Don't freak out guys, but yes, Astrill is temporarily down

I'm flying tonight and I have much to do and really shouldn't be wasting my time with frivolous blogging, but I couldn't resist commenting on the whole Astrill being down debacle which has caused much drama within the internet community.

As heavy internet users ensconced within the Great Firewall of China, we know that VPN proxies are our lifeline and our ticket to surfing important sites like twitter, facebook, blogger(!) and well, google. It means the difference between a frustrating day of work with slow google search results or a frustrating day of work with unusable google. I've personally tried (and paid for) about five different VPN providers, Astrill is thus far the best and the most popular here (being aware of its most desperate and lucrative market, Astrill also has several dedicated proxies for China).

Hence the response when Astrill was down yesterday was, as to be expected, caused no few waves in the community. Several desperate users switched immediately, and within hours, a post hilariously and aptly titled 'Don't freak out guys, but yes, Astrill is temporarily down' post was up on shanghaiist.com. With appropriate tags 'ASTRILL, DOWN, NOOOO'.

Commenters were understanding and serene. Like a comment left by 'Calm&rational':

and others that brought in higher powers:

It was, in fact, the first thing my teammates said to me when I woke up in the morning ('Astrill is down!'). Several demanding emails were sent out to support just from our little group. YH, being a savvy and meticulous Android programmer, dug out about six email addresses from the Astrill team and bombed all of them frustration. Today they had their revenge; she received about twenty emails saying that Astrill is up again. 

I just found the entire episode hilarious but also illuminating; after all I had to admit that the idea of not having this option frightening and would have been the trigger, more so than smog of 500+ PSI to leave this great country (and I do mean that respectfully!). Over the last year I've realised the difference in having free access to information, if only in terms of work quality and productivity. 

In any case I actually think that Astrill still ranks among the best providers of much needed VPN, and may the higher powers ensure continued uptime!