VPN & GFW question
 

This is really for the geeks on the forum. Does China's GFW block SSH traffic these days?

I have no idea what "SSH" is, but most of the better VPNs are fairly reliable. That having been said, the net nannies have the means to bring any one of them to a stand still.

normal ssh block in China. you need use obscure SSH.
why not use VPN, youtubevpn.com

ssh is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Shell

I heard regular VPNs (openVPN or PPTP protocols) get blocked a lot since last year. I can tunnel traffic through SSH on pretty much any TCP ports I want (port 443 for example, or even tcp/53 or tcp/179), and I want to know if there're any geeks at China who can comment on how viable this is through GFW.

openvpn can not use last year
pptp can use in some city in China
if you have iphone , cisco ipsec is better ways.
http://www.youtubevpn.com/index.php?...tent&cont_id=6

I am not a tech geek but my standard PPTP protocols did stop working so now I use IPSEC, UDP, L2TP protocols. I change my ports if the net nannies are really being a pain.

I also still use openVPN but change the ports if things get too slow.

(disclaimer: I have no idea what the above initials stand for, its the protocol's that my vpn gave me)

I regularly ssh out using port 22 when I am in China and found that it's more reliable than VPN (both PPTP and OpenVPN). VPN fails once in a while but I don't remember once that ssh didn't work. That said, my VPN and ssh service are from different providers so this could be one of the factors.

They do funny things to SSH like login flood it to cause it dropped the connection... hard to say what triggers it other than they are definitely doing deep packet inspection. The GFW is very sophisticated these days.

OK I'm here now and SSH tunnel works, at least on port 443 & port 53 (yes I'm pretty naughty). Haven't tried other ports yet.

During my last trip earlier 2013 my commercial VPN sucked big time. So far this trip my SSH tunnel to my own squid proxy running on Amazon EC2 works like a charm - it's even cheaper.

I don't think they will block SSH totally. They block UDP, so use TCP. They block certain ports, so use others (1194 is the obvious one to avoid). It is not in their interest to make online banking unavailable. That also uses SSH.
Also google for ' "Lantern", a software program funded by the US government that allows internet users to circumvent government censors, is spreading rapidly on the mainland as people seek access to websites such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.'

VPN service to access blocked sites
 

Does anybody have any recommended VPN software to recommend? I use it mainly for twitter or other blocked sites. I'm currently using TowerVPN and it's expiring soon. Wondering if there's anything better out there or I'll just continue with TowerVPN.

I'm using Express again (we had a thread about it several years ago and a bunch of us bailed to do reliability issues, but I've been quite pleased with them recently).

Four years in China with Witopia.

Every time the GFW adjusted their tactics, witopia would send an update OR if your area is experiencing special difficulties, their techs are always available to set you with a custom solution.

Wife never missed an episode of Good Wife, NCIS while I always got my netflix.

Thanks for the recommendations, will look through them.

Google has been blocked now for 4 days, & will probably be blocked for another few days. :confused: