CN2 GIA vs CN2 GT: China Telecom's Premium Route Explained

What CN2 (AS4809) is

China Telecom runs two IP backbones. The older one, ChinaNet, was set up in 1995 and is commonly called the 163 network, according to IT Home. Its network number is AS4134, registered as “CHINANET-BACKBONE”.

CN2 came later. In December 2004, Ericsson announced a contract to build China Telecom’s “next-generation IP backbone network, known as ChinaNet Next Carrying Network (CN2)”. It was expected to enter service by the end of 2005. CN2’s network number is AS4809, which APNIC lists as “China Telecom Next Generation Carrier Network”.

IT Home describes CN2’s design as flat, high-capacity and lightly loaded. China Telecom Americas calls it “a business class alternative for enterprises”. The 163 network is much bigger: on Hurricane Electric’s BGP Toolkit, AS4134 originates 2,255 IPv4 prefixes and AS4809 originates 243.

CN2 GT vs CN2 GIA

China Telecom sells several international services. Two matter here, and its own descriptions show who each one is for:

• Global Transit (GT) “provides global internet service with SLA guarantee to telecom operator customers”. It is transit for other carriers, and China Telecom Global’s old product page says it “can take customers directly to everywhere in the world”.
• Global Internet Access (GIA) “provides premium internet access between mainland China and countries outside China with SLA guarantee to the regional/local ISP/ICP and enterprise customers”, “with a dedicated path and the lowest latency routes on CN2”.

The clearest independent description is a peer-reviewed study by Zhu and colleagues, published in March 2020. It found that China Access, ChinaNet Paid-Peer and GT “share the same point-of-presence or international gateway and therefore similar potential bottleneck, while Global Internet Access has a different dedicated CN2 international gateway.” China Telecom Europe said Paid-Peer and China Access run on ChinaNet (AS4134). IT Home calls GT “a mid-range CN2 product” and GIA “the top product”, which is “also the most expensive”.

China Telecom doesn’t publish how each product is routed inside mainland China. Hosting guides describe it this way. GT has its own line to China’s international gateway but enters the domestic network through the 163 network. With GIA, the provincial, outbound and international backbone hops all have 59.43 addresses, with no 202.97 hop on the whole path. That description comes from bandwagonhost.net, an unofficial fan site, in 2019. The diagram above follows it.

Product	International gateway	Inside mainland China	Loss in the 2019 tests: average (worst)
ChinaNet Paid-Peer and China Access (163)	Shared	163	5% (15%)
CN2 GT	Shared with the 163 products	163, per hosting guides	4% (14%)
CN2 GIA	Its own CN2 gateway	CN2, per hosting guides	3% (7%)

The loss figures come from day-long tests from five nodes in China, run by the Zhu study in 2019.

CTGNet (AS23764)

China Telecom Global’s international network, CTGNet, has its own network number, AS23764. China Telecom Europe described GIA as a service “on CTGNet (AS 23764)” and said CTGNet “is linked to ChinaNet, CN2 and most of the major ISPs”. That is why some hosts name AS23764 for their GIA routes: DMIT labels its Hong Kong and Tokyo routes “CN2 GIA (AS23764)”, and BandwagonHost calls its product “CN2 GIA/CTGNet”. An anonymous network guide on GitHub says new GIA customers in Asia-Pacific and Europe now connect through CTGNet rather than directly to AS4809. China Telecom hasn’t confirmed this.

CN2 GIA-E

“GIA-E” isn’t a China Telecom product name; we found it on no China Telecom site. BandwagonHost’s public pages call the plan tier “E-Commerce VPS”. Bloggers call its route “CN2 GIA-E (E-commerce)” and describe it as an enhanced version of CN2 GIA (80AJ, October 2025).

Why the route matters

The Zhu study ran tests on 53 days between March and October 2019. It found a bottleneck “affecting 79% of the receiver–sender pairs we measured”, and more than 70% of the pairs ran below 1 Mbps for more than five hours a day. Loss over a whole day was “typically in the range of 5% to 15%”, with peaks from 10% to 50%.

The loss ran in one direction, “from the foreign country entering China”, and followed a daily pattern that looked like congestion. It wasn’t only an evening problem: in one pair the slowdown ran from about 11:30 am to 1:30 am.

ThousandEyes measured something similar in February 2017. Its test agents in China saw 6.9% packet loss and 218 ms latency to US sites, against 0.04% and 17 ms for its US agents. Latency stayed high from 1 pm to 1 am China time, usually peaking around 7 to 9 pm.

These are the newest independent public figures we found. China Telecom Americas promises “less than 3% packet loss” between the Americas and China on ChinaNet. BandwagonHost, which sells CN2 GIA, says regular transit into China can lose 30% or more at peak, and that CN2 GT “has become pretty much as congested as AS4134” since 2019. Treat those as a seller’s claims.

Two directions: outbound and return

Chinese hosting guides split a route in two. The outbound route (去程) runs from your connection in China to the server. The return route (回程) runs from the server back to you. The 80AJ wiki notes they can take different paths: “an optimized return route does not imply an optimized outbound route.”

This is normal on the internet. “Routing on the Internet has no guarantee of symmetry”, and a traceroute “shows you only the forward path”, as network engineer Richard Steenbergen put it at NANOG 47 in 2009. The 2019 study found the loss on the way into China, which is the return route when a server abroad sends data to someone in China.

Hosts say different things about direction:

• HostDare sells one-way CN2 GIA: traffic from the server to China uses it, and traffic from China to the server uses other uplinks, such as GTT.
• BandwagonHost lists CN2 GIA in both directions on its Osaka plans. Its Los Angeles page talks about “China-bound traffic”.
• DMIT’s status page lists CN2 GIA in both directions in Los Angeles, Hong Kong and Tokyo. In Los Angeles it lists China Unicom’s and China Mobile’s premium routes as inbound only.
• nosla.cloud advertises CN2, 9929 and CMIN2 in both directions.

China Mobile and China Unicom users

CN2 belongs to China Telecom. The other two carriers have their own networks and premium routes. Names below are from the APNIC registry and PeeringDB:

Carrier	Standard international network	Premium route
China Telecom	163 / ChinaNet (AS4134)	CN2 (AS4809); CTGNet (AS23764)
China Mobile	CMI, China Mobile International (AS58453)	CMIN2 (AS58807)
China Unicom	China169 backbone (AS4837)	CUII (AS9929); China Unicom Global (AS10099)

Our CMIN2 and AS9929 guide covers these networks in detail.

A V2EX forum post from July 2022 describes CMIN2 as China Mobile International’s newly launched premium network. IT Home says China Unicom renamed its “A network” CUII in 2018 and that it is positioned somewhat like China Telecom’s CN2.

This matters because BandwagonHost says China Telecom stopped peering with China Unicom and China Mobile for China-to-US traffic in 2019. If that is right, a server with only CN2 GIA does little for China Mobile and China Unicom users. Many hosts now advertise a premium route for each carrier. BandwagonHost’s Los Angeles DC9 sends China-bound traffic over CN2 GIA, CMIN2 and China Unicom Premium (AS10099). GreenCloudVPS lists “CN2GIA/CU PREMIUM/CMIN2” for Tokyo.

The gap shows up in tests. A May 2026 test of GreenCloudVPS Tokyo found China Telecom and China Unicom excellent but China Mobile poor, with up to 10% loss (meowvps.com, affiliate link).

How to check if a VPS uses CN2 GIA

1. From the server to China. Install NextTrace, an open-source traceroute tool, on the server. It has a one-key mode that traces to the Chinese carriers. Our NextTrace guide shows how to install it and read the output. IPIP.net’s Best Trace is a visual alternative.
2. From China to the server. Use an online tool with test points inside China, such as ITDOG, 17CE or BOCE. Pick China Telecom test points and run a traceroute to your server.
3. Read the hops.
   • 59.43.x.x is CN2. APNIC registers 59.43.0.0 to 59.43.255.255 as “CN2-BB”, the CN2 backbone.
   • 202.97.0.x to 202.97.95.x is the 163 backbone (“CHINANET-BB”). The rest of 202.97 isn’t: APNIC lists 202.97.96.0 to 202.97.127.255 as ChinaNet Hong Kong, and 202.97.128.0 and up as China Unicom in Shanxi, Liaoning and Heilongjiang.
   • An anonymous GitHub guide gives a rule of thumb for traces from China: GT usually shows two or more 202.97 hops, then a CN2 exit in Beijing, Shanghai or Guangzhou (59.43.244, 59.43.245 or 59.43.246). GIA shows at most one 202.97 hop before the 59.43 hops.
4. Test at the busy time. ThousandEyes saw latency peak around 7 to 9 pm China time, and the 2019 study saw slowdowns from late morning to after midnight.
5. Check IPv6 separately. In an October 2026 test from Guangdong Telecom, a DMIT server’s IPv4 return route used CN2 GIA, but its IPv6 return route stayed on the 163 backbone (NodeSeek forum).

Neither 59.43.0.0/16 nor 202.97.0.0/16 appears in the global routing table, according to Hurricane Electric’s BGP Toolkit. The network labels on those hops come from registry names, not from routing data.

Routes we traced

On October 12, 2026, at about 8 am China time, we ran traceroutes through Globalping probes on Chinese carrier networks to two DMIT servers in Los Angeles. One is on DMIT’s Pro line, which DMIT says uses CN2 GIA; the other is on its T1 line.

• China Telecom (Guangzhou): the trace to the Pro server made one 163 hop (202.97.43.78), then ran on CN2 (59.43.x.x) to Los Angeles. The trace to the T1 server crossed the Pacific on the 163 backbone (202.97.58.254 in San Jose), then went through GTT.
• China Unicom (Changsha): the Pro trace moved from 4837 onto 9929 and China Unicom Global (AS10099). The T1 trace stayed on 4837.
• China Mobile: the Pro trace used CMIN2 (Beijing probe). The T1 trace used China Mobile International via Miami and Dallas (Nanning probe).

Off-peak, China Telecom’s latency was about the same on both routes: 170 ms to the Pro server and 165 ms to the last replying hop before the T1 server. These are single runs. The NextTrace guide has the full results, including traces from servers in Los Angeles back into China.

CN2 GIA VPS hosts compared

Our CN2 GIA VPS comparison lists every host we found selling CN2 GIA VPS plans, by location, with prices and stock checked on each host’s own site. Before you buy from any of them, check two things. First, which direction the host’s CN2 GIA covers: HostDare’s covers only traffic from the server to China. Second, the host’s rules: DMIT and Vmiss ban VPN tunnels to China. The two best-known hosts have their own pages: DMIT, BandwagonHost and BandwagonHost vs DMIT.

What CN2 GIA doesn’t do

CN2 GIA is internet access, not a VPN: China Telecom sells it as premium access between mainland China and other countries. It doesn’t stop the firewall from blocking a server’s IP address. Hosts plan for that. GreenCloudVPS gives Chinese customers one free IP change within 3 hours of delivery if the IP is blocked, Vmiss charges CA$5 per change, and nosla.cloud charges ¥25 after the first 30 minutes.

It also mainly helps China Telecom users, and the gain can be small off-peak. In September 2026, a NodeSeek user testing from an Alibaba Cloud server in Hangzhou found three US CN2 GIA sites stable at about 170 Mbit/s, and a non-GIA site in Fremont “about the same”.

Who needs CN2 GIA

For a trip to China, you don’t. For a phone, a roaming eSIM that routes your data outside mainland China is simpler. For a laptop, see VPNs that work in China. eSIM or VPN for China? helps you choose.

CN2 GIA matters when you run a server that people in China use: a website, an app backend or a private proxy. Before you use a VPS to reach blocked services from China, read the host’s rules and what the law says about VPNs in China.