GoKunming Forums

Internet connection for digital worker

jeremi (5 posts) • 0

Hey,
I'm currently living in Singapore, and thinking about moving to Kunming with my family. I used to be living in Dalian, Beijing and Shanghai more than 5 years ago, and that was hard to work online.
I recently went to a 3rd tier city in Liaoning and have been amazed by the improvement on internet connection quality (provided I used a proxy, astrill). That made me think that moving back to china could be a possibility. I head a startup, but they do not need me to be there, I already work remotely.

I've looked at previous threads, but would love to get feedback from people who require internet to be able to work like me.

Is anyone working from home ?
How is it like ? is the connection reliable ? Any issue to do calls using skype or hangout (in my case, I mostly need early morning, so do not need to do in the evening)?
What connection do you have ?
is any specific area in Kunming better (I've read north as it is new could be) ?
Do you use Regus ? (maybe that could be a backup plan when internet is not good)
Is the solution would be to sub-rent a desk in an office ? (I saw there is no co-working space)

Thanks!

laotou (1714 posts) • 0

@jeremi
Move into NEWER complexes and the internet should be just fine - albeit a little crowded with wifi connections.

Some older complexes can have blazing internet - simply because of the population - but with the advent of internet TV - I'm sure those bandwidths are becoming supersaturated.

Oh - we have internet TV - that should sate your appetite for bandwidth. You'll DEFINITELY need a reliable VPN to punch out of China's sandbox.

And you haven't touched on the visa issue yet - but you can rent a desk in representative offices - if you have a college degree - they may even be able to swing a foreign expert's certificate for you..

blobbles (958 posts) • 0

International bandwidth is throttled regularly by ISPs in China I suspect at the discretion of the Chinese government. All international traffic, including VPNs, which is what happens around the "interesting" anniversaries. No matter what you do, you will have problems around these times.

Going through a VPN provider might help, but it puts another link in the chain of possible problems. You could instead set up a VPN in your overseas office especially if it has a static IP address. Then use your local PC, connect to your overseas offices VPN and you are essentially using the PC in your overseas office (connected to your overseas office local LAN). I did this as an IT worker for a bank for 2 years in Kunming and it was fine, slow, but fine. I did the same in Hong Kong for 3 weeks which was blazing fast, in comparison.

I was lucky to get 500 kbps in Kunming in 3 different places (usually 250 kbps average), Guangzhou was easily 3Mbs, Hong Kong in excess of 8Mbps. This was 2 years ago now, but gives you an idea of speeds in different places. Kunming international traffic is really slow.

voltaire (225 posts) • 0

Blobbles is on the mark. I see 500kbps max international bandwidth too, I'm in Chengjiang (Fuxian Lake) and work online.

I find often you get better speeds and more stability with SSH + a port-forwarded proxy than UDP VPNs (OpenVPN, etc.).

faraday (213 posts) • 0

I havent done any work this year but last year i had no problems whatsoever with using skype for international work (a paid skype subscription). I also had a PC left on at home with a bunch of macros in MS Office which synched everything with my qq account, including being able to use outlook for running sql queries and returning results in .csv to qq. Obviously a bit risky, and while i did have a lot of plans to expand the macros to cover security and more functionality, i never got around to it. At one point there was a major lockdown in china for several days but i was totally unaffected thanks to the macros.

I have a definite preference to have a pc switched on at home (europe or US), and thinking about trying the software "team viewer" next time i need to work - anyone tried it?

jeremi (5 posts) • 0

@faraday some funky hacks to get your data :)

I've always had a server in a datacenter (OVH is cheap for dedicated server), so I could SSH in case I need to play with large files.

I'm also looking at dual WAN. It seems that I could use this to increase the bandwidth by using 2 connections: 1 DSL + 1 4G dongle.
it seems some open source project support this :
www.pfsense.org/
Anyone tried something similar?

I've never tried "team viewer" but I've used Google remote desktop many times. though, I'm not sure if it is working in china.

Kernalpanx (74 posts) • 0

I work remotely in canada from Dali ... Rarely have issues and get 14 MBS down and 1.5 up... I SSH directly to my jump box .... Keep a large number of common commands in my script library incase connecting via phone or iPad. Just use nohup or screen incase u get disconnected.

Hangouts is hit and miss. Skype I have been in a 12 hour meeting no problem. The most important things is have a jump box. I use virtual box and vagrant along with chef that allows me to deply an entire dev environment on my jump box if needed. I am not a developer but keeps you from having code local...call me paranoid.

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