Leased Line?

[rogerdee123]

My secretary is after me to get a leased line internet connection, in hopes of solving the TOT ADSL slow connection problems.

My question is ... will leased line solve the problems?

She is suggesting LoxInfo. It costs about 12,000 baht per month for 256 speed (both ways). My understanding is that it's the leased line service which isn't shared with other users.

Anyone with experience with this?

[paveet]

The definition of a leased line is that it's meant to have a 'contention ratio' or what Thais call 'quota' of 1:1 (as opposed to 1:40 of TOT or whatever). This is like having a direct 'pipe' (to the ISP) without actually sharing that 'pipe'. But this still doesn't guarantee it's faster though.

Most ISPs provide an SLA (Service Level Agreement) on leased line and/or corporate packages. Ask the ISP about this. I've never actually had experience with leased line myself (and probably wouldn't), but I'm using G.shdsl which is usually marketed as the 'poor man's leased line'. The speed on my G.shdsl package is better than the consumer level adsl would give you. I pay about 3000 baht a month to CAT for the Premium Pack: http://www.cat.net.th/hinet/promotion.html (the site is in Thai, but u can understand the little English there I think). The speed's pretti much stable, 1900/1500 during the mornings and noons, 1400/1300 during late afternoons and evenings. Please note that this CAT Premium Pack Hinet is 1:5 and not a 1:1 'dedicated connection'.

These guys offer pretty good G.shdsl deals (marketed as a 'dedicated connection'): http://www.otaro.co.th/Broadband.html and I've heard that their service is really good.

I've got a quote before from Pacific Internet before for G.shdsl and its about the same price as Otaro. I'd definitely recommend G.shdsl over leased line connections as their prices are about 1/3.

Well it all depends where you are (from your profile I'm assuming Bangkok), if you're in an office building, True VDSL might also give you a good deal (6/6mbps for about only 6500 baht or 10/10mbps for 10000ish baht!!). The speed here's much better than True ADSL / TOT ADSL home packs. You could have a look into 'MetroLAN' also.

Sorry I've given you a wide selection there.

Pavee

PS well, actually I did experience a leased line once. This was at the Shang-Ri La Bangkok where my friend and I used KaZaA on his dad's computer in the office. It was fairly decent giving us 15kB/s (it WAS decent then! This was 6 years ago when everyone was still on ClickTA (56 kbps)).

Edited April 6, 2007 by paveet

[Kyosuken]

I am with Pavee on this one thought CAT in Patong, does advertise SHDSL as leased ligne. Problem is when you ask them why (it was a couple months ago it has changed lately) for a "leased line" the connection gets lower than our ToT adsl line ? The answer was : well it's a leased line but you get that bandwith only for inside Thailand (for an Internet Caffé it's very useful to have so much bandwith to see Thai websites ).

As i said, things changed lately with constant very good speed from SHDSL.

[paveet]

I thought I was actually the only one in the world using their service. The speed's been good for me (since May 2006 when I started using it) apart from when the Taiwanese earthquake actually hit.

The sales person always listens to me though which is good. The only problem I have with it is, at certain times of the day, the ping latency out to the US seems outrageous though the speed is constantly above 1400kbps (this isn't a problem if you don't game online). My DSLAM is at the Rat-cha-phak Building (near Asoke) in Bangkok and my line is 3.9 km long from there (not line of sight but actually the length if you curl on the roads). I was at the Nana DSLAM before (which meant an unstable 5.6km long line) and they were quite prompt in calling me saying they've now got a new node up closer to me two weeks into the service. The guy putting the wire up sat down and showed the map of how the line was laid from there to me.

G.shdsl tends to be more stable than ADSL. CAT runs a new copper drop wire for you.

Edited April 6, 2007 by paveet

[Kyosuken]

The people at CAT are very friendly good english speakers, but they are not too far from ToT when you tell them something is wrong on their end. I respect the whole "don't lose face" thing, i wouldn't be living there otherwise, but admiting the problem is not always the "Farang" would be nice in my book. I note that contrary to ToT, they at least do check remotely the line if you insist a little with them, before sending the squad of technicians .

From my experience with CAT's SHDSL is that the line behaviour is closer to ADSL arround the globe, it slow downs during peak hours and then settles at night. What has always amazed me thought is that at the time the line was not so good (before Taiwan's EQ) the upload was "always" close to expectations for international connections (we got a 2mb/1mb line) and the upload toped 900kb all the time.

[paveet]

Last Result:

Download Speed: 1983 kbps (247.9 KB/sec transfer rate)

Upload Speed: 1555 kbps (194.4 KB/sec transfer rate)

from www.speakeasy.net/speedtest to San Francisco.

http://www.speedtest.net/result/109689335.png to London

http://www.speedtest.net/result/109690107.png to LA

http://www.speedtest.net/result/109690462.png to Singapore

..maybe I'm pushing this service too much, but I'm just really happy with it espeacially now that Maxnet has moved off CAT to have their own identity. (Maxnet relied on CAT-ISP for bandwidth earlier instead of connecting to THNIX and IIG themself).

No, I do not work for CAT.

Edited April 6, 2007 by paveet

[Kyosuken]

Awesome

[Prasert]

A 256/256 leased line from CSLoxinfo for 12000 / month sounds absolutely cheap! But you will not get 256k international bandwidth dedicated as well. (they promised it to me when I took a leased line, but after 1 month that international bandwidth suddenly wasn't dedicated anymore).

The technical aspects of the DSL flavours (other than adsl):

A leased line is usually a HDSL link - runs on telephone wire (no space for a phone signal) so a dedicated line is required. Max speed: 2Mbps

G.SHDSL (in Europe sold as SDSL) is a standardized improvement of HDSL - also requires a dedicated copper-pair. Max speed: 2.3Mbps, max distance to the CO 11km.

VDSL can be combined with a phone signal so can run on existing wires. Max speed: 18Mbps, max distance 1500m.

Since you're located in Bangkok, take a closer look at all the choices in different providers you can get! Leased lines are expensive compared to competetive lines offered.

Also consider buying a decent router: the TOT adsl modems are usually the main problem (slow processor, very low packet-per-second switching rate and not enough memory). I showed a Thai friend the difference between using a TOT modem and a Cisco 827 - both setup in an internet cafe with 15 computers browsing the web simultaneously. He was very amused - most customers thought it was almost twice as fast now.

[paveet]

Also consider buying a decent router: the TOT adsl modems are usually the main problem (slow processor, very low packet-per-second switching rate and not enough memory). I showed a Thai friend the difference between using a TOT modem and a Cisco 827 - both setup in an internet cafe with 15 computers browsing the web simultaneously. He was very amused - most customers thought it was almost twice as fast now.

That's quite true when you're comparing a Cisco to a cheap modem. I've used the Cisco 831 but have had equally great successes with the Linksys WRT54GL flashed with the Tomato firmware+zyxel 791 in bridge mode.

HDSL, I think, is people refer to T1 and E1 as (if you've heard those phrases on IRC or something before).

Pavee

Edited April 7, 2007 by paveet

[Kyosuken]

OC12 owns them all

G.SHDSL max speed in download is up to 6mb now, just that we don't get it over here.

[paveet]

OC12 owns them all

G.SHDSL max speed in download is up to 6mb now, just that we don't get it over here.

OC just means optical carrier, it doesnt specify what it is. Then someone comes along with OC-24 and beats OC-12 jk

You're referring to G.shdsl+ rite?

G.shdsl.bis gives a symmetrical 20-ish mbps but over an 8-core wire.

Edited April 7, 2007 by paveet