In Bkk, Having Massive Troubles Uploading From Hotel Dsl Lines...

[sukatoro]

hi all, i just made it to BKK a few nights ago and planned on being here for the next year but have run into a major snag and am hoping this isn't going to be a permanent problem for me. i'm a programmer for a company in the states and regularly have to upload fairly large data sets (new builds) to servers via FTP, were talking around 800-1000MB a week usually. i've been at two different hotels already and just cannot upload anything to save my life over these connections... they seem surprisingly fast to start w/ in terms of upstream but invariably the connection seems to falter and die, and to make matters worse each time the files are un-resumable... i am dying here.

can anyone maybe shed some light on this issue? recommend an internet cafe w/ known solid upstream, a hotel i could check into that has connections that are more stable? this is really bumming me out as if i cannot find a solution my plans to stay here for a year are done, i just had no idea that something as simple as ftp'ing could be so arduous here... am hoping some of you more learned LoS-stayers can offer some advice or pointers for me, and thanks in advance for your attentions friends..!

[A_Traveller]

First point is that all lines you have access to are ADSL, and I would make a bet that the upload is capped or may be triggering a 'anti-robot' firewall. Are you using service in-room or in-lobby? You might be able to access a better upload capacity from a hotel 'business centre' but they will charge you for it. If I recall the Sheraton on Sukhumvit used to offer this.

Regards

[simon43]

If your sojourn in Thailand relies on fast and reliable uploads of large amounts of date, then can I politely suggest that you check the time of the next flight back home?

Simon

[A_Traveller]

Simon, to be a little more positive, if the OP is aiming to get a condo or proper office with a private or commercial ADSL line things will improve, but I agree that internet capacity here is woeful, compared to US, EU, etc..

Regards

/edit clarification/

Edited September 15, 2007 by A_Traveller

[sukatoro]

thx to all for the speedy replies, they are greatly appreciated. i can handle slow speeds and plan my work and uploading accordingly, just not a total inability for moving data from point A to B... i am about to try changing the ftp port on the servers in question to something random and high range to see if the gateways are purposely messing w/ port 21, will report if that makes any difference and will see if i can find a business center that is well equipped. so far i have only been at the Bangkok Grand Business Inn and the Evergreen Laurel, and as i stated before the connections actually start out w/ surprisingly fast upstream (95+kbps), but end up dying... if they were at least resumable i would be fine, but it almost seems the files are corrupted by whatever is causing the disconnects.

i will report back as to whether moving the ftp port to an unknown helps in any regard, and thx for taking the time to reply friends..!

[LivinLOS]

Took me a least 3 or 4 hours to upload a simple photoset to flickr the other day.. Just have to keep hammering at it over and over..

The idea of 1GB uploads.. Well without a form of specific upload manager that resumes I would think your gonna have a hard time..

[nikster]

I am also a programmer in the north, and depending on what you want to do, this might be difficult. I mostly upload source so nothing too big - at the most a few MB at a time. No problem.

If you have to upload 800MB all at once, be prepared for some problems. Even 1GB stretched out over a week is a bit problematic.

However, I think even then, there are solutions. It can be done.

1 - Get an upload program that can _continue_ uploads that you already started. Because TIT, your upload will be interrupted. But there are (free) FTP programs and servers which deal with that just fine.

If you are uploading directly into some repository (e.g. not using FTP at all) then I suggest you prepare a server for yourself in the U.S. that has FTP and a shell or remote desktop installed, then FTP your stuff there, and check it in from that server. Worst case scenario. I have done that before, worked fine.

2 - Depending on the amount of data you want to throw over the wire, you might want to get a condo / apartment with a phone line and then get a commercial 4MB or 6MB account. Or SDSL. That might cost BHT 8000 or 10,000 / month or more but hey, ever noticed how cheap everything else is around here?

Don't get me wrong, I think I can count the number of days that I didn't worry about my internet connection on one hand. Right now there's some underseas cable outage (rumored - no idea how bad that really is) AND TOT has problems in the entire north of Thailand and figures it's going to take them a few days to sort out. Heard that from a tech support person. I am a regular on tech support and I think I have called them every single day over the last 2 weeks. I am not angry with them - they are not the ones constantly screwing up the systems after all - but I do want to let them know whenever something is not working. Meaning - often.

You could also look into an apartment with 2 phone lines, and getting 2 DSL lines from different companies installed. Then add a load balancer, there are very cheap ones available from DLink. Less than $100.

I don't think you will find a Hotel with a decent connection, to be honest. Most hotel / staff are simply too clueless to install / maintain that even if they are trying. Even in 5 star hotels, cluelessnes abounds. Condos with DSL included share one line between all residents, so that's not an option either. And they are not going to have commercial grade DSL either.

Welcome to Thailand!

Edited September 15, 2007 by nikster

[Veazer]

I would break your upload into smaller segments so that any corruption will only require you to re-upload the affected volume. Perhaps split the file in 5-20 meg volumes. Also, I would recommend you use 7-zip compression as it almost always results in a significantly smaller file size, especially for huge datasets. It's much slower, but the time difference will be more than made up for when considering the slow thai connections. Higher compression levels & larger dictionary sizes will decrease the files size even further, but it can use massive amounts of memory. At the highest compression setting, 7-zip will utilize 1.3 GB of memory. I would recommend using the "Solid Archive" option as well for the smallest size, but check your files first because files cannot be added later to solid archives.

7-Zip is free, but i find the interface to be a lot more clumsy than some commercial apps supporting the .7Z format such as PowerArchiver.

I would use a FTP app that supports concurrent connections to maximize bandwidth usage. The free FileZilla would be my choice.

Changing ports is a good idea, i hope that helps.

Edited September 15, 2007 by Veazer

[nikster]

thx to all for the speedy replies, they are greatly appreciated. i can handle slow speeds and plan my work and uploading accordingly, just not a total inability for moving data from point A to B... i am about to try changing the ftp port on the servers in question to something random and high range to see if the gateways are purposely messing w/ port 21, will report if that makes any difference and will see if i can find a business center that is well equipped. so far i have only been at the Bangkok Grand Business Inn and the Evergreen Laurel, and as i stated before the connections actually start out w/ surprisingly fast upstream (95+kbps), but end up dying... if they were at least resumable i would be fine, but it almost seems the files are corrupted by whatever is causing the disconnects.

i will report back as to whether moving the ftp port to an unknown helps in any regard, and thx for taking the time to reply friends..!

Another tip: Try an accelerator program. I haven't used this for uploading, but for downloading, it totally maxes out my line. If I download normally, I get 30KB/s. If I use, say, FlashGet on Windows or Speed Download on OS X, I get 100KB/secon on my 1024K line.

All these programs do is open up a few different streams. I don't know if there is anything like that for uploading but the low-tech version would be to use WinRAR or something to partition your upload in, say, 5 pieces of equal size, then upload them all at once. I am pretty sure that will trick the bandwidth shaping algorithms they have in place. Each stream will go at 1/5th of the max. connection speed.

Edited September 15, 2007 by nikster

[nikster]

I would use a FTP app that supports concurrent connections to maximize bandwidth usage. The free FileZilla would be my choice.

FileZilla can also be set to retry uploads and to continue uploads automatically.

Edited September 15, 2007 by nikster

[A_Traveller]

A lot of this depends on what your target server permits, equally what you are uploading. Oddly enough I find less hassle using FireFTP within Firefox rather than separate FTP programs.

Regards

[sukatoro]

ok, that did the trick... i moved the ftp port on my companies servers back home up into a high range at random port and now i can ftp w/ no problem, no disconnects yet at all and have moved 100+MB already... i really suspect that whoever services (or firewalls) this hotel is doing something evil to port 21, so because of that i will keep my new port as a dark little secret...

i hope this helps some others perhaps and many thanks for the replies my friends... enjoy your day..!

[A_Traveller]

Glad you found an answer. Just to be fair to the hotel(s) it would not be unreasonable to 'flag' uploads such as you describe. In most cases the system will be set to anticipate 'normal' web traffic. Problem would have been finding someone who understood your requirement and was able to allow you to bypass.

Regards

/edit format//

Edited September 15, 2007 by A_Traveller

[peter991]

Thinking outside the square: Have you considered copying your data onto a DVD and posting it, express post via Fedex or DHL as an alternative to FTP uploading 1GB ?

Peter

[autonomous_unit]

Are your uploads revisions of earlier datasets?

If so, you really ought to look into rsync. It can easily perform an upload that "recovers" from partial transfer but even better, it can very efficiently upload just the differences between the source and a reference version on the destination. Look at the --compare-dest or --link-dest options, which are frequently used to do incremental backups. It is convenient to tunnel rsync over ssh, and through a typical ADSL link from Thailand, you will not see any performance effect, as the CPU can easily do the encryption (and compression) faster than your network link.

As a techie w/ a similar problem, I have found that rsync is my most indispensable tool here, along with a US-based Linux server where I have lots of disk space and can therefore setup any sort of transfer I need by logging in remotely, setting up temporary reference data, transferring, etc...

[tjo o tjim]

Unit's got it right; rsync is the only way to make it work reliably over time. I found that when I transferred too much data to any given host or over any given port it would slow down at times. With rsync, you minimize the amount of data transfer, and you can take advantage of the time differences by running the sync several times a day if it helps.

I wish I had learned to use it sooner; it makes working remotely so much easier!

If you don't have a unix box at the office, pay for hosting with a shell and ftp between the hosted server and the company.

1GB/week is about the most you can reliably do in Thailand. If you can compile on a machine in the US and just move text file transfers you are much more likely to make a go of it.

[Jiu-Jitsu]

I think both TRUE Internet and CS Loxinfo supply SDSL, though I don't know where you'll be able to utilize it, in Bangkok.

[gbglass]

Are there really no hotels in bkk with good internet? I'll be going there next month and would appreciate tips about hotels with a decent internet connection preferably with a tp-cable to the room.

[youngkiwi]

Many hotels do block port 21 (the FTP port). I have experienced this numerous times. If you run your own FTP server you can change the port your FTP server listens on, or ask your hosting company and they might allow their FTP server to listen on multiple ports.

[marcus]

If you use the internet connection in a hotel, they will never let you use the full speed. When you buy an account, there will always be some restrictions about speed and/or maximum download volume. And this is normal as they have to share the line with several users : one guy watching online tv in his room could block the whole hotel. A nice program hotels use is http://www.antamedia.com/hotspot/

[gbglass]

My concern is mostly a stable connection not so much the speed. That's why I prefer not to use wlan but most hotels only offer wlan.