China blocking gmail?
 

Saw this info a couple of places.

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/tec...321-1c3up.html

Any reports from the field?

It's been a bit flaky for the past several weeks, but I'm loath to use the term "blocked" because it never seems to be down for more than 20 or 30 minutes at a time. Thanks to that SecurityKiss software I downloaded, I simply go dark if gmail is down and am expecting an email.

Nothing new I've experienced in the past few weeks. Maybe 1/20 times I may have an issue for a few minutes, but never really noticed a problem. Now what is read in my email is a totally different matter...

I don't use gmail myself, but for the last 3-4 weeks have heard widespread complaints about slowdowns, inability to login, and intermittent blocking. Also some people reporting problems with google search, googlechat (or whatever it's called) and some other functions.

There have also been some reports of certain VPN's (mostly the PPTP type) becoming unuseable or of limited operability during this period. Speculation is that the Net Nannies are tinkering with new filters or enhancements to the GFW.

No sure about gmail, but last night all the connections to Chinese sites from stateside were painstakingly slow, has anyone heard anything about problems w/the TPAC fiber optical cable?

I bet the Chinese Gvt won't shut down this network.

SWIFTNet Network :)

This is a government blockage carefully designed to look like the problem is with Gmail

I've seen a real slowdown in GMail and outages for 20-30 minutes at a time from here in Beijing. Enough to make it tough to use. This is definitely new and predates the Japan earthquake, though I know traffic in general has slowed down even more since the earthquake.

Gmail now 45 times slower than QQ, 8 times slower than Yahoo

See which VPNs are working in real time

Witopia was down for a day.

They found a work around and if you contact them, they will send you the work around.

As for gmail.

It was slowed down tremendously. To the point it was useless unless you use vpn to connect.

I had no problem once vpn was up and running.

Reminds me of how Google Maps is much slower after the Chinese launched their own version of Google maps. Hmm...

The censors have kicked things up a notch during the past week or so (gchat is all but useless, forget about docs, and "basic html view" is often the only interface that works). Perhaps google would be well served by following the lead of many successful enterprises in China and start recruiting party bosses' children into executive positions.

The next "target" might be Skype. I've heard several times that the government is planning to block it in the more or less near future to make local users switch to Chinese competitors. Not just for control but also to help their business both in China and internationally.

I believe it, when they do it. Rumours had it in 2006, 2008, for the expo 2010 and then there was an "ominous law" prohibiting Skype on Jan 15, 2011. That being said, my wife is just using it right now :D

Moreover, Skype's teamed up with a chinese company and skype voice/im is not 'safe' anyway.

Are you talking about tom.skype? Or are you talking about the international version of skype? no im is ever safe regardless of brand however is the international version of skype not 'safe' either?