Speed Test Results

[nam-thip]

I have broadband TT&T (3 MB) and I’ve just run a couple of ‘Thai visa’ speed tests on the system but it’s a bit confusing so can you experts out there explain things in detail for an ageing computer user like myself, like what is Latency/PING and why is there two sets of figures for D/L and U/L?

The first speed test results were:

Download Speed: 2063 kbps (257.9 KB/sec transfer rate)

Upload Speed: 104 kbps (13 KB/sec transfer rate)

Latency (PING): 774 ms

Monday, December 22, 2008 6:55:16 PM

The second speed test results 6 minutes later:

Download Speed: 817 kbps (102.1 KB/sec transfer rate)

Upload Speed: 93 kbps (11.6 KB/sec transfer rate)

Latency: 791 ms

Monday, December 22, 2008 7:01:52 PM

Cheers guys

[monty]

ADSL is asymmetrical, which means the download (D/L) speed is faster then the upload (U/L) speed. Most people use internet mainly to download stuff, so this makes sense.

Hence most tests will do separate tests for both of them.

Latency is the time it takes for a small amount of data to travel to the server you are testing from, and back to you (the "round trip" time).

Often called the "ping" time, as PING is the command used from a DOS window to do such a test.

You say you have a 3Mb connection, so your theoretical top speed would be 3072 kbps (3 X 1024, computer nerds count slightly different with Kilo and Mega pre fixes ).

So your first test indicated that you are getting 2063 kbps out of the maximum 3072, roughly 66%. Which is not too bad.

ADSL normally tops out at about 75%-80% of your contract speed, due to overhead, error correction etc...

Your upload is not so good, the 104 kbps you're getting is only 25% of your rated speed (which is 512 kbps for upload).

Latency is also poor, basically you have this a lot on the cheaper "home" packages, in short your data is held up along the way to give priority to customers using the premium or business packages. Latency to Singapore (where the Thaivisa servers are located) should be under 100 ms!

In the second test a few minutes later you see a big drop in speed, again a result of being on the less stable "home" package (called Indy at TT&T).

Basically you are getting what you are paying for I'd guess.

If you are experiencing problems with your internet, i.e. excessive sluggishness, slow speeds etc, the only way to improve on that would be to upgrade to the "premier" package from TT&T.

For the same 3Mbps (but with faster 1024 kbps upload) on Premier you'd pay 1990 Baht (+7% vat) compared to the 790 Baht (+7% vat) you're paying now.

People ask many times why when they have a 3 Mbps package, they're not always getting that speed.

A good analogy would to compare it with a highway, since roads are a "shared" medium, just like the internet a shared medium is.

You're allowed to drive 120 km/h on a highway, and at night when there is little traffic you can easily do that. However during peak times, there are so many road users around, resulting in the average speed to drop!

Now on a standard home package, you are being routed over regular highways. Customers having the Premium package are allowed to use the tollways. For this they have to pay a premium (just like toll) for the privilege to run on the less congested tollways. They still can slow down during peak hours but to a much lesser extend, as the amount of drivers allowed on the tollway is limited. Still shared though, just less heavily.

Hope this clears things a bit up!

[nam-thip]

Very well explained monty and for an old fart like me I understood everything you explained.

Many thanks for your time and effort in putting a detailed explanation together.

Cheers and all the best for the coming new year.

[Acharn]

Very well explained monty and for an old fart like me I understood everything you explained.

Many thanks for your time and effort in putting a detailed explanation together.

Cheers and all the best for the coming new year.

I also thank Monty. His explanation was excellent.

You might find it interesting to use a little more general speed test, at speedtest.net. That test allows you to measure your network speed to hundreds of different locations in the world. You'll find that speeds differ radically because of the connections between different countries. Thailand still has far too little bandwidth because of the abusive monopoly at CAT (oops, sorry, of course I meant YOUR cattele.com).

I know Thaksin is widely reviled now, but back when he was putting in the 5 million telephone lines in Bangkok he was asked his opinion of the proposed privatization of TOT and CAT. He replied that each organization had 20,000 employees doing the work of a few thousand and he wouldn't be interested in buying into them.

[monty]

Thailand still has far too little bandwidth because of the abusive monopoly at CAT (oops, sorry, of course I meant YOUR cattele.com).

Actually that monopoly has ended for a while now. The main ISP's all have their own direct links to the outside world (called IIG's or International Internet Gateways), the biggest being True, Csloxinfo, TT&T, TOT and ADC.

[Pib]

The speedtest.net web site sometimes seems to give results/speeds which are much lower/slower than what a person is actually getting/experiencing.

By that I mean speedtest.net may give really low speed results to locations although your web surfing/video viewing/VOIP is working fne. Ex: I view CNN.com quite a bit whose server is located in Atlanta USA, but when using speedtest.net to check the download/uploa speed to Atlanta I many times get very low speed results although my CNN.com browsing is very zippy/fast, my VOIP to the U.S. works fine, etc. I then run the internet download/upload speed test program called Test My Connection Speed at http://myspeed.visualware.com/index.html and get a internet download/upload speed result usually north of of 1000kbps which seems to be in sync with how zippy/fast my browsing actually is.

I think Speed.net may now have too many people using it which many times bogs down their servers/web sites and gives low speed readings to sites in the U.S./Europe...for me this change seemed to occur in late Oct 08. Right now I have more faith in the Test My Connection Speed web site/program...give it a try at http://myspeed.visualware.com/index.html

[Blinq]

Your ISP should have an FTP server where you can download different size test files in ".bin" format. So if your ISP is called xyz.com, go to "ftp://ftp.xyz.com/pub/test" (without quotes) and download any of the files in that directory and make a note of the download speed. If it's not up to par, send the results to your ISP's tech support desk and ask them to look into it.

[daxbr]

I have broadband TT&T (3 MB) and I’ve just run a couple of ‘Thai visa’ speed tests on the system but it’s a bit confusing so can you experts out there explain things in detail for an ageing computer user like myself, like what is Latency/PING and why is there two sets of figures for D/L and U/L?

The first speed test results were:

Download Speed: 2063 kbps (257.9 KB/sec transfer rate)

Upload Speed: 104 kbps (13 KB/sec transfer rate)

Latency (PING): 774 ms

Monday, December 22, 2008 6:55:16 PM

The second speed test results 6 minutes later:

Download Speed: 817 kbps (102.1 KB/sec transfer rate)

Upload Speed: 93 kbps (11.6 KB/sec transfer rate)

Latency: 791 ms

Monday, December 22, 2008 7:01:52 PM

Cheers guys

Done the same test but from se US:

Download Speed: 2494 kbps (311.8 KB/sec transfer rate)

Upload Speed: 290 kbps (36.3 KB/sec transfer rate)

Latency: 568 ms

Saturday, January 03, 2009 3:27:11 PM

[kuma]

That was a glorious explanation - thanks for that

Who is this TT&t? Are they a decent provider? Do they bring a line to your house or does their service ride on your exissting TOT/True line?

I have TOT 2mg service now and have had for a few years and it never gives me the speed i need to NA so i was about to switch to True, haveing heard they are a better provider.

Does anyone have an opinion if i would be better off with true? Or how about TT&T? I am trying to get a minimum consistent 300mbps

Thanks

ADSL is asymmetrical, which means the download (D/L) speed is faster then the upload (U/L) speed. Most people use internet mainly to download stuff, so this makes sense.

Hence most tests will do separate tests for both of them.

Latency is the time it takes for a small amount of data to travel to the server you are testing from, and back to you (the "round trip" time).

Often called the "ping" time, as PING is the command used from a DOS window to do such a test.

You say you have a 3Mb connection, so your theoretical top speed would be 3072 kbps (3 X 1024, computer nerds count slightly different with Kilo and Mega pre fixes ).

So your first test indicated that you are getting 2063 kbps out of the maximum 3072, roughly 66%. Which is not too bad.

ADSL normally tops out at about 75%-80% of your contract speed, due to overhead, error correction etc...

Your upload is not so good, the 104 kbps you're getting is only 25% of your rated speed (which is 512 kbps for upload).

Latency is also poor, basically you have this a lot on the cheaper "home" packages, in short your data is held up along the way to give priority to customers using the premium or business packages. Latency to Singapore (where the Thaivisa servers are located) should be under 100 ms!

In the second test a few minutes later you see a big drop in speed, again a result of being on the less stable "home" package (called Indy at TT&T).

Basically you are getting what you are paying for I'd guess.

If you are experiencing problems with your internet, i.e. excessive sluggishness, slow speeds etc, the only way to improve on that would be to upgrade to the "premier" package from TT&T.

For the same 3Mbps (but with faster 1024 kbps upload) on Premier you'd pay 1990 Baht (+7% vat) compared to the 790 Baht (+7% vat) you're paying now.

People ask many times why when they have a 3 Mbps package, they're not always getting that speed.

A good analogy would to compare it with a highway, since roads are a "shared" medium, just like the internet a shared medium is.

You're allowed to drive 120 km/h on a highway, and at night when there is little traffic you can easily do that. However during peak times, there are so many road users around, resulting in the average speed to drop!

Now on a standard home package, you are being routed over regular highways. Customers having the Premium package are allowed to use the tollways. For this they have to pay a premium (just like toll) for the privilege to run on the less congested tollways. They still can slow down during peak hours but to a much lesser extend, as the amount of drivers allowed on the tollway is limited. Still shared though, just less heavily.

Hope this clears things a bit up!

[monty]

Actually no, TT&T is a phone provider.

They pull phone lines to your house.

Maxnet is a subsidiary of TT&T and is an ISP. Maxnet only is available if you have a TT&T phone line!

Normally TT&T phone lines are only available in the provinces and not in Bangkok, but apparently TT&T is now delivering broadband in Bkk as well under the "Triple T" brand. Not sure on what lines though, might be a different situation compared to here outside of Bkk.

[Pib]

That was a glorious explanation - thanks for that

Who is this TT&t? Are they a decent provider? Do they bring a line to your house or does their service ride on your exissting TOT/True line?

I have TOT 2mg service now and have had for a few years and it never gives me the speed i need to NA so i was about to switch to True, haveing heard they are a better provider.

Does anyone have an opinion if i would be better off with true? Or how about TT&T? I am trying to get a minimum consistent 300mbps

Thanks

I have TOT phone line and I first started with the TOT's internet 2MB Goldcyber package, but their international bandwidth/speed (i.e., speed to web sites outside of Thailand) varied greatly from being OK-fine to very slow (down to around 100kbps...no rhyme or reason to day or time of day as to the speed obtained). And access to https (secure) web sites/pages was even slower and non-secure web sites.

About six weeks ago I switched to JI-NET 2MB BizConnect package and have had steady/fast international speed. As mentioned and since I had a TOT line, this was the only JI-NET package available for my area/line here in western Bangkok. If I had a TOT (ADC) line, I would have had the choice of two other JI-NET packages. Now, JI-NET costs more than most standard internet package like TOT or True offer since JI-NET has a lower user-to-DSL circuit ratio (around 10 to 1 compared to TOT's 50 to 1), but the JI-NET service is steady/fast (almost always over 1000kbps and up to around 1800kbps to international sites). They do cost more, but it's worth it me to have steady/fast speed regardless of day or time of day. Their web site is www.ji-net.com

What ever service you decide on, definitely query them about their User-to-DSL circuit ratio (lower is better...less people sharing the same internet/DSL circuit...gives you faster speed especially international speed) and don't be dazzled by intra/inside-Thailand speed as that will most likely always approach your package's upper limit as long as you have a good physical line connection (i.e., low noise, your phone/DSL is not an excessive distance from the phone/DSL connection facility). Cheers.

[monty]

I have TOT phone line and I first started with the TOT's internet 2MB Goldcyber package, but their international bandwidth/speed (i.e., speed to web sites outside of Thailand) varied greatly from being OK-fine to very slow (down to around 100kbps...no rhyme or reason to day or time of day as to the speed obtained). And access to https (secure) web sites/pages was even slower and non-secure web sites.

About six weeks ago I switched to JI-NET 2MB BizConnect package and have had steady/fast international speed. As mentioned and since I had a TOT line, this was the only JI-NET package available for my area/line here in western Bangkok. If I had a TOT (ADC) line, I would have had the choice of two other JI-NET packages. Now, JI-NET costs more than most standard internet package like TOT or True offer since JI-NET has a lower user-to-DSL circuit ratio (around 10 to 1 compared to TOT's 50 to 1), but the JI-NET service is steady/fast (almost always over 1000kbps and up to around 1800kbps to international sites). They do cost more, but it's worth it me to have steady/fast speed regardless of day or time of day. Their web site is www.ji-net.com

What ever service you decide on, definitely query them about their User-to-DSL circuit ratio (lower is better...less people sharing the same internet/DSL circuit...gives you faster speed especially international speed) and don't be dazzled by intra/inside-Thailand speed as that will most likely always approach your package's upper limit as long as you have a good physical line connection (i.e., low noise, your phone/DSL is not an excessive distance from the phone/DSL connection facility). Cheers.

Good post!

We hear very little on the alternatives available for those stuck with a TOT line! Not many people are happy with their goldcyber package (which is TOT's own ISP), but indeed it is possible to switch providers on a TOT line. AFAIK Csloxinfo is also a possibility, albeit not the cheapest one.

Actually the same goes for TT&T phone lines, you are not forced to take up a Maxnet package, most big ISP's are available through a TT&T line! Csloxinfo, Ji-net, KSC are definitely available. Difference with TOT is that TT&T's Maxnet service is actually pretty decent!