Got a web server? Host a website? Then you've got a free secure connection to the Internet. A non-technical rundown, really quite simple.

Ingredients:
1. Server/webserver account with SSH abilities. (SSH is a method of communication that allows information to be exchanged over a secure channel. Encryption provides integrity and prevents snooping of data. (Unless someone has a really really powerful computer and a week to spare decrypting a single email).)
2. A computer with an Internet connection.
3. SSH software. Linux and Mac OSX users already have this. Windows users' best option is to download PuTTY, support and installation instructions on the website, if you don't like PuTTY more software here here.

I cannot access Youtube.

But what can one do? I don't care much for random questions about accessing a randomly blocked website, I care about how to run a website seamlessly.

I must expand on this in the future, but for now a quick synapsis: blocking of websites occurs across many countries:

The US, often held up as an example of a bastion of free Internet access occurs not so much from the consitution, more from the 'common carrier' status of telecom networks in the US - in short they carry stuff, who knows what they carry, but not filtering (supposidly) what is carried also means they cannot compete by charging different rates for different customers. [Of course different connection speeds, latency, etc, can get different rates, but the key point is Common Carriers are not allowed to filter stuff for different levels of service.]

In China, filtering happens. There have been cases brought to court about filtering not being consistent with the law. These cases, to the best of my knowledge, are undergoing appeal (having been heard) or have been rejected (with the plaintiff going to a higher court - all cases I know of undergoing appeal for hearing in the higher court also).

In China blocking happens. A block is different from a filter. In a filter the contents are checked to be compliant. In a block all traffic to a domain name and/or server is stopped. The recent Flickr block is an example and the seemingly new Youtube and Delicious blocks are also an example of this type of block. [Note the Flickr.com domain name was not blocked with the recent Flickr block, rather the URLs of the servers were blocked (while the IP addresses were not blocked, allowing even really really really lazy webmasters to keep serving Flickr photos).]

So, enough discussion, and please don't send emails to me asking for a proxy to access stuff because I will not give it to you. Pragmatic:
Want to serve embedded videos on your site that are accessible from China? Upload them to Youku.com, tudou.com, or one of the many YouTube clones in mainland China. Note that Youku is very slow from outside mainland China, so smart people may like to use a quick Javascript function to first determine whether or not the visitor if from outside mainland China, then show the version they uploaded to YouTube or YouKu depending upon their location.

Basic principal, as always, adjust your website to fix your users' needs. Don't expect your users to download Firefox and any number of dodgy extensions when it is easily fixed server side.

Will post tomorrow with useful code/patches/modules/hacks for the imposed pain. I can't wait for the Peoples' [sic] Congress to be over.

Perry Wu, just wrote a story complaining about bloggers in China: “Bloggers in China complaining recently about their inability to access weblog tools and websites like BlogSpot, Blogger, Wordpress, and FeedBurner should shut up or put up.” Harsh words indeed, but his tone cools further into the article and I actually agree with him on a pragmatic level, it is often quicker to solve the problem than complain about it.

Below is how to stop Net Nanny being a headache (I have written about all these things before, but here they are in a simple package):

I recently downloaded 3D Traceroute and have been having fun with it. Traceroute is an age-old tool that lets the user follow the stages across an Intranet and/or the Internet, to see what nodes, or routers, the data passes through. It allows analysis to show where the connection may slow. I downloaded this package in particular because it presents the results in nice 3D and 2D graphs. Traceroute packages ‘ping’ each node along the connection path, showing the ‘speed’ to each node in the overall connection.

Here’s an example picture:

It shows the nodes (discrete) along the horizontal axis, and the time (continuous) along the vertical axis. Higher times are bad, because that means the time needed to connect to this part of the connection is slower.... What is causing slower connection times?

Your website has been blocked. It needs unblocking, first you need to ask ‘why has my website been blocked’ then you need to work out ‘how to make it viewable’.

Ever see this? Nightmare!

The Oiwan Lam case has been all over the Internet, or at least some of the Internet. This case is important if you've got a site hosted in Hong Kong. A good summary of the case is here and there's an MP3 recording with Oiwan Lam being interviewed by the BBC

Ryan, inspired by Kim had the idea of a group writing project: If I Knew Then What I Know Now. Nice idea, should help a few others out; here is my spin, Internet related:

I've been tweaking the site a little, please update your feed links. Lots of content is awaiting!

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Cheers,

Alex