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China Lays More Fiber, Improving Physical Connection To the Worldwide Internet

Posted by timothy on from the better-tapping-points dept.

jfruh writes China's state-owned Internet service providers are improving the nation's connection to the worldwide Internet, adding seven new access points to the world's Internet backbone to improve speed and reliability for Chinese customers. This reveals the nation's essential Internet contradiction, improving its physical connection even as the government continues to block a number of important Intenet sites.

44 comments

  1. It's actually not a contradiction. by rmdingler · · Score: 1

    China has the largest population of internet users. Despite apparent continued attempts to censor what their citizens have access to, the Chinese are very interested in extending international market share of their three state-owned internet companies.

    --
    Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

    Ernest Hemingway

    1. Re:It's actually not a contradiction. by NotDrWho · · Score: 2, Funny

      I was worried about it, but I talked to China and they told me that their penises were so small, and assured me that my American penis was VERY large in comparison. This went on for a while and pretty soon I realized that they weren't any kind of threat after all.

      --
      SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
    2. Re:It's actually not a contradiction. by thedonger · · Score: 1

      China has the largest population of internet users. Despite apparent continued attempts to censor what their citizens have access to, the Chinese are very interested in extending international market share of their three state-owned internet companies.

      I read it as "China is enhancing the speed at which they can control the internet within their borders."

      --
      Help fight poverty: Punch a poor person.
    3. Re:It's actually not a contradiction. by kheldan · · Score: 1

      More likely they're wanting to increase their ability to commit cyber-espionage and cyber-terrorism and figure they need the extra bandwidth to do that.

      --
      Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
    4. Re:It's actually not a contradiction. by twitnutttt · · Score: 1

      I wonder if they get Slashdot in China?

    5. Re:It's actually not a contradiction. by Inkognitus · · Score: 1

      Yes, I haven't had issues accessing Slashdot from China at all. I mostly use the +5 Android Apk for reading the stuff here

    6. Re:It's actually not a contradiction. by Balthisar · · Score: 1

      Slashdot loads okay, but for some reason I often have issues with the rss subdomain working without a VPN.

      --
      --Jim (me)
  2. 'important' for whom ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... even as the government continues to block a number of important Intenet sites ...

    Important sites ?

    Important for whom ?

    Important for those who want to see China disintegrates into pieces ?

    Important for those who never want to see China become strong ?

    1. Re:'important' for whom ? by Roodvlees · · Score: 1

      Important because they have a lot of users. It's a direct restriction of freedom. China seems to do it mostly to protect the dogma's they base their rule on. Also they say such a big country can not be ruled with democracy and freedom.

      My solution would be to let go of the dogma's, they could explain why it's better to be moral. And give local government more political power so they need less oppression.

      --
      Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
    2. Re:'important' for whom ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Important because they have a lot of users. It's a direct restriction of freedom. China seems to do it mostly to protect the dogma's they base their rule on. Also they say such a big country can not be ruled with democracy and freedom.

      My solution would be to let go of the dogma's, they could explain why it's better to be moral.
      And give local government more political power so they need less oppression.

      The elite of Chinese society are not restricted unlike the unwashed populace. The Government of China, like every Western government, wants to ensure the chasm between the elite (1% ) and the general populace (99%) is demarcated such that nobody will question it. Governments are like the mafia.

    3. Re:'important' for whom ? by jandersen · · Score: 1

      My solution would be to let go of the dogma's, they could explain why it's better to be moral. And give local government more political power so they need less oppression.

      I think what you mean is, educate the people to understand and accept democracy; this is obviously a good idea, but not easily achieved. It isn't as simple as just understanding that you can vote for things; people have to learn to trust each other and the system, otherwise the losing side is not going to accept the result and it will end in chaos. On top of that, there will be powerful interests against its success - rich business owners and corrupt, local officials.

      Which is why it is not a good idea to give local government more power, before corruption at that level has been rooted out.

  3. Perhaps they want to sell hosting services by jmyers · · Score: 1

    Not just provide better access for domestic users.

    1. Re:Perhaps they want to sell hosting services by CavemanKiwi · · Score: 1

      Yes they would love to host all your companies data in the cloud!

  4. new chinese saying by itchybrain · · Score: 5, Funny

    Confucius says:

    "Sparkling light carries filtered wisdom. A house with no doors enters no one."

  5. China Lays More Cable by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    For all the sh*t coming out of China, the article should be labeled, "China Lays More Cable"

  6. All the better to hack you with! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Because, shit, they just didn't have the bandwidth to do a proper DDoS attack on multiple targets simultaneously or to attempt that brute force password hack.

  7. Slashdot Formatting Broken? by crunchy_one · · Score: 1

    I know this is OT. What the heck happened? Using two different browsers, Slashdot's page formatting is suddenly a mess. What happened?

  8. What's with the new look? by tehcyder · · Score: 1

    Slashdot now looks like a grey pile of shit.

    --
    To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
  9. Communism can work by Roodvlees · · Score: 1

    You just have to be practical about it instead of dogmatic and mix it with capitalism where needed.
    Sure China is a way too communistic and controlling for my taste, but the stupendous US dogma where capitalism and religion are supposed to magically fix everything is no better.
    Funny how China has better internet than the US.

    --
    Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
  10. And yet, still not enough bandwidth for Google by blind+biker · · Score: 1

    Still not enough bandwidth for Youtube or Google.

    --
    "The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
  11. Perhaps no so much for China to connect to the ROW by RevWaldo · · Score: 1

    Perhaps more for the ROW to connect to China. Dirt-cheap cloud services, anyone?

    .

    --
    Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
  12. Intenet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Gots to get me some of that good ol' timey Intenet. In my day it was called the Wold Wid Web, or some called it The Informaton Higway.

  13. China as a global interconnect? by userw014 · · Score: 1

    While this is purely speculation, could China be aiming to offer itself as a global (or even regional) interconnect? Or is the the ability to play NSA-like games on international traffic within home-borders just not a realistic possibility anymore?

    I'm thinking of how a "Chinese" error (in Germany) caused traffic between two Russian cities to be directed out-of-country (see http://research.dyn.com/2014/1... ).

    I can take the tin-foil hat off anytime I want to, but I really do like the propeller beanie.

  14. It is getting worse, not better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm in Guangzhou and can tell you it is worse than ever. Since last June, the connection between China and the rest of the world has become progressively worse and worse, almost to the point of being unusable today. I think something must be lost in translation. They didn't increase the bandwidth, it seems like they increased the amount of bandwidth they can filter. Everyone I know in the export business is having major internet problems now. The inability to do email, exchange files, collaborate, and protect our data is killing business. We and many others are seriously considering if it is worth it to continue to tolerate these small minded Chinese communists. The cost for us to make our products in several other Asian countries is already comparable to China now. The exodus has already begun.

    1. Re:It is getting worse, not better by Inkognitus · · Score: 1

      HK-Based VPNs cut it for me. I haven't had any issues, and I've been in GZ for 16 months. The inability to do email, exchange files, collaborate, and protect your data is your fault though.

    2. Re:It is getting worse, not better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Yeah they work great. Oh wait, they don't... The great firewall now has active VPN detection. PPTP is completely blocked. OpenVPN and LT2P are automatically detected and throttled, with continuous connection resets. If you use the same VPN server too much, it gets perma-blocked. The only good thing I can say is this is motivating creative nerds to develop new technology that is very difficult or impossible to block. There are a number of new distributed proxy-like applications already in beta. If we get internet freedom from this, maybe it is worth it.

    3. Re:It is getting worse, not better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Your full of it. We have an office in Shenzhen we have had HK based VPS servers VPN tunnels, the speed up doesn't happen if you need speed for a webserver in the chinese market it has to be in china and that means ICP license and all the bull that goes with it.

      We try and sync data between offices, our Shenzhen office is just abysmal even though we are paying thousands for a fibre connection as soon as you try and go somewhere outside of china it crawls. We wrap VPN's within SSL tunnels in an effort to keep the vpn working, with the china office randomly connecting to a new IP at our head office /24 range always using tcp 443 just to keep things less obvious that they are a VPN.

    4. Re:It is getting worse, not better by Agripa · · Score: 1

      OpenVPN and LT2P are automatically detected and throttled, with continuous connection resets.

      I understand the problem with TCP but how do they reset an OpenVPN tunnel over UDP?

  15. The letter R is also blocked by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I have it on good authority that the letter R is also blocked when it is used in certain controversial words.

  16. Avenue Q on line three... by Thud457 · · Score: 1

    China Lays More Cable , Improving Physical Connection To the Worldwide Internet

    there, FTFY...
    BOW-CHIKA-WOW-WOW

    --

    the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

  17. This has nothing to do with their population. by Puls4r · · Score: 4, Interesting

    China is preparing for a cyber war. They've watched what happened to North Korea. Having more direct connections to the net both prevents you from being DDOS'd as easily and allows you to counterattack. It's a simple numbers game. The person with the biggest pipe is going to end up winning the fight.

    1. Re:This has nothing to do with their population. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's a good point. But NATO as an entity also has a lot of entry points. The 5 eyes: US, NZ, Aus, Canada, Canada, has a lot of entry points. Aus and NZ seems a bit off the surveillance grid. China is pretty much surrounded.

    2. Re:This has nothing to do with their population. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They also infect their people as part of the botnet for DDoS those pipes will use.

    3. Re:This has nothing to do with their population. by tlhIngan · · Score: 1

      China is preparing for a cyber war. They've watched what happened to North Korea. Having more direct connections to the net both prevents you from being DDOS'd as easily and allows you to counterattack. It's a simple numbers game. The person with the biggest pipe is going to end up winning the fight.

      Doubt it. NK has barely any internet presence - you can probably count the number of hosts based on NK. All the DDoS meant was well, the Glorious Leader missed out on cat videos for the day essentially.

      And NK doesn't have many users to begin with - many African nations have far more internet users than NK.

    4. Re:This has nothing to do with their population. by ArcadeMan · · Score: 1

      You listed Canada twice, eh?

      --
      Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
    5. Re:This has nothing to do with their population. by dave420 · · Score: 1

      He likes Canada, friend.

    6. Re:This has nothing to do with their population. by ArcadeMan · · Score: 1

      I'm not your friend, guy.

      --
      Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
  18. Perhaps this is about internal connectivity. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Using Google translate on the Chinese press release linked to in the IT World article, leads me to
    believe this is more about strengthening the internal network connectivity in China then increasing
    capacity/links to the outside world. I can't find any mention of any new connectivity outside China,
    but several mentions of various provinces, national inter-networking, etc...

    1. Re:Perhaps this is about internal connectivity. by lazyBob · · Score: 1

      Exactly. Only China internal networks gets the speed boost.

  19. North Korean Hackers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Will be the big winners.

  20. Fiber? by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 2

    Yeah, usually more fiber means you lay more cable...

    --
    Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
  21. Complete waste of time by ukoda · · Score: 2

    As someone who recently lived in China for a couple of years I can tell you it is a complete waste of time. The Internet in China is so badly broken it is an open joke and it must be holding back the development of China. When you dig into the problem you quickly discover ALL your traffic passes through a single IP address, which I assume is the Great Firewall of China. This IP address not only makes your routes longer and traffic flow slower it also breaks different traffic types in different way depending on the service you want to use and the destination IP.

    Adding more bandwidth to the country will have zero effect while all traffic is filter through a single bottle neck, their firewall. If they really wanted to improve performance they need to take the firewall out of the route, that would be far more effective than more fibre.

    There is a lot to like about living in China but somethings, over time, drive you nuts. The biggest one for me was not having a reliable Internet connection, after two years of fighting for every packet I had had enough. It was so good to be back home where the Internet works as intended.

  22. Consider this the MIRV of cyber-warfare. by RealGene · · Score: 1

    My auth.log is crammed on a daily basis with access attempts from .cn addresses.
    It would be hard to be taken seriously as a cyber superpower if one strike could sever your connection to the internet. This is just redundancy.

    --
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