VOIP blocked

[Shanghai Pete]

I use a MagicJack (and previously Vonage) from Shanghai. Its well known that the government censors the internet here and one of their targets is VOIP. It is a bit sporadic -- sometimes the connection works great, other times it is terrible. Recently I believe they are getting better and more consistent at messing with VOIP connections.

What usually happens is the call goes through and then a few seconds or a few minutes into the conversation the line goes dead. This can last for 10 seconds or longer and then the connection will come back. If the conversation continues quite often my internet connection will be reset and the call will be disconnected. I have a cable connection and can hear my modem being reset.

I have recently started using a VPN which is great for regular internet usage. Can get to all blocked sites (freetibet.org, falun.org, etc, this site) and the connection is noticeably quicker. When I try to use my MagicJack for calls through the VPN however, my connection is very quickly disconnected. Usually as soon as I turn on the phone to get a dial tone I'll here the connection reset.

Any thoughts on how I might be able to work around Big Brother here?

[maine-iac]

As much as some here might want to help, how do we know that you are not in fact Big Brother, trying to gather more ideas about how to block magicJack and other applications from your people? I doubt that anyone in China would freely admit that they were accessing freetibet.org, falun.org, etc, even with a VPN. Sorry to sound so cynical, but even here in recent years in the free USA our government has been spying on communications without any legal warrants in the name of chasing down terrorists.

[lymon]

...Any thoughts on how I might be able to work around Big Brother here?

It's as the Great Helmsman once said, "political power grows from the port of the router..." or words to that effect.

good luck friend.

[Shanghai Pete]

As much as some here might want to help, how do we know that you are not in fact Big Brother, trying to gather more ideas about how to block magicJack and other applications from your people? I doubt that anyone in China would freely admit that they were accessing freetibet.org, falun.org, etc, even with a VPN. Sorry to sound so cynical, but even here in recent years in the free USA our government has been spying on communications without any legal warrants in the name of chasing down terrorists.

Well, let see......

Remember those old WWII movies? You could ask me who won the 1942 World Series (the Yankees). Or use a McCain tactic -- name the front line of the Green Bay Packers (afraid I'd fail that one, but I can name Brett Favre!).

Seriously, any help would be greatly appreciated and I promise not to pass it along to the Chinese government (I live/work here, but from the US; I don't know if accessing freetibet.og is illegal or not since I'm not Chinese, but interesting to see if it is accessible through a VPN -- it is.)

I do use a commercial VPN provider (gotrusted.com) and they do work great for general web surfing. I've used free services in the past (like anonymouse.org, which is now blocked) but paid services are much more reliable. I was hoping that paying for a VPN would solve my VOIP blocking problem but that doesn't seem to be the case.

[maine-iac]

Well, I won't cut you to see if you bleed red, white, and blue, but as far as working through a VPN, I haven't seen anyone addressing that issue here, not that there hasn't been some discussion on that topic. A lot of people here are having many problems just running magicjack on plain old cable and DSL; throwing a VPN into the mix would most likely create additional problems as you have undoubtedly discovered.

[testing123]

Just want to address the question about using MJ over VPN -- I have heard of a few who have had problems doing it.

It probably depends on how your connection is established with your provider.

i.e.,
is it via Proxying?
is it via SSH Tunneling?
is it via customized software?

Some things to explore:
IE Proxy Setttings - Even though this is in IE, it can modify the behavior of all your networking under Windoze
Hosts file - Hosts could be setup to redirect MJ Proxy Servers addresses to other IPs (might be useful if, for example, you use SSH Tunneling)

If you search this forum, you will find plenty of info on the latter (hosts file modifications).