Job Discussion Forums

[tofuman]

It is a simple matter to get a decent internet connection in many cities of China. If you don't have one, you are being played for a fool and the school is depriving you of something to which you probably are entitled by your contract.

A good connection can be had for about 100 yuan a month where I live, which is about 600 km from Beijing.

I heard every possible lie and excuse about why my internet connection did not work, including the one about no one on campus having a good connection so I shouldn't expect one. Don't believe it. The school is probably running your hook up through its institutional connection which is outdated and overloaded.

These scoundrels even told me that even though the contract said I should have a connection, that didn't mean it had to work!

After listening to way too many lies and excuses for months, and being sure that they were lies and excuses, I simply said, "If you don't get me a working connection, I'm leaving. The reason I don't have a good reliable connection no longer matters. I can't stay here without one."

I had an ethernet ADSl connection in about a week.

You should have one too.

[jeffinflorida]

My internet connection truly sucks. Its ADSL and I don't know if it is the modem, computer, nic card, or the high quality telephone connection. But it truly bites toadass. It times out and I have to close the connection and reconnect way too often.

Worse is I had topay 369 rmb for 6 months and now the school says they will give us free internet over the school network in our apartment.

I don't think the campus network is reliable or fast.

I am thinking of buying a new adsl modem to see if that works. i have updated all the drivers I could but I have a feeling the telephone circuits that are held together with black tape are not doing too well or maybe the chewing gum is falling off.

[tofuman]

What started me thinking about my connection was that within a five minute walk are at least three internet cafes with scores of computers that work quite well.

I have my own laptop, so I know my computer is fine. I proved it by hooking it up at another location. The computers provided by the school could have problems. Have you tried taking it to a cafe and plugging it in to be sure that the problem is not the computer?

[tarzaninchina]

At the college I'm teaching at now, they did connect the FAO and apartments to the college network. It's pretty good when it works. Thing is, they turn it off at 10:30pm every night and won't turn it back on until sometime between 6am and 8am. The most frequent problem we have is only being able to access Chinese websites. Have any of you experienced this problem? If so, how was it resolved?

[nolefan]