My understanding of the thread title was 'a conga', but happy for moondog to send me a referral if you prefer.

tb

After getting a referral from moondog, have been playing with this for a couple of days. It's very user friendly and easy to use: haven't tried it on my smartphone yet.

Re: speeds, at least going by speedtest.net (and anecdotally), I do notice a significant drop in speed on vpn compared with off, for routine browsing. But this drop is no worse, and usually better than my academic vpn.

The question for me is whether it's worth the cash outlay, since I have a free academic option -- which is more of a hassle, and not quite as good.

In the spirit of this thread as intended by moondog, if anyone wants to try this out for themselves, feel free to PM for a referral, and we can get the conga going!

tb

Interestingly, I downloaded some TV shows yesterday. With the VPN off, I was getting something atrocious like 15k down. But, after turning it on (Chicago server), that shot up to 100k in a matter of minutes. I suspect that my ISP is probably throttling P2P bandwidth. Strangely, skype seems to work better with it on as well. I'm not sure why.

This could well be the case. Many of the ISPs here throttle the bandwidth depending on the internet port that the connection goes through on (for good reason given the amount of downloading that goes on ....).

When you connect through VPN the ISP only sees the (encrypted) internet traffic going to the VPN port/address. This may be fixed or variable depending on your VPN provider, and so is another potential source of day-to-day variation in downloading speed.

I'm heading over in a week or two. Should I sign-up for a back-up option as well, or has expressVPN been stable? Also, anyone know if I can have one account and use it with my iOS devices and my macbook, or do I need separate accounts for each device?

I'm currently using two different VPNs: expressvpn and also an academic vpn. Both were brutally slow yesterday, but not unusable. This morning, things seem to be back to normal, so not sure what the disruption was due to.

tb

Interesting. Yesterday was one of my fastest internet days in quite a while.... was getting 350k+ down on utorrent. Which expressvpn server are you using? I tend to avoid that Los Angeles server because I figure everyone else is using it.

I was using the LA one, but as I said, had similarly slow rates on my academic vpn that goes through Boston. Since I didn't really need to be on a vpn for long, just came off it: speeds were generally a little slower at home yesterday, so maybe that was more of the issue, but was noticing x20-x50 slower on the vpn.

I don't tend to download large files, but happened to be updating some software, which took forever.

tb

Hmmm. I'm also at Qinghua today, and must confess that your internet up here is considerably slower than what I've grown accustomed to down south. I'm using expressvpn's Chicago server.

ETA: I just ran a speed test off VPN, and got decent results. Seems like something funky is going on. If I lived in this area, I would definitely send them an email about this.

Second edit: Off VPN, I got 1.0 m up and .2 down. Chicago server = really bad, Seattle South = .55 down and .62 up. A few years ago, the Comcast guy in Portland told me that up speeds more important than most people realize wrt to overall experience.

Off vpn we can get 6Mbp/s down 0.8up, but it's so temperamental that one can't rely on it. At our apartment, we routinely get ~2 Mbp/s down off vpn. Getting 0.55 down on vpn is a good result round these parts!

tb

I must say that I really like these guys (no, they are not paying me to write this, though perhaps they should be). While internet life China is tolerable sans VPN, having one that works reliably is kind of nice. Apart from Facebook, Twitter, G+, youtube, and IMDB, if you are logged on to a US server, you can call all of your friends in North America for free (via Google voice)... the call quality is on par with Skype (incidentally, for those big business deal phone calls, it's still best to use an actual phone).

I've had great difficulty accessing twitter during the past several days (with expressvpn on). This is the ONLY site I've had trouble with. Anyone else?

Don't use twitter, so can't comment. My wife reports no problems in accessing fb. I find it odd that I still get chinese adds when on vpn -- I presume that's because of cookies being enabled...

tb

I don't really care about twitter, but sometimes I like to check out beijingair. I emailed expressvpn, and they told me to use the Silicon Valley server for twitter, and it worked.

Have to add how impressed I am with expressvpn. I leave mine logged on most of the time via LA and speeds are sometimes a little slower but on the whole, it's great. I don't use twitter but FB is easily accessible.

To watch tv programmes from the UK, we have to log in via London or Berkshire but after being slow initially, I can watch Corrie as if I'm in the UK watching on tv, but I think that's more of an iplayer issue, not sure, I'm not sufficiently educated in IP and bandwith issues to know.