GFW Goes Berserk

Posted on March 17, 2008
Filed Under Apparatchiks, China Internet, GFW |

Not surprisingly the great firewall is working overtime in an effort to control internet content coming into China. For example, My Yahoo, Google News, MSNBC, and the Guardian are blocked. GFW subdomain filtering is working fine. Sites such as yahoo.com and mail.yahoo.com are available while news.yahoo.com is not. Google news is blocked, but the search page is still available. CNN.com and Time seem to be unaffected, as are the Economist, the Telegraph, Le Monde, and Al-Jazeera.

GFW filtering seems a little hiccupy today. Sites such as the New York Times and the Washington Post are blocked, then available after a short period. Looking at the international news page triggers the GFW. Because the GFW is distributed across China’s internet infrastructure, its latest filtering rules may be in the process of updating throughout its nodes.

It’s possible that the GFW is also facing some performance issues as there’s a huge volume of content now deemed unacceptable that needs to be filtered.

Thankfully Hot Chicks with Douchebags is still available in China. Phew.