Strong VPN Broken?

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  • This topic has 7 replies, 7 voices, and was last updated 9 years ago by Avatar photoLiam.
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  • #44201
    Avatar photoLiam
    Participant

    StrongVPN seems to get a lot of love here, but it seems that the crackdown on VPN’s has finally made it (at least partially) to them. Most of their servers have been unable to connect in China the last couple of days, and they have a message on their website that says only their New York and Miami servers are working properly (albeit under heavy load).

    Anyone else having problems logging in? What’s the deal with the sudden push towards shutting down VPN’s?

    #44202
    Avatar photoJerryS
    Participant

    Moved on to Astrill and never been happier. Had my VPN on for few days on straight with no interruptions also my torrents as well. Strong doesn’t allow torrents, F them.

    #44203
    Avatar photoRick in China
    Participant

    Eh? I was connected to my StrongVPN (san fran) yesterday evening no problem, catchin’ up on my youtube.

    There may be a difference if you’re using the application or using manual configuration, I can connect to manual every time – occasionally the app has some issues lately. If you’re having problems, did you go to one of their mirror websites and chat to a rep directly?

    #44204
    Avatar photoCharlie
    Keymaster

    StrongVPN and Astrill have been having outages since 2015 started, in general a lot of VPNs are having issues right now. The government is cracking down on VPNs at the moment.

    I’m not sure if the current crackdown is related to 2015 beginning (Uber was “officially” banned in China on January 1st also) but the internet crackdown has been a long-standing and perpetually degenerating situation.

    #44211
    Avatar photoMerior
    Participant

    Unlike with Strong, I have never suffered an “outage” with Astrill using the “stealth mode” albeit that Astrill does operate at about a quarter of the speed in the evening compared with the morning. This does make some connections (but not the majority) unusable but there are typically a couple of servers on the list that are running well enough to secure a connection.  They aren’t necessarily the same servers that were fast in the morning or fast the previous day. However, the evening speed is probably due to volume of user traffic since regular connections typically slow in the evening and it’s a rare day when I can get through to a harmless site without a VPN when I couldn’t when using a VPN.

    #44236
    Avatar photoWoodWERD
    Participant

    China Cracks Down On VPN Services After Censorship System ‘Upgrade’

    Visiting VN and it’s a breath of fresh air. Literally and connectively.

    #44243
    Avatar photoChris Ziich
    Moderator

    Don’t quote me on this but it seems that they are targeting/only have the capability to target PPTP and L2TP protocols at the moment. OpenVPN protocol seems to be untouched? I’m experiencing periodic disconnects during the day, but it’s worked fine all last night until this morning for me (on ExpressVPN’s OpenVPN).

    Chameleon should also be ok, but I think it’s PC/Android only.

    #44244
    Avatar photoLiam
    Participant

    Well, I tried talking to Strong’s live help, but the line the last few days is about 60 during the day, 30 or so at night. Long wait when I’m sure all I’ll hear is “yeah it’s a problem, sorry”. Not like it’s their fault.

    I’m not sure if the current crackdown is related to 2015 beginning (Uber was “officially” banned in China on January 1st also) but the internet crackdown has been a long-standing and perpetually degenerating situation.

    Yeah, it sounds like this is all a new step-up to better protect the local Chinese internet market. I mean, a lot of Asian countries censor or edit “unfavorable” content, but China’s unique in that it targets specific overseas companies’ products. In that techcrunch article it said they’re only newly targeting the top 3 VPN’s, and also google’s POP and IMAP services, and even Microsoft Outlook. Which means that they want to force people to use 163 or QQmail, since those are Chinese companies. As are Renren, WeChat, Weibo, etc etc, whose foreign competitors are all “harmonized”. It’s all about the money.

    From the techcrunch article, ““Censorship has suddenly become a serious business issue. When domestic and foreign companies cannot use the internet for basic business operations, it presents a real economic hurdle.”

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