Filemaker Server Hosting in China Problem

[ShanghaiAaron]

My company has offices in Los Angeles and Shanghai, China and in early 2006 I built a database to coordinate communication between our two offices. I initially hosted the database with Datrium, and everything was fine for about a year. The log in from China was always slow, but usable, and everything was mostly okay till early '07.

Then the speeds from China started to get really slow, and the most debilitating problem was that it would take 20-30 minutes to log in and the connection would frequently cut off for no reason. I did a ping test and found that the speed from China was 500-600ms - pretty slow. So I moved our database onto Point in Space servers, where my Ping tests showed a speed of maybe 200ms from China. Once again, that solved the problem for about a year, but the speeds continued to deteriorate in China, and by the end of '07 we were back to a state where our Shanghai office was unable to log on.

So I moved our database to a VPS in China, bought a copy of Filemaker server, and hosted it ourselves. Now the speeds were lightening quick in China, but somewhat slow in Los Angeles. Again, everything was fine for a few months until we began having the same problem in Los Angeles - 20-30 minutes to log on, frequent drop-offs, and a very slow working environment. I also noticed a problem where I would hit "Define Database" and click "options" on a field and it would take 5-10 minutes to open the dialogue window.

I suspected the problem was The Great Firewall of China. The Chinese government censors Internet communications in and out of China with a Firewall, effectively slowing down all Internet traffic. So I moved FM Server to a VPS in Japan, hoping that the proximity to China would give us a quicker "ping" speed to Shanghai and we'd be on the better side of The Great Firewall for our office in Los Angeles. Strangely, the speeds to Los Angeles were fast, but the Shanghai office couldn't log on at all (maybe after five or six tries, but not for very long). So I moved the database again to a server in Singapore. Same problem. I moved again to a VPS in Los Angeles. Once again, great speeds in LA but almost impossible to connect in China.

Desperate and out of any easy ideas after my Filemaker server world tour, I decided last summer to rebuild the database from scratch. One grueling month later, I had a new, lean database with small graphics, all pictures hosted externally (compliments of SuperContainer), minimal stored calculations, etc. Amazingly, our Shanghai office was able to connect to the database hosted on a VPS in Los Angeles!

My joy was short lived. The newly built database debuted in August, and by October the Shanghai office was having connection problems again. Same old story: 20-30 minutes to connect, slow speeds, frequent drop-outs. So I re-opened a VPS account at a provider in Shanghai (60G hard drive, 2G RAM, Windows 2003 Server), and upgraded our Internet connection in LA (fiber optic cable, 2MB upload, 1.5 download). From October to December we were able to connect in Los Angeles, and speeds were acceptable in Shanghai, though somewhat slower than before.

As a side note, if you ever have to host anything on a server in mainland China, expect it to be a nightmare. Internet hosting is a government monopoly there, and consequently service is poor, costs are high, and servers are very unreliable. They will sometimes shut down service for several hours during the business day with no explanation, will reboot their machines without warning, and occasionally change your settings arbitrarily. Don't do it unless you have to.

So a few weeks ago we landed back at square one. Our Los Angeles office was no longer able to connect to Filemaker Server hosted in China, or if we could, only after 30 minutes of waiting for a slow and unreliable connection.

I tested a VPS in Hong Kong last week, which of course works just fine connecting from Los Angeles but is all but inaccessible from Shanghai. So that's not the magic bullet unfortunately.

Has anyone else had this problem with connections in faraway places? China is probably an extraordinary situation because of the Great Firewall, but I suspect that some of the problem simply has to do with the distance.

To sum up, I have:

Filemaker database approx 20MB in size

FM Server 9 hosted on Windows 2003 Server, 50G hard drive, 2G RAM

Clients on a variety of machines - Windows Vista, XP, Mac OSX Leopard

Any ideas, or even general sympathy would be greatly appreciated!

Aaron

[Cesci]

I work out of Hangzhou, China (just next to Shanghai). We host a FileMaker database within the company network from a Mac OS X Leopard server. We used to have a second office on the outskirts of the same city that connected to our network via ground cable. It accessed the database with about the inefficiency you're mentioning. A year ago, the company used to host its website from it's own server that connected to the database using FX.php. That website was accessible occasionally (and only at snail speed) from the US only because the website was so simple.

Just this Christmas season, I VPNed to the company network from the States and managed to work on the database at sluggish, but definitely usable speed. Our database is nearing 600MB, but is was probably only me accessing it at the times I did while in the US.

[IdealData]

Have you considered Terminal Services or Citrix? At the very worst you could try using a VNC solution.

These only transmit the video, keyboard and mouse so small bandwidth is only required.

[ShanghaiAaron]

I do use Remote Desktop when I need to, but I've found that's it's a bit limiting. It makes it hard to print out labels, download reports, etc. Also, this type of access is still pretty slow. For the database to be really useful it really needs to be accessible with Filemaker Pro client.

My next thought it to try and upgrade to a dedicated server in China. I'll let everyone know the results as this odyssey continues.

Aaron

[ShanghaiAaron]

I've taken a new tactic this week. I discovered that when I put the database on a dedicated VPS in Hong Kong, the Shanghai office is able to log on - but only about 50% of the time (we're able to get on in Los Angeles with no problem). So for instance, they will log on in the morning and everything is great, and then a few hours later they try again and it won't work.

We had a network specialist check our office there, and all the routers are set up properly. There's no internal firewall causing the problem. The local ISP in Shanghai claims that the problem is that the VPS company in Hong Kong is blocking their ip address, but I'm skeptical about this because they did not offer any evidence to support this claim.

I've asked my office to do the following tests and submit a daily report:

1. Try and log onto Filemaker - can you get on?

2. Go to whatismyipaddress.com and identify the current IP address.

3. Log onto the Hong Kong VPS with Remote Desktop and do "ping" and "traceroute" tests back and forth from the office to the VPS.

4. Create a report of the results, including the content of the ping and traceroute tests.

I've asked them to do this at three locations in Shanghai: at home, in a Starbucks, and at the office. I'm hoping that after a few days it will become apparent what is blocking the connection between Filemaker client and Filemaker server.

Is it The Great Firewall? Is it something obvious and stupid? Stay tuned to find out, and if anyone has an idea of something additional I should test, please let me know!

[Cesci]

The local ISP in Shanghai claims that the problem is that the VPS company in Hong Kong is blocking their ip address

You're right to be skeptical. They don't know what the problem is, so most likely thought up that answer to pretend to be competent.

[ShanghaiAaron]

The craziest thing is that our Shanghai office can get onto the Hong Kong server with Remote Desktop no problem. They can ping the Hong Kong server no problem. They can also get onto our Shanghai VPS with Remote Desktop, open Filemaker client on the server, and browse the database hosted in Hong Kong.

However, when they open Filemaker client on a machine in the office to contact the Hong Kong server it works only 50% of the time. It was working yesterday morning, then not in the afternoon, this morning briefly, and now not at all. No change in any configurations anywhere.

Any ideas what might be going on here?

[ShanghaiAaron]

Seems like nobody but me is struggling with Filemaker in China right now, but this may be helpful to someone in the future, so here's an update on my progress.

As I wrote earlier, I've moved the database to a dedicated VPS in Hong Kong. Unfortunately, hosting in Hong Kong is more expensive and offers fewer choices than in the US, but so far the Hong Kong server is fast when we log on from the US, and as I noted earlier has a 50% success rate when we log on via Filemaker Remote Networking from China.

However, when we log on with Remote Desktop from China we have a 100% success rate, and the connection speed is lightning fast. I had always used Remote Desktop to log onto the Window 2003 Server desktop, and I didn't realize that you could use Remote Desktop to log onto Filemaker client directly so that it appears to be running in its own window, just like Filemaker Remote Networking. To do that, just open up Remote Desktop and go to Preferences->Applications and enter the path to a Filemaker client installed on the remote server.

Once I figured that out, I created Windows 2003 Server accounts for everyone in China who logs into the database, and created Remote Desktop login files for each user.

There's still a few details I haven't worked out yet. Windows Server 2003 Terminal Services only allows two simultaneous connections by default, so I'm going to have to buy an upgrade in order to allow more connections. And I haven't figured out an application file path that takes the user straight into an open launch file (they still have to open the launch file manually once they're in). Keystrokes and uploads to container fields are still a little sketchy. But it's reliable and fast from China, which is good enough for me.

The downside of logging in with Remote Desktop is that graphics load a bit more slowly. This isn't a problem in China right now, where everything loads super fast because they're close to the server in Hong Kong. But from the US I find it easier to log in with Filemaker Remote Networking, where the slow loading graphics is noticeable. But really I could log in either way from the US and get the job done.

I don't think it would work to have the database on a server in the US and log in from China with Remote Desktop. In that case the graphics would load very, very slowly because we'd have long distance + the Chinese firewall + mediocre Chinese ISP. And if the database were hosted on a server in China we would end up with long distance + the Chinese firewall + unreliable Chinese server-run-by-government-monopoly. In this situation, a server in Hong Kong is the only good option.

If anyone has to set up a Filemaker solution in China and needs more info, please feel free to email me.

Aaron

[59Box]

From a China hosting provider perspective, this problem is very interesting to me.

I have not worked with FileMaker so I can't say it is FileMaker specific. But your description of the problem seem rather amazing, even for China standard!

We are launching our VPS in China and you seem like a perfect candidate for our beta test. If you have the time and motivation, let me know.

[ShanghaiAaron]

Here's an update to anyone interested in this thread. I met up with 59Box in Shanghai and we let me test out my database on his server for a week. I was extremely skeptical, because at this point the Hong Kong server (a dedicated server at a top hosting company) was slow to useless in Shanghai and sluggish at best in Los Angeles.

But surprise, surprise, it worked fast on both sides of the ocean and continues to do so two weeks later. The server still seems to be inside the Chinese firewall, subject to Chinese censorship, but for whatever weird reason it's not throttled like the other two servers I've been on in Shanghai. From the US, I can get onto my Filemaker database in under two minutes and work only imperceptibly slower than I would on a server in the US. In Shanghai, it's lightning fast.

So thanks 59Box, so far so good!

Aaron

[wclo]

http://worldcloud.com can provide you a dedicated FileMaker Server 10 Advanced platform on 30 day free trial - that way it is on the public internet with dedicated ip and accessible by all - easier than trying to do it in-house - we also provide Terminal Services desktops with FMPro client so the users can connect to your worldcloud.com server from anywhere in the world with no firewall issues.