Will appengine work in China?

Question

A couple of our clients want to know - looking at some posts about there is inconsistent information.

http://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/detail?id=1144

Answer 1

Based on tests I conducted it appears that App Engine itself is not blocked in China, but the appspot.com domain is. So if you can use your own domain then App Engine should work fine for you. In fact, if you use yourapp.appsp0t.com (with a zero instead of an o) then it seems to work as well at the moment, although I would not really recommend relying on this work-around in the long run; it opens your app and your users to Man in the Middle (MITM) attacks from whoever runs appsp0t.com.

Here are some tools you can use to check availability and performance from China:

• http://www.greatfirewallofchina.org/
• http://www.websitepulse.com/help/testtools.china-test.html
• http://www.dotcom-monitor.com/WebTools/website-speed-test.aspx

Answer 2

Not directly, since Google DNS server is blocked by 'Great Firewall', therefore one cannot reach myapp.appspot.com within China.

However, you can work around by setting up a reverse-proxy server, which redirects myapp.com to myapp.appspot.com.

Answer 3

The answer is "No", for now and long after.

• of cz google support his service in china,
• but not china gov.
• appspot is blocked by a big firewall around china.

by the way, it works when Obama visitting china.

Answer 4

What about using custom domain name?

This will get around the DNS resolution. But is the google IP address range allocated for appengine blocked by china? If so, you then you have to use the reverse proxy solution.