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.