Recaptcha - Availability in China

firewall recaptcha
wacdany picture wacdany · May 21, 2014 · Viewed 19.3k times · Source

We are developing a site that will require the usage of a captcha service.

Has anyone successfully use Google Recaptcha for a website for users from Mainland China?

  • Did you have major problems with load-time?
  • Did you experience any reliability problems?
  • Any problems with the great firewall of china?

Any experience that you can share is appreciated.

Answer

nrser picture nrser · Jun 2, 2014

i can't even open the Recaptcha page you linked to without VPN. i've been in Beijing the last two years. assuming you're not here and/or don't know very much about the infrastructure situation in the PRC:

  • i'm not aware of any service of Google's that is reliably reachable and fast from the mainland. they are probably the worst choice to depend on from here.
  • in general, if you want stability and speed, you will need to host inside China. the firewall often renders international sites anywhere from painfully slow to completely useless. if hosting here is too much headache and hassle, my understanding is that Hong Kong is the next-best thing.
  • even once you're in China, you'll have to deal with the inter-telecom situation if you want serious speed and stability (they don't always play 'nice' with each other like we're used to in the west, which requires more expensive and complicated hosting setups to mitigate). Note: as someone mentioned above, Alibaba and Baidu's cloud hosting solutions may make this much simpler, and can help skirt some of the ICP license stuff from my understanding.
  • suggested alternative from local developers: http://www.yinxiangma.com/ all in Chinese, but it is China after all.

China is a massive market, but it's far from an easy one. hope that helps, let me know if you have any specific questions.

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