> find out direct evidence of mandatory content filtering at the border You seem to be implying that you don't believe/can't see the GFW, which seems surprising. I've personally had issues with traffic crossing it getting RST'd (luckily I was fortunate enough to cross through a GFW instance which was easy to avoid with a simple iptables DROP), but its also one of the most well-studied bits of opaque internet censorship gear in the world. I'm not sure how you could possibly miss it.
Matt On 3/2/20 2:55 PM, Pengxiong Zhu wrote: > Yes, we agree. The poor transnational Internet performance effectively > puts any foreign business that does not have a physical presence (i.e., > servers) in China at a disadvantage. > The challenge is to find out direct evidence to prove mandatory content > filtering at the border, if the government is actually doing it. > > Best, > Pengxiong Zhu > Department of Computer Science and Engineering > University of California, Riverside > > > On Mon, Mar 2, 2020 at 8:38 AM Matt Corallo <na...@as397444.net > <mailto:na...@as397444.net>> wrote: > > It also gives local competitors a leg up by helping domestic apps > perform better simply by being hosted domestically (or making > foreign players host inside China). > >> On Mar 2, 2020, at 11:27, Ben Cannon <b...@6by7.net >> <mailto:b...@6by7.net>> wrote: >> >> >> It’s the Government doing mandatory content filtering at the >> border. Their hardware is either deliberately or accidentally >> poor-performing. >> >> I believe providing limited and throttled external connectivity >> may be deliberate; think of how that curtails for one thing; >> streaming video? >> >> -Ben. >> >> -Ben Cannon >> CEO 6x7 Networks & 6x7 Telecom, LLC >> b...@6by7.net <mailto:b...@6by7.net> >> >> >> >>> On Mar 1, 2020, at 9:00 PM, Pengxiong Zhu <pzhu...@ucr.edu >>> <mailto:pzhu...@ucr.edu>> wrote: >>> >>> Hi all, >>> >>> We are a group of researchers at University of California, >>> Riverside who have been working on measuring the transnational >>> network performance (and have previously asked questions on the >>> mailing list). Our work has now led to a publication in >>> Sigmetrics 2020 and we are eager to share some >>> interesting findings. >>> >>> We find China's transnational networks have extremely poor >>> performance when accessing foreign sites, where the throughput is >>> often persistently >>> low (e.g., for the majority of the daytime). Compared to other >>> countries we measured including both developed and developing, >>> China's transnational network performance is among the worst >>> (comparable and even worse than some African countries). >>> >>> Measuring from more than 400 pairs of mainland China and foreign >>> nodes over more than 53 days, our result shows when data >>> transferring from foreign nodes to China, 79% of measured >>> connections has throughput lower than the 1Mbps, sometimes it is >>> even much lower. The slow speed occurs only during certain times >>> and forms a diurnal pattern that resembles congestion >>> (irrespective of network protocol and content), please see the >>> following figure. The diurnal pattern is fairly stable, 80% to >>> 95% of the transnational connections have a less than 3 hours >>> standard deviation of the slowdown hours each day over the entire >>> duration. However, the speed rises up from 1Mbps to 4Mbps in >>> about half an hour. >>> >>> >>> We are able to confirm that high packet loss rates and delays are >>> incurred in the foreign-to-China direction only. Moreover, the >>> end-to-end loss rate could rise up to 40% during the slow period, >>> with ~15% on average. >>> >>> There are a few things noteworthy regarding the phenomenon. First >>> of all, all traffic types are treated equally, HTTP(S), VPN, >>> etc., which means it is discriminating or differentiating any >>> specific kinds of traffic. Second, we found for 71% of >>> connections, the bottleneck is located inside China (the second >>> hop after entering China or further), which means that it is >>> mostly unrelated to the transnational link itself (e.g., >>> submarine cable). Yet we never observed any such domestic traffic >>> slowdowns within China. >>> Assuming this is due to congestion, it is unclear why the >>> infrastructures within China that handles transnational traffic >>> is not even capable to handle the capacity of transnational >>> links, e.g., submarine cable, which maybe the most expensive >>> investment themselves. >>> >>> Here is the link to our paper: >>> https://www.cs.ucr.edu/~zhiyunq/pub/sigmetrics20_slowdown.pdf >>> >>> We appreciate any comments or feedback. >>> -- >>> >>> Best, >>> Pengxiong Zhu >>> Department of Computer Science and Engineering >>> University of California, Riverside >>
