantee Stumbles by DWWebSolutions

What type of blog posts to write for stumblers? You can learn it from this article. This is something a bit humorous, but it does provide serious help in getting a picture of what to write.

6. A Guide to StumbleUpon: Understanding and Beating The System by Lost Arts Of Blogging

As the name describe, in this article you will find:

• Getting Started with Stumble
• That sounds all great and all, but what can Stumble do for me and my blog ?
• Well, how much traffic are we talking about?
• Leveraging the Stumbleupon traffic

7.The Ultimate Guide To Leveraging StumbleUpon by Daily Moolah

You can learn how to leverage StumbleUpon from this article. Here are the topics covered by the article:

• Black Hat Strategies
• Power Stumbler Profile
• Using WordPress
• Mistakes
• Friendship

8. A Comprehensive Guide to StumbleUpon: How to Build Massive Traffic to Your Website by DoshDosh

This article shows what DoshDosh learned when using StumbleUpon. He teaches how to drive traffic to your website, as well as some strategies you can adopt to retain StumbleUpon visitors while monetizing your website.

9. StumbleUpon Networking: How to Easily Share Content and Build Relationships by DoshDosh

This article gives the various ways of using StumbleUpon to share content directly with others, while studying the numerous benefits that arise when one disseminates web pages and shares opinions in this manner.

10. Five Ways to Grow Your StumbleUpon Network: An Ode to Altruistic Stumbling by DoshDosh

This article shows you five main ways you can use to expand your StumbleUpon network of friends. A list of strategies DoshDosh used himself and share with us.

Additional articles

There are many more articles about StumbleUpon and worth reading. However these felt off the top 10. Here they are:

• StumbleUpon - Simple tips to increased traffic by Yeepage.com
• Stumbleupon: My story so far… by Yeepage.com
• StumbleUpon exchange train by Yeepage.com

Conclusion

If you like this post, please kindly bookmark it using StumbleUpon, Digg, or other services to share it with others. If you would like to use it on your site, please kindly links back to this post.

All feedbacks are welcomed. Especially if you come from using Stumble! button, if you don't have time please just say "Stumbled!", thanks.

Finally I got the time and motivation to follow up on a post earlier called China Internet Speed too Slow or Just DSL Slow? . Thanks to Alex, a visitor who left a question on that post. You will find in this articles:

• Why is it slow?
• How to make it faster?

Update: I got a better solution: VPN Solution (click to read more).

Why is it slow?

Why broadband in China too slow? The reason... bottleneck at the trunk line to International Websites, especially to America. I found my own IP is located in Bejing while I'm staying in ZhongShan, which is thousands of km away from Bejing. Far enough to say... "too far".

I have been wondering this in mind "Why is it so slow" when surfing international websites in Vietnam and China. I had an Australia proxy, which generally give me full speed access to those sites, but with no proxy, the connection is terrible.

Then one day, while searching for "Australian Proxy", I stumbled upon this page: Australia Proxy for those having connection problems by Reaper-X. From that page, I realized why the Internet speed is so slow when connecting to most international web sites.

The recent connection problem in Asia region is caused by recent earthquake in Taiwan, as Reaper-X pointed out. As much as I know, the earthquakes also destroyed many undersea fiber optic cables in Vietnam, causing a bottleneck for the Internet traffic going in from and out to Website hosted outside the country.

A visitor, Alex raised the issue up again, and this time his connection is ADSL. So basically, what I learn is that not only DSL is too slow, but also ADSL is too slow. In this case, Alex has a 3MB ADSL plan and he is complaining about the speed.

I've been complaining about this too much, and now I have to accept the only one solution to it. Why? Even the 3MB ADSL have the same problem, what can my little 512Kb DSL do? Unfortunate enough, The 4MB plan I mentioned earlier isn't available in my area.

How to make it faster?

The only fix available for me now is to use Australian proxies.

I've been using one Australian proxy 165.228.131.12:80. If you don't know what it mean then here is the breakdown:

• IP address: 165.228.131.12
• Port number: 80

The proxies that work

For as long as I can remember, that was the only proxy that worked for me. I've tested too many and none of them worked. Until recently after reading Reaper-X article, I found 3 more proxies which do work:

1. 165.228.128.10:3128
2. 165.228.130.10:3128
3. 165.228.132.10:3128

Testing the proxies

I test those proxies against Lorelle's "Taiwan Earthquake Disrupts Internet Access" and here are the results:

Winner of the test: proxy 165.228.132.10:3128

Interesting facts

• In fact, without using proxies I can only open Google.com.
• With proxies, Google.com will block my IP and ask for entering confirmation code.
• Google come up slower when proxy is used.

How to use proxy

On Internet Explorer:

1. Open Tools menu > Internet Options;
2. Open Connections tab > LAN settings (near bottom of the dialog box);
3. Look for proxy server, enable the "Use proxy server for LAN";
4. Enter the IP Address and port number there;
5. Click "Advanced" button, enter google.com into the exception list.

On FireFox:

1. Open Tools menu> Options... ;
2. Open Advanced tab > Network tab > Connection group > Settings... button;
3. In "Connection Settings" form, select "Manual proxy configuration";
4. Enter the proxy IP address into HTTP Proxy box, and port number in to port box.
5. Enter google.com into the "No proxy for" box.

Caution: to avoid all the trouble, remember to bypass proxy for google.com.

What's next

Update: I got a better solution: Strong VPN (click to read more).

I hope the solution here fix your problems with the slow internet speed in China. Every visitor to my website is valuable and the motivation for me to continue providing quality articles.

If you have same problem. If you find this article help. If you need some more information. If anything, please feel free to contact me by sending me an email, or leave a comment here and I will attempt to follow up immediately.

Overview

Today, I visited his website again after he left a comment on JohnCow.com about his changes for this new affiliate program.

I can tell that he is improving a lot after he Relaunche Affiliate Program For 1 Cool File. It look like he will succeed on this... soon... He decided to cut the price down to very affordable and appealing. I'm not yet an affiliate on his program so... no profit for me for saying this.

As McGrath requested on his post, I tried to post a comment on his post... but unsuccessful due to blocked IP. So I decided to post it here instead, since it's a long one.

My Humble Suggestions

1. There is one quick suggestion I have for the categories: remove the categories with 0 blogs in it. It's just there to keep the screen busy and drive away viewers.
2. I reckon he makes a whole sub domain just for the blog directory. So something like http://blogs.1coolfile.com may do the trick.
   • His software download section in the main site should be kept and improved. Because after all the site name is "1 Cool File", not "1 Cool Blog".
   • This allow him to expend the site later on. Such as adding:
     • http://forum.1coolfile.com,
     • http://tutorials.1coolfile.com, etc.
3. For me I could see a bunch of opportunities you could do with 1coolfile before you want to sell the blog directory service. And yes, it's more profitable than selling few $ /year.
4. As for the terms. "Buy Blog Package" might confuse people with actually buying some blog. So McGrath may want to change it to something similar to "Add your blog". Sometimes, the word "Buy" doesn't work as expected, because people just tend to ignore it.
5. The site, and especially the front page should be keep in a more sleek design. A good start should be keeping the design compact, clear and less confusing. Too many explanation isn't always helpful. Maybe some JavaScript with the big ? mark button to display instruction might work better.

What's next?

I could feel that it's a promising service. There are more things he need to improve though. I guess McGrath needs more people working for him as employees, or partners.

Problem no.1: Slow Internet Speed

The worst thing ever happen to me. The area where I stay now is next to Zhuhai, but unfortunately inside Zhongshan's authority. In other words, I'm living inside Zhongshan, but 1.5 hours drive to Zhongshan city center, while Zhuhai is right there few km away but got a checkpoint.

Perhaps too far from the City center, my area only have DSL line of 512Kbps. Few days ago I tried to get a ADSL 4Mbps, which was really promising, until I got notified that they couldn't connect it. What worse can it be, not able to access your own blog to post new entries.

This problem also cause me to have so much difficulty in managing the plugin and stuff.

I am learning a lot everyday by reading the senior blogger's advices. But this thing bugging me not able to load their heavy blog pages. Regarding this, I think bloggers should seriously read more about page optimization for dial-up users. In fact I'm applying the very simple rule: keep it plain simple stupid for the sake of readers.

Problem no. 2: Tools Stripped off

Yes, the CiaDoor attack forced me to reinstall Windows. It was not the virus itself which damage so much, but the malformed F-Secure Anti-Virus broke my whole operating system.

Enough for the causes, the effect is a bit amazingly disturbing. I had to reinstall:

• office suite,
• graphic suite,
• HTML editor,
• Apache server,
• A lot more, which can cover a few pages just for listing.

Then it come to even more disturbance, when it's time for settings. I then had to do a lot more, including:

• Reconfigure windows
• Tweak windows
• Enable commonly used features
• Disable unused annoying features
• Configure the web server
• etc.

And yet, till now I haven't configured my webserver properly to test my WordPress powered blog. For safety, and speed reason, I need to test out the new plugins and themes on my local computer, otherwise we know how messy it could get.

Since I'm a computer technician myself, these tasks are just a breeve. But being busy learning to blog the right way, I'm just feel annoyed to be distracted by something so unexpected.

Conclusion, not?

Often people ignore very important factors around a successful blog/website: Internet access and good computing equipment.

From these two problems I'm facing right now, I know how valuable those resources are. We just can't create profitable blog or website without having a good Internet connection and a fast computer.

So, shouldn't we take into account the cost for Internet access and computer equipments as expenditure for our online business? I think these are somethings to take into account when calculating our profit.

Would you like to share some difficult times you on your side? What do you think about the two items I talked about and their relation to our online world?

Update: Now I get faster and unblocked with Strong VPN Solution (click to read more).

The place I'm in currently in is the border of Zhongshan and Zhuhai. Zhuhai is a city near in mainland China that's right next to Macau and close to HongKong. The speed is noticeably slow at peak times, like noon and evening. I could only surf the Internet at an acceptable speed while using an Australian proxy at time between midnight till morning.

At first I was blaming China for not having stable speed. Then yesterday I found out in January someone also said "China Internet Still Terribly Slow":

The Internet in China is still at snail speed and for some weird reason it gets worse in the evening.

Is everybody trying to play games after 18:00? Is the available bandwidth less in the evening to cut cost for China Telecom’s use of satellite back ups or is there another explanation for this?

Then today when I signed up for a new Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) plan, I realized actually I was using Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) which cause the problem. When I signed up for new broadband I had to make sure they tick the ADSL option (;).

Anyone should know that DSL is a bad out-dated choice for broadband. DSL speed varies from 128Kbps up to 9Mbps. The max speed look so nice (9Mbps) but actually it's not that fast.

The bandwidth for one DSL trunk line is divided by the number of people who share the same line, just like a LAN-to-LAN line. So what happen here is that at peak time, too many people surf the Internet at the same time, so the line become bottleneck, and the speed become slower than dial-up.

The problem didn't just end there, I'm surfing mostly American hosted websites, while the rest surf their China based sites (.cn). The .cn traffic sure get priority compare to others, so my own web requests get delayed, delayed, and delayed... till the browser display time-out message.

Well, I guess the good news is that the new ADSL line is 4Mbps. There is a 2Mbps option but it's so ridiculous that the monthly price is the same as the 4M.

• 4Mbps: RMB 150/month + RMB 300 one time setup.
• 2Mbps: RMB 150/month + RMB 200 one time setup.
• 512Kbps: RMB 80/month + some cost I don't care.

I felt like being lucky for the speed checkup. China Telecom notify I could get the 4Mbps and they will come to setup at 4pm tomorrow.

Update: I got a solution for slow Internet in China here Strong VPN.

I will post update on this topic so if you like it please check back later, or subscribe to the RSS feed for latest post.