Regular readers will know how much I despise the Great Fire Wall of China. That's right, internet access in China is pathetic. Slow download, slow uploading and nearly impossible to enjoy YouTube or even my personal favorite - ESPN.com. To be brutally honest, I don't even care about the censoring of websites and the blocking of information. What I care about most is having my pictures seen by people, and that involves me getting them out of China. In basic terms this Great Fire Wall of China is just bad for business.
But alas, I have a solution - albeit not a complete solution.
I have recently acquired a Virtual Private Network through a company named WiTopia. (http://www.witopia.net/). I am not too technical, but apparently this VPN allows me to avoid the fire wall in China and enjoy freer and faster uploading and downloading. The VPN was USD40 per year, a massive investment of USD3.33 per month.
I've been using the service for about one month now and I can tell you all by experience, it is better - but it is still not great.
What do I mean? Well, I can access all blocked websites like the BBC, TIME, Human Rights Watch and a host of others. But the bandwidth is still crawling along at a regular snails pace.
Where I do find value in this service is in the Uploading or when I FTP my images out of China. I find I can get my pictures out 2 or even 3 times faster than when I am not using the VPN. It's still a lot slower than the US and Europe, but it is an early solution and it has eased some of my headache.
So when will I find a complete solution to my internet troubles? Perhaps when the PARTY ends it's paranoia about freedom of information, and when the state run monopoly of China Telecom ceases to exist and consumers have the right to choose between services based on attributes like stability and speed. But alas, that is a long long long time away.
Just wanted to share that with anyone out there who is suffering from a similar fate.
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Cheers,
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
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Friday, February 15, 2008
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Hi,
This is Ryan Pyle. I appreciate you adding a comment to my blog and I hope that this space has offered you something useful and interesting. I look forward to staying in touch and I'm glad you took the time to comment.
Ryan Pyle
ryan@ryanpyle.com
www.ryanpyle.com