The service is strictly PPTP and not SSL, which I suppose is both a pro and a con. From my experience PPTP is faster and easier to setup as services go, but is easier to get blocked.

And blocked I think is exactly what happened with the initial setup I was using with the service. ibVPN allows you to use various different gateways (3 US, 2 UK, 1 DE and 1 NL). I slapped the first US gateway into my settings and tried to connect — no go. Not a great start for my review. Not easily dissuaded, especially when the reward is funny cat videos, I gave the second US gateway a try — worked great.

Youtube videos were loading decently fast, and I could login to Facebook and Twitter no problem and with no noticeable VPN lag. After a few days though, I suddenly started getting this error on Facebook. So, with one gateway completely inaccessible, and the other gateway’s IP being blocked by Facebook, I loaded up the third and final US gateway. Fortunately it’s been working a treat for the last few days, with no problems at all.

Here is some speed data done by pinging the referenced sites with the VPN on and off:

So, as you can see, decently fast (I generally consider anything that pings between 200-300 “fast enough” when dealing with sites hosted, literally, overseas). My final tests were the ones that are most important to me when it comes to make or break for a VPN — how fast does Youtube stream?

I tested three Youtube videos of varying lengths to get a sense of the streaming speed, and tested them at 11am (+8 GMT) and again at 10pm (+8 GMT). Here are the results:

@ 11am:
This 48sec video, this 1:21 sec video, and this 22 min all streamed fine with no need to perform the “pause-wait shuffle”.

@ 10pm:
All three videos loaded at about the same rate, but were noticeably slower than when accessed in the morning. They could not be streamed, and had to be paused to allow a bit of time for them to load. Not a lot of time mind you, but still, not the fluid streaming I had seen earlier in the day.

Pricing

ibVPN’s pricing is about on par with the industry, and if anything a bit cheaper than some of the other VPNs I’ve looked at — likely due to the fact that they only offer PPTP. For access to either the US- or UK-based gateways, it will set you back about $20 USD for half a year, and they throw in the Netherlands gateway for free. For an additional $17 you can have access to all the gateways (US, UK, DE and NL).

Overall

Generally a decent service at a decent price. I’m a little nervous about the inaccessibility of the first US gateway, and Facebook’s blocking of the second’s IP, but results are results and as it stands at the time of this review, I am able to quickly and easily get on all the sites and have them operate with satisfactory, or better than satisfactory results.

Another bonus is that they offer monthly, quarterly and semi-annually payment options — which makes it the perfect service for anyone visiting China in the short-term for travel, teaching ESL or a business trip.

NOTE: The links in the review are all clean, non-affiliate links. However, if you decide to sign up and give ibVPN a try yourself, we’d love for you to show your support of Lost Laowai and use our affiliate link. It costs you nothing, and helps us keep the lights on.

Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and more: all blocked in China

Just a few months ago I posted here on Lost Laowai about China’s massive web-filtering system, and how it was becoming distinctly anti-social in that it was targeting social-networking and web 2.0 sites, such as Facebook and YouTube, which are characterised by allowing a fast flow of information and ideas.

Bad news: that’s getting worse, and this time there’s no identifiable reason. Usually, a wave of tightening-up on the internet by the Chinese government comes immediately after some particular incident; we saw it right after the troubles in Tibet, then again in Xinjiang, and recurring at sensitive anniversaries. But, this summer, no clear justification for new blockages – it just seems to be malicious, and that makes it more sinister.

So, to add to lengthy list of blocked websites from earlier this summer (see the footnote, at the end of this post) we must now add a few more:

Vimeo
Friendfeed
Bit.ly (URL shortening service)
Post.ly (URL shortening service)
Blip.tv
Yahoo Meme
Google Documents (accessible again)
Fileden.com
iTweet.net (a twitter web app)
Twitzap (a twitter web app)
Dabr.co.uk (a twitter web app)
TwitterGadget (a tiny twitter app on iGoogle)

The situation really is getting ridiculous. A few other ways to access twitter still exist, thankfully. Just this afternoon one China-based expat on twitter commented that “China no longer has internet. It has LAN” (h/t @illuminantceo), which is an apt description of how insular and freaky it’s getting.

It’s not just an inconvenience to laowais, remember. Such a crackdown has economic repercussions for everyone in the country, as well as drastically stifling creativity and the sharing of ideas (those last two, obviously, are actual aims of the Chinese government who implement the Great Firewall). It’s impossible to quantify the economic damage done by this web-filtering, and it might even amount to quite little, but undeniably it costs a lot of companies extra time and frustration, and limits some companies in dealing with foreign clients and partners.

So, this second major wave of censorship is clearly aimed at slowing or stopping the flow of information and ideas. It’s visible, too, in the Chinese webosphere, where severe Terms of Service on websites or constant filtering of content means that ‘sensitive’ material is spotted and deleted (and the account removed) possibly within an hour of offending content being posted. Try putting up a sensitive video on Tudou or Youku, and see how long it lasts. Thus, Chinese websites don’t get blocked, as such, as there’s already that two-pronged devils fork of enforced compliance.

Foreign-based websites cannot be similarly coerced, so they just get blocked.

Even Virtual Private Networks are under stronger attack, as detailed quite recently by Rebecca Mackinnon (requires a proxy or VPN to access inside China).

Anger is clearly mounting over this. Right now, on twitter – despite there being fewer ways to access it – I can clearly see hundreds of tweets regarding the Great Firewall – labelled as #gfw and #fuckgfw – by younger tech-savvy Chinese people detailing sites that have been newly whisked away into purgatory, and also expressing a hell of a lot of anger aimed at the web-filtering system and the government in Beijing as well.

Just a few days ago, at the World Media Summit which was this year hosted in Beijing, China’s President Hu Jintao suggested “cooperation, action, win-win, and development,” in the realms of all world media, and called for “monitoring by the public and the safeguarding of the rights to be informed, to participation, to expression…..and their important functions put into play,” to an audience that included News Corporation CEO, Rupert Murdoch. If you’ve managed to avoid vomiting after such a display of hypocrisy, then you have a stronger stomach than I.

From where I’m standing, the Chinese government is failing its people with such extensive censorship; there’s a massive disparity between the kindness, good-natured openness and eagerness to learn of the Chinese people, and the paranoid, low-down, two-faced, narrow-minded bigotry of the Chinese government.

I’m ordinarily against intervention by foreign governments, but right now I’d love to see President Obama and some European leaders stand up – in the manner of John F. Kennedy Ronald Reagan on the Berlin Wall – and say “Tear down this Firewall.”

===

Footnote:

Here’s my previous block-list, from July 31st this year. All sites mentioned below except ‘blog.com’ seem to still be blocked.

Facebook
twitter
YouTube
Blogger blogs
Wordpress free blogs
Typepad blogs
Blog.com blogs
Opera blogs
Tumblr
LiveLeak
Google’s Picasa Web Albums (log-in accessible, but borked thereafter)
Google Image search results (very frequent re-set connections)
Orkut
Bebo

That’ll teach George not to respond to natural disasters in a timely manner.

Still, the PM is just below Arnold Schwarzenegger – but really, even if you stick all the disasters that Grandpa Wen has weathered, it hardly amounts to saving the world from a future war with cyborgs. I mean, lets keep some perspective.

From the NYT article:

The page appears to have been set up recently. It is not clear whether Mr. Wen, 65, did it himself. Perhaps another government official put it up, or, just as likely, someone with no ties to Mr. Wen.

It bears a portrait of Mr. Wen in a gray suit, his lips set in what could be either a slight grin or a slight grimace.

The page offers a few bits of biographical information: His interests are Chinese literature and baseball, and his employer is the Central Government of the People.

More than 500 people have written on Mr. Wen’s Facebook “wall,” in Chinese and English.

The page does not have popular Facebook applications like Scrabulous, Cities I’ve Visited and Shelfari Books, but what it lacks in technical pizazz it makes up for in emotional reach.

It has a video showing horrific scenes from the earthquake playing beneath a mournful pop song. It has a photo of Mr. Wen holding up a schoolchild’s dusty backpack and white sneaker while atop rubble, and one of him crouching and looking at rescue workers digging in a hole.

It also has photos from playful times, like ones of him wearing a baseball uniform and catching a ball with a mitt.

The vast majority of supporters appear to be Chinese living overseas, from Taiwan to Vancouver to Milwaukee.

An interesting side-note, just three refreshes of the page brought up a number Wen Jia Bao supporters I know:

John Biesnecker
David DeGeest
Lonnie Hodge
Christine Lu
Paul Denlinger
Nicholas Stanosheck
Brendan O’Kane

Ya buncha Commies!

Wonder if he’d join my cartel in Dope Wars?

h/t to China Law Practice Blog via Hao Hao Report