Hey everyone,

I live in China, studying Chinese (imagine that!) and use a VPN. However, I'm not really satisfied with the service. I regularly get cut off (lose the connection) and I have to keep reconnecting, wasting time. Right now I'm using StrongVPN, but I think WeakVPN is a better name. Any suggestions for a good VPN (or, is getting kicked off just a regular thing and I need to get over it)?

I'm using freedur
http://www.freedur.net/clients/aff.php?aff=087
but I do get knocked off sometimes, just FYI.

StrongVPN are terrible. They are not cheap and they limit the number of servers you can switch around on, and the number of times you can switch. It's ridiculous.

When I was in China I used overplay.net. They're based in Britain, have something like 50 servers in different countries and you can switch about as you wish. No limits or anything. I think I only asked them a question once, but their response was fast.

I personally found using their "safe mode" servers (particularly in HK, Korea or Singapore) worked best. That is, when connecting to servers they use port 443 and TCP, not UDP and a standard VPN port. My Chinese ISP always throttled the latter, but never the former.

I use witopia and didn't have any problems until the past week or so. I think their are especially sensitive things happening right now. It should be temporary, but it's surprising that there would be problems with VPNs. My understanding was that they are in that gray legal area where they are not legal but not illegal. In other words, they allow VPNs here so businesses can use them to have more perfect information about the market, but they are enough of a pain to use/buy that most ordinary people wouldn't use one.

Here is a related article:

http://shanghaiist.com/2011/03/14/is_the_gfw_leveling_up.php

I use ExpressVPN. It cost $9 a month and has been pretty reliable. You can swtich between several servers and change your IP in an instant. I found free VPNs too slow, and adverts which subsidized them got anoying.

I used to use ExpressVPN as well - it was so-so for me - when it worked it was blazing fast, but it was hit or miss on connectivity, to the tune of probably a 60% success rate, and the price was definitely higher than anything my friends were paying. On the positive side, I managed to use it for 3-4 months after my subscription expired - I'm not really sure why, I guess it's possible that there were so many service interruptions that they kept crediting my account all the way through a 9-10 month period for a 6 month subscription, but I like to think that if I were still using my old computer with the ExpressVPN installation it would still be able to connect.

These days, I don't use a VPN - all it did was inspire me to waste my days playing Facebook games anyway. Ugh - bad times.

Out of curiosity, has anyone had success watching Netflix over a VPN, or are they generally too slow? I'm heading over to China in about a month and a half, and I'm trying to make some decisions about what VPN to use and have realistic expectations of what I'll be able to do with one. Is stuff like YouTube and Hulu right out?

The only time I really needed my VPN for was looking at gifs and pictures on wikipedia to help with school.

If you're not looking at it for business purposes, why not spend time previously burned on movies and games getting immersed in Chinese language and culture while in China? Sub sina microblogs for your twitter and renrenwang for your facebook addiction 'til you eat up your finite supply of spicy cheetos you brought with you on the airplane. Anyway, google news, ted.com, youku, and Skritter.cn all work without a VPN :-P

While the condescending assumption that it's not possible for one to both watch the occasional movie and be involved in what's going outside their apartment is much appreciated, it didn't actually answer my question of whether the average VPN will allow you to watch stuff on YouTube and/or Netflix.

Seriously, I've spent the last year in a Chinese immersion program doing nothing but study Mandarin all day, every day. I'm moving there to work, where probably eighty percent of my day will be spent speaking nothing but Mandarin. I'd say it's pretty normal to feel like going home and decompressing for an hour or two by watching a movie in my native language. Not that I need to justify it to anyone, but come on....

Anyway, since we can't all be stars like Thomas here, anyone care to actually answer my question?

Just a joke man, lighten up.

Jokes are usually funny, aren't they? Must be a cultural difference, since I don't see a punchline anywhere in there amongst the lecturing.

Jeeze, sounds like you are a bit short on your tube fix.

I was using 12vpn but it stopped working a few weeks back. Didn't realize it was such a serious thread. And the :-P usually means it's a joke, at least from my experience.

I haven't tried it, but according to some brief Googling, it should be possible if your base service in China is fast enough.