Every CS:GO players knows matchmaking is not a place for competitive CS: 64 tick servers and hackers. In Asia, there are a couple of choices of third-party servers that have decent anti-cheat and 128 tick servers to play on:
- Faceit
- ESEA
- 5E (Chinese)
- B5 (Chinese)
I'll introduce them below with technical details.
Faceit #
Faceit is a well-known platform to play CS on. It has a decent anti-cheat. In Asia, they use OVH Singapore servers (AS16276). A test IP address as of April 12, 2020: 139.99.68.225.
$ traceroute 139.99.68.225
traceroute to 139.99.68.225 (139.99.68.225), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 routeros.internal.birkhoff.me (10.0.1.254) 2.62 ms * LAN Address
2 h254.s98.ts.hinet.net (168.95.98.254) 2.81 ms AS3462 Taiwan cht.com.tw
3 snuh-3301.hinet.net (168.95.24.130) 8.04 ms AS3462 Taiwan New Taipei City cht.com.tw
4 220-128-1-26.hinet-ip.hinet.net (220.128.1.26) 6.41 ms AS3462 Taiwan Taipei City cht.com.tw
5 r4103-s2.tp.hinet.net (220.128.1.13) 3.71 ms AS3462 Taiwan Taipei City cht.com.tw
6 r4003-s2.tp.hinet.net (220.128.6.237) 5.49 ms AS3462 Taiwan cht.com.tw
7 211-72-233-73.hinet-ip.hinet.net (211.72.233.73) 32.61 ms AS3462 China Hong Kong cht.com.tw
8 ae-10.r24.tkokhk01.hk.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.6.93) 36.80 ms AS2914 China Hong Kong ntt.com
9 ae-6.r20.sngpsi07.sg.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.7.66) 68.16 ms AS2914 Singapore ntt.com
10 ae-1.r00.sngpsi07.sg.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.3.82) 67.38 ms AS2914 Singapore ntt.com
11 103.5.15.20 69.25 ms AS16276 Singapore ovh.com
12 *
13 *
14 *
15 sin1-sgcs2-g1-nc5.sgp.asia (103.5.15.5) 120.67 ms AS16276 Singapore ovh.com
16 *
17 *
18 *
19 *
20 ns568968.ip-139-99-68.net (139.99.68.225) 67.67 ms AS16276 Singapore ovh.comThe average RTT is around 67 ms off-peak. It sometimes goes to 100+ ms at peak times (in Taiwan).
Anyways, Faceit is a decent choice in Taiwan, but you can sometimes encounter unplayable latency which can massively affects your performance. You can run a GCP instance in asia-east1 (which is in Taiwan) to have premium network access and have an optimal latency to Faceit SGP servers. It's a direct route from Google and the latency is around 51 ms. Costs money and it's super complicated though.
ESEA #
ESEA has the industry-leading anti-cheat which makes it the best choice to avoid cheaters. It seems to have Taiwan servers but I've never connected to any. It also seems to me that they have Japanese servers but I haven't got the IP addresses yet. (comment if you do have one)
Their HK servers are hosted on i3D.net:
$ traceroute 43.239.136.134
traceroute to 43.239.136.134 (43.239.136.134), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 routeros.internal.birkhoff.me (10.0.1.254) 2.28 ms * LAN Address
2 h254.s98.ts.hinet.net (168.95.98.254) 3.65 ms AS3462 Taiwan cht.com.tw
3 snuh-3301.hinet.net (168.95.24.130) 4.94 ms AS3462 Taiwan New Taipei City cht.com.tw
4 220-128-1-26.hinet-ip.hinet.net (220.128.1.26) 4.02 ms AS3462 Taiwan Taipei City cht.com.tw
5 r4103-s2.tp.hinet.net (220.128.1.41) 4.97 ms AS3462 Taiwan Taipei City cht.com.tw
6 r4003-s2.tp.hinet.net (220.128.6.225) 4.86 ms AS3462 Taiwan cht.com.tw
7 xe-0-10-0-3-1.r02.tkokhk01.hk.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.8.65) 31.04 ms AS2914 China Hong Kong ntt.com
8 203.131.242.30 33.16 ms AS2914 China Hong Kong ntt.com
9 hosted-by.i3d.net (43.239.136.134) 33.43 ms AS49544 China Hong Kong i3d.netNot bad. The only downside of ESEA Asia is that there are really few players on it. It also costs money if you want to have good experience with it.
5E #
5E now requires a Chinese phone and ID for verification. Other than that, it has a pretty poor anti-cheat, on the higher ranks there are way too many cheaters. In terms of latency, the servers are hosted on Aliyun with Chinese domestic ISP BGP routing, which is very bad for players outside of Mainland China at peak times (high loss and RTT), because AS4134 is very busy, and there's GFW too.
$ traceroute 118.31.173.22
traceroute to 118.31.173.22 (118.31.173.22), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 routeros.internal.birkhoff.me (10.0.1.254) 3.27 ms * LAN Address
2 h254.s98.ts.hinet.net (168.95.98.254) 8.29 ms AS3462 Taiwan cht.com.tw
3 snuh-3302.hinet.net (168.95.171.22) 2.75 ms AS3462 Taiwan New Taipei City cht.com.tw
4 220-128-2-26.hinet-ip.hinet.net (220.128.2.26) 5.19 ms AS3462 Taiwan Taipei City cht.com.tw
5 tpdt-3012.hinet.net (220.128.25.89) 6.75 ms AS3462 Taiwan Taipei City cht.com.tw
6 r4105-s2.tp.hinet.net (220.128.11.169) 4.03 ms AS3462 Taiwan Taipei City cht.com.tw
7 r4005-s2.tp.hinet.net (220.128.10.149) 8.35 ms AS3462 Taiwan Taipei City cht.com.tw
8 183.91.34.121 59.21 ms AS4134 China Hong Kong ChinaTelecom
9 202.97.6.49 81.53 ms AS4134 China Shanghai ChinaTelecom
10 202.97.51.242 70.68 ms AS4134 China Shanghai ChinaTelecom
11 202.97.57.26 67.70 ms AS4134 China Shanghai ChinaTelecom
12 202.97.26.6 69.25 ms AS4134 China Zhejiang Hangzhou ChinaTelecom
13 220.191.200.62 67.15 ms AS58461 China Zhejiang Hangzhou ChinaTelecom
14 122.224.214.70 80.44 ms AS58461 China Zhejiang Hangzhou ChinaTelecom
15 42.120.247.73 80.39 ms AS37963 China Zhejiang Hangzhou ALIYUN
16 106.11.75.250 81.36 ms AS37963 China Zhejiang Hangzhou ALIYUN
17 *
18 *
19 118.31.173.22 76.15 ms AS37963 China Zhejiang Hangzhou ALIYUNI don't really understand why so many Taiwanese CS:GO players like to play on 5E. It's bearly playable to me.
A test IP address for Aliyun Beijing: 118.31.173.22. They also got Hong Kong servers that literally no one play on: 47.99.67.144.
B5 #
In terms of networking B5 is quite the same to 5E, so I won't do it again here. B5 has a much better anti-cheat and player base. The gameplay is really smooth and healthy. People there are just thirsty for winning, and I think it's almost like playing professionally. Of course people there speak Chinese as well.
B5 now costs money and they only support payment methods in Mainland China, like Alipay or Wechat Pay. It's very affordable, though!
Conclusion #
I'd recommend B5 > Faceit > 5E > ESEA if you ever want to play competitive CS in Taiwan.
There are "network boosters" from China like UU or Xunyou which provides shared IPLC to mainland China so you can play on 5E/B5 smoothly. They are very effective, but kinda pricy though!.