The Truth About Cat Telecom.. Internet

[media]

I have used CAT telecom 2MB (2800 baht per month deal) for 12 months, it was great at first, 1750kbps from a USA speed test, Day and night it did nto matter it was always fast. didnt mind the hefty 2800 bill because i had the best net in pattaya day and night.

But as they have gained popularity, the speed has come down, and down. I have 5 friends all in totally different areas of pattaya and we all get the same quality of service.

Day time speed 600 to 800kbps

after 6pm 300 to 500kbps

1am onwards until 9am 1750kbps (this is the fastest it ever goes, its great, a joy to use, youtube 2 video clips at a time no buffering, happy days)

But It is so annoying paying 2800 baht per month for a crappy TOT style day time/evening connection speed, I mean who wants to stay up until 2am just to get fast internet. I phoned CAT and told them that it is obvious that they have started following in TOT footsteps and SHARING the lines with too many users. this is the only thing that can explain the speed test results in peak times.

I want 1700kbps speeds back all day and all night, thats what im paying 2800 baht p/m for. (1700 is still only 85% of the speed we are paying for)

I guess it will only get worse and worse.. it wont get better and i am not holding my breath for the good old days to come back like 12 months ago in the early days of the CAT 2mb package.

To add salt in the wounds, my connection keeps dropping off, sometimes the PPP light on the modem goes out, meaning i am no longer connected, i have to turn modem off for 1 min and try again.. sometimes this sorts it, this has been happening 5 to 10 times a day! it doesnt seem to be able to auto re connect, it will stay off until i reboot modem.

also sometimes the PPP light stays on (meaning i am connected) but there is no internet.. it normally does this for about 20 seconds every hour or 2. and mostly comes back on its own.

The last time i phoned CAT, when it would NOT reconnect. the modem would NOT connect. CAT just said nothing they can do. Their service in day time hours is normally pretty good. but if you try to call them after 6pm forget it. the guy who answers the phone... well its almost as though you called Pizza Hut by mistake and ended up taling to the pizza delivery guy.. thats how random his help is, he doesnt have a clue about anything, its almost funny.

Is any other CAT users also disappointed lately?

can anyone recommend a service provider that actually gives the day time and evening speeds that you pay for?

[monty]

Im still a happy camper with CAT...

Sure, top speeds go down, but seldom drop below 1500 kbps for me.

USA test, 8:50 in the morning:

Normally I can eak out some extra speed using a download manager, but here it is clear that the bottleneck is at the server where the file is hosted, and not at my CAT line!

180 kBps equals 1440 kbps....

[jonniebkk]

Well, it's better than my 80 kb/s down and 16 kb/s up But this is with my GPRS/EDGE service and it costs B 3.5 per hour.

[monty]

On my AIS gprs I get slightly faster downloads, but a lot faster upload then with Dtac!

Same card as you use, the SW 775...

And it looks like your latency is darn high at over 3000 msec

AIS is par for the course with a tad over 300 msec...

[jonniebkk]

And it looks like your latency is darn high at over 3000 msec

AIS is par for the course with a tad over 300 msec...

Would there be a noticibly difference in surfing with my DTAC speed compared to your AIS speed? And how does the latency speed effect things? Sorry...but not much of a techie

[monty]

Latency is the time it takes to send a tiny package to another computer and back again. The lower the better (means the package comes back to you very fast).

High latency can be caused by physical distance, but mostly it is caused by overloaded routers somewhere along the way, causing your package to sit in a queue for a while, before it can get send back to you...

High latency makes your surfing experience feel slow, even if the download speed itself can be quite good (the biggest disadvantage on satellite connections, which always have high latency).

Opening a website happens in several stages, first the URL has to get resolved, which requires one round trip to a dns server.

Then your browser knows where to find the website and the downloading starts.

Some webpages have content spread over several web hosts, so for every piece, a separate dns request has to be done. For example on Thaivisa, the forum content is hosted on Thaivisa's servers, while the google ads are hosted on google servers! Just think of it that every different location has to be looked up in a phonebook...

If your latency is 3 seconds like in your case, the whole page looks to be loading slow because there can be quite a few 3 second waits, looking things up, while the actual downloading might take only 1 second!

Luckily some smart caching on the ISP's servers and even on your own PC can speed things a bit up, but still!

You also have a very low upload speed, which can hamper the general speed at which sites can load.

As I posted before, in general (and in the Pattaya area) I found AIS to be quite a bit faster on average, with as dowbside that it is less stable, meaning sometimes it works very slow, or even doesn't work at all!

Dtac is slower, but tends to be more stable.

Hence my main SIM is AIS (with a monthly package) and I use a Dtac sim As a back up if AIS packs up.

[jonniebkk]

As I posted before, in general (and in the Pattaya area) I found AIS to be quite a bit faster on average, with as dowbside that it is less stable, meaning sometimes it works very slow, or even doesn't work at all! Dtac is slower, but tends to be more stable.

Thanks for the layman's explanation...interesting.

As to AIS vs. DTAC, it sounds like a rabbit vs. turtle sort of analogy...faster, with occasional burnouts, or slow and steady, that gets you to the finish line. I like DTAC as the speed is good enough for what I need...when it is running.

[media]

Thanks, you must be lucky you are on a fast Node that hasnt been over shared.

here is my test done at 10pm

I got a new modem today to see if its my modem causeing the frequent disconnect.

[media]

You must have the CAT 4MB package????

I have NEVER seen a cat 2mb package go over 1780kbps!

your test speed of 2016 is amazing!!! how comes its so fast?

Please do a few more tests for me to see, day time, early evening and mid evening..

I am really interested to see

Media

[media]

10.20pm

see what i mean... the evening speeds are crap.

[sweetchariot]

I have the same 2mb/1mb CAT package, and just did a speed test at 1180/440.

However, just downloaded a video a friend sent to my hotmail account, averaged a 12kb/s and dropped as low as 8kb/s.

I am sick of CAT, we pay a premium price for a sh1tty service. I am now getting speeds comparable to GPRS for 2,800 a month?? Gonna change this week, but to what?

[media]

Hello sweetchariot

yes i know how you feel, it really is annoying paying but not receiving. i mean, lets face it, 2800 is half of 1 months salary of an average Thai person.

lets say that we are thai people... 2800 is a LOT of money! just for internet.. and it is still SLOW.

Mine is only fast from 1am until 8am the rest of the time it is only average speed.

Internet in thailand should really cost no more than 500 baht per month. we really are paying too much, but why are we still not getting the service we pay for?

they charge us 2800, but then they make us SHARE the line with too many people.

it is not fair.

the problem is, that you dont have much more choice.

I have heard the TT&T Maxnet, 2mb connection is really good. very fast in day and night. it is cheaper than CAT.

I will change to this soon. i just have to check if i can get a TT&T line here in Chaiyapruk 2, jomtien

I must say 1 thing though, the slow speed that you complained about, downloading the video from hotmail account, the slow speed is probably not cats fault, it is the msn network.

I am still changing to MAxnet 2mb!

do you know Gullavers? new pub on walking street and on beach road. they use maxnet. go in there and test speed on www.speedtest.net

its really fast!

[media]

Hey Monty

Very slow tonight.. 9pm

how is yours?

[monty]

Hey Monty

Very slow tonight.. 9pm

how is yours?

Sorry, was not home last night, so couldn't check.

today in the morning looks kind of OK...

I don't always trust the speed test websites 100% (they tend to give wildly variating results, even when your connection is relative stable), so I always follow up with a real life download to check what speeds I'm getting.

So that gives a tad under 230 kBps or 1840 kbps. No worries there.

Another thing important for everyday use of your connection is latency, although speedtest.net indicates ping time, it does only 1 single ping, which is generally not a good indicator. It'll always be higher then the average of 4 pings!

So I also follow up with a tracert, to see if there are any under performing routers in the system...

Tracing route to google.navigation.opendns.com [208.67.219.230]

over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms 1 ms 1 ms sweat-dream.wan [169.254.97.234]

2 22 ms 7 ms 4 ms 10.233.70.1

3 55 ms 42 ms 40 ms 61.7.183.1

4 63 ms 55 ms 103 ms 61.7.148.73

5 78 ms 69 ms 50 ms 202.47.247.222

6 41 ms 39 ms 66 ms 202.47.254.141

7 54 ms 54 ms 40 ms 202.47.253.150

8 289 ms 301 ms 248 ms 202.47.253.221

9 287 ms 356 ms 317 ms ge-1-6.r01.lsanca03.us.bb.gin.ntt.net [204.1.253

.17]

10 292 ms 269 ms 304 ms ae-2.r20.lsanca03.us.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.3.1

25]

11 273 ms 295 ms 355 ms as-0.r21.snjsca04.us.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.4.9

6]

12 253 ms 276 ms 250 ms ae-0.r20.plalca01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.4.1

18]

13 369 ms 301 ms 277 ms xe-4-4.r04.plalca01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.4

.242]

14 249 ms 254 ms 322 ms fa-3-3.r04.plalca01.us.ce.gin.ntt.net [140.174.2

1.166]

15 283 ms 308 ms 270 ms google.navigation.opendns.com [208.67.219.230]

Trace complete.

All looks good here as well, with most pings on CAT servers being below 60 msec, and the US google server coming in average under 300 msec...

[monty]

You must have the CAT 4MB package????

I have NEVER seen a cat 2mb package go over 1780kbps!

your test speed of 2016 is amazing!!! how comes its so fast?

Please do a few more tests for me to see, day time, early evening and mid evening..

I am really interested to see

Media

Nope, definitely the 2 mbps package. I do have a 4 mbps package but at another location (hardly come there) and that normally tests between 3400 and 3700 kbps.

As I posted above, I don't really trust these speed tests, indeed 2016 kbps should not be possible on a 2 mbit package due to the tcp/ip overhead etc.

Thats why I give more importance to a real life download from a server known to be fast (microsoft's servers are also a good test bed as they are pretty fast).

And the tracert. Whenever my browsing feels sluggish, I do a tracert and it will always show where the problem is.

Sometimes it's CAT's international gateway, but also sometimes the problem is somewhere else.

[monty]

I actually have another quite annoying problem with CAT, and that's the fact that half of the servers are working as open proxies, and are known as such.

Depending on what IP address I'm getting from CAT, I can't log into my Belgian bank account, since it uses a proxy black list!

Often rebooting my router a few times until I get a different IP address out of the DHCP pool solves the problem.

I currently have one of those silly proxy IP's:

[tropo]

the problem is, that you dont have much more choice.

I have heard the TT&T Maxnet, 2mb connection is really good. very fast in day and night. it is cheaper than CAT.

I will change to this soon. i just have to check if i can get a TT&T line here in Chaiyapruk 2, jomtien

You're wasting your time going to TT&T Maxnet, or any other service. CAT owns all the internet infrastructure in Thailand, so what you get with CAT is as good as you'll get. Your 2MB/1MB ADSL service is a dedicated internet line so how do you expect to get better with TT&T? I have both TT&T Maxnet and CAT, and CAT is better.

I don't agree that anyone can say what is too expensive in Thailand for internet compared to what you expect in other countries. The price is the price and that's what you pay for the best Thailand has to offer...period. (stop whinging - it's useless)

You could give their new SDSL 2MB/2MB service a go. It's about the same price but you'll need to invest in a new modem. I've heard it's quite good from a friend who uses it.

Edited April 3, 2008 by tropo

[monty]

You're wasting your time going to TT&T Maxnet, or any other service. CAT owns all the internet infrastructure in Thailand, so what you get with CAT is as good as you'll get. Your 2MB/1MB ADSL service is a dedicated internet line so how do you expect to get better with TT&T? I have both TT&T Maxnet and CAT, and CAT is better.

I agree it's probably a waste of time, I'm not sure about the prices with TT&T's maxnet with all their promotions, but the 2 mbps premier package used to be quite a bit more ecpensive then the CAT package.

But the fact that CAT owns the international connectivity infrastructure is not true anymore.

More and more ISP's have their own IIG (International Internet Gateway), and TT&T is one of those ISP's. Along with True, ADC, TOT and Csloxinfo.

They still buy part of their bandwidth from CAT, but the majority they try to route through their own gateways.

Their main problem, is lack of experience, something CAT does have! In some other threads members are complaining about True's poor performance, and when doing a tracert you can clearly see their own IIG routers are severely overloaded, pinging at sometimes over 500 msec!!!

[tropo]

To add salt in the wounds, my connection keeps dropping off, sometimes the PPP light on the modem goes out, meaning i am no longer connected, i have to turn modem off for 1 min and try again.. sometimes this sorts it, this has been happening 5 to 10 times a day! it doesnt seem to be able to auto re connect, it will stay off until i reboot modem.

also sometimes the PPP light stays on (meaning i am connected) but there is no internet.. it normally does this for about 20 seconds every hour or 2. and mostly comes back on its own.

Yes, I've had the same problem, but it's been like this off and on for the 2 years I've used CAT HiNet. It was dropping out a lot earlier this year, but it has been more stable over the last month.

You should really try to remember you're in a 3rd world country and that the internet here is years behind 'back at home' (wherever that is). If dropping out is a very big problem, then get 2 connections.

In reality the CAT HiNet is not too bad. I often get up to 200 kB/s downloads on bittorrents and download movies with no trouble at all. I can often download bittorrents for 24 hours straight without interuption.

[Bagwain]

I recently moved abode to Naklua and I asked TT&T & TOT if I can get the internet & phone, as the house has an existing telephone line. Alas I was told no, it is too busy up that way. I was told try Hutch. I went to Hutch and they promised me 400 to 700 Kps. When I took my laptop to them for configuring I was told that it is a new laptop and they don't have the cards yet!!!! So I was sold a 230 package (4,500 up front, 1000 a month) through a sim card and usb adaptor. Quite frankly it is shit 80% of the time. But what can I do?

They tell me that the new adaptor/cards will be ready in May. But my experience to date makes me reluctant to spend the 13,000 baht

Do I have to reside to the fact that a regular trip to a internet shop for a LAN hook up is needed?

[monty]

I recently moved abode to Naklua and I asked TT&T & TOT if I can get the internet & phone, as the house has an existing telephone line. Alas I was told no, it is too busy up that way. I was told try Hutch. I went to Hutch and they promised me 400 to 700 Kps. When I took my laptop to them for configuring I was told that it is a new laptop and they don't have the cards yet!!!! So I was sold a 230 package (4,500 up front, 1000 a month) through a sim card and usb adaptor. Quite frankly it is shit 80% of the time. But what can I do?

They tell me that the new adaptor/cards will be ready in May. But my experience to date makes me reluctant to spend the 13,000 baht

Do I have to reside to the fact that a regular trip to a internet shop for a LAN hook up is needed?

If I were you I definitely would not invest in Hutch modems, they are planning to drop the CDMA system to move over to the 3G gsm system.

This would leave you with some expensive useless piece of hardware.

Of course, this being Thailand, they might abandon cdma in 2 months, or it might take 2 years, who knows!

You might pop into the CAT office on South Pattaya Road (opposite Soi Rungland), and inquire there.

They have quite extensive coverage in the Naklua/Soi Potisan/Wong Amat area...

[sweetchariot]

I don't always trust the speed test websites 100% (they tend to give wildly variating results, even when your connection is relative stable), so I always follow up with a real life download to check what speeds I'm getting.

So that gives a tad under 230 kBps or 1840 kbps. No worries there.

I am probably showing my ignorance here, but I always get a wildly different speedtest result to what I get in real life. You are saying that by getting a real download speed of 230kbps this is equivalent to 1840? How does that work, all I see is the figure increased by a factor of 8.

I actually have another quite annoying problem with CAT, and that's the fact that half of the servers are working as open proxies, and are known as such.

Depending on what IP address I'm getting from CAT, I can't log into my Belgian bank account, since it uses a proxy black list!

Often rebooting my router a few times until I get a different IP address out of the DHCP pool solves the problem.

I have had this for a while, a few weeks ago I had to reboot my router over 30 times to get an IP that would allow me to access my hosting server (directnic), which also applies to pulling down mail from their mailserver via Outlook Express. Also cannot log into Yahoo with these dodgy IP addresses.

The proprtion of 'good' to 'bad' IP addresses seems to fluctuate all the time, depending how busy the spammers have been I guess. Luckily I have a VPN in the UK for when it gets really bad, but why should I have to?

[patsfangr]

My latest test showed me at 725 dwnld, 486 upld, with a 312 ping. (By the way, how did you guys get the picture of your test to the forum? All I could find was a link. -

I'm near the Wat Suttawas, and very close to the CAT office they recently opened. I don't know exactly what equipment is in there, but they told me that it should ensure that I get maximum service.

As others have stated, I get speeds all over the range, from as low as 100 or so, up to 1700. I just ran a Speakeasy test, 10 minutes after running the above on Speedtest, and I got 550/527. You just never know.

While I agree with the guy who said that whining won't do any good; a little venting is necessary now and then, just to relieve a little pressure. In that vein, I think we have a right to bitch about the cost of CAT. Nobody can convince me that they aren't raking in millions, if not billions, in profit with these outrageoue rates for this level of service. I don't mind paying a high price for high quality. But I can't just shut down the anger I feel from being blatantly abused. It pisses me off to be charged for filet mignon, and being served horsemeat!

[patsfangr]

My latest test showed me at 725 dwnld, 486 upld, with a 312 ping. (By the way, how did you guys get the picture of your test to the forum? All I could find was a link. -

OK. The link does print the picture! DUH!

[jonniebkk]

I'm near the Wat Suttawas, and very close to the CAT office they recently opened.

Nobody can convince me that they aren't raking in millions, if not billions, in profit with these outrageoue rates for this level of service.

George...you're less a techie than me...but you did figure that pasting in that link puts in the pic for you

By the way, am I to understand that there is a CAT office somewhere by you down near the temple or is it just an equipment/switching station? I might go for the CAT package.

As to the pricing, I think we have to bear in mind that there is really very limited uptake for these "high-speed" internet services. Basically, just hotels, i-shops, rich Thais at home, and some farangs. Therefore, the telco companies have to spread their investment costs over a rather small number of customers. It's not like "back home," where they can spread the high-speed internet infrastructure build-out costs over a customer base of tens of millions.

And all comments regarding the quality of food should be posted on our Dark Side restaurant thread

[patsfangr]

George...you're less a techie than me...but you did figure that pasting in that link puts in the pic for you

By the way, am I to understand that there is a CAT office somewhere by you down near the temple or is it just an equipment/switching station? I might go for the CAT package.

As to the pricing, I think we have to bear in mind that there is really very limited uptake for these "high-speed" internet services. Basically, just hotels, i-shops, rich Thais at home, and some farangs. Therefore, the telco companies have to spread their investment costs over a rather small number of customers. It's not like "back home," where they can spread the high-speed internet infrastructure build-out costs over a customer base of tens of millions.

And all comments regarding the quality of food should be posted on our Dark Side restaurant thread

Yes, John. I'm less a techie than most people who can spell "computer"! But, hey, I got it done, right?

The CAT office near me is only an equipment and switching station, I'm afraid. If you want to deal with them, you have to go to their building on Pattaya Tai. By the way, the traffic is always backed up from the Third Road light. It's easier to get to the CAT building by going down Pattaya Klang, then left on Third Road to Pattaya Tai, then left on Pattaya Tai. Their parking lot is just about 50 yards up, on your left, from that direction.

Probably a valid point regarding the revenue sources for a company like CAT. ... But it still hurts to pay these prices for that service.

I do apologize for crossing threads with my food analogy!

[tropo]

I don't mind paying a high price for high quality. But I can't just shut down the anger I feel from being blatantly abused. It pisses me off to be charged for filet mignon, and being served horsemeat!

It's just a matter of where you head's at. I've been paying for broadband internet in the Philippines (cable) and Thailand (adsl) for 6 years now and never felt that way. It should be pretty obvious that in a developing country technology will cost more for less. I've always felt fortunate that I can even get broadband here.

I pay for 2 services to improve my chances of always having a connection.

[patsfangr]

I don't mind paying a high price for high quality. But I can't just shut down the anger I feel from being blatantly abused. It pisses me off to be charged for filet mignon, and being served horsemeat!

It's just a matter of where you head's at. I've been paying for broadband internet in the Philippines (cable) and Thailand (adsl) for 6 years now and never felt that way. It should be pretty obvious that in a developing country technology will cost more for less. I've always felt fortunate that I can even get broadband here.

I pay for 2 services to improve my chances of always having a connection.

Well, it really does depend upon your economic perspective, Tropo. I'll acknowledge that the 2800 baht to CAT didn't bother me as much a year ago, with the dollar getting 41 Bt, as it does now, with an exchange rate of 31 Bt per dollar. That 25% reduction in income hurts like hel_l; and definitely affects my perspective on the cost of everything.

I certainly couldn't even consider paying for a second service now.

[monty]

I am probably showing my ignorance here, but I always get a wildly different speedtest result to what I get in real life. You are saying that by getting a real download speed of 230kbps this is equivalent to 1840? How does that work, all I see is the figure increased by a factor of 8.

You have to look closely at the b in the units.

A small b, as in kbps are bits (kilobits per second)

A capital B as in kBps are bytes (kilobytes per second)

One byte consists of exactly 8 bits.

Hence 230 kilobytes per second (kBps) equals 1840 kilobits per second (kbps)

For some unknown reason most download programs indicate the speed in kilobytes per second, while connection speeds are always denominated in kilobits per second.

A 1024 kilobit connection probably sounds better to the marketing blokes then a 128 kbyte connection

Actually bytes is the more practical unit, since file sizes are always expressed in bytes. An MP3 file is on average 3 MegaByte big.

So when my download manager tells me the file comes in 230 kBytes per second, this will equal 1840 kilobit per second. My connection is rated at 2048 kilobits per second (1 megabyte is 1024 kilobyte, I know, blame the geeks ), so I can see that my connection is humming along at 90% of its rated speed!

[sweetchariot]

Thanks Monty, thats cleared up alot. Many times I have downloaded files at 200 kBps and sworn at the computer, but I was actually getting 1600 kbps which is alot closer to what the speedtests tell me I should be getting.

Cheers