Maxnet

[gharknes]

just a short post about my experience with maxnet since I got a free upgrade.................it was really a downgrade

I have been with maxnet for about 3 years now and have had very little to complain about until now, I have given up.

I get international speeds (using the thaivisa speeed test) of less than 20k down and 250k up, this is totally unaceptable for a 1536/512 connection, sometime after repeated rebooting of my modem 20+ times I can sometimes get 500k, they either have serious problems with their servers or they are doing it on purpose to falangs trying to encourage them to upgrade, either way after numerous call to 1103 and emails to icare, i have given up, they can stick it where the sun don't shine.

I would strongly advise anyone else considering a DSL connection to stay away from maxnet, it is all but useless.

[Sakeopete]

I'm having the same problems and am dropping then also.

[zzSleepyJohn]

just a short post about my experience with maxnet since I got a free upgrade.................it was really a downgrade

I have been with maxnet for about 3 years now and have had very little to complain about until now, I have given up.

I get international speeds (using the thaivisa speeed test) of less than 20k down and 250k up, this is totally unaceptable for a 1536/512 connection, sometime after repeated rebooting of my modem 20+ times I can sometimes get 500k, they either have serious problems with their servers or they are doing it on purpose to falangs trying to encourage them to upgrade, either way after numerous call to 1103 and emails to icare, i have given up, they can stick it where the sun don't shine.

I would strongly advise anyone else considering a DSL connection to stay away from maxnet, it is all but useless.

The higher speed demands a higher performance from your line pair, so if it's a long line, or if there's any slightly dry or corroded joint anywhere, it will cause more errors and dropouts than it did at your lower speed.

After my own Maxnet upgrade I experiencd similar symptoms to those you describe. Eventually after speaking nicely to TT&T they came round and thoroughly checked my line.

In an attempt to be helpful they rerouted a short length of my dropwire, although that wasn't really the problem, but after further checking eventually they found the trouble was all caused by a phone socket inside our bungalow.

At some time in the past, lightning had slghtly burned the contacts in this socket, but it hadn't affected the telephone or the lower speed ADSL at the time. It was only after the speed upgrade that this weak link affected performance.

The dodgy socket was our own equipment, not TT&T's, so it was not their fault at all. Replacing it made all the difference, and given their cheap price, my upgraded Maxnet is now just as good and sometimes a lot faster than it was before the upgrade.

So don't assume your problem necessarily all lies with TT&T. It might or it might not. Try to talk nicely to them, keep an open mind, and explain your trouble calmly and carefully, and maybe they will be able to find where the problem is.

+ SJ

[monty]

I never got the upgrade, basically because of the distance to the local exchange. My modem can barely sustain 256kbps, so upgrading would be pointless and create more problems.

Maybe due to this, I have not noticed any difference in performance over the last few months at all. Downloads come in at a rock steady 28kBps (224 kbps), as much as a 256kbps connection can handle (overhead etc).

Package is the old Maxnet@life, at 1600 something Baht/month...

[zzSleepyJohn]

I never got the upgrade, basically because of the distance to the local exchange. My modem can barely sustain 256kbps, so upgrading would be pointless and create more problems.

Maybe due to this, I have not noticed any difference in performance over the last few months at all. Downloads come in at a rock steady 28kBps (224 kbps), as much as a 256kbps connection can handle (overhead etc).

Package is the old Maxnet@life, at 1600 something Baht/month...

You're probably not missing much because for large parts of the day, congestion and traffic queues delay webrowsing, but last week I tried downloading some short high definition video clips from a Microsoft site and was amazed to see them dowwnload at slightly over 100kBps. I think they must have been cached on a server in Bangkok.

But 1600/month sounds expensive to me. I still pay only 631/month for what was originally a 256k connection (now upgraded). Do you have any evidence to suggest that your higher price actually gives you any higher priority in the traffic queues or allows your VOIP packets to be handled better?. In Thailand I think it's misleading to go by the ADSL speed. The network only performs as good as it's weakest link, and it's generally further up the line where the weakness and overloading occurs.

+ SJ

[monty]

But 1600/month sounds expensive to me. I still pay only 631/month for what was originally a 256k connection (now upgraded). Do you have any evidence to suggest that your higher price actually gives you any higher priority in the traffic queues or allows your VOIP packets to be handled better?. In Thailand I think it's misleading to go by the ADSL speed. The network only performs as good as it's weakest link, and it's generally further up the line where the weakness and overloading occurs.

The package I have is the more expensive SME (small & medium enterprises) package, which supposedly has only 10:1 sharing on the international capacity, compared to 40:1 on the home (indy) packages.

I have always exact the same speed regardless of the time of the day, although I have read that many subscribers of the more expensive packages also suffered slowdowns after they started to upgrade everyone!

Even with a 10:1 sharing, a heavy P2P downloader can still upset speeds!

Another difference is that they do not shape specific traffic, which they do on the cheaper packages.

I'm quite happy to pay the premium price as long as my speed stays pegged at the rated speed!

[gharknes]

My line is fine, my modem can test the quality and it will aloow me connection speeds of up to 11200/1500, besides that the local speed test inside Thailand consistantly shows 1300/400, as I stated it is my international connection, they keep telling me they have a problem with their network and would i like to upgrade.

Also time of day has absolutly no influence on this problem, I get the same issues at 5am as I do at 7pm, trust me I have worked in IT most of my life and this is either a serious problem with their network or (my own belief) they are doing it on purpose to encourage falangs to upgrade and pay more (double pricing) I think if I was thai I would not be getting these problems, can't prove it of course but double pricing is none existant in thailand ??????

Edited January 26, 2008 by gharknes

[scotsman]

I also have the 1536/512 indy package I have been with them over 3 years and since the start of this year it has been very poor. So I e-mailed the help line on there web page and I got a phone call from this nice lady. The nice lady said she was very sorry for her company poor service but its because of the upgrade to much demand. To many people and not enough international bandwidth. I asked her will the company increase the international bandwidth in the near future to fix this problem, she said yes but don't know when So it looks like we will have to put up with this for now or upgrade or change to another company but as we all know they are all just as bad

[ade100]

Sorry to hear the problems everyone has been having with maxnet. Just to give an alternative view, my maxnet4life connection was great before the upgrade and excellent after it. Speed rarely drops below 1Mbps. I must be one of the lucky ones.

[vam-pire]

Feeling the strain of the mounting and increasing complaints from the Expat Long term stayer the Thai government recently announced a new approach for all Thai Internet Service Providers , promise them every thing , take their money and don't answer the phone.

We have to remember here in Thailand

what you pay for and have been promised means absolutely nothing

Customer service is as bad as it could get , guarantees and assurances are

Just words to fob you off, pay your money and then they couldn't care less

What a sad state of affairs

VP

[JetsetBkk]

Also time of day has absolutly no influence on this problem, I get the same issues at 5am as I do at 7pm, trust me I have worked in IT most of my life and this is either a serious problem with their network or (my own belief) they are doing it on purpose to encourage falangs to upgrade and pay more

I find that during the week, it is the time of day that determines my international speed and Hotmail access.

For the last several weeks, daytime speeds have been apalling but it all sorts itself out at about 3 am to 9 am.

Today - Sunday - it's fine, so I also believe they are currently working on their network during the week and have been for a month or so. Over the new year I was getting incredible speeds on my upgraded 2.5 Mbps link, including torrents. Once they (Maxnet) - and their customers - went back to work, it all went back to normal again - v. slow during the day and fast at night.

I also believe the upgrade has caused this problem - they gave all this extra bandwidth away for free and didn't think about the effect on their own infrastructure.

[DCS]

I have the maxnet service 1500/512 and since two weeks ago can barely send any e-mails with attachement, max size attachment 200 Kb, I have tried many ways to resolve this but now I have a number of mails accumulating in my inbox. Does anybody have a solution to this, smtp/pop3 address maybe, is there a maxnet specific smtp/pop 3 address?

Thanks

[JetsetBkk]

I have the maxnet service 1500/512 and since two weeks ago can barely send any e-mails with attachement, max size attachment 200 Kb, I have tried many ways to resolve this but now I have a number of mails accumulating in my inbox. Does anybody have a solution to this, smtp/pop3 address maybe, is there a maxnet specific smtp/pop 3 address?

Thanks

Set your alarm clock for 4:30 am, and try then.

It's bad again tonight for receiving Hotmail. Eventually I get everything, but have to try many times.

[Kyosuken]

TT&T's got 2 or 3 IPs range, the 222.X.X.X, 124.X.X.X. and 117.X.X.X (the later is pretty rare i didn't get one for months now, i used to when i first got my subscription though)

222.X.X.X is slow, usually nothing above 30KB/s, but very late at night (like 2am, 3 am) the speeds kicks in a little faster and everything is smoother (like no buffering when watching youtube). i believe this is the range all Indy people get usually.

124.X.X.X is faster, and very much faster up to 60KB/s during the day, but before the big "upgrades", and like during 3 weeks after the big "upgrades" it was very fast, i used to get 90KB/s up to (after the big upgrade) 220KB/S ! my max was 260KB/S on torrent (my line was upgraded from 1024/512 to 2560/512 Oo)

117.X.X.X when i used to get it, was on par with 124.X.X.X.

Now 3 weeks after the upgrade i started to notice something wrong with my connection, until there i didn't have any sort of bandwidth limitations from TT&T, and then suddenly they started with the worse traffic shaping ever : they don't block ports, but they limit to a crawl anything that are not http/https/Ftp (active only so limited to port 21)/pop/smtp anything else : RDP, DXport (game ports for directx/ and mostly other gaming ports), VNC etc either fail to connect, or connect but so slow you want to shoot yourself

Then from, around November till today, the speed as gone down progressively, 124.X.X.X is still faster (i suppose it's a backup IP pool range if 222.X.X.X is unavailable) but at most i get 40-50KB/s (and sometimes up to 60KB/s).

Some people stated that upgrading to the premiere TT&T there is no port shaping at all (though it can be still very slow at times), if someone plays on internet (when i kill time i like to load up wow or whatever to relax, but for months now i have been totally unable to do so) with TT&T can he tell me if he is able to do so with the indy package, i am pretty sure not though.

More over, there is still problem with their rooting showing private IP on at least 3/4 routers nationwide, way to go TT&T.

NB: i have another connection at work, 2 actually a SDSL connection through CAT (2mb/2mb), and TOT(2mb/512), and frankly they are more or less the same than with TT&T, but they don't have any traffic shaping at least...

I guess we still have to live with this shit for some time...

Edit : typos

Edited January 28, 2008 by Kyosuken

[Seizhin]

Been using Maxnet for years and I wasnt really satisfied.

Things changed when I get a free upgrade from 1mbps to 2mbps.

I can download anything at around 100kBps, however, the bliss only last for a week before I downloads stuff at 30kBps.

Then slowly, the speed decreases from 10kBps to around 7kBps now.

I've contacted the customer service twice, but it seems useless, all they told me is to change to a more expensive 10:1 at 1mpbs speed.

I'm starting to wonder if I should go for TOT.

I wish I could go for TRUE as my boss said it's much more efficient than TT&T.

[gharknes]

By the way folks, I sent this thread to icare, so they are reading it, there is nothing here that I haven't told them directly

so voice your views - it is being read

[Kyosuken]

I don't think it's gonna change anything, the problem is CAT in the end i think either CAT got to upgrade the international bandwidth, either TT&T got to go through something else then CAT to deliver.

Plus the cheap upgrade some months ago did more harm than help as the International bandwidth didn't change at all... in another country companies like TT&T would go bankrupt in a few months, but TIT so unless things change nationwide i don't think it's gonna be of any help.

[gharknes]

Its getting worse, took me 20mins of rebooting before I could even open this forum, speed test is now showing 4k after waiting 2 mins for it even to start.

I think they are having technical issues that they can't resolve themselves created by trying to be too clever, I think they need a strategy rethink.

[Kyosuken]

well about one hour ago there was a routing problem took like 10mn to resolve (by itself), i restarted the router to no avail, until i tried a trace route and saw that the connection was going wrong after the gateway.

[Seizhin]

Yes, had the same problem at around the same time.

According to my memory, the operator said that TT&T are going to increase their internet potential around December or so, but it seems to be downhill as time pass.

I cant even download big files now as the connection will disconnect every now and then.

[zzSleepyJohn]

Been unusually bad all day today up here in Chiangrai. Did someone mention something about a broken fibre in Taiwan?

Just now tried TV's speed test on my 1024/512 (upgraded) ADSL. Over 3 tries, my 1024 download is giving me an average of 172kb, and my 512 upload is giving me an average of 409kb. My ADSL link itself is solid at a full 1024/512 with no significant CRC errors or errored seconds or breaks.

It's the first time I've seen it bad like this this year. Must be something really broken in the network somewhere.

+ SJ

[gharknes]

how about they just don't have a clue what they are doing, I still think there is a hidden agenda but they are just making a balls of the whole thing...........I hope they are reading this because I am just fed up with the poor service last 6 months

absolutly useless

my gprs is currently faster.

[monty]

how about they just don't have a clue what they are doing

That will definitely be closest to the truth!

Plus they operate on the Thai principles of seniority. I have personally met one young bloke who worked for them for 3 months (he resigned himself).

Educated in the US, very high level of competency on internet backbone management etc. Previously worked 3 years for AOL (ok, not the most beloved ISP, but they do run an immense network!).

Came over here, joined TT&T's Maxnet arm, recognizing several shortfalls in their systems, only to be told Thai style that this is the way the big bosses tell them (sorry, order them) to run the network, and to not criticize them since they are senior and all knowing!

Believe me, the competency is there, but the place is not operated by the technicians, but by the managerial team which doesn't have a clue how to operate something like an ISP.

[zzSleepyJohn]

how about they just don't have a clue what they are doing

That will definitely be closest to the truth!

Plus they operate on the Thai principles of seniority. I have personally met one young bloke who worked for them for 3 months (he resigned himself).

Educated in the US, very high level of competency on internet backbone management etc. Previously worked 3 years for AOL (ok, not the most beloved ISP, but they do run an immense network!).

Came over here, joined TT&T's Maxnet arm, recognizing several shortfalls in their systems, only to be told Thai style that this is the way the big bosses tell them (sorry, order them) to run the network, and to not criticize them since they are senior and all knowing!

Believe me, the competency is there, but the place is not operated by the technicians, but by the managerial team which doesn't have a clue how to operate something like an ISP.

But I'm afraid this kind of griping doesn't help to make you or anyone else feel better, nor does it help anyone to understand what the underlying cause of the present problem is, and what needs to be done to fix it.

It turns out that the global internet is currently suffering from 3 major fibre breaks, one in the Taiwan area, and two others in the middle east (Alexandria)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7218008.stm

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=206...mp;refer=europe

So with 3 cables broken, it's hardly surprising that our internet services are struggling. There's a parallel moan thread under "True Adsl - Slow - Cable Broken In Taiwan..., Is that true?" going on about all this, too.

The ISPs are supposed to have backup alternative routes they can patch into service when this sort of thing happens. Sometimes via a different cable (perhaps not so good in this case with 3 cables down), or by satellite. But they tend to be a bit slow off the mark implementing these reroutes, maybe because there's a bill to pay. It means that if anyone calls their ISP to complain about the degraded service and gets fobbed off with a "it may take a few weeks to repair the cable" story, they should counter by asking what they're doing about implementing temporary satellite restoration.

Contingency plans do exist for these events, so if they leave us suffering for long periods, it's an organisational failure as well, not just an unfortunate act of god! I grant you that a specific organisational failure like this would warrant a gripe, and it would also warrant an official complaint. An official complaint about a specific delay in implementating restoration plans would stand a lot better chance of being listened to and something happening as a result, than the general griping going on here.

+ SJ

[marcus]

A cable in Taiwan might affect the traffic to the US, but I don't see the importance of these Mediterranean cables for the average Thai user (unless for those of us with close contacts in the Middle East) Besides it seems that these cables were broken just a couple of days ago, and we have problems for months now. But it might be a good excuse to use for the helpdesks of our ISP's

[monty]

But I'm afraid this kind of griping doesn't help to make you or anyone else feel better, nor does it help anyone to understand what the underlying cause of the present problem is, and what needs to be done to fix it.

It is not a present problem, the problem is going on for months. It might be a bit worse now due to the cable breakages, but that still doesn't explain why my connection is moving along nicely

And I pretty much explained the underlying problem, namely incompetent management, incapable of listening to the voices of the young and capable geeks, nerds, whatever you want to call them, they have working for them!

And believe me, the talent is there.

Only part of it is caused by the bean counters reluctant to buy more bandwidth etc. Even with the available bandwidth today, a much better end-user experience could be created by managing what they have properly.

Main example is that some users on the el-cheapo home packages get blistering fast speeds, with nearby located subscribers of expensive business packages just crawl along. The complete bandwidth management is out of whack!

[gharknes]

they now seem to be blocking my pop3 mail server, probably because that's what I use to request support from icare

I now cannot send or recieve mail either through my client or webmail

simply unbelievable.

[gharknes]

It seems that any sort of message access has been disabled, cannot access yahoo hotmail or webmail with my SP.

Also stuff like charts on and certaian banners on webpages are blocked out as well, is it a port range they have blocked ?

Edited January 31, 2008 by gharknes

[Seizhin]

I honestly dont think that they would block your mail and stuff.

But if they really block your access, isnt that something illegal?

Edited January 31, 2008 by Seizhin

[zzSleepyJohn]

they now seem to be blocking my pop3 mail server, probably because that's what I use to request support from icare

I haven't been able to get any messages out on Maxnet SMTP server 203.147.0.5 for several days now, and prior to that it was only accepting traffic in the mornings. I think part of the trouble there is that it gets seriously abused for spamming, because on several occasions when I've managed to get my e-mails to go out via it, they've ended up in a distant end spam folder due to the Maxnet server being blacklisted by Spamcop. On the whole, it's never been really reliable.

I now cannot send or recieve mail either through my client or webmail

Fortunately I have alternative SMTP access via another server in USA. I'd have been sunk a long time ago if I'd had to rely solely on 203.147.0.5.

It seems that any sort of message access has been disabled, cannot access yahoo hotmail or webmail with my SP.

Also stuff like charts on and certaian banners on webpages are blocked out as well, is it a port range they have blocked ?

My guess is it's mostly just congestion causing those banners to be delayed or lost. I could be wrong but don't think it's port range blocking except insomuch as they apply network management on http: and deliberately fail every 1 out of 2, or every 2 out of 3 page attempts in order to limit traffic.

Apart from the last couple of days' cable break trouble, I've found the Maxnet service quite reasonable between 1am and 1pm. From around 4pm to midnight, though, expect problems!

+ SJ