3BB International Bandwidth

[JetsetBkk]

Years ago TT&T had a service called "Maxnet Premier".

I recall that it was supposed to provide better international bandwidth.

 

Does anyone know if 3BB has a similar service?

I can't see anything like it on their phone app.

 

[KannikaP]

What speed are you expecting on your phone via 3BB. What package are you paying for?

[JetsetBkk]

12 minutes ago, KannikaP said:

What speed are you expecting on your phone via 3BB. What package are you paying for?

The package I have is 1000/500. The problem is not on the phone, I just looked at the app on the phone to see what other packages there may be.

 

The problem was on my IPTV set top box. The server (Asia 2) on Pulse-TV is normally around 15Mbps (sometimes 25, or 30 Mbps) but this morning the channel I was watching was buffering a lot. On checking the speed this morning, it went below 7.5 Mbps (needed to prevent buffering according to the "chat" help guy) a few times and once went down to 1 Mbps!

 

I was thinking of paying for a better international bandwidth from 3BB, but I now wonder how the server speed test is calculated? Is it the speed I'm getting on my Set Top Box, or is it the speed the server is getting from its ISP? 

 

So if the server shows a speed of 1 Mbps, does it mean Pulse-TV needs to fix it? Or is it a "local" 3BB problem that I could possibly avoid by paying for higher international bandwidth?

 

I need to learn more about this stuff! ????

 

By the way, the channel is OK now - no buffering.

[JayBird]

A better way to test your speed is to go to:  testmy.net

 

It does an actual file transfer to test the speed, and you can choose the target country.

 

Also, I like fast.com, as it should measure my Netflix speed.

 

 

[Taxi]

Had a friend who had the 3BB international plan, he changed to the 1000/300 plan and didn't notice any difference. I was on the 1000/1000 and changed to the 1000/300 plan and didn't see any difference.  By changing we both saved over 7,000 baht per year.

 

Are you connected via ethernet or wireless?  You should connect via ethernet if possible it can make a big difference.

 

For international a good vpn can help, I use Nord and usually connect via Singapore or Perth (Australia).  I get almost zero buffering with live sports and no buffering on tv/movies.  

 

Lastly check which router you have, if it's an older model hit 3bb up for a new one. It all helps. 

[kiteman9]

When you have a slow connection with buffering you can sometimes solve the problem by turning off your phone/computer and the router for a minute.

[Seeall]

6 hours ago, Taxi said:

Had a friend who had the 3BB international plan, he changed to the 1000/300 plan and didn't notice any difference. I was on the 1000/1000 and changed to the 1000/300 plan and didn't see any difference.  By changing we both saved over 7,000 baht per year.

 

Are you connected via ethernet or wireless?  You should connect via ethernet if possible it can make a big difference.

 

For international a good vpn can help, I use Nord and usually connect via Singapore or Perth (Australia).  I get almost zero buffering with live sports and no buffering on tv/movies.  

 

Lastly check which router you have, if it's an older model hit 3bb up for a new one. It all helps. 

The 3BB tech says we lucky to get real 1-3 Mps ..... never mind your speed lying tests....  its the thai bottleneck....  so all these fancy packages, unless its a real international connection.. I recall prices of 4k up ... forget it, ur wasting ur cash,,, get the cheapest...

[1FinickyOne]

they just came by my house today... they have helped me in the past and I find the service aspect very good... you can call them at 1530 and press #9 for English.. but probably best to stop in at a nearby office... 

 

about 6 months ago they came by and gave me a 5g router - no extra charge... 

[KhunBENQ]

10 hours ago, Taxi said:

For international a good vpn can help, I use Nord and usually connect via Singapore or Perth (Australia).  I get almost zero buffering with live sports and no buffering on tv/movies.  

You were faster.

I often download youtube videos to watch them on a proper viewer without ads. Speeds of 100 to 300 Mbit/s are seen depending on time of day and type/age of video.

But sometimes it slows down dramatically.

Then switch Nord VPN to Singapore and I get a steady download of about 100 Mbit/s.

 

[D2Pipes]

On 9/2/2021 at 11:18 AM, JetsetBkk said:

Years ago TT&T had a service called "Maxnet Premier"

Hi JetSet, we meet again????

I can't remember if I mentioned it or not but the main cause of buffering is the Bandwidth (BW) of the ISP's International Internet Gateway (IIG). Quite a mouthful but it boils down to how much capacity the ISP allocates to the IIG i.e. how much money are they prepared to pay up front. When the ISP allocation is fully utilised by bods like you and I, the result is buffering. I can assure you the allocation by ISP's in Thailand has improved dramatically over the years and it is most unlikely to be a Pulse-TV issue.

 

Regarding speed tests here you have to be very careful as the likes of Ookla measure the Up/Down speed using local servers which is of no use to you whatsoever.  Op JB is so correct when he said to use Testmy.net or Fast.com but be careful with Fast because if you look at the settings you will see Fast use  between 1 & 8  parallel connections. Pulse-TV have only one connection to your router so you need to change the Fast setting from 1-8 to 1-1. The other problem with Fast is they are testing the Internet connection from the UK to Thailand which is again, not what you want. With Testmy.net you can set the location of the server and in your case you need to set the server location to Singapore for LIve streams and Germany for movies and series. I am not sure about catch-up TV so no comment. Pulse-TV have 2 servers for Live TV streams located in Singapore. If you ever have buffering on a LIve feed again play a movie or series as these servers are located in Germany. Your download speed is very dependant on time of day, server location and how many bods are trying to share the 3BB downlaod BW.

 

Regarding your initial question, as far as I am aware no ISP has a 'Special' International package.

[D2Pipes]

BTW: This link, https://bit.ly/38FcyGN has interesting stats on the Thai Internal & International Internet Gateway for those that are interested in this sort of thing????

[D2Pipes]

On 9/2/2021 at 11:59 AM, JetsetBkk said:

I need to learn more about this stuff! ????

I forgot to say that you should select SD if your stream is buffering. My IPTV stream has 3 sources onmost channels, FD, HD & SD. If Pulse-TV has the same options then select SD as this requires the lowest BW.

[D2Pipes]

and if you really want to kill buffering dead on a Live TV stream you need an IPTV supplier with servers in Thailand. To that end there are not many IPTV suppliers with servers in Thailand.

When you add the popular farang requirement the IPTV supplier must also have catch-up it becomes very difficult and in fact, I only know of one IPTV supplier with servers in Thailand that also has catch-up????

If you do not mind delaying your 'Live' feed by a few minutes you can create a Live feed buffer using VLC as your IPTV player but that is another story. 

[JetsetBkk]

6 hours ago, D2Pipes said:

Hi JetSet, we meet again????

I can't remember if I mentioned it or not but the main cause of buffering is the Bandwidth (BW) of the ISP's International Internet Gateway (IIG).

???? Indeed! I was incredibly busy yesterday and don't think I even logged in to Thaivisa, so missed many posts.

re. the IIG, I used to religiously download the NecTec Internet maps to see how they - Thailand - were improving the bandwidth. I stopped about 10 years ago when they got too d@mn complicated.

It's was fairly easy to see what was going on 20 years ago, but now? OMG!

I'm not sure if the forum software can handle them:

 

Here's the latest. Do you see where my buffering is? 

 

 

[JetsetBkk]

5 hours ago, D2Pipes said:

I forgot to say that you should select SD if your stream is buffering. My IPTV stream has 3 sources onmost channels, FD, HD & SD. If Pulse-TV has the same options then select SD as this requires the lowest BW.

I'm pretty sure I tried various settings for the picture quality, hoping that a lower resolution would help. But I found that the very lowest resolution was worse than the "Automatic" setting which, I presume, was HD. I'll investigate again later.

[JetsetBkk]

On 9/3/2021 at 9:35 AM, Taxi said:

Are you connected via ethernet or wireless?  You should connect via ethernet if possible it can make a big difference.

???? Exactly what I thought. So I ordered a 25m CAT 6 cable. It came today. The idea was to put it up through the ceiling and down into the bedroom which is farthest from the WiFi router, which is in the office.

 

So I plugged it in to the Ethernet switch - which is connected to the router - and plugged the other end into the Android set top box. B*gger me, the speed dropped to 5mbps!!! It still is around 5, sometime 3 sometimes 12. I've turned off the WiFi in the settings of the set top box to make sure it is measuring the Ethernet speed.

 

It doesn't make sense to me, especially as the picture - for as long as I've been testing it - is not buffering!

 

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

I've asked various staff at 3BB about this periodically, and they've always replied with the same answer -- no, they don't have any special service plan option/add-on package designed to maximize international connections.

 

They've also maintained in those same conversations that they themselves (3BB) don't throttle their customers international internet traffic. But that doesn't mean, of course, that it doesn't get slowed down elsewhere on its complicated route out of Thailand to the rest of the world.

 

[D2Pipes]

10 hours ago, JetsetBkk said:

B*gger me, the speed dropped to 5mbps!!! It still is around 5, sometime 3 sometimes 12.

Same same so I gave up on Ethernet!

Interestingly, my best IIG download speed is when I use 2.4GHz WiFi which is NOT what anyone will tell you.

[D2Pipes]

10 hours ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

They've also maintained in those same conversations that they themselves (3BB) don't throttle their customers international internet traffic.

I believe this to be correct as I only ever see my download speed drop when I use a VPN.

[KhunBENQ]

12 hours ago, JetsetBkk said:

I'm not sure if the forum software can handle them

It can!

17.1 MB, 8400 x 5250  Pixels

Would make a nice wallpaper.

At least the obvious can be seen: big fat wires up to 450 GBit/s to Google (youtube), Facebook. Telenor ... (Singapore, Hongkong, Malaysia) plus China Telecom.

Total bandwidth 16.18 TBit/s. Enough for me ????

[GammaGlobulin]

11 hours ago, KhunBENQ said:

It can!

17.1 MB, 8400 x 5250  Pixels

Would make a nice wallpaper.

At least the obvious can be seen: big fat wires up to 450 GBit/s to Google (youtube), Facebook. Telenor ... (Singapore, Hongkong, Malaysia) plus China Telecom.

Total bandwidth 16.18 TBit/s. Enough for me ????

Using the standard 3BB packages of 1Gbps/1Gbps, or 1Gbps/500Mbps, is it possible to achieve 80 percent of these speeds to overseas servers in, say, USA, China, etc?

[muratremix]

7 hours ago, GammaGlobulin said:

Using the standard 3BB packages of 1Gbps/1Gbps, or 1Gbps/500Mbps, is it possible to achieve 80 percent of these speeds to overseas servers in, say, USA, China, etc?

80 percent? no. Best I get is 650 mbps from Singapore with multiple connections on a speedtest server. It would be lower if I was on 1000/100 or 1000/300. I'm on a 1000/1000 mbps and they give different contention ratio between higher and lower packages.

[GammaGlobulin]

42 minutes ago, muratremix said:

80 percent? no. Best I get is 650 mbps from Singapore with multiple connections on a speedtest server. It would be lower if I was on 1000/100 or 1000/300. I'm on a 1000/1000 mbps and they give different contention ratio between higher and lower packages.

Therefore, would you say that upload/download speed to/from an overseas server does not necessarily depend solely upon the speed of one's domestic internet connection?  In other words, even if one had a dependable local/Thailand internet connection speed of, say, 2 Gbps, yet one might never achieve speeds anywhere near approaching this, if one were to exchange data overseas?  (I would assume this if there is limited bandwidth available for sending data overseas.)

[KhunBENQ]

3 hours ago, GammaGlobulin said:

Therefore, would you say that upload/download speed to/from an overseas server does not necessarily depend solely upon the speed of one's domestic internet connection?

Yes. You will hardly find any server providing a single internet connection with such speeds.

And then ask the basic question: what to do with it as a private user?

Or do you run a design/engineering company with x engineers/designers?

Currently I am not aware about an application for private use with such bandwidth?

Virtual reality in 8k?

Nextflix requires about 50 Mbit/s (0.05 Gbit/s) for highest resolution available.

Some "hightech" country in central Europe can not provide 50 Mbit/s connections in all regions!

And: distance can't be cut short.

The ping (signal travel time) to Europe or US (200/300 ms) is a handicap for gamers who often complain and hope to find a solution which there is not.

[GammaGlobulin]

30 minutes ago, KhunBENQ said:

Yes. You will hardly find any server providing a single internet connection with such speeds.

And then ask the basic question: what to do with it as a private user?

Or do you run a design/engineering company with x engineers/designers?

Currently I am not aware about an application for private use with such bandwidth?

Virtual reality in 8k?

Nextflix requires about 50 Mbit/s (0.05 Gbit/s) for highest resolution available.

Some "hightech" country in central Europe can not provide 50 Mbit/s connections in all regions!

And: distance can't be cut short.

The ping (signal travel time) to Europe or US (200/300 ms) is a handicap for gamers who often complain and hope to find a solution which there is not.

Thank you. 

 

I was asking for purposes of large file upload to overseas servers, in the order of several TBytes. 

[robblok]

On 9/3/2021 at 9:35 AM, Taxi said:

Had a friend who had the 3BB international plan, he changed to the 1000/300 plan and didn't notice any difference. I was on the 1000/1000 and changed to the 1000/300 plan and didn't see any difference.  By changing we both saved over 7,000 baht per year.

 

Are you connected via ethernet or wireless?  You should connect via ethernet if possible it can make a big difference.

 

For international a good vpn can help, I use Nord and usually connect via Singapore or Perth (Australia).  I get almost zero buffering with live sports and no buffering on tv/movies.  

 

Lastly check which router you have, if it's an older model hit 3bb up for a new one. It all helps. 

I definately see differences international between the 1000/300 and 1000/1000. I download big files from newsgroups and get often 65mb/s so far higher then what the OP is complaining about.

 

But the problem could also be pulse TV if their servers are not fast enough then your own connection does not matter. They can easily put the blame at 3bb to not feel responsible. Like someone suggested the OP needs to find a good speedtest site so he can check.

[robblok]

20 minutes ago, GammaGlobulin said:

Thank you. 

 

I was asking for purposes of large file upload to overseas servers, in the order of several TBytes. 

That will take forever. I have uploaded with speeds of 70MB/s with 3bb even more at times. But it also depends on the speed of the overseas server. I mean if one is fast the other is slow the slow one will be the limiting factor.

 

But with the 70MB/s it would take you 4 hours to upload 1TB in optimal conditions so a connection like the one I have (3bb can be better or worse depending on location) and the receiving server needs a fast internet connection to match.

 

 

[GammaGlobulin]

18 minutes ago, robblok said:

That will take forever. I have uploaded with speeds of 70MB/s with 3bb even more at times. But it also depends on the speed of the overseas server. I mean if one is fast the other is slow the slow one will be the limiting factor.

 

But with the 70MB/s it would take you 4 hours to upload 1TB in optimal conditions so a connection like the one I have (3bb can be better or worse depending on location) and the receiving server needs a fast internet connection to match.

 

 

If you had one computer with 8TBytes of storage here, and were trying to use some application such as FileSync, to sync with a computer offshore, then a fast and reliable connection would become important. 

 

Sounds to me, just from reading past posts here, that 3BB is reliable. 

[robblok]

9 minutes ago, GammaGlobulin said:

If you had one computer with 8TBytes of storage here, and were trying to use some application such as FileSync, to sync with a computer offshore, then a fast and reliable connection would become important. 

 

Sounds to me, just from reading past posts here, that 3BB is reliable. 

Sure its reliable i had it in nothaburi and BKK and both times it was great.

 

I have 340GB on dropbox 1 million files. The first time the computer took over a day to upload (many small files go slower then a few big ones). However now it just mutates the changes and it works perfect.

 

I think if you have to upload 8tb new (not just changes) all the time then your computer takes each time 2 days or more. Also 3bb might start to complain about fair use.

[GammaGlobulin]

2 minutes ago, robblok said:

Sure its reliable i had it in nothaburi and BKK and both times it was great.

 

I have 340GB on dropbox 1 million files. The first time the computer took over a day to upload (many small files go slower then a few big ones). However now it just mutates the changes and it works perfect.

 

I think if you have to upload 8tb new (not just changes) all the time then your computer takes each time 2 days or more. Also 3bb might start to complain about fair use.

Thank you very much for answering my question. I was asking about 3BB service reliability, speed, offshore. 

 

I will change my internet service to 3BB this week. And, just in case, I will keep my present internet service provider, as backup. Two wheels is better than one. 

 

Tks.