Hi everyone - I was asked by my friend in China to post something for them here because their internet is being blocked. I don’t have enough experience with it to help so I hope you guys can provide some info! Friend says:
"Tried asking this in the discord server but no one’s replied yet.
My husband and I just moved to Shanghai and we bought an ASUS router in Poland and installed ExpressVPN directly onto the router before coming. He and his dad tested it at home and it worked just fine.
Today, the realtor had a guy install the internet in our new apartment. Provider’s Great Wall Broadbank Network. Came with a router, so we thought we could just switch routers. Nope. Not working at all.
My husband is wondering how to configure the connection so that the new router from Poland with ExpressVPN connects to the internet.
Alternatively, I installed the Express VPN app onto my iPad, but it’s just not connecting at ALL either. Help?"
I have bad news for you. It sounds like your internet provider is a re-seller. Only China Telecom, China Unicom, and China Mobile have their own international bandwidth. These re-sellers are getting their bandwidth from the 3 ISPs and usually over-selling it. Any VPN connection or connection to a foreign website/server will be slow and unreliable. See if you can change your internet provider and use of the 3 main ISPs.
As for your router, you can just plug the WAN port of the VPN router to one of the spare LAN ports on your ISP router. Make sure that the gateway IP of each router is on a different subnet. For example, see the configuration in this tutorial.
If it’s anything like installing VyprVPN on a router, you won’t be able to, period.
Every internet connection I’ve had in China uses PPPoE for authentication and it’s not compatible with the special router software (according to VyprVPN).
If it is somehow compatible, the router probably isn’t working because you haven’t signed in.
No idea what " Great Wall Broadbank Network" is. Probably leases lines from China Telecom, Unicom, or Mobile.
Have you tried plugging the router directly to the Chinese router? Does it work? Also are you sure that the Chinese router is a router and not a box with other capabilities? Some have reported that some internet providers that lease lines use some boxes that prohibit the use of vpns. Are you sure that you dont have one of these boxes?
Madam，I know a way that may help You.
Change your APP Store account to a Taiwan account ，where you can download VPN freely，its name is lantern，which means “蓝灯” in Chinese,it’s free and safe,if you don’t have aTaiwan accout,you can buy a shared accout in Taobao,it’s our eBay.it’s very cheap.About 4~10 Yuan.You have learned that we can not find any useful VPN in our APP store.So it’s the normalst way we download VPN.
I hope it will help you.
Every internet connection I’ve had in China uses PPPoE for authentication and it’s not compatible with the special router software (according to VyprVPN).
That is why I suggested to connect the router with express VPN to the a router that connects to the internet box.