How can I provide a VPN connection for someone in China
July 28, 2014 1:18 PM

Hi Everyone I would like to help a friend in China access Bloomberg, Youtube and a few other sites unaccessible from China. I have a few spare computers, can use Linux, Mac etc. Any ideas? I thought about Remote Desktop but perhaps a VPN solution will be better. Thanks! BB
posted by bright77blue to Computers & Internet (9 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
You looked into hosting a tor node?

Unless you have a super super fast connection, relaying a VPN connection would limit this guy to a portion of your upload speed (probably way slower).
posted by cjorgensen at 1:20 PM on July 28, 2014


Good point. I will make sure the network upload speed here is fast
posted by bright77blue at 1:27 PM on July 28, 2014


He should ask bloomberg. You pay a shitton of money for what is quite good customer service.
posted by JPD at 2:09 PM on July 28, 2014


I'm not sure if this is still functional (and not currently in China) but it seems like a decent option.

If you're technologically inclined, you could set up your own AWS server and get them to connect to it. I've found instructions on how to do that in the past but it escapes me right now.

Another option is to purchase a VPN for them.
posted by sarae at 2:33 PM on July 28, 2014


Oh, they also sell VPNs on Taobao. If the person you're helping is Chinese, or half-fluent in Chinese, they can probably find one there for much cheaper than the western alternatives.
posted by sarae at 2:34 PM on July 28, 2014


Can your friend in China run Linux or OS X? If so, all you would need to do is provide an account on a local Linux box (I myself use a cheap VPS) via ssh and then they would run sshuttle to tunnel all their local traffic (including DNS queries) over that connection. If that is not possible you could also use OpenVPN but that is more difficult to set up.
posted by Poldo at 7:17 PM on July 28, 2014


I'd say go with a VPS and either set up OpenVPN or simply just have them run the web traffic through an ssh tunnel.
posted by Gev at 5:12 AM on July 29, 2014


Hi Everyone

Thank you for the pointers. I think I will set up an OpenVPN server on one of my computers or on VM Ware.

Thanks again,

BB
posted by bright77blue at 2:29 PM on July 29, 2014




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