Ask HN: Things to consider when dealing with Great Firewall of China

6 points by autonomousLD 9y ago ↗ HN

The company I'm working for is developing mobile multiplayer games. For our previous project we used separate server infrastructure for players located in China. SSH connection was slow, costs, compared to anywhere else, 2-3 times higher and it was quite painful to support two clusters at the same time. This time we are thinking about using our NA servers for everyone. The game itself is not real-time (500ms delay is tolerable) and uses binary protocol. Analytics data shows that players in China have on average 300ms ping to our EU servers and based on feedback we received so far - the game is playable.

My question is: Are there any pitfalls we need to avoid? Proxies to setup in case our traffic gets blocked? Ports not to use? I'm mostly interested in potential engineering problems, not legal, but any feedback is welcomed.

4 comments

[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 21.3 ms ] thread

billconan 9y ago ↗

there used to be an article about this

https://www.techinasia.com/software-development-china-great-...

chatmasta 9y ago ↗

You might be interested in this very well written blog post: http://blog.zorinaq.com/my-experience-with-the-great-firewal...

autonomousLD 9y ago ↗

Thank you! This is exactly what I've been looking for.

baybal2 9y ago ↗

From real world experience: 1. Buy an emergency satellite connection - completely illegal, but hey. All and every major company in China has one. 2. Try to look for a place in Shenzhen. It will be your best bet to get a private fibre connection beyound a network exchange where GFW is set up.