Originally Posted by
moondog
When commercial VPNs become too popular (or worse, brag about their China coverage), they often find themselves in an uphill battle.
Many of us use abbreviations or obfuscations when referring to specific providers, whether or not we like them, because we don't want to accelerate their demises.
Understood. However, I suspect that if you try to block access, you'd look for IP addresses not associated with well-known sites but with lots of traffic. Commercial VPNs have only finite number of servers/IP addresses. As their popularities grow, they draw not only more traffic (wanted), but also more attention (unwanted), leading to their identification and blockage. Shadowsocks-based proxies, OTOH, are dispersed/distributed among lots of small servers, each with less traffic, so they don't attract the same attention. If I decide to go with a Shadowsocks-based solution, should I seek out a server before the trip, or find a server after I arrive in China? The disadvantage of the former is that a server (such as the ones recommended by Shadowsocks.org) would likely be drawing the same attention as the commercial VPNs. The disadvantage of the latter is that I don't know which one(s) are reliable.