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Frequently asked questions

• What is Shadowsocks?

Shadowsocks and Shadowsocks R are free, open-source encryption protocol projects that act as a fast tunnel for a Socks5 proxy. Their primary use is to bypass firewalls and other restrictions to access blocked content without being as obvious as a VPN.

• How does Shadowsocks work?

Shadowsocks servers use a technique called proxying to route some internet traffic through a server rather than directly from your computer to its destination. It uses encryption protocols while it does so to stop activity from being spied on by intermediaries. An encrypted connection is formed between the Shadowsocks client on your local PC and your remote VPS proxy server, utilizing in part a well-known internet protocol called SOCKS5.

• Is Shadowsocks a VPN?

No, Shadowsocks is not a VPN, though both can be used to bypass censorship.

• What's the difference between Shadowsocks and OpenVPN?

While both Shadowsocks and a OpenVPN encrypt data, the focus of Shadowsocks is more to disguise your traffic rather than keep it private – though, depending on your configuration, it can do so to an extent. However, unlike a VPN, applications don't tend to work out-of-the-box with Shadowsocks. Instead, you have to tell the application that you have a proxy and direct it to the relevant server. As such, it doesn't disguise *all* traffic, just traffic from specified applications. This, as well as its use of multiple TCP connections, makes it much faster than a VPN, but means that the applications that don't support proxies will still be sending data to your ISP as normal.

• How do I set up a Shadowsocks server?

Setting up a Shadowsocks or Shadowsocks R server with BitLaunch is easy. All you need to do is open the "Apps" tab when deploying your VPN and click on "Shadowsocks". Our scripts will do the rest. You can find a full guide with screenshots here.