Is There 24/7 Broadband In Chiang Mai?

[JuniorExPat]

Is there any provider in Chiang Mai that genuinely offers 24/7 broadband?

I've been here long enough to know what sort of answers to expect to this question but I am inspired to seek the holy grail again by having some critical deadlines to meet. During about 75% of local office working hours I receive an acceptable connection but for the remaining 25% of those 'working' hours it is appalling and for the majority of the night time hours (when it is ideal for me to connect in real time with clients etc) I am unable to get any connection at all - what is that all about?

I am on Maxnet 512/256 B790 per month.

Who here reckons they have the closest thing to 365/24/7 broadband? And who provides it?

JxP

[Austhaied]

I use TOT 512/256 and it's "24/7".. 700 baht a month, free installation and modem as well.

My last speed test results were.

Download Speed: 429 kbps (53.6 KB/sec transfer rate)

Upload Speed: 208 kbps (26 KB/sec transfer rate)

[Das65]

A Neighbour has 1mb TOT Wi-fi

Very good coverage not sure how much it cost's them

Last Result:

Download Speed: 741 kbps (92.6 KB/sec transfer rate)

Upload Speed: 227 kbps (28.4 KB/sec transfer rate)

[JuniorExPat]

I use TOT 512/256 and it's "24/7".. 700 baht a month, free installation and modem as well.

My last speed test results were.

Download Speed: 429 kbps (53.6 KB/sec transfer rate)

Upload Speed: 208 kbps (26 KB/sec transfer rate)

When my connection is working those are the kind of speeds that I receive. Can I ask whereabouts you live? Location seems to have some impact on the service - I guess it's more to do with distance from the exchange (or are they hubs these days?!).

JxP

[JuniorExPat]

A Neighbour has 1mb TOT Wi-fi

Very good coverage not sure how much it cost's them

Last Result:

Download Speed: 741 kbps (92.6 KB/sec transfer rate)

Upload Speed: 227 kbps (28.4 KB/sec transfer rate)

That sounds interesting, I will check out the pricing. Is there much downtime, do you know? What area of Chiang Mai are you talking about?

Thanks

JxP

[Das65]

A Neighbour has 1mb TOT Wi-fi

Very good coverage not sure how much it cost's them

Last Result:

Download Speed: 741 kbps (92.6 KB/sec transfer rate)

Upload Speed: 227 kbps (28.4 KB/sec transfer rate)

That sounds interesting, I will check out the pricing. Is there much downtime, do you know? What area of Chiang Mai are you talking about?

Thanks

JxP

It's has gone down a few times but not for long, i'm in the Nong Hoi area along the Chiang Mai -Lamphun Road

[p1p]

I also use TOT.

Today is the first day in about a month that I have had reasonable speed. In recent days my 56K dialup has been vastly quicker.

So don't expect miracles and remember This Is Thailand, keep your options open and don't throw away that old modem.

EDIT:- Having written the above, I clicked on the post function. NO connect whatsoever. Took almost 40 minutes for it to come back.

[Austhaied]

I use TOT 512/256 and it's "24/7".. 700 baht a month, free installation and modem as well.

My last speed test results were.

Download Speed: 429 kbps (53.6 KB/sec transfer rate)

Upload Speed: 208 kbps (26 KB/sec transfer rate)

When my connection is working those are the kind of speeds that I receive. Can I ask whereabouts you live? Location seems to have some impact on the service - I guess it's more to do with distance from the exchange (or are they hubs these days?!).

JxP

I live about 1km from the main server/exchange on the Super Highway.

[CobraSnakeNecktie]

I use TOT 512/256 and it's "24/7".. 700 baht a month, free installation and modem as well.

My last speed test results were.

Download Speed: 429 kbps (53.6 KB/sec transfer rate)

Upload Speed: 208 kbps (26 KB/sec transfer rate)

When my connection is working those are the kind of speeds that I receive. Can I ask whereabouts you live? Location seems to have some impact on the service - I guess it's more to do with distance from the exchange (or are they hubs these days?!).

JxP

I live about 1km from the main server/exchange on the Super Highway.

what is that close to? any cross streets?

[Austhaied]

I use TOT 512/256 and it's "24/7".. 700 baht a month, free installation and modem as well.

My last speed test results were.

Download Speed: 429 kbps (53.6 KB/sec transfer rate)

Upload Speed: 208 kbps (26 KB/sec transfer rate)

When my connection is working those are the kind of speeds that I receive. Can I ask whereabouts you live? Location seems to have some impact on the service - I guess it's more to do with distance from the exchange (or are they hubs these days?!).

JxP

I live about 1km from the main server/exchange on the Super Highway.

what is that close to? any cross streets?

Near the Tarin Hotel / Wat Jet Jod area..

[CobraSnakeNecktie]

I use TOT 512/256 and it's "24/7".. 700 baht a month, free installation and modem as well.

My last speed test results were.

Download Speed: 429 kbps (53.6 KB/sec transfer rate)

Upload Speed: 208 kbps (26 KB/sec transfer rate)

When my connection is working those are the kind of speeds that I receive. Can I ask whereabouts you live? Location seems to have some impact on the service - I guess it's more to do with distance from the exchange (or are they hubs these days?!).

JxP

I live about 1km from the main server/exchange on the Super Highway.

what is that close to? any cross streets?

Near the Tarin Hotel / Wat Jet Jod area..

okay that is close to me. I am just a another 2 K from Tarin at hillside 4. That would assume the cables go straight there. Unfortunately my TTT maxnet(TOT phone line) 1mb service only nets about 550kbs tops. Must be some other factors in play also.

[ProThaiExpat]

Having been frustrated for years with GPRS, I was delighted to hear that my across the street falang neighbor installed newly available TOT ADSL. I had been monitoring all of the posts on the subject relative to distance from hubs, etc. and so on my return to Thailand in Nov. 2006, I went to Mae Rim TOT office and ordered up the service. I live 8 km north of superhighway.

A knowledgeable technician came to get us up and running, although the system is fairly easy to install. What I did learn from the tech who advised to leave the service on all the time as I had an unlimited service for 1000 Baht was that I was in a group of five houses/users, even though there were two users in my house. I asked and was told conceivably there could be many users in the same house and if they all went on line at the same time, speeds would come down.

In the four months since I have had the service, it has been fine, although I get no service periods of about 45 minutes two times a week, usually mid morning. I have not experienced the multiple day outages that some have reported in the Hang Dong area. Some no service periods are cured by re-booting my computer or rebooting the router.

What makes sense to me is that the "bundles or groups" of users using the same band width is what affects speed. I wonder how many users within a group there are in a condo building. In a residential neighborhood five houses in a group suggests maximum ten users, is a condo building considered one "house" for grouping?

[nikster]

I live in the north, have TOT, and I must say it's been pretty good.

There were some outages but none lasting more than 5 minutes. I usually use the net all day, every day, starting early am. From 5 am to 9 am and during those times, speeds are as advertised, 700Kbps down / ~500 up (theoretical is 1024/512). After that speed goes down significantly until about 6pm.

I also found that the reason it stays below 1024 is line sharing and sharing only. When I use one of those programs that just open multiple streams for downloading - something the simplistic network shaping algorithm at TOT apparently doesn't handle - I get a rock-solid 1024 kbps download, at nearly all times of the day. Quite amazing, actually.

So TOT is doing as good as it can here - the lease for a non-shared 1024 connection is something like 15,000 Baht or more (see other posts on topic for details), since I pay only 1000, something's got to give.

I have a feeling that TOT is much improved over last year when we had several day's worth of outages. It was pretty bad, I had to leave the town in order to be able to do work - I have a backup GPRS connection but it's so slow as to be almost worthless.

As I have posted in another thread, sometimes it's not even the provider's fault. The Thai internet gateway (IIG) which nearly all providers must go through was out for a whopping 280+ hours in 2005.

One more thing: I am pretty far from the exchange, ~3.8km. When I look at the line speed characteristics, I don't think either matters at all though. After all if this was the cause for slowness, it would be slow at 5am also.

Edited March 31, 2007 by nikster

[meadish_sweetball]

The main factor is what is known as 'contention ratio'. This means the number of people that share the same line as yourself. When you sign up for 512/256 from TT&T Maxnet at 790 baht per month, the contention ratio is quite high. This means, that what other people do, affects you. If somebody is constantly downloading stuff, they will occupy bandwidth the entire time. If you are lucky, you are in an area with few heavy users, and your speed will be as good as that of people who pay for a package with a lower contention ratio.

The cheaper the package, the higher the contention ratio. Your results will vary, and you wont know what the actual speed is until you try in your particular area.

I used to be on TRUE cable 1024/256 for just 1000 baht per month, and had an excellent connection 24/7 with extremely little downtime. Total download speeds varied from 60-130, mostly around 100 kB/s.

When I moved into where I live now, only TT&T phonelines (which are in reality TOT phonelines leased by TT&T, but this is another story) were available. I could not get a TOT phone line in this neighbourhood, since the 'quota for TOT lines was already filled'.

So my options are limited to the broadband packages offered on TT&T lines. Because internet is important for my job I opted for TT&T Maxnet, small business connection (one notch over what Junior Expat has). This is 2390 baht per month, for a 512/256 connection with a relatively low contention ratio. For this price I was expecting a connection that would stay at constant speed throughout the day. But it did not. At best, I got download speeds of 50 kB/s, but most of the time it hovered around 30 kB/s.

Considering the price, I did not think it was worth the money. So I switched to Hinet by TT&T - 999 baht/month, plus VAT. This is a CAT service which runs on TT&T lines. It has a *very* high contention ratio, and so speeds vary wildly, and I cannot say I would recommend it. Occasionally, on a rare day, I will get speeds of around 150 kB/s, but rarely for more than 2-3 hours.

Typically, it is more like 10-30 kB/s. But as you can see, it is still not that much worse than what I got with the "high end" TT&T MaxNet package I paid more than twice as much for earlier. So I am sticking with this for some time more... and hope I will move to a place with better options next time.

*Note that I report download speed (kB/s) and not line speed (kbps). You divide the line speed by 8 to get the download speed.

[richard10365]

I think the main factor with ADSL here in Chiang Mai is the distance from the orginating source. I copied this from http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/dsl.htm

Distance Limitations

Precisely how much benefit you see will greatly depend on how far you are from the central office of the company providing the ADSL service. ADSL is a distance-sensitive technology: As the connection's length increases, the signal quality decreases and the connection speed goes down. The limit for ADSL service is 18,000 feet (5,460 meters), though for speed and quality of service reasons many ADSL providers place a lower limit on the distances for the service. At the extremes of the distance limits, ADSL customers may see speeds far below the promised maximums, while customers nearer the central office have faster connections and may see extremely high speeds in the future. ADSL technology can provide maximum downstream (Internet to customer) speeds of up to 8 megabits per second (Mbps) at a distance of about 6,000 feet (1,820 meters), and upstream speeds of up to 640 kilobits per second (Kbps). In practice, the best speeds widely offered today are 1.5 Mbps downstream, with upstream speeds varying between 64 and 640 Kbps

I have the 1024kbps/512kbps package from TOT. I was told I would not get the advertised speed due to the distance from the point of orgin. I just ran the ThaiVisa speed test and got 828kbps download and 409kbps upload. I'm happy with that.

Also note, location of the speed test you choose will affect the your reported speed. I used the ThaiVisa Broadband Speed test. Another speed test I did from http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/speedtest.swf rated my download at 291kbps and upload at 404kbps.

[CobraSnakeNecktie]

I think the main factor with ADSL here in Chiang Mai is the distance from the orginating source. I copied this from http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/dsl.htm

Distance Limitations

Precisely how much benefit you see will greatly depend on how far you are from the central office of the company providing the ADSL service. ADSL is a distance-sensitive technology: As the connection's length increases, the signal quality decreases and the connection speed goes down. The limit for ADSL service is 18,000 feet (5,460 meters), though for speed and quality of service reasons many ADSL providers place a lower limit on the distances for the service. At the extremes of the distance limits, ADSL customers may see speeds far below the promised maximums, while customers nearer the central office have faster connections and may see extremely high speeds in the future. ADSL technology can provide maximum downstream (Internet to customer) speeds of up to 8 megabits per second (Mbps) at a distance of about 6,000 feet (1,820 meters), and upstream speeds of up to 640 kilobits per second (Kbps). In practice, the best speeds widely offered today are 1.5 Mbps downstream, with upstream speeds varying between 64 and 640 Kbps

I have the 1024kbps/512kbps package from TOT. I was told I would not get the advertised speed due to the distance from the point of orgin. I just ran the ThaiVisa speed test and got 828kbps download and 409kbps upload. I'm happy with that.

Also note, location of the speed test you choose will affect the your reported speed. I used the ThaiVisa Broadband Speed test. Another speed test I did from http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/speedtest.swf rated my download at 291kbps and upload at 404kbps.

My guess is its more about engineering like distance than contention.

In my case I am less than 3 km from the TOT exchange. I can test at all times of the day and night and never exceed 550kbs for a 1000kbs TTT maxnet service. Sometimes it is less which I would guess more likely to be contention. The difference between the advertised 1000 kbs and my 550kbs has got to be engineering issues.

If I sometimes got 800 kbs at 5 am when most folks are sleeping then I would say its contention but does not seem to be the case.

[mcgriffith]

Hey, I'm not a geek, but do you guys know about tweaking your modem (I'm assuming you are all on ADSL)? You can optimise your TCP/IP port settings to get max speed. I personally live in an apt bldg with free LAN, so I'm lucky. Check out:

http://www.speedguide.net/

or just do a Google search for "DSL speed tweaks". Troll around, you will find a lot of things that (may) get you up to the advertised speeds promised by your provider. Hope this helps