True Dsl 8 Mb Initial Impressions

[ungcas]

Let me start off by saying that I've always had pretty good luck with True's 3 MB DSL connection. I download a lot of Torrents from Asia(mostly HK and Japan I would imagine since they are dramas/tv series) and consistently get over 300K/sec.

With Newsleecher I have fairly good luck as well. Off peak hours I get over 300K as well, though during peak hours it falls to the 100K(probably due to the server located int he US).

All in all I have been quite satisfied with my True connection.

Last month I found out they were offering the 8 MB option so of course it only cost me 50baht more so I took it. They said it would be available starting April 2nd, but of course it was not ready. I spoke to a customer service agent from True and she said they were "having problems with their system".

I tried rebooting the modem, once and night and once in the daytime everyday to see if there were any changes. Nothing until today (sunday) 10:00am.

First thing I did was pick something random from newsleecher and started downloading. Top speeds were 800K. It fluctuated back and forth and remained consistent in the 600K area(4 connections.)

Next thing I tried of course was Bit Torrent. Loaded up 3 random torrents and right away It shot up to 800K and stayed there. Now it is down in the 600K area again.

Of course this is Sunday morning on a long weekend and most people are still asleep. But overall I have to say I am quite happy with the speeds. This is getting close to the 7 MB which I get back in Canada. Of course the price is only half of what I pay there.

So if anyone was using a 3-4 MB connection before and was getting good speeds I would highly recommend them upgrading to the 8 MB service.

[namoo]

Give it a month or two, when the majority have signed up. fingers crossed it will just be as fast...have my doubts tho.

[webfact]

Yeah, maybe 8 Mbph... = 8 Mbperhour

But I wish it will work for the OP as he expect it.

[rainman]

If everyone from the regular packages will switch over to the new 8mbps packages, won't the 8mbps packages be swamped like the regular packages now are, opening up the regular packages and making them faster?

[EdtheTruth]

I upgraded my 2.5 Mbs package to the 8 Mbs package on Friday afternoon. On Saturday morning I got a nice text message from True that said I was registered in the system and that the upgrade would take place within 24 hours (which would have been Sunday morning). Well, Sunday came and went with no change in my speed. I just got off the phone with them, and the nice woman with excellent English said that the queue for upgrades was very long and that I should get the upgrade by Wednesday. (:

Sounds like the OP got lucky!

[CosmicSurfer]

I did the Upgrade at TRUE in Fortune at around 1PM on Friday, April 3. Going from 3 to 8 Mbps.

Now, Monday 9pm.. Just did a Speed Test.... No torrents running, no other downloads.

(Test.. Bangkok to New York City) http://www.speedtest.net/

Ping - 371ms

Down - 0.79 Mb/s

Up - 0.30 Mb/s

Not even close to the 3 Mb/s I was paying for before.. 8 is a Pipedream.

Maybe by Wednesday....

TIT

CS

Edited April 6, 2009 by CosmicSurfer

[momosan]

I upped mine to 4mb first before I tried the 8mb even though it was available. The actual modem is saying it's connected at 5mb. The fastest I've been able to actually download has been 3mb (300Kbps) so I'll probably downgrade it again soon if it doesn't seem to be able to actually handle faster speeds.

[ungcas]

I upgraded my 2.5 Mbs package to the 8 Mbs package on Friday afternoon. On Saturday morning I got a nice text message from True that said I was registered in the system and that the upgrade would take place within 24 hours (which would have been Sunday morning). Well, Sunday came and went with no change in my speed. I just got off the phone with them, and the nice woman with excellent English said that the queue for upgrades was very long and that I should get the upgrade by Wednesday. (:

Sounds like the OP got lucky!

Yeah it's likely they over promised and under delivered. Make sure to reboot your modem so the changes take effect.

I'm only getting 400Ks now with newsgroups, but still hitting near 800K downloading old episodes of G4 Tech tv shows off their website.

[indothai]

I also got the SMS text message 2 days after registering to upgrade from 4mb to 8mb... Though after reading the SMS a few times, it meant that my "privileges" for "www.truelife.com" will be "effective in 24 hours". I did check my dsl modem, and in there it states that my link is 5mb ???

Yesterday I stopped in a True shop to inquire further more, and the lady said the process will most likely take 4 days.

So,... I'll be giving it till this week Friday before calling them again.

[indothai]

Update:

Got my package upgraded today.

Tip: if you are getting an error, try turning off your modem and leaving it off for about 2 minutes. Then turn it back on. You should not have to change login or password.

Speed tests:

From http://www.trueinternet.co.th/testspeedmain.php:

Worst speed 3767 kbps. Best speed 5663 kbps.

From http://www.speedtest.net:

http://www.speedtest.net/result/446939759.png

It's probably going to be this bad for about a couple of weeks or so, until people start complaining and switching back to their old package.

Got my fingers crossed.

[webfact]

Update:

Got my package upgraded today.

Tip: if you are getting an error, try turning off your modem and leaving it off for about 2 minutes. Then turn it back on. You should not have to change login or password.

Speed tests:

From http://www.trueinternet.co.th/testspeedmain.php:

Worst speed 3767 kbps. Best speed 5663 kbps.

From http://www.speedtest.net:

http://www.speedtest.net/result/446939759.png

It's probably going to be this bad for about a couple of weeks or so, until people start complaining and switching back to their old package.

Got my fingers crossed.

The first link is broken.

Did you run this test when it was raining? You should test during different weather conditions. Maybe theres a surprise in store for you.

Rain is a major issue! Take that serious. The last few days we had a lot of rain.

[EdtheTruth]

Well my new package got activated yesterday. All I've got to say is wildly inconsistent results. The Thai server is steady at 7 mbs, but all international servers are up and down. The first time I checked a server in Los Angeles I was shocked to see 5 mbs! But five minutes later it was 3 mbs. And an hour later it was 1.5 mbs. It seems that my international server average is about 2.5 mbs or so, but its almost constantly changing.

As for surfing, also strange results. A lot of websites (ESPN, Huffingtonpost) snap right up. But others, like YouTube, hang for 5 to 10 seconds before loading. It seems the more prominent the website, the slower it loads. Maybe those sites are being screened by the government? Who knows.

All in all, a bit underwhelmed. But it is faster than before, and it only cost me about 100 baht more than I was paying before.

[webfact]

Well my new package got activated yesterday. All I've got to say is wildly inconsistent results. The Thai server is steady at 7 mbs, but all international servers are up and down. The first time I checked a server in Los Angeles I was shocked to see 5 mbs! But five minutes later it was 3 mbs. And an hour later it was 1.5 mbs. It seems that my international server average is about 2.5 mbs or so, but its almost constantly changing.

As for surfing, also strange results. A lot of websites (ESPN, Huffingtonpost) snap right up. But others, like YouTube, hang for 5 to 10 seconds before loading. It seems the more prominent the website, the slower it loads. Maybe those sites are being screened by the government? Who knows.

All in all, a bit underwhelmed. But it is faster than before, and it only cost me about 100 baht more than I was paying before.

What you have to report does not surprise me in no way. It was to be foreseen.

Always I compare Thai ISP's with car dealers. They try to sell you a Porsche, even offer it for a fracture of the "normal" sales price and they absolutely don't care if there's no road or highway available around where you can drive your car with more than snail speed.

They want sell and they promise you almost everything even if your line does only support 2mb, they will try to sell you 8mb signal!

Some posters mentioned the danger of these "inexpensive high speed packages". They are bloody dam_n right! You can't compare Thailands internet infrastructure with other countries, i.e. Japan, Korea only to mention a few.

To get an almost reliable service and results you have to spend more money! And even that does not give a guarantee to get the results you are expecting.

MHO

Edited April 8, 2009 by webfact

[CosmicSurfer]

Just ran a Speed Test. Contract for 8 Mbps

Time Between 9:45 am - 10:05 am

Torrents OFF (Paused)

Bangkok to Bangkok > TRUE Speedtest > 7299.404 Kbps (Steady after a number of repeats)

Bangkok to New York City > http://www.speedtest.net/

1st Test > Dwn 2.30 Mbps, Up 0.39 Mbps, Ping 328 ms

2nd Test > Dwn 1.64, Up 0.36, Ping 328

3rd Test > Dwn 2.16, Up 0.35, Ping 329

Torrents ON >

Bangkok to Bangkok > TRUE Speedtest > 739.264 Kbps > 1155.006 Kbps > 1283.467 Kbps < 3 Tests > 1352.041 Kbps

Bangkok to New York City > http://www.speedtest.net/

1st Test > Dwn 0.33 Mbps, Up 0.13 Mbps, Ping 469 ms

2nd Test > Dwn 0.31, Up 0.03, Ping 569

3rd Test > Dwn 0.44, Up 0.02, Ping 506

4th Test > Dwn 0.68, Up 0.06, Ping 452

HUGE Difference!! Torrents running strong but nothing coming in faster than 15 kB/s

Around 18 Downloading, and much more than that uploading.

Around > Down 80-100 kB/s - Up 49.1 kB/s

I'll try again later.

CS

Edited April 8, 2009 by CosmicSurfer

[webfact]

Just ran a Speed Test. Contract for 8 Mbps

Time Between 9:45 am - 10:05 am

Torrents OFF (Paused)

Bangkok to Bangkok > TRUE Speedtest > 7299.404 Kbps (Steady after a number of repeats)

Bangkok to New York City > http://www.speedtest.net/

1st Test > Dwn 2.30 Mbps, Up 0.39 Mbps, Ping 328 ms

2nd Test > Dwn 1.64, Up 0.36, Ping 328

3rd Test > Dwn 2.16, Up 0.35, Ping 329

Torrents ON >

Bangkok to Bangkok > TRUE Speedtest > 739.264 Kbps > 1155.006 Kbps > 1283.467 Kbps < 3 Tests > 1352.041 Kbps

Bangkok to New York City > http://www.speedtest.net/

1st Test > Dwn 0.33 Mbps, Up 0.13 Mbps, Ping 469 ms

2nd Test > Dwn 0.31, Up 0.03, Ping 569

3rd Test > Dwn 0.44, Up 0.02, Ping 506

4th Test > Dwn 0.68, Up 0.06, Ping 452

HUGE Difference!! Torrents running strong but nothing coming in faster than 15 kB/s

Around 18 Downloading, and much more than that uploading.

Around > Down 80-100 kB/s - Up 49.1 kB/s

I'll try again later.

CS

up and down, up and down, looks to me like a bad roller coaster ride...

...but it seems the 8mb are there - in LOCAL bandwidth.

I never heard of any provider in LOS promising its customers "we will provide/guarantee x mb international bandwidth"

The above results are no surprise.

Edited April 8, 2009 by webfact

[nikster]

As for surfing, also strange results. A lot of websites (ESPN, Huffingtonpost) snap right up. But others, like YouTube, hang for 5 to 10 seconds before loading. It seems the more prominent the website, the slower it loads. Maybe those sites are being screened by the government? Who knows.

The most prominent sites will be in the Thai international gateway proxy cache so they should load fast - that's why ESPN is fast .

YouTube on my TOT is always completely unusable so I am 100% sure they actively throttle the site, at the very least the video downloads. Even at the times when my TOT connection is fast, YouTube videos trickle in at a paltry 5KB/s or so. Basically totally unusable. The very same videos come in at 70 - 80KB/s via CAT CDMA so this is not some government conspiracy. More likely, the ISPs are throttling YouTube to preserve their international bandwidth.

Makes a lot of sense if you think about it because YouTube videos are not only very large, but there's also a vast number of different videos that people could be watching, so it's impossible to cache.

[CosmicSurfer]

As for surfing, also strange results. A lot of websites (ESPN, Huffingtonpost) snap right up. But others, like YouTube, hang for 5 to 10 seconds before loading. It seems the more prominent the website, the slower it loads. Maybe those sites are being screened by the government? Who knows.

The most prominent sites will be in the Thai international gateway proxy cache so they should load fast - that's why ESPN is fast .

YouTube on my TOT is always completely unusable so I am 100% sure they actively throttle the site, at the very least the video downloads. Even at the times when my TOT connection is fast, YouTube videos trickle in at a paltry 5KB/s or so. Basically totally unusable. The very same videos come in at 70 - 80KB/s via CAT CDMA so this is not some government conspiracy. More likely, the ISPs are throttling YouTube to preserve their international bandwidth.

Makes a lot of sense if you think about it because YouTube videos are not only very large, but there's also a vast number of different videos that people could be watching, so it's impossible to cache.

YouTube works fine for me... sometimes it's fast enough for streaming. If it isn't, just let it start to download, then pause it, visit another tab, and come back in a few minutes... enough should have downloaded to watch it streaming until the end.

Slow sites can be caused by many reasons. ISP throttaling is not always the answer. Actually it probably never is in Thailand.

It's more likely that the government orders a site blocked totally, then an ISP throttling it.

ISPs just don't care enough about how their service is being used, or misused.

They only care about signing up more customers.

CS

[webfact]

As for surfing, also strange results. A lot of websites (ESPN, Huffingtonpost) snap right up. But others, like YouTube, hang for 5 to 10 seconds before loading. It seems the more prominent the website, the slower it loads. Maybe those sites are being screened by the government? Who knows.

The most prominent sites will be in the Thai international gateway proxy cache so they should load fast - that's why ESPN is fast .

YouTube on my TOT is always completely unusable so I am 100% sure they actively throttle the site, at the very least the video downloads. Even at the times when my TOT connection is fast, YouTube videos trickle in at a paltry 5KB/s or so. Basically totally unusable. The very same videos come in at 70 - 80KB/s via CAT CDMA so this is not some government conspiracy. More likely, the ISPs are throttling YouTube to preserve their international bandwidth.

Makes a lot of sense if you think about it because YouTube videos are not only very large, but there's also a vast number of different videos that people could be watching, so it's impossible to cache.

YouTube works fine for me... sometimes it's fast enough for streaming. If it isn't, just let it start to download, then pause it, visit another tab, and come back in a few minutes... enough should have downloaded to watch it streaming until the end.

Slow sites can be caused by many reasons. ISP throttaling is not always the answer. Actually it probably never is in Thailand.

It's more likely that the government orders a site blocked totally, then an ISP throttling it.

ISPs just don't care enough about how their service is being used, or misused.

They only care about signing up more customers.

CS

>>They only care about signing up more customers.<<

Welcome to the club. Now you know about! They have a target to meet...to make "Thailand the IT HUB of Asia"

[indothai]

Update:

Got my package upgraded today.

Tip: if you are getting an error, try turning off your modem and leaving it off for about 2 minutes. Then turn it back on. You should not have to change login or password.

Speed tests:

From http://www.trueinternet.co.th/testspeedmain.php

(Bangkok) Average speed 7509.522 Kbps. Best speed 11533.736 Kbps.

From http://www.speedtest.net:

(Bangkok old test) http://www.speedtest.net/result/446939759.png

(Bangkok new test #1) http://www.speedtest.net/result/449275964.png

(Bangkok new test #2) http://www.speedtest.net/result/449277092.png

(Bangkok new test #3) http://www.speedtest.net/result/449277735.png

(New York test) http://www.speedtest.net/result/449279201.png

(San Francisco test) http://www.speedtest.net/result/449279772.png

Torrent speeds are good, peaking at 850 kB/s.

International is still not so good.

[gaipad]

I do have rapidshare downloads at around 550kbs with my 2mb true line. But in general True is such a crappy service I won't throw any more money for false promises at them. The Internet speed is still crap in the evening hours and instead of 550kbs that I get a 2 - 6am the speed goes down to 30kbs. Ridiculous.

I love online games and absolutely hate to be so severely limited just because I'm in Thailand.

[webfact]

I do have rapidshare downloads at around 550kbs with my 2mb true line. But in general True is such a crappy service I won't throw any more money for false promises at them. The Internet speed is still crap in the evening hours and instead of 550kbs that I get a 2 - 6am the speed goes down to 30kbs. Ridiculous.

I love online games and absolutely hate to be so severely limited just because I'm in Thailand.

True is such a crappy service I won't throw any more money for false promises at them.

I'll second that from the bottom of my heart...

[CosmicSurfer]

Torrent speeds are good, peaking at 850 kB/s.

International is still not so good.

These torrents Must have Thai based seeders... No way you could get this speed with International seeders.

I have the 8 Mb/s package now and best I can get Internationally is about 20-25 kB/s down, more usually under 10 kB/s.

The real penalty is the 512 Limit Upload speed.... It very hard to manitain a decent ratio on Private Trackers with this.

Some of my seeding crawls at between 0.1 kB/s Up and most are under 5.0... Some people are complaining that I'm not seeding even though I am.

They are just not connecting. The limit maybe 512, but my firewall tells me that I'm never pumping out more than 75 kB/s.. usually around 60-70 these days.

If the 850 kB/s Down is real for you Internationally, then I'm really, really Jealous.

What are you getting Up ?

CS

[indothai]

Torrent speeds are good, peaking at 850 kB/s.

International is still not so good.

These torrents Must have Thai based seeders... No way you could get this speed with International seeders.

I have the 8 Mb/s package now and best I can get Internationally is about 20-25 kB/s down, more usually under 10 kB/s.

The real penalty is the 512 Limit Upload speed.... It very hard to manitain a decent ratio on Private Trackers with this.

Some of my seeding crawls at between 0.1 kB/s Up and most are under 5.0... Some people are complaining that I'm not seeding even though I am.

They are just not connecting. The limit maybe 512, but my firewall tells me that I'm never pumping out more than 75 kB/s.. usually around 60-70 these days.

If the 850 kB/s Down is real for you Internationally, then I'm really, really Jealous.

What are you getting Up ?

CS

Good speeds are from domestic seeders, international is still crap.

My up speeds are as advertised 512 kilobit (around 64 kilobyte)... i can get those speeds domestic and international.

[nikster]

Torrent speeds are good, peaking at 850 kB/s.

International is still not so good.

These torrents Must have Thai based seeders... No way you could get this speed with International seeders.

I have the 8 Mb/s package now and best I can get Internationally is about 20-25 kB/s down, more usually under 10 kB/s.

Don't confuse torrent speed with your connection speed. torrent speed depends on many things - number of seeds, number of leechers, your upload, etc. If you must maintain 1:1 ratio for uploading then you'll always be capped by your upload speed, and they never promised a 8Mbit upload...

Anyway, in order to test the line speed, do a speed test to a server in the USA. Or on the Mac, install MenuMeters to show up/down speed in the menubar (free), and hit the engadget RSS feed in Safari - this loads hundreds of images in parallel and is usually my "real world" test. It gets around the download limits the providers like to put on us, so it's an accurate measure of best possible real life performance.

As for your torrents, 20KB/s sounds like it's definitely some not-very-popular torrent. I am getting over 100KB/s on my garbage TOT line, if the torrent is popular enough. Stuff like the latest episode of Heroes which has tens of thousands of seeds. Other torrents trickle in but that's because there's only a handful of seeders... and who knows what kind of limited connections they are on, and how much other stuff they are seeding.

By the way: You can check if your torrent download is international or not, just go to the details page in Vuze/Azureus, and check out all the peers you are currently downloading from. Just check the fastest few - you can see their IP address, and then use a web service to check if that IP is within Thailand. I almost never get any peers from within the country - I wish there was a way to search for Thai peers, or to somehow prefer them, but I don't think the BT protocol took into account that somebody might have different national and international speeds...

Edited April 11, 2009 by nikster

[joncl]

The best local speed test and used by most ISP's

http://speedtest.adslthailand.com/

It shows for me;

Last Result:

Download Speed: 7288 kbps (911 KB/sec transfer rate)

Upload Speed: 855 kbps (106.9 KB/sec transfer rate)

TEST TIME:: Sunday April 12, 2009, 08:26 AM

[SoMeOnEnUlL]

Can you share the Line Attenuation and Noise Margin?

My line stats is as follow at 4Mbps and they said I cannot get 8Mbps.

noise margin upstream: 20 db
output power downstream: 10 db 
attenuation upstream: 14 db

noise margin downstream: 15 db
output power upstream: 11 db 
attenuation downstream: 29 db

[monty]

Can you share the Line Attenuation and Noise Margin?

My line stats is as follow at 4Mbps and they said I cannot get 8Mbps.

noise margin upstream: 20 db
output power downstream: 10 db 
attenuation upstream: 14 db

noise margin downstream: 15 db
output power upstream: 11 db 
attenuation downstream: 29 db

You seem to have a lot of noise on the line.

15 db noise marging at 4 Mbps means indeed that your line won't support much more, maybe 5 Mbps at best...

[SoMeOnEnUlL]

^^ Thanks mate! no 8Mbps for me, then

[TopDogger]

relative capacity occupation: 56%

noise margin downstream: 13.5 db

output power upstream: 0.0 dbm

attenuation downstream: 44.0 db

carrier load: number of bits per symbol(tone)

tone 0- 31: 00 00 00 04 34 67 89 88 89 88 88 87 77 55 43 00

tone 32- 63: 00 00 00 02 22 23 44 44 55 55 55 56 66 66 66 66

tone 64- 95: 06 26 66 66 66 66 66 66 66 66 55 55 56 66 66 66

tone 96-127: 66 66 55 66 66 66 66 65 56 55 55 55 55 55 54 55

tone 128-159: 55 54 44 44 42 04 44 44 44 04 33 22 02 20 00 02

tone 160-191: 22 22 22 22 22 22 20 22 22 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

tone 192-223: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

tone 224-255: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

Anyone care to roughly estimate the capacity of the above?

Thanks

[monty]

relative capacity occupation: 56%

noise margin downstream: 13.5 db

output power upstream: 0.0 dbm

attenuation downstream: 44.0 db

carrier load: number of bits per symbol(tone)

tone 0- 31: 00 00 00 04 34 67 89 88 89 88 88 87 77 55 43 00

tone 32- 63: 00 00 00 02 22 23 44 44 55 55 55 56 66 66 66 66

tone 64- 95: 06 26 66 66 66 66 66 66 66 66 55 55 56 66 66 66

tone 96-127: 66 66 55 66 66 66 66 65 56 55 55 55 55 55 54 55

tone 128-159: 55 54 44 44 42 04 44 44 44 04 33 22 02 20 00 02

tone 160-191: 22 22 22 22 22 22 20 22 22 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

tone 192-223: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

tone 224-255: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

Anyone care to roughly estimate the capacity of the above?

Thanks

Your line is pretty maxed out on the downstream.

Guess you can get an extra 512 kbps but not much more before the noise margin drops too low.