

Test whether any website is blocked in China in real-time - hughesey
http://www.blockedinchina.net/

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olalonde
I'd like to mention this service isn't 100% accurate.

For instance, my website <http://syskall.com> is shown as _not blocked_ when
in fact it is _blocked_ (as are all Posterous blogs). Also,
<http://google.com.hk> is shown as _blocked_ when in fact it isn't.

Writing this from an apartment in Shenzhen and regular DSL connection.

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wiradikusuma
hi olalonde, i'm planning to visit shenzhen by the end of this month. quick
question: can i use gmail there?

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olalonde
Yes, Gmail isn't blocked. Also, feel free to join
<http://www.shenzhenstuff.com/xn/detail/1343813:Group:5211918>

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Renaud
Blocking has been an issue for the international company I work for. The
company recently switched 4000+ users to Gmail and Google Apps only to find
after the facts that nearly 20% of the workforce would have little or no
access to most of the Google Apps sites as they are in China (I guess a bit
more testing should have been in order...).

I hacked a solution, involving stunnel for encrypted communications, ss5 (a
SOCKS5 proxy server), Proxy Auto-Config files (PAC) files and the Web Proxy
Auto-Discovery protocol (WPAD)... An installer is used to easily deploy the
whole thing and configure the system.

PAC files are used by the browser to redirect traffic based on URL pattern
matching. Instead of going through the local Internet, requests that match the
rules for known bocked sites are diverted to a local stunnel service running
on the user's machine (or a local server depending on the configuration). The
encrypted requests are then sent to a server in Hong Kong running the SOCKS5
proxy (we actually now use multiple servers on different HK ISPs and do some
load balancing for better results).

From the point of view of the user, the system is transparent: it just works,
they have nothing to do once their machine is configured.

I tried many setups, but the various measures used in China to disrupt traffic
required the data stream to be encrypted for reliable results.

The only issue we face is due to the really unpredictable quality of the
network in China: most ISPs have limited international bandwidth and depending
on the ISP, the time of day, etc there can be large variations in quality.

I need to write about this one day...

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jedschmidt
And you thought testing your development environment was hard.

<http://www.blockedinchina.net/?siteurl=127.0.0.1>

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timxpp
This service can not be accurate, as what is blocked varies within China! And
even within the same city, it varies with ISP. Go figure.

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kalleboo
Also varies based on what you've visited before. English Wikipedia works fine…
until you visit the Tiananmen Square Protests article, and then suddenly all
of Wikipedia stops working.

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dongsheng
That page triggered keyword filter, it's intrusion detection system

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buddydvd
Interesting, Reddit seems to be blocked half of the time:
<http://www.blockedinchina.net/?siteurl=reddit.com>

~~~
huetsch
As other commentators have pointed out, much like the actual Great Wall of
China, the Great Firewall of China is not a singular entity but rather a
patchwork of potentially overlapping walls whose policies vary by ISP, city,
and province.

Inner Mongolia has been having uprisings recently, it does not surprise me
that reddit would be blocked there (actually, I believe most internet was
severed from Inner Mongolia a month or two ago).

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yannickmahe
Small typo : Shenzen should be Shenzhen.

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wickedchicken
blockedinchina.net: apparently not blocked anywhere in china

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dimmuborgir
Scribd is blocked. Not surprised though.

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iskander
Interestingly, google.hk is blocked everywhere (which wasn't true when I
visited last summer).

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olalonde
It isn't blocked, it actually redirects to <http://www.google.com.hk/>.
(writing this from an apartment in Shenzhen)

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zalew
is there any similar website for Iran?

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dongsheng
plus.google.com is blocked already! That's quick

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willvarfar
a plus link to a fb blog?

delicious at the beginning, will be tedious if you keep it up ;)

