The Great (Fire)Wall

June 27, 2010 7:18 AM

Why is the internet in China so excruciatingly slow?

I'm not sure if this is just me, but I'm in Beijing, China right now and I cannot manage to get a decent internet connection anywhere. I need to download fairly large files for work (100+MB) somewhat regularly, but the best download speeds I have managed to get are barely over 20kb/s, and that's not consistently - it will often dip down to 0.0kb/s for a few seconds before slowly crawling back up.

I've tried using a proxy (Witopia), but that generally makes things slower. Is there something I'm missing? Or is the internet this slow for everyone here?

I'm using a Macbook Pro running OSX 10.6.3. I live in Zhongguancun (near Wudaokou) if anyone who's familiar with the area can recommend a place that has a fast wireless network.

posted by god particle to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

Beijing's (and China's) internet speeds have gotten noticeably worse over the last few years. I had the same problems with it when I was there earlier this year.
posted by smorange at 7:31 AM on June 27, 2010

Does it have anything to do with the firewall that all traffic in China has to go through?
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 7:48 AM on June 27, 2010

I vaguely remember reading an article a couple years ago, maybe in a Korean newspaper, arguing that China just isn't prioritizing internet infrastructure. I don't know the cause, but that's a possible explanation.
posted by smorange at 8:18 AM on June 27, 2010

It's gotten worse for me in the past few weeks since I've been here (here being Hangzhou). It was kind of crappy to begin with but now it's a few times worse. It doesn't matter whether I'm using wireless or connected via ethernet. I don't have an answer to your question, but at least you now know you aren't suffering alone?
posted by lucy.jakobs at 8:46 AM on June 27, 2010

SPAM traffic. The hacker/spam capital of the world.
posted by nogero at 1:45 PM on June 27, 2010

Same thing in Nanjing. It's gotten worse lately. Don't know why.
posted by msbrauer at 4:42 PM on June 27, 2010

This article (in Chinese) seems to suggest it's a combination of what smorange pointed out above about the infrastructure and the measures the providers are taking to offset that by deliberately limiting the speed available to given user accounts - I'm an ignoramus so far as the technology is concerned, but AFAICT the implication is as more users signed up, rather than upgrade the infrastructure too cope, they've set limits on each account to squeeze more users onto the same infrastructure.
There's also the famous bottlenecks when it comes to accessing servers outside China, which slow down connections to overseas sites and services.
My ADSL in a downtown residential community has stayed about the same as it's always been - fair to middling 70kbs/sec download from a nominal 512k account. They've got a promotion for a free trial of a 2M account going on at the moment that can be accessed by signing up online and when I do that I can get 300kbs/sec torrent speeds still.
Caveat to the above is I really have no clue what I'm talking about.
posted by Abiezer at 10:53 PM on June 27, 2010

And don't forget to come to the meetup tomorrow god particle - I think Alba's wireless is a bit quicker so you can get a speedier surf in in between the drinks.
posted by Abiezer at 11:11 PM on June 27, 2010