[bnomis]

The fact that RST is sent mid stream in no way lessens the point that the content monitoring leads to a narrowing of bandwidth which slows things down.

HK's Internet Infrastructure maybe its own but it is still this side of the Pacific and it is a lot faster to access US sites from HK than it is from China. And if, as you said, China traffic is routed through HK then the only difference is the GFW which is slowing things down.

[est]

So what's your point? I don't see how GFW slows the Internet down in any way. Except RST packets bandwidth which is too tiny.

[bnomis]

Just because you don't see how it slows things down does not mean that it does not slow things down. The web in China is slower than the web in HK. Why? I don't know precisely because I don't have access to the GFW of course. Think of it as a funnel, the communication has to pass through the funnel so that the RST (or whatever) can be inserted. There's only so much BW in to and out of the funnel - so the traffic slows. The very fact the filtering happens must insert some delay.

Have you tried the web in China?

[est]

I am sorry but I don't see any reasonable facts or explanation of how GFW slows the Internet down. HK is fast because your ISP is fast, it has nothing to do with GFW. I can download from ThePirateBay with the speed of 37MB/s in Chinese CERNET, and I can watch Youtube HD/HQ videos in ChinaTeleCom's 1Mb ADSL smoothly in midnight when the Internet is not busy.

I am a native Chinese living in China. And the tool I am using to visit youtube does not require any 3rd-party servers, it hacks into GFW and establish connections to blocked sites directly. :)