PageSpeed is a Google service that aims to improve the performance of a website and reduce server load by optimising pages and serving them from Google's infrastructure. The main problem Google is currently facing is having its services blocked by the Great Firewall of China such as the recent blocking of Gmail and it appears that PageSpeed is also affected from our testing.
As Myce uses PageSpeed for the front pages and the forum, I first tried the homepage URL on GreatFire.org, which checks whether a website is accessible in China:
One problem with running a test like this is that this result could mean one of many outcomes - Myce itself is blocked, Pagespeed is blocked or even a technical issue leading to a false positive. To test this further, I made a VPN connection using the HMA service to a server in Renqiu, a city in Hebei, China.
Just as a Chinese person can make a VPN connection to a server outside of China to by bypass the firewall, the reverse process is possible where establishing a VPN connection into China provides the equivalent to what it's like accessing the Internet from within China.
With the VPN connection established, I first checked Internet connectivity by loading a few websites that are not blocked in China, such as msn.com and yahoo.com, which all loaded up fine. Then I tried myce.wiki and club.myce.wiki, which both failed:
One advantage over the test websites with having a VPN connection is that I can run further tests to see whether the culprit is China blocking Myce or whether we're a victim of PageSpeed being blocked.
To bypass PageSpeed, I edited the Windows hosts file on my PC so that the myce.wiki, static.myce.wiki and club.myce.wiki all point to 212.83.220.200, the IP address of our current hosting provider Webscale. This means when I access the forum, it will connect directly to the server instead of through the PageSpeed service IP address.
With the VPN still connected, I tried loading myce.wiki and club.myce.wiki again and they both loaded successfully. The ads showed up in Chinese, which also shows that the website was fetched from within China and this rules out China intentionally blocking Myce. As a further test, I made a temporary test post on the forum and got the forum to reveal the IP address it was posted by and this is the Chinese IP address HMA assigned me for the VPN connection:
Once I removed the entries from the Windows hosts file, the website is no longer accessible and the ping test below shows that the PageSpeed IP address does not even respond to the ping test, which otherwise replies fine when not connected through China. The first ping test here is directly to our server and the second ping is to the domain name which points to the PageSpeed IP address:
What this means is that for anyone considering implementing Google PageSpeed on their website, they will need to check whether they have or will have any Chinese guests or customers using their website as using PageSpeed will potentially lead to the website being inaccessible within China. One workaround would be to provide a separate website for Chinese visitors or customers, such as a Chinese translated version hosted on a separate domain name that does not use PageSpeed.
