VPN Between UK and China

Yaayuh! · 4 Jul 2013 at 09:20

Hi All, long shot but worth a try.

Has anyone here got any experience in connecting a UK office and an office in China via hardware VPN?

We currently have a Cisco ASA VPN connection setup here in the UK and a few users in China connect via the Cisco VPN Client software. However, China being China, it's unstable and will just disconnect randomly.

I need to find a way to get a constant stable connection, if possible. I was thinking getting an ASA for the China office and running a hardware VPN connection, but i'm not sure it's going to help all that much.

Any advice appreciated.

richard smith · 4 Jul 2013 at 10:53

We have two sites in China. Beijing and Shanhgai. We use Cisco DMVPN to link them with the rest of the world using (generally) 2911 routers

Most of the time it works however we do occasionally see the odd bit of packet loss, or the tunnels dropping for a a few seconds or longer. Longer drops are rare but this year we've probably had a couple of drops that lasted for an hour or longer.

mr.bond · 4 Jul 2013 at 21:29

Yes we've got an office in Shangai, use china telecom for the ISP and Watchguards to build the vpn tunnels back to the UK.
Works a treat.

soisix · 4 Jul 2013 at 22:11

Previously linked up China and Thailand with VPN - we found we needed to move the VPN Hardware to a Datacenter in Shanghai - and then they provided a private link from Datacenter to our office and worked a treat.

However for some services it was better and faster to loop through the USA - occasionally politics gets in the way of the internet and then the speeds get throttled.

But UK to China should be fine

D

Yaayuh! · 5 Jul 2013 at 08:24

Cheers guys, thanks for the info.

DRZ · 12 Jul 2013 at 05:09

If the business needs demand a stable connection, why not use MPLS?

Yaayuh! · 12 Jul 2013 at 08:24

DRZ said:
If the business needs demand a stable connection, why not use MPLS?

Definitely on the cards, just again it's about time put in and cost vs outcome. In our experience with where this office is in China the connection is unpredictable on all levels.

I have decided to start from the ground up and researching ISPs at their end that will do the job better. Then apply something simple on top and compare.
From there i will be able to see what's possible/worth doing.