Re: Foreign Student Dealing with China's Web Filtering of US Websites

["Ayala, Daniel" <ayaladan () MSU EDU>]

Hi Bruce,

The most consistent thing when dealing with connectivity to western services in China is the inconsistency in 
connectivity to western services. The fact that VPN to your campus works one day from a country may not mean that it 
works the next, and maybe not from all regions in the country. Layer on this some new technology limits on TLS 1.3 
which makes it harder for national firewalls/filtering to limit specific destinations, so it has been summarily blocked 
in China which eliminates a number of technologies.

There is also the fact that care needs to be taken when giving recommendations on how to connect that may be illegal in 
a particular jurisdiction. While the goal is to connect students and keep them connected, we should not rely on or 
recommend solutions that we know to be illegal in their area (and there are more countries than just China where 
connectivity is a changing landscape). As such, our approach as been to establish a joint academic/technology approach 
to give instructors a suite of options that they can leverage and consider for international students, along with the 
up-front understanding that students in these areas will likely require some flexibility by the instructor to use these 
multiple paths, through the use of a suite of technologies perhaps used in creative, new ways.

https://tech.msu.edu/about/guidelines-policies/exploring-alternative-edtech-approaches-for-international-student-participation/

This document is to a stage where were are actively sharing and using it throughout Michigan State University as we 
lead up to the start of the fall semester. But if you have any feedback or ideas based upon it, please share them as we 
consider this topic a permenent work-in-progress..  Thank you!

Dan

Daniel Ayala
Interim CISO
Michigan State University
ayaladan () msu edu<mailto:ayaladan () msu edu>


On 25 Aug 2020, at 09:13, Bruce Heldman <heldmanb () QUEENS EDU<mailto:heldmanb () QUEENS EDU>> wrote:

We have a foreign student who’ll be returning to mainland China since our Fall semester is online only.   Prior 
experiences he’s had with the Chinese government’s Web filtering suggest he will be blocked from browsing various US 
sites required for his course work.

Are there any options that would help us with this situation?

We’ve considered:
1.      Granting him VPN access, but I believe non-university wouldn’t be tunneled.  It would go through his default 
gateway.
2.      Assigning him a VDI workstation.  He would then connect to this university VDI workstation (with or without 
VPN) and browse from that station.

Any suggestions or recommendations are appreciated



Bruce Heldman
Sr. Director of Technology Infrastructure & Support
Queens University of Charlotte
1900 Selwyn Avenue
Charlotte, NC  28274
Tel:   704-971-5409



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