zzSleepyJohn

Yup, if your UPS has a built-in AVR there is little point in adding a seperate one

Dunno, just to get a last word in here, I reckon there could be some point if someone is stuck on the end of a long distribution line. This is because run-of-the-mill UPSs with a built-in AVR centre their +/- 25% input voltage range on 220v, i.e. they can cope from 165v to 275v.

But usually the voltage drops rather than rises, so the +25% of that input range is wasted. I know of a case, probably not all that rare in rural locations, where the incoming mains normally sits at around 180v, and quite often browns down to well below 165v. In this kind of situation, I'd suggest a seperate AVR could make a big difference.

+ SJ

There is no HDTV broadcast (that technically not true there is one test channel on a bird thats acessable but not worth having) here......

Actually I think you will find there are already three demo channels available here free to air:

Luxe TV HD on Asiasat 2 4000H in English & French

Voom HD on Measat 3 3752V in English

CCTV Hi-Vision on Chinasat 6B 4100V in Chinese

plus several encryted ones:

TrueVisions Preview on Thaicom 2/5 12657H in Thai

Three more Chinese on Chinasat 6B

You can get in idea of the Luxe TV content in standard definition on Asiasat 2 4000H, and of Voom at http://www.voom.tv/

No free full length movies here, but I'd have thought, given an HD TV set, it would be worth adding an HD satellite box as an alternative source to Blu Ray discs. Clearly more satellite HD is on the way.

+ SJ

I've looked at similar journeys myself, the following link would be a good starting point for you:

http://www.seat61.com/Vietnam.htm

Thanks for that. I'm assuming that you haven't actually taken the plunge and been yourself yet. Any particular concerns that have held you back that you could share? I'm interested to hear cons as well as pros.

+ Sj

First the background.

I recently felt in need of a break from Chiangrai, and conscious of my carbon footprint, decided to set off on my own with just a bus ticket to Bangkok and see if I could make it all the way to Singapore overland, and back. I'm retired so I didn't have any fixed timescale to adhere to, and simply did it step by step on buses, trains and sleeper trains. Stopped one night in a very cheap places in Bangkok and Butterworth on the way south, and two nights in Penang on the way back. In Singapore I stayed 5 nights in a backpacker in Little India, where I met all kinds of interesting fellow travellers. Nothing was pre-booked except for my train journeys in Malaysia; all train journeys in Malaysia have to be pre-booked. The whole trip was a kind of adventure, and being unplanned and unscheduled, a few things went wrong and it wasn't always the comfortable and smooth experience you get with conventional holidays, but when I arrived back in Chiangrai 16 days later, I really felt I'd enjoyed my unconventional break, that I'd lived a bit, and that next time I'd like to try something perhaps even a little more ambitious.

So now I'm wondering how feasible it would be to go from Chiangrai to HongKong and back overland in similar vein. Across Laos into Vietnam and then up into China from there would seem to be one option, or another would be to take a slow cargo boat up the Mekong from Chiang Saen direct into China and then head for Kunming. The former route is probably the more tourist-trodden one, whilst the latter would avoid the need for Laos and Vietnam visas. I admit I haven't studied the details of either yet.

Any thoughts or experiences or advice about travelling on either of these routes would be welcome. How easy would it be to find an economical hotel in China, and get across the country to HongKong by train, I wonder, bearing in mind I don't speak any Mandarin, and what about the hazards of travelling like that on my own? I'm guessing that the journey would take about a week each way.

+ SJ

There is an old Thai style to keep freshness of lemon for 1-2 months by burying lemons in damp sand. Use a wooden bucket or opened container that has hole for draining water, make sure you don't flood the sand, sprinkle a little water few times a week so it won't dry up.

It works well with kaffir lime too.

Good luck .

Thanks for that! Certainly worth a try, anyway.

So I've now found an old stone plantpot with a hole in the bottom, put a few crocs in there, taken 10 good big hard yellow lemons from the tree, and filled the pot with the lemons and enough sand so the lemons aren't touching.

Let's see what happens! Anyone interested, contact me again in February.

+ SJ

So how did the Lemons work out, can you still eat them ??

Yes, this simple technique actually worked really well, and I can definitely recommend it. I left the December lemons in the sand longer than I'd originally intended, 3 months in fact, because there didn't seem to be much point taking the preserved ones while there still were some fresh ones on the tree. They do, by the way, keep remarkably well on the tree. Anyway, just a few days ago, I dug down into the pot of sand wondering whether I was going to find brown dried-up remnants, or some guey mould, but no, out came nice yellow lemons virtually the same as they'd gone in 3 months ago. We sliced them and served them up to squeeze on to pancakes, and really nobody could have guessed their age! Good as new, they were!

There was just one problem, though. I originally buried 10 lemons, but when I came to dig them out, there were only two! What happened to the other eight, I've no idea! Oh well, better just put that down to Amazing Thailand

+ SJ

.......Two days ago we received 1200 emails back, this were bounces from other mail servers with non existent addresses but with @ourdomain.

I'm on TT&T, not TOT, but am also suffering from a recent plague of spoofing [email protected] addresses. I don't think this is purely a TOT phenomenon; more like a new global wave of exploitation by spammers.

+ SJ

Nothing like the BEEB, but Australia Network http://australianetwork.com/ have some daily children's programmes that are free to air in English, and on the same satellite, there's Knowledge Channel http://www.knowledgechannel.org/kch/index.asp which is educational, largely English, and also free to air. The only possible difficulty is that you need a C-band dish pointing at a pretty low angle so it has to be insalled in a location with no obstructions where there's a clear view down to your eastern horizon.

+ SJ

Hi,

does someone know what is the repair status with these broken cables? My TOT connection is still crappy and I'm ruling out possible causes.

Thanks

FLAG was repaired last weekend and traffic was restored on it last Monday. SeaMeWe should have followed a few days later, but sorry, haven't seen confirmation of this so far.

I'm on Maxnet, and I saw considerable improvement from Monday onwards, but I wouldn't say it's quite "back to normal" yet; that's if there ever was a normal. I hear there are still problems with SMTP sending on TOT. I think many ISPs heavily restricted or totally blocked SMTP sending when the cables broke in an attempt to stop spam abuse, and some of them haven't yet removed this blocking. My Maxnet definitely suffered from selective SMTP port blocking because I could nearly always access my mailserver on port 110, but not on 25, 25 or 587.

+ SJ

Nope, have now confirmed it's still not working for me, either. Must be some subtle differences that affect some folks' posts and not others'. Something individually set in My Controls perhaps??

Nope, sorry, this one has failed in my case.

Double-checking here. It didn't work on a different thread I posted to today.

I saw an intruiging report on BBC World (I think it was) recently about how entrepreneurial folk in South African villages are able to get wi-fi working at ranges of about 1km from the source by simply inserting a wi-fi dongle into the side of an empty metallic cocoa tin and pointing this kind of "dish" in the direction of the required signal. I suppose given the right diameter of cocoa tin, it could act like a waveguide and produce a very sharply focussed beam. I've seen professionally made dish-like wi-fi USB devices advertised at professional prices with gains of 9dB, but this cocoa tin idea seemed more in keeping with the way we do things here in LOS, and might have the potential to do a lot better than 9dB on a narrow beam.

'Fraid my waveguide theory isn't too hot, nor do I know what sort of radiation pattern a simple wifi dongle on it's own would produce. I did once try mounting my battery-powered wi-fi detector dongle at the focus of an 80cm KU-band sat tv dish to see if could get some gain that way, but ended up apparenly with loss rather than gain. Not sure why!

Anyone care to estimate what diameter of cocoa tin would suit wi-fi frequencies best, and how far from the bottom of the tin would be the best distance to mount it? The TV programme showed these tins mounted on poles on village huts, and they were apparently working well. We know it can work, so it would just be a matter of getting the dimensions right, I guess!

+ SJ

Just measured the diameters of the waveguide on my satellite LNBs and come up with the following rough calculation:

KU band frequency = 10700. Diameter = 2.2cm

C band frequency = 3700 Diameter = 6.3cm

Then by extrapolation:

802.11g frequency = 2400 Diameter = 9.7cm

So it looks as if a tin can approx 10cm diameter ought to do the trick!

+ SJ

I can get wireless from the hotel a few meters away from my apt, but have to walk down a hall 20 feet away and hold my laptop next to a window. Was wondering if I should buy a USB wireless adapter, a long cord and try that. If so, would it make any difference if I go with regular wireless G or get G plus (which is twice as expensive). Also note, when you buy anything here, it can not be returned. Thanks...

I saw an intruiging report on BBC World (I think it was) recently about how entrepreneurial folk in South African villages are able to get wi-fi working at ranges of about 1km from the source by simply inserting a wi-fi dongle into the side of an empty metallic cocoa tin and pointing this kind of "dish" in the direction of the required signal. I suppose given the right diameter of cocoa tin, it could act like a waveguide and produce a very sharply focussed beam. I've seen professionally made dish-like wi-fi USB devices advertised at professional prices with gains of 9dB, but this cocoa tin idea seemed more in keeping with the way we do things here in LOS, and might have the potential to do a lot better than 9dB on a narrow beam.

'Fraid my waveguide theory isn't too hot, nor do I know what sort of radiation pattern a simple wifi dongle on it's own would produce. I did once try mounting my battery-powered wi-fi detector dongle at the focus of an 80cm KU-band sat tv dish to see if could get some gain that way, but ended up apparenly with loss rather than gain. Not sure why!

Anyone care to estimate what diameter of cocoa tin would suit wi-fi frequencies best, and how far from the bottom of the tin would be the best distance to mount it? The TV programme showed these tins mounted on poles on village huts, and they were apparently working well. We know it can work, so it would just be a matter of getting the dimensions right, I guess!

+ SJ

Only if it's a fine mesh dish designed for Ku. With a C band dish the holes are too big (greater than 1/4 wavelength) and Ku just drops through

My old C-band mesh dishes seem to work OK when I put a KU LNB in them, even on non-Thaicom birds. The only problem I found was slight irregularities in the surface that have developed over the years cause some sidelobes, so one bird exhibited several maxima as I moved the dish across the sky. Worst case scenario would be interference from an unwanted sidelobe, but there aren't that many KU birds covering this region.

+ SJ

I haven't had replied for a few weeks too! used to get and keep checking the boxes!... I use Gmail....

I can confirm its not happening to everyone. In the last week I have changed from Aol to Karoo to Yahoo and finally to hotmail and received notifications all the time

Add me to the list who get not e-mail notices and haven't for at least a month.

George has reported in http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=167442 that the problem has now been fixed. Please could someone reply on here so I can check if mine is working.

Tks, + SJ

Thanks HDRIDER! Nice Map! But really could do with zooming in to see the detail in the two circled areas and to read the comments associated with them.

Perhaps webcams on the repair cableships as well to check that they're getting on with the job and not just sitting there drinking tea??

+ SJ

Yes, I am having the same problem, it started about week ago. It must be to do with the internet and not the computer's themselves, cause I haven't changed anything on my computer.

One website I was trying worked again tonight (UK nova.com) but, some are still just coming up with writing and those red crosses instead of pictures.

Just an idea: Could this all be caused by imperfect caching of the sites in question? If you're looking at ISP caches rather than at the original host websites, and if there's a lot of congestion due to heavy traffic and international cables broken, then maybe when the cache was last updated, it couldn't download the graphics files from the host site. Perhaps the www being present or not affects whether you're looking at a cache in Bangkok or at the original host.

Anyone more familiar with how caching works care to comment?

+SJ

i have a maxnet account on a TT&T line in samui

1024/256

speedtest says aboout 1000kbps up to bangkok

but 100kbps (!!!!!!! yes 100) to melbourne australia.

this was the case in pattaya recently also in cafes.

so why does it choke on leaving/entering thailand?

simply not enough bandwidth to supply the country?

still only one pipe to the world outside?...

Yes, basically it's the international circuits that cost the big money, so capacity is pared down to well below what would be the acceptable minimum in other countries, and as a result tbere's chronic congestion most of the day, and just now it's temporarily a lot worse because of breaks in inernational cables in the Middle East.

....and bless my soul, what can consumers do about it?

Not much, I'm afraid. Remember this is LOS and we just have to be happy with things as they are!

You couldn't by any chance be mixing up Bytes to Melbourne with bits on your ADSL could you? The maxiximum download speed I've ever achieved on my 1024k Maxnet is 105kB, which I was very happy about!

+ SJ

Any further news yet on when TOT will be returning to normal?

I too am still unable to send emails via Outlook despite changing to the recommended settings.

This is probably related to the current international cable breaks that are restricting traffic in this region. I've been seeing exactly the same problem on TTT Maxnet since the cable breaks occurred. However if spammers have also been having a field day, which happens a lot on TOT and TTT, the ISPs sometimes restrict or totally block all SMTP sending while they try and sort it out.

We've been discussing the effect of the current cable breaks on this other thread:

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=166185

+ SJ

Strange thing, for me, is that I only have trouble now with sending email (smtp) via Eudora. Receiving email. web browsing, and so on, no problem. Even file sharing has been fine (except for Gnutella 1, which may be blocked by TTT (Gnutella 2/eDonkey via Shareaza no problem).

I called TTT about my email problem but despite spending a large amount of time on the phone with me to no avail, and no explanation (denying blockage of port 25 by the way, tests confirm it), the problem has not been solved.

Same here. My Eudora struggles and quite often fails to complete its SMTP sending sequence because the responses coming back are so slow and it times out.

Have tried telnetting from Command Prompt to my mail server in USA which confirms the same problem is on ports 25, 26 and 587, but if I do the same test on port 110, a good response comes back immediately.

I put this down to the ISP (in my case Maxnet) deliberately applying network management controls to try and limit new traffic. Not sure whether this is because so many cable breaks are restricting their available international bandwidth (the trouble started at the same time as the cable breaks) or if they're trying to stop spammers having a field day (which happens quite often).

There have been times over the last few days when this "network management" SMTP blocking, if that's what it is, has been 100%. I've just had to queue my outgoing mail and try again in an hour or two.

Hope those international cable breaks get fixed quickly so that things can return to normal again.

+ SJ

I get the impression that this is happening to A LOT of subscribers.....i put a query out on the Pattaya forum but george took it off...i'm not sure why I asked him but he hasn't replied...must be busy solving the problem

PS - still no notifications today and my web site said I was the last contributor to this thread....not true....until now...

Add me to the list, too, please. I use a regular POP3 address and collect via Spamcop. I check my spam folder there daily,so I would have picked it up if any notifications were spamblocked. They were coming in OK until I guess sometime in early to mid January.

Thanks, + SJ

HI

Here is some of the stuff you never hear about.

Cable Repair Status:

RNAL Segment (Hong Kong - Busan) & Segment (Hong Kong - Toucheng):

- The RNAL cable path between Busan and TongFuk was down at 1243utc 26-Dec.

*SNIP*

FLAG FEA Sub-System 8 (Hong Kong - Shanghai - Korea)

- FLAG FEA reported that the Sub-system 8 had suffered cable fault at 2056UTC. The fault point is between Repeater 9 and Repeater 10 near Hong Kong.

- Currently no any repair schedule for the FEA repair.

The above information appears to refer to faults which occured in December 2006 and which were fixed in January 2007. They were well publicised at the time.

What I find very strange is that reports on the current faults which are equally causing us all a lot of disruption are limiited to the two broken fibres in the Middle East, and there's apparently no mention in the media of any other fault in Asia that's contributing to the present troubles.

HDRIDER, can you give any reason why Asian cable faults were considered newsworthy a year ago, but similar incidents this year aren't?

Is it just possible that someone has mixed up their years and has been mistakenly reporting last year's faults thinking they are current now?

+ SJ

Absolutely right, HDRIDER, provided diversely routed standby facilities have been prearranged and paid for by the telecoms operators. But I think the problem here in Asia is that such facilities all cost money and for 99% of the time they aren't going to be used, so cash-strapped ISPs tend instead to rely on overflowing to the already quite well loaded-up mesh network that exists round here.

That means if you get 3 seperate cables broken all at once like we have now, the remaining good part of the mesh gets horribly congested.

I still think a broken cable, even in Asia, is a newsworthy item, and remain puzzled why nothing much seems to have appeared in the media about it.

+ SJ

I'm afraid you can't merge (combine) topics. Only a moderator or administrator can to this.

What you can do, though, is click on the REPORT button below a post in a duplicate topic. This will bring up a window where you can suggest which topics should be merged and a moderator will take care of it.

I am now going to look at the four topics you suggested for merging.

--

Maestro

Thanks. Though I'm not sure if merging is really the answer in this case, because the "cable break" theme only came up just this week, whereas the original threads were griping about other issues long before the cables broke. Ideally what I would like to see assembled into a new topic would be just the few fragments about cable breaks extracted from the original 4 threads, and leave the old threads to carry on as they are. Perhaps on reflection the simplest way would be to just start a new thread on cable breaks and make 4 seperate announcements on the original threads to that effect?

+ SJ

Several different threads in Internet, computers, communication, technology in Thailand have been discussing users' gripes about the poor service offered by their ISPs, and this week when some major cable breaks disrupted services more generally, the gripes all started getting stronger, but important information about the breaks and their effect on the network didn't immediately get through to all the threads. Bits of information about it did appear on some of them, though.

I tried posting what I knew about the cable breaks on some of them myself, but all the news and chat about the cable breaks, which I would consider to be of interest to all internet users, remained fragmented amongst 4 threads at least. Maybe more.

Thread topics 166047, 166185, 167153 and 167254 refer.

I was wondering about starting a new "Broken Internet Cables" thread myself, but can't really see how I could pull together all the fragments from the other threads in an easily readable form without a lot of boring requoting. I suppose I'd then have to post a link to my new thread in each of the other 4 threads.

Any better ideas?

+ SJ