You guys out east are obviously getting better download speeds than us out west. I may need to contact CS about this (am usually reticent about this sort of thing).

tb

I could have sworn that you told us, or perhaps just me, that you were getting 6mb down speeds sans VPN. If so, that is very fast for China, and the VPN shouldn't slow you down more than ~10%. If it is, then contacting CS would be a wise move.

At work can get 6MB/s download speeds at off-peak times. However, on vpn that goes down to 0.4 MB/s, so more than 90% slower. At home, speeds are 2MB/s off and 0.3MB/s on vpn...so a real pain for downloading movie files.

Will probably get in touch with them after CNY since it appears to be an east-side problem!

tb

My VPN license runs out at the end of Feb. (with Witopia) so when I return to Beijing in mid-Feb I will also give these guys (expressvpn) a go. That should give us one more "west-side" data point ... I can still connect to a couple of "extra secure" Witopia servers, but it is a real problem to connect to a UK server (though I mostly just need this for online banking).

I increasingly think that their Los Angeles server is a sucker's bet. While they may claim "it's the best for Asia," it clearly isn't. I've had much better results with Seattle, Silicon Valley, and Chicago.

I might give those locations a try then, not that I'm having any real issues with LA but happy to try anything that might increase speed as it is a tad slow on occasion, usually with FT of all sites ;)

I've had excellent results lately with VyprVPN (no affiliation except as a customer). In particular, their Hong Kong server is extremely speedy from within the mainland (getting about 13mbps on average, which is right about the same as to mainland servers) and still gets around the GFW quite nicely. They also support PPTP, OpenVPN, and IPSec protocols, which helps when logging in from public Wi-Fi that blocks one or two of the above.

Not sure how it compares with ExpressVPN as I've never tried their service, but it might be worth a look for anyone in the market. :)

Random question:

Whenever I'm on Skype and am running expressvpn, I frequently get random chat messages from people I haven't seen in years asking me what I'm doing in Trinidad. It doesn't matter what server I use, but the location Skype displays is always "Trinidad and Tobago". Do the rest of you have the same issue? What is the cause of it? (I don't really care -- so what if my skype friends think I work for the CIA -- just curious.)

I never use skype on vpn since i find it too slow for good call quality. However, I do find the server locations quite random. E.g. connecting to the SF server, if I go to 'speedtest.net', it shows my location as london! I do think that the company rather picks out random servers rather than dedicated ones, but I'm not enough of a techie to fully understand this.

I have found speeds on vpn to have improved considerably over the last week, however....let's see if it continues.

tb

Can one sign up for expressvpn in China or does one do it before arrival? I am trying to access the expressvpn.com site in China and everything but the home page seems to get hung up. Other sites (newspapers, yahoo, etc.) are not having that problem.

Yes. If you can't access their site, just email their support team (I'm pretty sure you can guess their email address), and they will provide you with an alternate. Even if you go this route, you'll still have an opportunity to permit someone here to refer you.

Thanks, moondog.

Little time left on this trip, but I may contact you before returning.

Expressvpn
 

I made a quick decision to subscribe to expressvpn before returning to China, and have been extremely happy with the results. That is, until today! Not only has it been able to access previously forbidden sites, but whenever I think my internet access is slow, I check and find the vpn has lost its connection. Restoring it, speeds up everything.

But now it keeps giving me error messages that "other VPN applications" are running in the background. Rebooting doesn't help, and everything is slow. Attempting to login to expressvpn.com gets me the usual "...can't connect to the server…" message.

Have the authorities suddenly discovered this service and blocked it?

UPDATE:
It's back after another reboot and change of connection location!

I can no longer recommend these guys.

1. complete outage about 10 days ago
2. slow response to emails
3. zero advice wrt server selection apart from "speed test winner: Taiwan" or "best for North China" -- both, horrible

That having been said, I've yet to chance upon a better option, and I'm going to keep paying Express until I do.

It still works well for me (I've used it for 3 years or so). Their latest versions have a speed test and HK is actually the fastest for me (from Shanghai) and I've had no problems with it.