Based on the generous feedback of many posters here and even a generous donation from a VPN company, I want to tell everyone what I'm going to test out after I get to Shenzhen.
I'm going to pick up a RK3188 or 3288 Single-board computer with an ethernet port on it and flash Ubuntu to it. In the end, I may pick up several of these, since ideally there'd be one at home, one at work, etc.... This board will serve as my "internal server". I've also heard of people using aliyun images to host their internal server so that they can easily connect to a multitude of services from their aliyun instance, as the Aliyun instance is behind the firewall. (for example, assigning the aliyun instance as their gateway on all of the devices they would like to connect)
Software Configuration Since I will have the SBC to connect to the VPS-Mesh, I will use tinc sent through stunnel or OBFSproxy3 on port 443 as https traffic. I do hope that you guys will vote in the poll on which is better and let me know your thoughts on that. The SBC will provide a gatewaay for all of the computers & phones & tablets and god knows what in my home to connect to.
As for protocols and stuff, I still want to try optimizing the routing. However, I do not know of the right tool to do it. Since I have 7 VPSes, I figure I should be able to somehow set them to route optimally for me. That is-- the server that can get the client the data the fastest based on myriad factors is the one that ends up being used. Does anyone here know how to configure that? I believe the term for it might be "bonding", but I really am not sure.
For reference, here is my list of servers:
**2x weloveservers.net** (Buffalo & LA)- Latency is quite bad as is throughput-- ~400ms avg & ~10-20KB/sec downloads. Peering is probably the issue here, but with GFW you never, ever truly know.
**2x (Chinese letters here) WIndows VPS in HK;** identical performance -- ping is rarely over 50ms and each connection gets me 100-500KBPS throughput. HK servers are molested less by GFW.
**1x ramnode.com Seattle** - Better than WLS Buffalo & LA, but still ~200-400ms & 20KB/sec in downloads. Peering is probably the issue here, but with GFW you never, ever truly know.
**1x digitalocean Singapore** - 100ms ping & maybe 100KB/sec in downloads
**1x Japan AWS** - haven't played with lately
Ideal Scenario
Ideally, my RK3288 SBC would take some sites on pre-defined routes (ex: pandora.com should only use one of the US VPSes) and on others it would be able to have some idea of which route is "ideal", or even be able to combine multiple VPSes connections as to provide better speed. I'm going to have a 1gbps internet connection in Shenzhen, and the GFW wants to stop me from enjoying it. Gotta prevent that!
Advice?