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andyfff
Rocker
Joined: July 03, 2005
Posts: 684
Status: Offline
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 Posted:
Mar 31, 2008 - 11:26 PM |
 
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| Post subject: a shoutout for Witopia! |
I was getting so frustrated being unable to read stories critical of China and the torch prοtests that are planned, tired of butting my head against the GFW. I took the plunge and did Witopia (10% off for entering SHEXPAT in the coupon code.)
Man, I wish I had done this sooner! If anyone is sitting on the fence about getting a VPN, come in to the light brothers and sisters. Any and every site loads with no trouble. I didn't realize how much content was being blocked... Thank you Witopia! |
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hc
Post Roaster
Joined: Apr 04, 2007
Posts: 4545
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Apr 01, 2008 - 12:42 AM |
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ThomasCaron
Raver
Joined: Dec 11, 2006
Posts: 472
Location: Shanghai
Status: Offline
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Apr 01, 2008 - 01:17 AM |
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The connection was spotty at best, and when it was activated it had the opposite effect of cutting off sites that were normally accessible. A month's worth of e-mails exchanged with their support staff did nothing to improve it, and in the end they offered me a refund. |
_________________
"Try again. Fail again. Fail better." - Samuel Beckett |
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mikegee
Seeker
Joined: Apr 09, 2004
Posts: 74
Location: GZ
Status: Offline
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Apr 01, 2008 - 08:46 AM |
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If it works great for me in the morning, it becomes slower the rest of the day, to be incredibly slow in the evening. So yes it's convenient to easily check some blocked websites but it's still really too slow on day time, so i actually seldom use it. |
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Freelance French Web~designer : www.supadezign.com |
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action
Talker
Joined: Oct 14, 2007
Posts: 79
Status: Offline
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Apr 01, 2008 - 12:36 PM |
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So should accessing my work VPN from home sort this out as it is in the UK? I still seem to have trouble getting onto sites |
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andyfff
Rocker
Joined: July 03, 2005
Posts: 684
Status: Offline
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Apr 01, 2008 - 08:24 PM |
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Not quite sure how that would work. My company has a VPN, but there are plenty of sites I cannot access (anything about t¡bet, the DL, etc.) but at home I can access anything. Also, I have not noticed any significant slowdown in loading time, maybe 10% during the late morning, but otherwise it seems to be just as fast as before. |
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shu
Lurker
Joined: Mar 04, 2008
Posts: 23
Location: Jin Qiao, Pudong
Status: Offline
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Apr 01, 2008 - 09:58 PM |
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I spend many hours trying to fidget with proxies and GFW workarounds on my mac but was unsuccessful. I know that if your VPN is outside of this country, it should work, but could be painfully slow. Any techies out there that can help?
oh, and EXTRA EXTRA! the powers that be have unblocked youtube and even.....BBC news! hurrah! |
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hc
Post Roaster
Joined: Apr 04, 2007
Posts: 4545
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Apr 01, 2008 - 10:51 PM |
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frisian
Seeker
Joined: May 09, 2006
Posts: 54
Status: Offline
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Apr 01, 2008 - 11:08 PM |
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I found that SHEXPAT for example is much slower when using Witopia, as most China based web sites. So then it is a drawback.
Also when accessing foreign web sites, which load easy and fast, Witopia is not giving an advantage.
But if the same web sites for some reason take a long time to load, often switching on Witopia speeds it up quite a lot.
Besides that I did not yet have any problems using it. So for me too, I should have done it earlier. It certainly beats the use of the free sites, that often do not work, or are very slow. |
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chingiskhan
StreetBeater
Joined: Apr 24, 2007
Posts: 2244
Location: Shanghai
Status: Offline
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Apr 02, 2008 - 12:01 AM |
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It doesn't matter that unblocked websites take longer to load. If that's the case then DON'T USE WITOPIA FOR UNBLOCKED WEBSITES! Duh!
I'm happy with it. It works when nothing else does. And when stuff works without it I disconnect. |
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ThomasCaron
Raver
Joined: Dec 11, 2006
Posts: 472
Location: Shanghai
Status: Offline
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Apr 02, 2008 - 05:27 AM |
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| chingiskhan wrote: |
| It doesn't matter that unblocked websites take longer to load. If that's the case then DON'T USE WITOPIA FOR UNBLOCKED WEBSITES! |
Assuming it functioned as advertised, one would prefer to leave it on all the time. Constantly having to toggle back and forth - and twiddling your thumbs while waiting for the tunnel to connect - takes the surf out of surfing. But in my experience it barely worked at all. |
_________________
"Try again. Fail again. Fail better." - Samuel Beckett |
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kuldaen
Veejay
Joined: June 06, 2005
Posts: 2064
Location: Somewhere in Shanghai
Status: Offline
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Apr 02, 2008 - 04:09 PM |
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| ThomasCaron wrote: |
| chingiskhan wrote: |
| It doesn't matter that unblocked websites take longer to load. If that's the case then DON'T USE WITOPIA FOR UNBLOCKED WEBSITES! |
Assuming it functioned as advertised, one would prefer to leave it on all the time. Constantly having to toggle back and forth - and twiddling your thumbs while waiting for the tunnel to connect - takes the surf out of surfing. But in my experience it barely worked at all. |
Of course its going to be slower to access sites that you already can access since it has to do some extra hops. Thats why there's no point in doing for unblocked sites.
Its sort of like typing and email, sending it to a friend to forward to the actual person you want to send it to and vice versa. If you can send it to the original person in the first place why bother using a proxy? |
_________________
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; I'm not sure about the universe |
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mikegee
Seeker
Joined: Apr 09, 2004
Posts: 74
Location: GZ
Status: Offline
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Apr 02, 2008 - 04:54 PM |
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But sometimes these "extra hops" can make everything faster. Don't forget that the "great firewall" makes our connexions much slower than it could be. And with some fast proxies, it can be faster to access some websites. (i used to watch youtube videos via proxies, as i can't stand the normal speed from here).
The good thing with witopia its that we don't have to deal with proxies (find them, test them and so on) and it always works. But it's still pretty slow, especially on day time. Some proxies or "similar" programs can be much faster. |
_________________
Freelance French Web~designer : www.supadezign.com |
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Dazzz
Reacher
Joined: Jan 26, 2007
Posts: 224
Status: Offline
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Apr 03, 2008 - 07:20 PM |
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the witopia client is a renamed OpenVPN client.
with OpenVpn it is possible to have split-tunneling means you can configure which traffic gets routed over the vpn and your normal gateway.
The problem is you would have to check every website you want routed through the vpn and configure the tunneling only for the selected IP's (to catch it on a domain-basis you need a automatic proxy conf file for your browser.... check proxy.pac in google).
The task get pretty **** up when working on windows though ( for best results or if your running vista go get the latest OpenVPN beta, as witopia uses an older version) so better get someone knowing windows manages static routing.
There are router that can keep the VPN connection alive and you configure the routing there, so you don't have to mess with windows internals , but they are pretty expensive. |
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voipguy
Newbie
Joined: June 26, 2007
Posts: 7
Status: Offline
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Apr 04, 2008 - 06:26 AM |
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a tip for witopia users: you must either clear out the chinese dns server info from your pc and/or router or enter witopia's DNS server IP address manually (if you want to leave the Chinese ISP's DNS server..or some other one.. in there for some reason).
If you don't use witopia's dns, you probably won't be able to resolve websites and this is another way the GFW can throttle your connection. this may also explain why some people have slowness on witopia or think it "doesn't work". This is especially true on Macs for some reason.
Chinese sites will logically be slower on witopia as you are going the longest possible distance on the Internet (around the entire globe and back) versus staying local. most other sites, especially u.s.-based, will likely be much faster. |
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andyfff
Rocker
Joined: July 03, 2005
Posts: 684
Status: Offline
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Apr 04, 2008 - 08:41 AM |
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After several days of use, i can't say i detect a significant reduction in speed, maybe 5-10% for some sites, but not much. |
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computersolutions
FooJay
Joined: July 02, 2006
Posts: 1785
Location: Shanghai
Status: Offline
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Apr 04, 2008 - 12:52 PM |
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shalamazoo
Reacher
Joined: May 28, 2002
Posts: 201
Location: Shanghai
Status: Offline
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Apr 12, 2008 - 08:42 PM |
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Witopia does the job, he's "DA MAN" |
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Shanghai7136
Reacher
Joined: Nov 26, 2003
Posts: 238
Status: Offline
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Apr 27, 2008 - 09:24 AM |
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| voipguy wrote: |
a tip for witopia users: you must either clear out the chinese dns server info from your pc and/or router or enter witopia's DNS server IP address manually (if you want to leave the Chinese ISP's DNS server..or some other one.. in there for some reason).
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computer noob here but --- how would one clear out the chinese dns server info and viceversa? |
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zanderion
Talker
Joined: Jan 29, 2008
Posts: 110
Status: Offline
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Apr 27, 2008 - 09:41 AM |
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I guess you enter witopia's dns server ips into the tcp/ip properties under network connections. OR enter them into your router using the web interface if any.
Just a guess. I would think they have dhcp services of some sort though that would provide the dns server ips automatically. |
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findus
Veejay
Joined: Feb 03, 2004
Posts: 1825
Status: Offline
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Apr 28, 2008 - 10:16 PM |
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The main plus to Witopia is that no longer do I see 'connection timeout' or similar every 2 minutes. Slightly slower on some sites, but faster on others, but overall just 100 times more reliable than the awful standard Chinese internet connection. |
_________________
| wwzcsd wrote: |
| We have NO racialism in China. Racialism was born in western.Your culture produced it.In Chinese Culture,we dont discriminate any race and nation. |
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Shanghai7136
Reacher
Joined: Nov 26, 2003
Posts: 238
Status: Offline
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Apr 28, 2008 - 10:26 PM |
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lol findus, I love your quote. |
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dontheguy
Lurker
Joined: Nov 01, 2006
Posts: 27
Status: Offline
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May 02, 2008 - 11:22 AM |
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what are the witopia DNS ip address? |
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voipguy
Newbie
Joined: June 26, 2007
Posts: 7
Status: Offline
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July 31, 2008 - 11:29 AM |
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cxm
Squeeker
Joined: Feb 05, 2007
Posts: 10
Status: Offline
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Aug 06, 2008 - 11:40 PM |
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I use Firefox with the gladder extension, but if I'm still having a problem accessing a particular site I use http://www.hotspotshield.com/.
It's a free VPN service (pops a little ad in the top of the browser) so I would pass my card details through it, but you can easily turn it on/off and it's pretty fast. |
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