Gprs Technical Guru Info Needed

[ProThaiExpat]

I have GPRS from AIS which is a sim card in my laptop communicating by Sierra Wireless to AIS Chiang Mai station. One operator said they then connect to BKk by

cable.

I log on with no difficulty, but then have noting but "trouble". This trouble hits me for about a week or two every couple of months.

Symptoms are: Browser tells me 1) "Site contacted, awaiting reply" 2) "Downloading from site" 3) Cannot find server 4) Tx & Rx byte counter stays on 0.

My best guess is band width limitations. These "symptoms" are not time related and not necessarily when one would think the network is "busy". I am on now, first time in two days, sometimes the link gets so slow as to be not moving.

My speed is barely acceptable, a lot less that the reports 64 kbs.

Anyone know how GPRS works once my connection "signal" gets to the Chiang Mai station? Is the Chiagn Mai station connected to BKK by a fiber-optic cable?

Is this a "portal"problem that AIS has?

I have tried surfing via google on Thai pages, and while I can get the Google site in Thailand more easily, the search of Thai sites is unavailable as well when my symptom occurs.

I have complained many times to AIS center and they have no definitive reason when this occurs. The only information my son-in-law IBMer says is "bandwidth" problem

Am I suffering from what most non-high speed users experience, just slow or non-existent upload and download speeds????

If there is nothing I can do about this problem, I can live with it, going to internet cafe's if necessary, but would a change of GPRS provider help? Should I pay 15K baht for a land line and use a dial up service? Is there hope the ipStar service will become reliable and should I explore that now? I live to far from a central stations for ADSl.

Hlep!!!

[MadFrankie]

other people using the same service in the same area are experiancing similar problems?

[Crushdepth]

Hi

You are not alone this has been going on for a long time, and yes its a bandwidth problem.

[stumonster]

I have read a few of peoples reports about problems with their GPRS connection, but I have yet to experience any problems. I use the GPRS connection fairly regularly in bangkok just on my phone, operas symbian client and agile messenger. this post I am using my laptop connected via bluetooth to my phone then GPRS to the internet - but sitting on the bank of the mekong about 20klms upstream of nong khai.

what phone are you using for your GPRS connection. GPRS has a few different classes, which determine how many data streams you can use, up and down. you might want to do a bit of googling on your phone and info about GPRS classes. I did post a link on another GPRS thread which explained GPRS classes quite well.

I am running win2kpro on my laptop and my phone is a nokia n-gage. I have mozilla 0.9 running 7 tabs and trillian connected to msn,yahoo and IRC and while the speed is not incredible it is more than adequate. prob 3 to 4 k bytes / sec

maybe your bottleneck is your phones gprs capabilities.

[Crushdepth]

Not unless its class 0 Actually we experimented with a couple of Nokia 3650s (one of which is mine), an O2 Xphone and more recently a new Nokia 6230 (nice phone that) with similar results. All of them worked quite well on occasion, but were quite patchy and when one was down all were down even in widely separated cells, so we think the problem is with AIS.

Half your luck...are you on holiday or what ?

[ProThaiExpat]

I hate to say it, but misery does love company. Thanks all for your consolation. You have confirmed my guess. Perhaps in a year or two, ADSL or sattelite service will be available.

Since my telephone service through the same sim card provides no problems, I know it is not the sim card or the connection, just the service provided by AIS through their station, internet feed or whatever.

[stumonster]

ok on me quick(mr T style) tiki tour I am testing the GPRS connection about 100klms west of korat . I have a slightly fluctuating signal strength but the data is comming down at a reasonable speed.

[ProThaiExpat]

My GPRS service in Chiang Mai is now working as normal, and it is Sunday, presumably the busiest day for them. Thus, I question whether the amount of users has anything to do with the band width problem that lasts for a week or more.

When I last got a 0 reading on the Tx and Dx, I re-booted and I was up and running.

Will re-boot and re-initialize my Sierra Wireless Card each time I have a "clog" in hopes that has something to do with it. I leave my lap top on at all times, and sometimes the software connects to the GPRS system without any imput. TIT.

Periodic re-boot is probably a good idea, thus giving my XP 2000 system a chance to "d&c" its "tubes".

[monty]

I'm using GPRS when I'm on our boat somewhere on the sea. It seems when signal strength is good I get good dataconnections to AIS but the internet access is no good at all...

It seems to be very patchy. Just tried to download a pdf file, started ok but got stuck after approx. 50kb. Tried about 5 times and everytime same result. The first 40 to 60kb comes in ok, then it all packs up, eventhough the connection is still alive since still have access to other sites...Starting to get my e-mails with outlook is a nono as well, first 6 messages com in and then everything packs up again

I'm using a nokia 6610 with a datacable connected to a regular desktop pc...

WAP works fine also, browse this forum quite often through wap!

It seems GPRS works fine for stuff made up from small files, but gets int trouble when bigger pieces come through...

Anyway at 350 Baht/month for 120 hours it can hardly be called a rip-off...