Today I learned about the factors of packet-loss around the Chinese internet. Internet within China is not slow. Especially in larger cities your speed-test (app) will probably show very respectable number. However when it comes to talking to “the real internet” outside of China, you’ll notice packet-loss. This originates in multiple factors, first and foremost probably to “the great firewall” which assigns foreign connections a suspiciousness score and automatically introduces packet-loss, according to Wikipedia. But a research done by Pengxiong Zhu, which is discussed on the APNIC website, discusses another possibility which points at economics around the Chinese ISPs, which might tried to artificially shortening peering to drive prices up. However the research points out that it requires more research to verify this.

I came across this after reading a blog article about fwupd having problems with packet-loss towards Chinese users. As I have some experience with this sort of problem myself, I decided to verify my theory about intentional packet dropping on a “Great Firewall”-level. Which to some degree was confirmed.