True Bizpack?

[rambling]

I've been having a really bad time with True 3Mbps connections during evenings which is the most crucial part of the day for me. Things just lag very badly. I am told no TOT or Maxnet is available in my area (Ladprao). I'm pretty desperate to get a better connection, additional connection, anything that will help.

One option is True Bizpack, does anyone have experience with it or know if it's any better than a normal residential connection? True customer service is unable to explain (in English or Thai) what's the difference except "for company". Any other alternatives that can result in better quality connection? I don't mind subscribing to another ISP, or two, or business plans etc.

[Ian_B]

I have had the True SME package and had no problems with their connection for the past 2 years - 4 phone lines and 1 2Mbps line

Only problem is thieves have stolen the cable for ALL the telecoms companies TWICE in the last few months so had no service for nearly a day whilst they replaced the cable

[rambling]

Mind if I asked how much this cost?

What do you mean by cable? Is this some infrastructure somewhere outside the premises?

The normal residential internet package works fine for me 99% of the time for normal web surfing, the problem is with lag sensitive online services like financial apps.

I have had the True SME package and had no problems with their connection for the past 2 years - 4 phone lines and 1 2Mbps line

Only problem is thieves have stolen the cable for ALL the telecoms companies TWICE in the last few months so had no service for nearly a day whilst they replaced the cable

[nikster]

If lag really is your problem, I don't think there's a way around it. Lag from thailand is very high. I just did a traceroute google.com and found 900ms lag. On windows, do 'tracert google.com' on the command prompt and look at the values.

900ms is a HUGE number if you are used to U.S. based lag times which are usually around 50 - 60ms. A factor 15 higher!

The problem for Thai ISPs is that most of this lag happens outside the physical borders of Thailand. The signal just takes that long to go around the globe. The best biz package can't change this fact.

Things should improve when they install that new underseas cable directly to the USA, end of 2007 AFAIK.

BTW I am a developer working on financial applications, e.g. live stock tickers and such.

All that said, your problem might still be a slow connection - it's not easy to distinguish the two problems when you are looking at some internet-based application.

[rambling]

Hi,

Yeah I know what you mean. I'm not really expecting 50-60ms, that will never happen outside the US. I'll be happy with anything below 400ms. From Singapore, where I lived before coming here, I would get around the 250ms to the same servers in the West coast which is not too bad at all.

I notice a significant drop in performance during the evening hours so I'm guessing a big part of the issue is due to crappy ratios we get and overloading the local servers / exchanges with too many subscribers.

So what I'm trying to do is take whatever steps I can to reduce the latency to the minimum possible, understanding it's not going to be perfect.

I was also told that CAT is doing some maintenance work on some cables that True is using and that this should be done early next week. On the other hand another CS at True claimed these were already completed. So who knows.

P.S. I'm using QCharts, eSignal and InteractiveBrokers TWS. What type of applications are you working on?

If lag really is your problem, I don't think there's a way around it. Lag from thailand is very high. I just did a traceroute google.com and found 900ms lag. On windows, do 'tracert google.com' on the command prompt and look at the values.

900ms is a HUGE number if you are used to U.S. based lag times which are usually around 50 - 60ms. A factor 15 higher!

The problem for Thai ISPs is that most of this lag happens outside the physical borders of Thailand. The signal just takes that long to go around the globe. The best biz package can't change this fact.

Things should improve when they install that new underseas cable directly to the USA, end of 2007 AFAIK.

BTW I am a developer working on financial applications, e.g. live stock tickers and such.

All that said, your problem might still be a slow connection - it's not easy to distinguish the two problems when you are looking at some internet-based application.

Edited September 21, 2007 by rambling

[rambling]

Things should improve when they install that new underseas cable directly to the USA, end of 2007 AFAIK.

Are you referring to this: http://slashdot.org/articles/07/04/30/0330242.shtml

"BusinessWeek is reporting on a new submarine cable system that will link South East Asia directly with the USA. Designated Asia-America Gateway (AAG), the project will involve a consortium of 17 international telcos, including AT&T Inc, India's Bharti AirTel, BT Global Network Services, CAT Telekom (Thailand), Eastern Telecommunications Philippines Inc (Philippines), Indosat (Indonesia) and Pacific Communications Pte Ltd (Cambodia). Led by Telekom Malaysia Berhad, the project is slated for completion in 2008, where 20,000km of cables will be providing a capacity of up to 1.92 Terabits per second of data bandwidth. Interestingly, the fibre-optic cable system will be taking a different route from many existing cables to avoid quake-prone areas and a repeat of the disruption to Asian web access caused by a tremor off Taiwan four months ago."

[paveet]

Well, the ridiculous ping times at the moment are due to some cables being damaged since 8th Sept because of an earthquake. I've been informed by CAT that these will be fixed by next week.

Nominal ping from here to US west coast is around 220-250ms, 280-300ms for east coast, 250-350ms for Europe (if it goes through the Europe links rather than to the US and back).

[rambling]

I was told the same. Will see next week if there's any improvement.

Well, the ridiculous ping times at the moment are due to some cables being damaged since 8th Sept because of an earthquake. I've been informed by CAT that these will be fixed by next week.

Nominal ping from here to US west coast is around 220-250ms, 280-300ms for east coast, 250-350ms for Europe (if it goes through the Europe links rather than to the US and back).

[monty]

It seems easier in the provinces to get redundant internet connections set-up.

In Pattaya for example many places have both TT&T and TOT lines available, each with their own possible ISP's.

Even on a TT&T line you have a big choice of ISP's available.

On top of that, in certain places you additionally can get a dedicated line put in by CAT.

SO with not that much luck you can get two different ISP's in, on phonelines from different phone companies.

Attach to a load balancing router (or a basic PC with 3 LAN ports running PFsense) and you would have to be very unlucky to lose connection altogether.

Up till now I have been happy with connections from JI-net, Maxnet and CAT, using the sme packages (not the home packages) on each...

[nikster]

Things should improve when they install that new underseas cable directly to the USA, end of 2007 AFAIK.

Are you referring to this: http://slashdot.org/articles/07/04/30/0330242.shtml

"BusinessWeek is reporting on a new submarine cable system that will link South East Asia directly with the USA. Designated Asia-America Gateway (AAG), the project will involve a consortium of 17 international telcos, including AT&T Inc, India's Bharti AirTel, BT Global Network Services, CAT Telekom (Thailand), Eastern Telecommunications Philippines Inc (Philippines), Indosat (Indonesia) and Pacific Communications Pte Ltd (Cambodia). Led by Telekom Malaysia Berhad, the project is slated for completion in 2008, where 20,000km of cables will be providing a capacity of up to 1.92 Terabits per second of data bandwidth. Interestingly, the fibre-optic cable system will be taking a different route from many existing cables to avoid quake-prone areas and a repeat of the disruption to Asian web access caused by a tremor off Taiwan four months ago."

Yes. Hm, 2008 then, oh well

Working on prophet.net applications which have now been merged with Investools and ThinkOrSwim (SWIM). MarketMatrix and ProphetCharts. The latter is the best charting app out there I don't know about Investools but I do know about ThinkOrSwim, ProphetCharts is now included in the TOS trading application. So that's the easiest way to try it out without signing up for anything, in case you are interested. A TOS PaperMoney account, download the TOS app, etc.

[rambling]

I've used Prophet.net before, their ProphetScan is quite neat. Aren't all their tools web-based though? Investools sounds as its name implies - more geared for investors / longer term traders. I'm with QCharts because it's a standalone fast charting app with lots of trading fields geared for intraday that others don't have (float, average trade size, trade rate, unusual volume scans etc.)

Are you located in LOS btw? Have you had any experience by any chance with IQFeed and their data feed or the apps they support?

Things should improve when they install that new underseas cable directly to the USA, end of 2007 AFAIK.

Are you referring to this: http://slashdot.org/articles/07/04/30/0330242.shtml

"BusinessWeek is reporting on a new submarine cable system that will link South East Asia directly with the USA. Designated Asia-America Gateway (AAG), the project will involve a consortium of 17 international telcos, including AT&T Inc, India's Bharti AirTel, BT Global Network Services, CAT Telekom (Thailand), Eastern Telecommunications Philippines Inc (Philippines), Indosat (Indonesia) and Pacific Communications Pte Ltd (Cambodia). Led by Telekom Malaysia Berhad, the project is slated for completion in 2008, where 20,000km of cables will be providing a capacity of up to 1.92 Terabits per second of data bandwidth. Interestingly, the fibre-optic cable system will be taking a different route from many existing cables to avoid quake-prone areas and a repeat of the disruption to Asian web access caused by a tremor off Taiwan four months ago."

Yes. Hm, 2008 then, oh well

Working on prophet.net applications which have now been merged with Investools and ThinkOrSwim (SWIM). MarketMatrix and ProphetCharts. The latter is the best charting app out there I don't know about Investools but I do know about ThinkOrSwim, ProphetCharts is now included in the TOS trading application. So that's the easiest way to try it out without signing up for anything, in case you are interested. A TOS PaperMoney account, download the TOS app, etc.

[Firefoxx]

I've had the dubious pleasure of experiencing various ADSL packages from various ISPs in Thailand. The only thing I can say is that there is no statement that can be said about any package that will actually mean anything for any significant period of time or any area. They all change, going from the extremes of "godawful" to "oh my god! this rocks!". My current True connection started out "godawful", then went to "this rocks!" then "godawful", then "rocks", and now it's back to "godawful". I'm not talking about the daily fluctuations, I'm talking about periods of weeks or months, with speeds at about 150k for the "godawful" periods to consistent 2000k for the "rocks" periods.

I've had this happen to me with other ISPs too, although the trend has been towards "godawful" and staying there until I canceled the subscription.