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Hosting in mainland China?
6 points by myshortname 4833 days ago
Does anyone know of a good VPS host in mainland China? We'd need a small VPS only (for hosting static files), preferably Ubuntu.

Thus far we've been hosted in AWS in Japan, but apparently websites hosted outside of mainland China are really slow for Chinese visitors.

We'd prefer a host that has English support, but it's not an absolute requirement. We do have staff in China, but they're not tech guys, so it'd be hard for them to fix problems.

Also: Would we need an ICP license? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICP_license)
1 comments
remyt 4833 days ago
Hi,

There is, but not with English support. It's not true, but China is huge and latency can be an issue, depending on the service you want to host.

If you host in China you DO need an ICP license. One of your Chinese staff will have to register one for you. Choose someone you trust.

link
myshortname 4833 days ago
What if I choose a Hong Kong host - then I don't need an ICP license, right?

Is the speed acceptable for mainland Chinese visitors if the website is hosted in Hong Kong?

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Pyramids 4833 days ago
Hong Kong or Singapore are much better choices, especially if you only need to host static files, as you avoid the legal requirements of having an ICP license. If you decided on a chinese provider anyway, be aware that almost all providers either block port 80 or filter unlicensed HTTP traffic (by deep packet inspection and automatic lookups against the sent "Host:" header.)

Keep in mind, latency in China is often high to begin with, so don't expect the same results as you'd get in most countries. For example, here is a trace from Beijing (Telecom+Unicom Route Optimized) to 36Cloud:

  traceroute to 123.242.224.27 (123.242.224.27), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
   1  118.244.160.1 (118.244.160.1)  1.110 ms  1.139 ms  1.207 ms
   2   (124.207.18.125)  1.882 ms  2.632 ms  2.586 ms
   3   (124.202.11.61)  2.617 ms  2.747 ms  3.011 ms
   4  219.239.92.193 (219.239.92.193)  2.603 ms  2.937 ms  3.007 ms
   5  58.19.arpa.hb.cnc.cn (58.19.112.241)  26.950 ms  26.911 ms  26.947 ms
   6  58.19.arpa.hb.cnc.cn (58.19.112.5)  25.141 ms  28.073 ms  19.810 ms
   7  219.158.99.201 (219.158.99.201)  41.906 ms  41.745 ms  41.723 ms
   8  219.158.100.194 (219.158.100.194)  66.004 ms  65.917 ms  65.833 ms
   9  219.158.11.190 (219.158.11.190)  65.744 ms  67.349 ms  67.274 ms
   10  219.158.97.6 (219.158.97.6)  62.020 ms  61.966 ms  61.983 ms
   11  219.158.29.130 (219.158.29.130)  71.800 ms  71.743 ms  71.687 ms
   12  219.158.33.118 (219.158.33.118)  69.861 ms  70.179 ms  81.530 ms
   13  61.8.40.149 (61.8.40.149)  81.380 ms  81.305 ms  81.237 ms
   14  61.8.40.150 (61.8.40.150)  81.165 ms  81.095 ms  81.022 ms
   15  gi7-0-9.core1.hk01.sunnyvision.com (123.242.225.2)  84.300 ms  84.146 ms  84.033 ms
   16  123-242-224-27.sunnyvision.com (123.242.224.27)  80.617 ms  80.544 ms  80.470 ms
Another option to consider if you need an SLA or have concerns regarding availability would be Internap's Public Cloud in Singapore (Very good peering and availability, uses Internap's FCP dynamic routing technique. You can expect less than 100ms from almost anywhere in mainland China, while not compromising routing to everywhere else.)

Ping from Beijing (same network as above) to Internap Singapore:

   PING 202.58.10.86 (202.58.10.86) 56(84) bytes of data.
   64 bytes from 202.58.10.86: icmp_seq=1 ttl=239 time=80.9 ms
   64 bytes from 202.58.10.86: icmp_seq=2 ttl=239 time=82.6 ms
   64 bytes from 202.58.10.86: icmp_seq=3 ttl=239 time=86.1 ms
   64 bytes from 202.58.10.86: icmp_seq=4 ttl=239 time=82.7 ms
   64 bytes from 202.58.10.86: icmp_seq=5 ttl=239 time=85.2 ms
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