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We deal in B2B, and work as a bridge between china's manufacturers, and worldwide customers. Because a lot of backend stuff have to be done daily, we initially set up our servers in Hong Kong at a datacenter, as a USA server were prone to shutoffs from the Great FW(Fire Wall of China), and during protestaional period, or summits, access outside of China slows down to a crawl with it's filtering security running at full blast!
So anyway. Even with the server being in Hong Kong, and our office at northern China, it's still very taxing for our corporation to do daily tasks like updates, emails and whatnots. Productivity is running at 50% of it's possible capacity.
But then in my own experience, we could not afford to place our server in china itself, as access worldwide into China's network would also be unbearable!
We are using China Telecom(the big monopoly of ISP), with 2mb pipe access plan quite close to a cbd district in Beijing. We also need to cater to our agents across all provinces, of their access as well.
On certain days, of certain hour, access from our office to server could be pleasantly fast, but majority of the time, it's unbearable for me, in a business sens..
I've tried so many times talking to the management of the Hong Kong datacenter, but they have shown me proof that the problem is not from their center's end, and insists on us talking to our ISP(China telecom), which is a hopeless cause, as China Telecom services to 6 billion populations at least, and we have no influence, connections whatsoever to ask them to place us on their filtering white-list, which they deny exists anyway!
I'm not certain about this ofcourse, which I'm hoping to ask the community, if it is possible to place our server inside China itself, while not affecting worldwide access towards our server. Or is there any way that I can gain more stable, high-speed access for our office at least?
Regards,
Urban
The threads from Bill are a handful, so I'm going to read through all of them asap. bill's linked thread looks similar to what I have in this situation..
Sincerely,
Urban
Thanks to all,
Urban
Hosting our backend in USA, will definitely hinder our staff and supplier's productivity due to the filtration system.
Hosting in China, we have not, and do not have the resource to test, of impacts from OVerseas clients towards the chinese server (USA aside, we also have to cater towards African, European, South American crowd), and customers are where the money's at.
In our company's situation, hosting it in China would be the best choice ofcourse. However, I'm not sure how big corporates does it (Alibaba, Globalsources etc).
I'd like to re-point out that our company's architecture is no where as large as the companies I mentioned above..
So...can I please have more reader's advice and input in this situation?
Thanks everyone.
Urban
What our company need is:
Email delivery - (this plagues us the worst)
We wanted to use a CMS system for our emails, but couldn't due to unstability of speed. The CMS is fully databased, so in this instance, how should I set up the system to grab and retrieve information with regards to the CMS system? On top of that, each staff have 1 to 3 dedicated POP3 company accounts to them as well.
In our office location in china, sending any emails larger than 2MB kills us.
Having china, USA servers and load balancing them is quite a daunting task, and I'm not certain that I'm ready for it (only 1 networking guy in company, won't be able to hire another)
My boss is set on the idea of having 1 server in China, as producitivity matters. However on this point, can anyone confirm my suspicion that having a china IP address, our SEO efforts will have a severe impact on the search engines? Is there anyway around it?
My apologies, my general computing knowledge stops at php and mysql queries. The company's depending on me to set up this system, and I know very little about Linux and networking. I really need more help and guidance on our situations..
Email delivery
You did very wrong job what place a server to H.K, so you certainlly think that H.K is out of GFW and have good connectivity within china, It is 100% WRONG.
China Telecom Beijing Branch(your beijing office ISP) is very small business and market coverage. here in beijing,china, most of place,you have to use china telecom or china netcom, not more ISPs available! so you have to use china telecom in your office building.
Regarding the seo effects, there is a little,but ip address is not only 1 reason cause ranking changed in S.E.
[edited by: bill at 7:05 am (utc) on May 9, 2008]
[edit reason] no e-mail addresses please [/edit]
Even if you move your hosting in China you will need to make sure that your email server is kept overseas.
I suggest to clients to host in the US and save yourself the headaches unless your business is 100% based in China, or you are willing o invest in dual geo hosting options.
