I would be very appreicate of any advice on good (and cheap if possible) VPN services in order to get through facbook, youtube etc.

I've used the 11vpn.com service but it looked more like a scam thought it was only 100 kuai a year.

Thanks in advance.

There may be many reasons why VPN may not work with your computer or connection. If you need advice, look here :

www.strongvpn.com/faq.shtml
www.strongvpn.com/forum/
StrongVPN's site is one of the best VPN I have seen.
(I cannot see a reason, why 11vpn.com shouldn' work)

Thanks LaoBenDan, the 11vpn.com works but the only reason I refuse to use it is because it has a tiny little usage allowance which doesn't even allow you to visit sites such as youtube, nor to stalk your friends' photos on facebook as it claims you will use a lot of traffics by seeing many pictures. The strongvpn looks quite good, a little expensive though, what about Linkideo or Witopia?

I've found Witopia to be excellent, have never had any problems with it, though when local internet access is slow, Witopia also crawls.

Just make sure you get at least the $59.99/yearly pkg vs. the 39.99 one. The former is SSL, the latter PPTP. The PPTP service is blocked in China.

the witopia PPTP service is not blocked in China, however it is sporadic and does need a couple of attempts to connect.

I've used witopia for a long time and find them ok but slow quite often.

the openvpn client slows things down a bit so if you can get a vpn with native operating system support it'll work a bit quicker.

I've found that L2TP/IPSec VPNs work really well now and the protocol is not blocked by China Unicom or China Mobile (which PPTP is), therefore I can even use facebook from my phone on the street. A couple of services I've tried recently are www.vpnaccounts.com and www.vpngates.com (both offer PPTP, L2TP and Openvpn).

If you've got Windows Vista or Windows 7 you can get an SSTP VPN. This is a new protocol which uses SSL like openvpn but is natively supported in newer versions of Windows and runs a lot faster than OpenVPN - if you have XP, OSX or Linux unfortunately you cant use SSTP.

One thing that is advisable is to change your DNS settings to use OpenDNS (see www.opendns.com). Sometimes VPNs still don't work for certain sites because the local ISP (China Telecom) has messed around with the DNS settings so that the domain name doesn't match the IP address. If you use OpenDNS you can get round this (although you'll still need a VPN to connect to the site itself). It is best to edit the DNS settings on your router if you can but failing that it can be done at the computer level.

ultravpn.fr is free and gets the job done.

you just need to play with the config file for it to work here.

Thanks Greginchina the L2TP/IPSec sounds great but I don't really use facebook on my phone here so i guess i'd stick to the OpenVPN.

Also many thanks to kickkick for reminding me to change the config for the ultravpn!! It's now working again!!!!

Bump. Anybody got a recent recommendation for a reputable VPN service for OSX. My Witopia account just expired and I'm not going to renew. Too slow and the connection seems to drop out constantly. Cheers.

I use AceVPN $5/mo reliable with no problems. I've used ExpatVPN also with no problems.

Quote: "the openvpn client slows things down a bit so if you can get a vpn with native operating system support it'll work a bit quicker."

I realize that advice was from a year ago and the situation may have changed.

I still use Open VPN and find it reliable, with very little speed degradation. What are examples of services for use inside China with "native operating system support?" (I use Windows XP and am only interested in VPN for my laptop, not for a mobile device.)

Thanks.