Hi, I will soon be going to China for about 40 days. I wonder if V2Ray would be worth setting up. If so, what set up would work best for me. Or would I be better off with VPN like letsVPN?
I would want to be able to access Youtube, Discord, Slack and Zoom meetings during my stay in China.
“Do you know how to use SSH”
If the answer is yes, setup a Hysteria2 server on AWS Lightsail JP.
If the answer is no, don’t bother.
Not really, to be honest, unless you’re tech-savvy and can do it without too much hassle. The VPNs that work in China are more expensive and slower, but they do a fine job for a short stay. V2Ray, in my opinion, is more something you want to set up on a home router for longer stays.
40 days isn’t all that short, but ditto to the “do you know ssh” question. You’d barely save $10 at most by going self hosted.
I am using it as V2Ray plugin in my shadowsocks installation in the raspberry Pi 4 in my home country and it works perfectly while in China for almost 2 weeks now
Just subscribe to a proxy service that offers v2ray or any of the alternatives that work currently. Much cheaper than any of the vpns that work in China and better. Happy to make rec in DM
If you need a reliable option (say if your work depends heavily on Internet quality) I would recommend https://zoogvpn.com/, they worked perfectly for me every time I visited China. But as the others said, short duration plan are likely more expensive.
or if you feel like testing ur luck, send me a DM, I can provide you some free v2ray server to test out (setup on some cheap VPS I bought before)
p/s: Slack works without VPN
What platform are you using? iPhone, Android, Windows, or MacBook?
If you are doing normal business or traveling instead of being a spy, I can help you.
You can use your mobile roaming service.
I am right now in China and visit China quite often. For a 40 days stay my suggestion is like this (assuming you have all required technical skills.)
Maybe roaming from your home country is best bet. No GFW but signal WILL be weaker then China domestic SIM. I have both SIM on same phone and It’s quite common for both my roaming SIM and local SIM running on the same provider but domestic signal is full while roaming is almost no signal.
Tailscale: Tailscale works surprising stable in China. I have 4 Exit nodes around the globe (VPS) and they all works flawlessly. Plus, setup is easy. Downside is only 1 exit node can be used at any time and the need to disconnect for domestic app.
V2ray: I have 3 exit nodes on two countries. When it works (especially with balancer setting where you could run all nodes concurrently to combine bandwidth) it works wonderfully, but connection is not stable and doesn’t work anywhere. It seems GFW somehow has ways to find the traffic pattern and block here and there. Thus, I need to change the IP of exit nodes from time to time. Like one of my current exit nodes the IP is being “blocked” since yesterday, resulting in an extremely long ping time. Changing IP will fix this but I don’t want to remote reconfigure IP for my server for the risk of not being able to reconnect it. I end up setting a new exit node on a VPS, since spin up a new container is easier. V2Ray is really a hit and miss situation. Good thing about V2ray is it will separate China and non-China traffic so all your China app (Alipay/WeChat pay) will work at high speed while you could access Google like GFW doesn’t exists!
TL;DR:
Tailscale is the way to go. (Just don’t forget to disconnect Tailscale for faster Alipay/WeChat pay at metro or payment when local net access is available)
For use with the hotel network, Tailscale is also the champ.
I think you’re right . It OP can ssh into their server then definitely they might not need to be that tech savvy it they use Hiddify
Rprx-vision+reality is better than using hy2,bc using quic-liked connection for huge traffic will be limited by some providers in China(finally 5mbps)
Thanks for the response. I’ll try out nextVPN and see if it works in China.
Are you sure? In my experience Express + Nord rarely work if ever. Undercurrentss was my go to for reliable and fast VPN.
would be happy if you make rec.
How have you setup tailscale? I was lead to believe UPD / wireguard / tailscale is actively being blocked.
I used wireguard to several self hosted VPS last month and ports were being blocked after 24hrs.
V2ray/Xray worked really well for me. Not had a issue (so far). I believe its still the go to method which is why it is being discussed in this /r/
I tested mostly on CU in the north (both against lightsail and a CN2+CUG VPS in LAX), I didn’t see any issues. I did turn on port hopping.
Geph works in China, just in case if your VPN would not work
Last week I visited several cities in China and Tailscale works pretty solid. I can jump the wall reliably over the mobile network as well as the hotel and restaurant internet.
Actually I have V2Ray, Tailscale and Wireguard setup and use whatever works at that moment. V2Ray has the benefit to separate China/non-China traffic so Alipay and WeChat Pay still work fast (especially with gate at subway) but it’s spotty when travel around. I use it on my mobile phone to keep Whatsapp connection while making payment with Alipay snappy.
Tailscale is very stable and solid but you need to turn it off for payment most of the time so I use it on my NB when the stable connecting to the outside network is crucial.
BTW, for even better stability I suggest setting up exit servers in multiple countries. V2Ray could combine bandwidth from many exit servers and Tailscale can switch servers quickly. I found sometimes the Great Fire Wall will block my exit server IP, regardless which tool I use.
Wireguard does not work well since a lot of places just block UDP traffic and unlike Tailscale, wireguard has no fallback mechanism once UDP is blocked. When Wireguard works, it’s fast since there is very little overhead compared to other solutions.
The main issue for me isn’t GFW scans at all. Encrypted DNS types all work perfectly fine and even wireguard packets go through fine. Main issue is peering and peak period bandwidth. CM v6 is probably one of the cheapest ways.