Written by Administrator | 03 November 2009

Using a VPN to bypass the Great Firewall of China

The Great Firewall of China refers to the Chinese government’s censorship of the internet. Using techniques such as IP blocking, URL filtering, DNS blocking and redirection, and packet filtering the government prevents internet users within China from accessing content which they do not approve of. International news sites, such as the BBC, and sites which publicise China’s human rights abuses, such as Amnesty International, have been blocked for a long time. greatfirewallofchina.org maintains a list of sites curently blocked by the Great Firewall.

There are several ways in which The Great Firewall can be bypassed, the fact that it cannot filter secure traffic is one. By using a VPN a secure connection is made to one IP address and all traffic from that point will be encrypted and sent through the VPN, bypassing the Great Firewall. Using a proxy based outside of China would also work.

Whilst travelling I am going to be using a VPN to encrypt all my internet traffic and to allow me to have unrestricted access to the internet. The security benefits should be obvious when you consider internet banking, email and any other online service. Its something that would be of benefit to anyone using a public wifi network regardless of where they are. When using a public wifi network, you cannot be certain that your data is not being intercepted so using a secure connection through a VPN makes a lot of sense.

Other benefits to using a VPN include being able to access content intended for audiences in different geographic locations. For example using a UK based VPN server from outside the UK would allow access to the BBC iplayer and to Channel 4 on Demand.

For the last few weeks I have been using Witopia’s Personal VPN service. So far it has been very reliable and has had no notable impact on my connection speeds. I will be sure to report back on how well it performs when I am in China.