As the largest consumer market in the world except the United States, China is a market that almost every international company wants to explore deeply. However, foreign companies need to face a special challenge when conducting online business in China: the Internet Firewall (GFW). For this reason, all foreign companies that want to make a difference in the Chinese market need to solve this problem first.
The purpose of this article is to provide some references for network facilities solutions for foreign customers who want to enter the Chinese market, hoping to help everyone.
But before getting into the topic, it is necessary for us to popularize a basic concept: ICP filing.
1. What is ICP filing and why is it needed?
Internet Content Provider is Internet Content Provider in English, abbreviated as ICP, that is, a telecom operator that comprehensively provides Internet information services and value-added services to the majority of users. The certificate it must possess is the ICP license. The "People's Republic of China Telecommunications and Information Service Business License" issued by the department.
China implements a licensing system for commercial ICPs that provide Internet information services (commercial ICPs mainly refer to the use of online advertisements, production of web pages on behalf of others, rental of server memory space, host hosting, paid provision of specific information content, e-commerce and other online application services and other ways to obtain income ICP). Therefore, hosting a website or online service in China requires an ICP license. In other words, having an ICP license ensures that websites hosted in China comply with Chinese laws and regulations. This will help increase trust in your online community in China and help you successfully attract customers in the Chinese market.
After learning about ICP filing, we will discuss this issue in depth below. So first you need to consider the following two questions:
- Does the content of your website comply with relevant Chinese laws and regulations, and can you obtain an ICP license?
- Would you rather move the hosting and caching of your content to China, or keep your current setup and invest only the resources needed to improve latency for Chinese users?
This is a priority that your products should consider before entering the Chinese market.
2. Three different content delivery solutions
Below we will recommend 3 different solutions for you, and you can determine which option is more suitable for you according to your own product situation:
PlanA: Apply for an ICP licensed domain name hosted in China.
An ICP licensed domain name hosted in China is a domain name that has been registered with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) of China. This type of domain name registration is aimed at foreign companies that want to provide Internet services to Chinese customers and host such services in China.
The advantages of this setup are outstanding:
1. Greater flexibility. With an ICP license, you can directly choose to host mirror content of your current website in mainland China, or create a separate website specifically for a Chinese audience (your approach will depend on your service requirements and business strategy).
2. Ultimate performance. Regardless of the deployment strategy, your online services and content will be closer to your audience and benefit from low latency and high speed. Furthermore, if you add a CDN based in mainland China, this performance will be further improved, making your content comparable to the best websites and services in China.
3. It will not be blocked by GFW . Having a licensed ICP and hosting your content within China guarantees that GFW will not intentionally block that content. But please note that you still need to abide by China's relevant Internet content laws and regulations.
Again, we must stress that some of the challenges associated with this setup is that it necessarily requires an ICP license. As mentioned earlier, this setting is only applicable to companies that are eligible to obtain an ICP license in China. The process of obtaining such a license is relatively complicated, so your organization must ensure that it is qualified to apply for this license smoothly. Overall, this scenario is ideal for businesses providing services that require minimal latency and high performance. Again, this is the best option for businesses who want to minimize the risk of being blocked by GFW and don't mind applying for an ICP license and hosting their content within China.
PlanB: Add a Mainland China CDN to the current hosting setup.
An easier alternative for companies that don't want to change their infrastructure infrastructure is to add a China-based content delivery network (CDN) to their current hosting setup. This way, most of the benefits of PlanA can be enjoyed without the extra IT work associated with hosting servers in China.
The benefits of doing this are as follows:
1. Reduce the risk of being blocked by GFW. Since the content is cached in mainland China, the risk of GFW interception is reduced. But keep in mind that risk reduction is not the same as bypassing GFW, which is only possible with the setup above.
2. Provide better performance. With a CDN, Chinese users can access content with less latency and shorten data transfer times. China CDNs also offer better reliability as they can withstand high traffic and can scale to handle sudden increases in demand. By providing better performance and reliability, China CDNs can help improve user experience, reduce latency, and improve website performance. In addition, by implementing integrated CDN, your organization can protect your services from damage. Huosanyun integrates domestic mainstream CDN manufacturers (Alibaba Cloud/Tencent Cloud/Huawei Cloud/Baishan Cloud, etc.), with 14,000+ high-quality nodes, safe and stable , intelligent monitoring, intelligent scheduling, with full business processing capabilities, providing safe and stable CDN services for tens of thousands of customers, is a recommended choice.
But we also have to account for some challenges associated with this setup :
1. Performance improvements may vary . In this setup, the origin server is located outside of China, and latency and overall performance will be affected by the distance from it. In other words, if a CDN fetches data from an origin server in the US, the performance gain will be limited compared to an origin server in Europe or Asia.
2. Your company still needs an ICP license for this setup. As with the former, the prerequisite for using a Chinese CDN is to obtain an ICP license, which may still be an obstacle for companies that do not qualify for an ICP.
As you can see, this setup requires you to carefully evaluate whether the performance gain is worth it. In short, this setup is best suited for organizations that qualify for an ICP license that don't want to make major changes to their infrastructure, but need to host their content relatively close to China.
PlanC: China CDN acceleration solution without ICP filing
As you can see from the settings above, the distance to the origin server is critical. That said, the logical, technically feasible alternative is to deploy a server that replicates the contents of the source server (mirror) near mainland China. Because the mirrored content server is closer to the user, both performance and latency are improved, which helps to significantly improve the user experience. Additionally, this setting can be tuned for Chinese networks, resulting in lower latency and more reliable service. This will further improve performance as the mirror server and CDN will be close to each other.
Huosanyun China Acceleration Solution combines Huosanyun's proprietary edge server and record-free CDN nodes (PoPs) located in South Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Excellent performance in the country. Fire Umbrella Cloud record-free CDN distributes the content of the source site to the server nodes of multiple mainstream CDN manufacturers overseas. The perfect monitoring system can improve the accessibility of the website, and realize the effect of the website at low cost without increasing the cost of the server.
Huosanyun's proprietary GMA network uses a well-regulated, high-speed, non-traffic-free global network with sufficient redundancy, which is suitable for websites and applications with rich dynamic content, such as Internet of Things, finance, technology, AIOT and games. Provider, after you choose your own solution, GMA will be activated by default and added to your converged CDN settings to provide you with stable domestic content delivery without an ICP license.
Advantages of this network configuration :
1. Improve user access quality and experience . Both performance and latency are improved because the mirrored content server is closer to the user. Additionally, this setting can be tuned for Chinese networks, resulting in lower latency and more reliable service.
2. Buy and use immediately without filing. The biggest advantage of this setting may be that it does not need ICP filing, and the nodes used are not in mainland China, so it saves many companies the troubles related to ICP filing.
Of course, this solution also has a major disadvantage that needs attention: GFW blocking. You will have to deal with GFW content blocking as the mirror servers are located outside of China. It doesn't provide the best performance or solve GFW issues, but it can still improve the uptime and latency of online services without requiring an ICP license.
3. What is the best choice for your business ?
In this article, we evaluate three different infrastructure setup options for foreign businesses in China. We explored "all within mainland China", "all outside mainland China" and intermediate options involving infrastructure inside and outside mainland China, all of which improve network performance, but each approach has trade-offs. The answer depends largely on your company's goals and the location and characteristics of your current infrastructure.
The good news is that your business can rely on Huo Umbrella Cloud's rich experience in network acceleration to help you determine which scenario is most suitable for your product. Our service includes a comprehensive inspection and test of your website to provide your business with Provide valuable opinions and find the most suitable solution. At the same time, we can also provide integrated CDN acceleration in China and China CDN acceleration solutions without ICP filing.