Broadband Providers Suggestions/advice

[Firefoxx]

This is a VERY often misunderstood concept: Your distance from the CO doesn't affect your effective speed. It just limits your maximum speed.

ADSL is capable of around 8mbits (for the original ADSL), which drops as your distance to the CO increases. 1mbit is attainable from pretty darn far away from the CO, as long as the line is not *too* atrocious. If you manage to get a certain speed from the CO or in the case of Thailand subscribe to that speed, you will keep that maximum speed as long as nothing happens to the line. If you're too far away to attain that speed, your ISP will usually tell you before hand and may or may not offer you a lower speed. This will always be the speed between you and the CO, unless they change the DSLAM configuration.

Your EFFECTIVE speed will depend on how good the connection/congestion is from the DSLAM to wherever you want to connect to. This is mostly determined by the ISP (quality, network, whatever). In some cases, you subscribe for a certain speed but you get a DSLAM speed that's higher (True sometimes does this), but your account (login) will throttle your effective speed down to your subscribed speed. So, your link speed may be 1024/512 (line speed to the DSLAM at the CO) but your effective speed (to wherever you're testing) may be from 1k to 1024k.

This is sort of like in the old 56k modem days. We would see that the speed reported by our modems was something like 192k, but that would just be the computer-to-modem speed, not the modem-to-modem speed (which was usually never above 52k). The slowest link is what determines the speed as a whole.

[bkk_mike]

I found this...

http://www.inet.co.th/inetweb/product.jsp?id=231

Is this good?

Any way after checking out some sites... Here are some of my requirements:

1. Unlimited broadband speeds of 1000 kbps / 1Mbps

2. Monthly payment without long term contracts

3. Ethernet broadband modem (Does this come free or may I use my own broadband modem?)

4. 850 Baht or less per month

Any ideas?

Actually - I used to use Internet Thailand on dialup a long time ago, and they were definitely the most reliable ISP I used back then (and it was easy to switch providers, so if someone was crap, you didn't buy their card again..)

Wouldn't mind trying their ADSL package, but my phone lines are True, which they don't seem to allow.

Edited July 13, 2007 by bkk_mike

[Naam]

Well it all depends on whether you can get a hard line into your house for ADSL if not I suggest TOT Ipstar there are different packages, but I have no problems with mine:

have got the line already. will report after i am connected.

[sonicdragon]

So, I decided to get a TOT home package and so far I am quite happy.

The only complaint is that it seems to get disconnected from time to time. Is this common with TOT ? While it is connected I don't have problems (such as speed), but a few times a day, the connection seems to go down. If I log on to the modem (Speedtouch 536) and reconnect, it always connects quickly and is fine until the next time. Sometimes it repeatedly drops out ever few mins for 5-10 mins. Then it will be fine for 5-10 hours. TOT said they tested the line and couldn't find any fault. They sent an engineer, and of course it was working perfectly while he was here. He changed the modem anyway, but I still get the problem.

Any suggestions ?

[Sam125]

Firefoxx,

Great information! Thank you. I am moving to a small town about aan hour and a half from Khorat next week and have heard from the local internet cafe that two ISPs are available: TOT and one other which I forget.

I plan to subscribe to the best home package. Without paying too much more are the business packages much better? And what is a SME package?

Thank you.