Is it me or yet another censo_rship experiment? Can easily connect to .cn sites, but everything else is pretty much impossible to reach. I need to reconnect 10-15 times until my VPN finds a connection. After an about an hour everything collapses again and I have to reconnect to find servers. Even Utorrent, which usually works like a charm, has problems...
Anyone got the same problems?

China Telekom 4Mbit connection.

I pretty much always have problems... the international speeds suck and it seems like sites get newly blocked every minute. Oh well, if China wants to wallow in the 1990s from an internet perspective, then that's it's problem.

ADSL is basically shared bandwidth. As more and more people in your neighborhood get/buy computers, laptops, etc - the bandwidth gets sucked up - especially with your neighbors doing youku, tudou, mp3.baidu.com, etc.

You MAY wish to try a different DNS - example google has free dns services (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4) - which MAY ease things (blind guessing). To test, ping the above addresses - make sure your connection doesn't timeout on the PING. PING should be 300-500 ms. Anything over 1 second is bad.

If you want to see how many people are online during your bad experience - look for network map, topology, or ping sweep software online - lots of free/shareware stuff online - and do a network or PING sweep. I'm guessing during really crappy connection times - you probably have around 100-200 people sharing your IP segment (techno speak, your ADSL is probably on a class C segment, which supports up to 253-254 unique IP clients).

Basically - it's crappy network management which screws your connection.

The above info doesn't really help things (aside from MAYBE the DNS change) - but it does let you know why MAYBE why your internet sucks.

Oh...it's been raining heavily lately - ADSL through crappy old copper lines (if you're in an old part of town) - degrades with weather.

Something has definitely changed recently, even my mail client has trouble to connect. Never had major problems...

Cheers Laotou, but it hasn' gradually become worse, the connection problems started a few days ago, before that, no prob.

Yeah, I've got exactly the same problem. I'm working with Freegate to enter foreign websites and I just get disconnected now and then. Seems to be working for the moment. Utorrent is also very slow and troublesome.

Yeah, I've got exactly the same problem. I'm working with Freegate to enter foreign websites and I just get disconnected now and then. Seems to be working for the moment. Utorrent is also very slow and troublesome.

I used to laugh when told heavy rain affected ADSL speeds. Time, and the 'old copper wire' explanation proffered by Laotou, now explain a great deal.

Many problems are also down to management, poorly trained technicians, and a lack of true competition. I have photographs of truly amateurish wiring jobs done by 'technicians' from one big provider and when I took them to the local head office I got the impression they thought the standard of workmanship was acceptable, if not normal.

The big companies regularly report huge profits. Something any poorly managed business could probably do if they regularly provided half-measures while charging the full price. Corporate theft on a grand scale maybe too strong a word but only when local consumers complain in large numbers will things change.

Ian
Network problems are analyzed in 3 layers of increasing complexity.

LAYER 1
The hardware or physical layer. Clean the modem. Check your connections. Assume you've already done the reset the modem thing. Make sure all your electrical stuff is well grounded. If you're using a chinese power strip - test the power (voltmeter) to make sure everything is operating at full power. To re-iterate, inclement weather can affect crappy hardware - which is prolific. And as nnoble mentioned, we'll skip the neanderthal service technicians. Also - remember normal ADSL just guarantees connection - it does NOT guarantee any kind of QoS or quality of service.

LAYER 2
The "link" layer. This is basically the direct hardware address layer - example the MAC address of your equipment. We'll skip this.

LAYER 3
The "network" layer. This is the realm of IP, DNS, etc. Do a reverse DNS Lookup of the targeted web site or email server. That will give you the IP address(es) of your targeted VPN or foreign website. PING the IP address (assuming the ISP permits PING). PING is an exploitable hole, so most ISPs blackhole PINGs (goes nowhere, no response, timeouts). If the PING is responding reasonably (0-1k ms) - then the problem MAY be firewalling. Also, remember PING occurs in TWO directions - so the IP packets may take different paths going and returning - that's too complicated to explain or troubleshoot here.

If the PING times out occasionally - you probably have firewall or routing issues - which usually means you're screwed. You can TRY to use DIRECT IP addressing in your browser (aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd) - if that works the issue is DNS resolution. If direct IP addressing doesn't work - the problem is a routing or firewall issue - you're traffic is being intercepted or routed through a series of firewalls.

To check the path your traffic takes (brute force) - use the tracert (on a pc) or Traceroute (on a mac using the network utility app) to document the path your IP packets take to/from the destination. If you're like me - your traceroute will show several IP addresses in China before they pop offshore into the great pipeline. This is most probably the source of your crappy VPN connections offshore.

Traceroute comparison:
Do a traceroute to a typical chinese isp -example baidu.com. It should terminate in 10-15 paths.

A traceroute to a typical USA ISP (example apple.com) will take roughly 20 paths. Each path introduces lag or delay into your IP packet. IP packets (TCP/IP) timeout. To fix this - you'll have to muck around with the IP Packet timeout settings. This is a major pain to do on apple and I forgot how to do this on PCs (somewhere in the property settings - but microsoft may have disabled or hidden it elsewhere).

LAYER 7
This is the "application" layer - the realm of some firewalls, content management/filters, etc. Not gonna go there...

SUMMARY
In China and ESPECIALLY in Kunming - the aged or crappy construction practices (non-spec copper wire for your twisted pair phone lines, running adjacent to power lines, TV lines, etc) coupled with (as nnoble notes) truly apathetic and unprofessional network management combine to create a plethora of intermittent or transient problems. Most service staff are ill-equipped (aka not trained) to handle these kinds of issues - so they spit out the usual crap response - reset your modem, check your connections, etc etc. For all you know - your neighbor wanted to add ADSL, so the telecom spliced a couple of your wires or did a crappy job with the punch down (a big box of wires with a punch block where all the wires terminate/originate)...did the job in the driving rain, so the punch block is soaked with water (which means you'll have to wait for the heat to dry out the punch block)...etc ad infinitum...but - most probably - you've been firewalled.

One other issue to remember - which I mentioned earlier - ADSL is shared bandwidth - there is a VERY high probability your neighbors recently installed ADSL and are sucking up major chunks of bandwidth with streaming video/audio. I see university staff watching streaming videos, listening to streaming audio ALL THE TIME. These are HUGE bandwidth hogs.

A simple PING sweep (use freeware sw to do this) will sweep all the IP addresses in your class C domain and tell you how many other people (network nodes) are sharing your domain. Basically this will PING or touch the computers of everyone in your neighborhood. If you see 100-200 people - you should expect really crappy service... PING is shorthand-ish for Packet Inter-Network Groper...

That about covers 10+ years of telecom network experience...now you're all experts...

I find the service is consistent. That's consistently erratic!

I've been downloading a 5 season TV series since mid-April using Utorrent. Download speeds vary from 400 kbps down to 0 kbps. I get the best speed when the local population is sleeping.