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Zaijian Facebook

richard — Thu, 20 May 2010 09:19:55 +0000

Jason Calicanis sent out an email recently that reinforced what I had already thought. Get out of facebook. Delete and see that useless molasses of nothingness get what it deserves.

Well it turns out that for the past two months I had only been “Deactivated”!

Deleting is a whole new option (hidden – until Jason showed me) that also needs 14 days to complete.

Getting China residence is easier than canceling citizenship to Face Book! :-s

Xinjiang, China Internet Block to last until October 1st 2009, Face Book and Twitter?

richard — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 04:55:36 +0000

According to the local media in China, things flared up 2 days ago again. So while internet restrictions were about to be lifted the current official line is October 1st – China National Day – is when the blocks will be lifted.

Right now there is no internet service in all of Xinjiang. This is confirmed by my relatives there. Of course we don’t know if GPRS or CDMA data access is blocked. People can always use a modem to and dial up to a POP in another city – but the point isn’t about stopping people like myself, that in 1999 unwired their hotel room phone jack in order to hook up a modem and dial out.

So if I were a betting man, I would guess that October 1st brings a lifting of net blockage in Xinjiang and maybe Face Book and Twitter and Friend Feed blocking for the rest of us.

Though like anything in China….don’t hold your breath. But maybe we will have something else to celebrate on China National Day?

Facebook Blocked in China

richard — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 11:46:32 +0000

Facebook blocked in China.

This time it is not even the “Connection Reset” usual suspect. Nothing is happening so I am guessing DNS poisoning.

Going to run some tests from different servers across China in different cities and different networks and also do some DNS zone queries to see what is up. 20 mins and counting…….

UPDATE: Can confirm that Shanghai and Nanjing also not working. Also not a “Connection Reset” error so this is not happening due to the automated and distributed filter system. This must be happening at the international gateway as packets are just being dropped as opposed to having TCP connection resets inserted into the streams.

30 mins and counting…

OK – GPRS works for Twitter… IDC doesn’t on CNC – does on China Telecom – office doesn’t

richard — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 08:16:42 +0000

This makes me laugh when overseas China tech “experts” say the “Great Firewall”. There is NO FIREWALL. There is a VERY DE COUPLED and de centralised filtering system that often gives different results on different networks and at different times.

So the office on CNC does not – so this is a CNC problem…

This is why I always tell clients, don’t cheap out on the cheapest hosting – always host in an IDC that is dual homed to both CNC and CT and will pass traffic between the two networks (and others) because Chinese network providers charge each other to peer traffic – as such it is often slow or limited.

Another China day. Back to work.

UPDATE: Fully blocked now…seems at the gateway, tests show dropped packets and not the usual local area filtering “TCP Reset” style of error.