Witopia Personal VPN
Last year I talked about using Tor to bypass the internet censorship in China but the problem is that it’s painfully slow, almost to the point of being unusable. There are other options such as anonymous proxy servers (again slow) and corporate private networks but for most individuals these are not an option and fiddly to configure.
I have however discovered another alternative which provides both security, stability and speed – it’s not free but certainly isn’t expensive either. Enter Witopia personalVPN – costing $59.99 per year this basically creates an encrypted tunnel out to Witopia’s secure internet gateway giving you unlimited access to the internet without any blocks or restrictions. Set up is simply a matter of installing a simple piece of software which is sent to you pre-configured by email (there are clients for Windows, Mac & Linux).
Establishing a connection takes a matter of seconds and then you’re good to go. No messing around with any computer or internet settings as you would with the other solutions. What makes this even better is that the speed is fast, in fact I’d swear its faster surfing international sites using the VPN connection than without it normally making me extremely happy!
This of course will work world-wide once you’ve subscribed and can be useful in other situations where you want to ensure your connection is secure. Although I’ve only been using it a short while I’d thoroughly recommend it, especially if you’re in China.
N.b. as a side note if you use Mac OS X I’d recommend using the Viscosity OpenVPN client, rather than the included Tunnelblick application as it has a much better interface. It will import the connection settings automatically the first time you run it.
Update: for those in China blocked by the great firewall you might also like my guide to the various other ways of bypassing it.
Other possibly related posts you might enjoy:
the ” image via wikipedia” is cute…
Cute it may by but what’s behind it is rather more subversive and sinister. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jingjing_and_Chacha
Okay,it’s not that expensive but do they provide tryout or something before you pay?btw,this post seems to me like an advertisement.^^
‘subversive and sinister’–come on,don’t be so judgemental.At least it helped you got some innocent colleagues around.(you know what I’m geting at^^)
Another alternative is AlwaysVPN (https://ssl.alwaysvpn.com).
Instead of paying yearly you only pay for what you use.
Thanks for the tip Tom.
I could recommend a different personal VPN. They allow weekly, monthly etc. So for a few dollars you can try it out or even turn it on and off as needed. They run a lot of servers and have a lot of IP addresses. It seems they constantly change these address to prevent blocks by IP address. I like the constantly changing ip address from a web privacy standpoint also. Over time web sites never see the same IP address.
http://www.surfbouncer.com
I used Freedur.com at school to play games, access my gmail and watch youtube videos. It rocks.
It works in Firefox and Internet Explorer. Try it here http://www.freedur.com.
My experience is freedur just sucks. It definitely doesnt work in mainland china and appears to make your system run even slower while using it. I am going to try witopia mainly because they have a 30 day money back guarantee. Thanks for the post, it helped alot.
I should be on commission for these guys
Also worth checking out is 12vpn – http://www.randomwire.com/tunnel-through-the-gfw-with-12vpn
How do you get it? When I try the website is blocked.
Hi Tim, are you in China? It seems to be unblocked here. Try http://www.witopia.net/ again, it may have been the link in my post which was broken.
Hey David,
Thanks for the tip. I just moved to China, and looking for an VPN service. Do you think the free services like http://www.sneakme.net is insecure as for data will be recorded?
and if I go for WiTopia, should I get the
SSL for Mac 59.99
or
PPTP 39.99?
I use a Macbook.
Hi Jimmy, I think those free services are OK for anonymous surfing but I wouldn’t use them for anything private like checking your email or buying something.
I would recommend the SSL option which usually has better performance. I use it on my MacBook and find it great. I can even watch streaming video on sites like BBC iPlayer or Hulu.
Hey David,
Thanks for the quick reply. I will think about what I should get. And I will check back on your blog often to see what else y you have to say about living in China.
Cheers!
Jimmy
I just moved to China from Singapore. It’s a nightmare. Many sites I used to be able to access with ease were crawling like snail or completely inaccessible.
The worst is my own website was hosted in US. I even have difficulty access my email server.
I’ll definitely try out one of the methods you mentioned here. Thanks, David, for sharing such useful info. Btw, do you know whether the service provided by witopia.net will work when I receive email using the MS Outlook? What I mean is that I find receiving emails extremely slow (esp from Yahoo account). Will setting up service at witopia.net also helps in my emails download speed?
Thank you in advanced!
Hi Jeanette, yes Witopia and similar services will work transparently with any application including MS Outlook. It may also speed up downloads but only marginally. The main plus point is being able to securely access blocked sites.
Thanks! David.
I just signed up with Witopia today. I took the $59.99 package, Windows SSL (openVPN). Here’s a coupon code i used which gives me a 10% discount. Perhaps, readers of your blog will find it useful: shxpt
I moved to a city near Shanghai. With Witopia turned on, I can access Youtube, Facebook & Twitter, among other blocked sites. But, the speed is extremely slow. I also noticed that I was connected to the UK gateway instead of US. Perhaps, that’s one reason why it’s slow. My site resides at US server. Do you know how to fix it at US gateway?
I thought the SSL package should be better than PPTP, as described in your blog. But, the performance/speed is too slow. Any idea? Do you have other better VPN provider that you’ve used before? I’m finding it very frustrating here. I never had such internet access problem back in Singapore. If I knew it earlier, I may not have agreed to move to China.
Anyway, thanks for all the useful info you’ve shared on this blog
The slowness could be caused by a number of things so it’s hard to say for sure what’s causing it but in general the internet in China isn’t very speedy. I suggest you contact Witopia support about your questions and take a look at their wiki (http://wiki.witopia.net/) which shows you how to change the gateway – they’re usually very helpful. Before they gave me some advice about how to adjust your settings to get faster speed in China but your millage may vary.
Hope this helps.
I live in China but I set up a server in the States. I charge $3/month to friends. The only catch is that sometimes if they discover it I have to set up a new one which is a few days of downtime.
You can write me an email and I’ll give you free access for a couple weeks if you want. blockedbychina at gmail.com
Nice review. nearly a year after you wrote this, I still haven’t gotten a VPN, apart from occasionally hopping onto Freegate (which is free, as its name sort of suggests). But, now that things have gotten so much worse this summer (2009), Witopia is looking like my top choice: the 59 dollars/year deal. Unless things drastically improve after the whole 60th anniversary shebang soon. It’s a (slight) possibility that YouTube, Facebook et all will return after the anniversary. Hmmm.
We live in hope but somehow I very much doubt we’ll see much change unless the authorities have a massive change of heart which I don’t think is probably in their interest. As long as it doesn’t effect the majority the minority will just have to put up…
Have you folks tried http://www.SolVPN.com? They have good openvpn service. Speed is good too.
I’m in China (mostly Beijing), and I’ve been using Witopia $60 service now for about 6 months. It’s great. It’s fast. Sometimes I use US gateways, and sometimes I use the UK gateway. Support is fantastic (and super speedy).
I just returned from the US with a Cloakbox as well. The cloakbox is great for people with multiple internet-using devices (mine has two laptops, xbox 360, apple tv, roku box for netflix, iphone…), all of which have full access to the internet. The only problem I’ve had happened last night. Hulu now knows that I’m using an anonymizing IP service (through the cloakbox) and refuses to give up my daily servings of Colbert and Jon Stewart. Hopefully I can find a way around it.
My current problem with Hulu aside, I love Witopia.
Hi David,
From your comment, it seems that you can choose between US & UK gateway as you like. May I know how to do it? I’ve personalVPNT – SSL (openVPN). But, the gateway was automatically decided by the program. Could you show me how?
Hi,
Witopia has a few different services. The $30 service does not allow you to choose your gateway. With the $60 service, you can choose between 4 or 5 (I think) US gateways and one UK gateway. But again, you have to have purchased the more expensive option.
Witopia has a table that shows the differences between the services, the ability to choose/change my gateway was one of the main reasons I chose the more expensive option. With the cloakbox VPN router, you can also choose your gateway.
Witopia maintains a pretty good wiki page here: http://wiki.witopia.net/ You can get a lot of answers and screenshots to walk you through any changes you make to you configuration. But that ability depends on the service you chose. Their support, as I mentioned, is also very good and has always responded to me within a few hours. These support guys actually know what they’re talking about, which is refreshing. So I would use them rather than me.
Thanks! I did opted for the more expensive version. But, can’t remember there’s cloakbox. Will ask the support guys.
In that case, just go to the witopia wiki link above and search ‘changing gateways’. There’s a very detailed page of instructions. It’s quite a simple process really.
I’m using Witopia (SSL) for half a year now and I’m satisfied with the service. I can access all sites that are blocked in China and browsing foreign sites is usually faster. The helpdesk responds quickly with helpful and clear answers.
Not mentioned before: Witopia blocks torrent sites, so if you want to download torrents you have to temporary disable the VPN, because in China all piracy related sites are not blocked … Once you downloaded the torrents you can turn the VPN on again as the peer-to-peer communication is not affected by the VPN.
Another thing I experience since 2 weeks is that Google is prompting captchas once or twice a day (no, this is not because of malware on my PC; my PC is clean – and Witopia gives me random IP addresses anyway).
It seems to be related to IP ranges Witopia is using. Perhaps some Witopia customers are using the service for robots that anonymously operate on the VPN?
Good point about downloading torrents Anton. This the one thing about Witopia which annoys me. For a service which is meant to free you from firewalls this is a bit shady on their behalf.
I live in china too and just bought a yearly package. It seems rather slow though… which server would you recommend? I’m assuming the Hong Kong one would be the fastest, but it’s slower than my normal speed. trying out the London servers right now.
Right now, I’m using the San francisco gateway. I also find, as expected, that the speed varies depending on the time of day. Most of the time, I still get a full 300+ kb/s through the San francisco gateway which is also my max when I do not use the VPN at all. It’s fast enough to download youtube videos/other files, while also streaming Netflix to my tv.
Is your connection significantly faster when you do not use the VPN? Is it a shared connection?In my experience, the DC, Jersey, and LA connections are very slow. I would say to pay for a faster service here in China (an extra 30rmb/m got me 3x increase in my download speed) and try each gateway until you find the one that is fastest for you.
When I emailed Witopia about this before they recommended I change some settings in the configuration file to set the Tun MTU to 1300 – this seemed to speed things up for me a lot. Below is the line I added to the config:
tun-mtu 1300
I purchased the Witopia $60 plan. I am living in Shanghai, and it has been a bitter disapointment.
Although I can access various sites that were previously blocked – they are painfully slow, to the point of being un-usable. For example, my gmail account will not load unless I use plain HTML.
It works fine for online gaming, but internet surfing, or watching Utube videos is impossible. I have used more expensive VPN clients from this location, and they worked fine.
The support desk has been ultimately useless, and without a case number or tracking – I have had multiple people asking me the same questions or to do the same thing.
I would strongly advise you to go someplace else for your VPN needs.
Certain gateways can be slow during certain times of the day. I can always tell the times when the ‘West’ is waking up or getting home from work. I only use a couple of the gateways now because of their overall consistent speed. You might have to muck around with the settings to really get it optimized. I’m using Witopia right now and am getting a good 500kb/s. I’m downloading, chatting on skype, and streaming a netflix movie right now, all without problem. It sounds like the problem could be more on your end than Witopia’s.
How many support requests did you send?
I’m in Southern China and have the Witopia $60 plan. I know someone who has the same plan in my city and is using it with great success. It has really been a disappointment for me. I’ve spent a ton of time with Witopia tech support and still no solution. I need a service that works.
David M.
what is your support ticket #? send it to suggest at witopia.net and they will research it for you and find out if it can be solved or is a bug/conflict that cannot be fixed and refund you under 30 day unconditional guarantee.
My VPN has been working fine till this trip to China. Seem like all FB and YT sites has been blocked somehow even after connected to the VPN…
Andy, it works fine for me. Maybe you forgot the run the VPN software as administrator? (happens to me all the time …)
Anyone with Support issues for WiTopia personalVPN service should contact us through Support section at https://www.witopia.net or e-mail at support at witopia dot net.
If you’re in a censored country such as China, and are experience performance issues, it’s highly likely you’re on an older configuration and your ISP’s blocking techniques have changed.
We are constantly adding servers and ISP capacity and route diversity on our side and do not limit bandwidth. We only run about 30%- 40% capacity at peak across our network.
China ISPs do not have the best peering with other ISPs as you cross the Pacific and practically nothing going West to Europe so some speed issues are related to that and there is little that can be done. Luckily, these tend to be solved eventually by ISPs involved. We are also investigating changing ISPs in Hong Kong to gain better local peering, so that may help, as more traffic will stay in Asia and not have to go to California and back.
Still, we do find that most speed issues are easily solved by updating our configuration, tweaking your local network settings, or helping track down a software conflict (security program usually). We sustain a high sales volume and have offered VPN services for 5 years now in China so we’ve seen it all.
We track about 5%-8% of China-based customers will experience a speed issue that will need a tweak at one time or another, but the vast majority of those are resolved right after signup and do not reoccur. One size does not fit all when you’re dealing with various blocking techniques and how often a person’s computer or network might change…sometimes even without their knowledge if another program stealth updates, etc.
Anyways, we’re here to help so please contact us and we’ll see if we can get David out of the VPN Support business.
@Daniel – Not sure how to comment. It is IMPOSSIBLE to contact sales or support departments at WiTopia without automatically being issued a ticket# in subject line in return mail. Been that way for years so what you describe just can’t happen here. We have many imitators. Perhaps, we have a case of mistaken identity? If you actually are a customer of ours, and are not satisfied for any reason, please take advantage of our 30 day money back guarantee. We’re not quick buck artists like many others. Don’t want anyone’s money that isn’t happy.
True—Witopia offers a number of tweaks to improve FB and YT performance, and support people are knowledgeable, fast and sincere. I went through 3 or 4 rounds of changes with WIT support before concluding that there was just no fix. Let my Witopia subscription lapse and looking for a more reliable solution.
Moved to Guangdong province recently and disappointed with the blockage of FB, YT, Hulu, NBC, etc. Thinkin’ about getting a VPN, but reluctant to subscribe to a service for a year, based on range of comments here. I don’t want connection or speed problems. Has anyone had any luck with 12VPN or WITopia in the south? I’d appreciate any suggestions or experiences. Thanks.
Uhm… you’ve seen the 30-day guarantee mentioned quite a few times, right? So.. try it. If it doesn’t work, get your money back. Though me and a small army of foreigners that I’ve converted all use Witopia (all of the various products) without problem. When there was a problem, support answered and had things fixed amazingly fast.
anyone have experience with another vpn – Skydur on mac?
it seems cheaper with 16.99 for 3 months, but im having problem connecting on my mac, keep getting an error 503 – invalid login session, but seems to work fine on windows.
I travel to middle east where mostly free internet and VoIP is blocked. I have been using http://www.solvpn.com openvpn for more than a year now. Thier speed and uptime is great. With openvpn you get full access to internet.
Recommend checking them out. Worth the price which is the same as other openvpn providers.
I had a lot of problems setting up with Witopia. The thing that got it working was MTU in the Config sys file. Now it’s as fast as any where. Fantastic!
I suspect TonyG to be an affiliate of solvpn, or reseller, as it’s USD$140 a year.
Oops!
I forgot to say that I’m in China! An Aussie, too.
Dui bu qi
Thanks for your comments Rocket and for pointing out about the price of solvpn. It’s not one I’ve personally tried so can’t recommend it.
Glad you got your vpn speeded up
I had a hell of a time setting up with WiTopia and they offered me a refund, too. But there was one little setting that I’d missed and when I got it done, well, sites that load quicker than you can blink! Now that’s worth any amount of trouble.
When I emailed Witopia about this before they recommended I change some settings in the configuration file to set the Tun MTU to 1300 – this seemed to speed things up for me a lot. Below is the line I added to the config:
tun-mtu 1300
Can you explain more? Which line in the config file is this put or is it just a case of adding it at the bottom? The more information the easier it is for this dunderhead to get it working.
Hi Tim – funnily enough you’re the second person to ask me this today.
On windows right click the vpn connection icon, select the connection you use and click “Edit Config”. Add that line to the bottom of the file, save and then re-connect. If it works you should see an immediate speed increase.
As I understand it this somehow changes the packet fragmentation which makes it harder for the authorities to throttle (apparently).
Hope this helps.
What about Logmein Hamachi?
It is free for non commecrial usage, and IIRC, it received quite a good share of praises about its security.
Test Aug 24 2010 between 11:20 – 11:50 Beijing time (UTC +8)
ISP: China Unicom / ADSL 2Mbit / SSL VPN
Tested with Speedtest.Net
VPN connection Down Up Ping Test server
————– —— —— —— ————–
No VPN 1.26 0.52 71 Changchun
Hong Kong Main 0.23 0.26 223 Hong Kong
Hong Kong AES 0.08 0.22 552 Hong Kong
Washington MAIN 0.60 0.22 426 London *)
San Fran. MAIN 0.57 0.17 610 London *)
New York MAIN 0.51 0.30 365 New Jersey
LA MAIN 0.53 0.27 439 LA
Dublin MAIN 0.93 0.13 510 Dublin
Manchester MAIN 0.97 0.27 413 UK
London MAIN 1.00 0.33 405 UK
*) Speedtest recognises IP as UK IP
above results for Witopia
conclusion for this time of the day: UK connections are the fastest
Thanks for the stats Anton – I guess it will differ depending on where you are in China but interesting to see the UK server is fastest.