Bkk Broadband International Performance

[autonomous_unit]

I've seen lots of related topics but nothing particularly current or practical. We've been using True ADSL 1024/512 service for the past 6 months or so in Bangkoknoi. It has proven to have pretty good outbound service, often approaching 500 Kb/s for transfers. However, the inbound remains highly variable, meaning realtime uses like VOIP/conferencing are not feasible most of the time. I do see 1000 Kb/s once in a while for transfers, but often it goes below 200 and it varies over short periods as if they are queueing traffice too much. Quite often, if I try H.323 or other VOIP solutions, I get good sound quality from me to the international person but unusable sound coming back in.

We may be moving house to Nonthaburi in the next few months and I am trying to understand what our options are for a new connection. I think our True service is very cheap at around 900 baht a month or less, so I am not afraid to pay a bit more to remedy the performance problems. However, I do pause at the thought of paying ten times as much for 1024/512 that "works right"... I would want some pretty terrific multi-megabit service for 10k baht/month! I also am interested in symmetric performance so it is no good to me to get more inbound but start reducing the outbound below what I have now.

Does anyone have practical experience to compare, say, True 1024 and higher rate services? Does the international performance improve at all, i.e. do they prioritize your traffic any better as the service plan goes up? Or do you get the same crappy sub-512 performance variations w/ 1024, 2048, and 4096 services?

What about these "SME" services? Are there any that will give something in the range of 512-2048 in both directions without breaking the bank? Again, I am concerned with practical international performance and not local link or Thai-only internet speeds. I'm not limiting myself to True, but I am hoping we can find something in this performance range for 1-4k baht/month (the lower the better).

[Firefoxx]

For that much per month, the only thing fitting the bill would be True's SME promotions, and they're not symmetric. Try the 2mbit/512k plan, according to other members it's quite all right.

I'm guessing that the SME and cafe lines are similar, and if that's so, then it should turn out to be pretty good. I get pretty consistant speed (about 80% full bandwidth) with little lag on the cafe promotion. Once in a while, there will be a problem and the speeds will drop, but it doesn't happen often. I've tried the same programs (p2p and skype) on the home packages and compared it to my results, and the home package (even the 2.5mbit one) stinks royally in comparison. The one thing that annoys me to no end is that every day during the wee hours (not always the same time), all active TCP/IP connections will be severed (the login doesn't disconnect) so any transfers I have active are reset. Not very nice when I've waited in a P2P queue for hours.

Of course, you can't really say anything for sure with True's service... changes from time to time, place to place.

Symmetric services, even 512k/512k corporate packages, are way beyond your budget. You can try other Thai ISPs, but True is generally the cheapest with respect to speed/QOS, but that doesn't mean that it's a good ISP on a worldwide scale.

[Abandon]

I send large files to Japan and also receive them. Usually going out hits 50 kbs, but incoming is usually in the 10-15 range, Sometimes as low a 5, and sometimes hits 60 in the early hours. I too would be happier with dsl than adsl but I have not come across any such services.

The SME business package of TRUE is 2500 baht/month and they 'guarentee' 60% of advertised speeds. I heard that regular users are crammed in at 60/server, but the SME users at 20/server.

The SME account is far superior and does give even good speeds all day.

added: I have heard that the internet cafe account will cut your service if you are using Bit Torrent at night, since they restrict late traffic to try and prevent kids playing games all night. It was Bkk_mike who told me that. Firefox - did you find this problem?

The regular SME does not have this restriction.

Edited March 24, 2005 by pandit35

[autonomous_unit]

Thanks, I'll take a closer look at the SME packages. Do you know if individuals can subscribe or whether we should plan to use our LLC for that? We plan to reregister the LLC at the new location, and I am only worried about that causing delays in getting new Internet service going without unbounded disruptions. I was on GPRS for several months while we sorted out the last True line...

As for the daily connection severing, I noticed that was 24 hrs after the last time my router got a new WAN address on the home service (or more frequently if connections idled too long). I thought someone said the SME plans have a static address; but these connection resets happen anyway? I shouldn't be surprised but that sure is silly.

[sajal]

as to what i hear from a reliable source any regular joe can apply for the sme package, need only ID card or passport(requirements same as for home package).

i agree with pandit...the SME account is a more privilaged one...we use home package at home and office, during the day it gets really slow...slower than dialup even(im hardly at office during the day my experience is limited to the very rate occasion that im at bangkok and that too at office during the day). at home the home package works like a charm(caus i use it only at nights and sundays).

someone who uses the true SME package says he hasnt had any such problems with the SME package.

[Firefoxx]

I never heard of anything about cutting bittorrent downloads. I used bittorrent for a while, about 2 weeks, and had no problems downloading at full speed with no noticeable interrupts. The problem I'm seeing is that transfers/connections will be interruppted for a few seconds, but this happens even when I'm using very little bandwidth (and normally I use less than 1/4 of the full bandwidth).

True's consumer ADSL packages all cut after 24 hours of continuous login (yes, it's silly). The rote response from True about the reason is that it's for "accounting purposes", which is absurd, since they're cutting unlimited usage subscribers. The cafe and SME packages are just suped up consumer packages, and so get similar treatment. What I'm experiencing happens even after a fresh login, and only very late at night, and doesn't disconnect you from True.

You might or might not need to subscribe in the company name. Depends on the salesperson you talk to and the legal owner of the telephone line. When I went to ask at the True kiosk, they were very strict about procedure, but when I called a salesperson, it was a different story.

[bkk_mike]

I basically got cut off for 24 hours and warned for bandwidth abuse.

I'll still run bittorrent occasionally to get something specific, but no longer leave it running for weeks on end...

[sajal]

You might or might not need to subscribe in the company name.  Depends on the salesperson you talk to and the legal owner of the telephone line.  When I went to ask at the True kiosk, they were very strict about procedure, but when I called a salesperson, it was a different story.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

for my connection at home i just went to the true center at it mall in fortune tower rachada.

talked to the lady in the front most desk, she helped my in the application. only my pasport copy was needed and filled the application. i got the phone line and adsl within 5 days, no other document/details needed.

probably if u already have a line ud require an authorizion from the owner of the phone line...

my appartment was a rented one, they didn't even want to see the rent agreement...very simple...

[Firefoxx]

I basically got cut off for 24 hours and warned for bandwidth abuse.

I'll still run bittorrent occasionally to get something specific, but no longer leave it running for weeks on end...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Wow, that must have been some heavy abuse... But really, BT is a bandwidth hog, and the way it aggregates several simultaneous sources and just uses up any bandwidth available can be quite unfair to people using the net for other things. There is a new breed of person out there who has the motto: I'll never pay for anything againcuz I have BT.

BT in moderation is great, but the way some people use BT to just saturate any and all available bandwidth they have is just unrealistic for the price they pay for broadband. I know a lot of these folk, and they tend to download things they don't even intend to look at.

I actually applaud this type of policing by TA, I just wish that they'd do it more often. You often see Thais in the Thai ADSL forum gloating at how many tens of gigs they've downloaded in the last month by using BT way too much.

[sniffdog]

Get a SME package? Depends if you are willing to spent a multitude of what your home package costs.

Although bandwidth during the late afternoon and early morning (around 2am) is very unstable, during the night (I am privileged to be to able work during the night) I reach speeds of of upto 267 kilobytes per second. Upload is always good (round 50 kilobytes per second).

Downloaded a 'demo' last night in 12:27 minutes (199.97 mb). But sometimes you have to make use of tools like downloaders (Star Downloader, free) or tell your FTP client to upload two or three files at a time.

BTW Is it me or is this subject discussed over and over again, leading to the same talk?

Edited March 24, 2005 by sniffdog

[autonomous_unit]

...

BTW Is it me or is this subject discussed over and over again, leading to the same talk?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Yeah, I think it is. I was reluctant to post but I couldn't find something directly going at the angle that is my main concern... consistent middle-of-the-road service at consumer prices. I think the frequent questions about ADSL and GPRS are just evidence that there are gaps in the available services here.

You almost need a FAQ list to cover the status of broadband here, but the problem is that in the end it is like reporting the weather. Is it hot, or is it ###### hot? There are lots of subjective concerns about QoS for different types of users that are not captured in X/Y Kb/s and Z baht/month. For example, I tried to emphasize VOIP applications because that is what is hurting me; I agree that home ADSL works OK for batch downloads that can run all day or night. I just don't care about that use case.

I think there are a group of us IT types who have seen so much better service around the world that we just want to get back some small fraction of it here. I've been spoiled by connections in the U.S. where the local link is the bottleneck, rather than the backbone to the world... even when the local link was gigabit over fiber.

[Firefoxx]

I remember seeing advertisements for 100megabit office internet connections in the US for around $1000 a month around 5-6 years ago. At that time, a 64kbit leased line (with internet from loxinfo) in Thailand cost 64,000 baht per month, and it was the standard price throughout the larger ISPs. (go to the library and look up some of the old computer mags, they have lists of leased line costs from major ISPs).

The SME package is around 2-3x the price of the home packages, but from user experiences it is a lot more reliable and stable than the home package. Since a bit of QOS during business hours is your goal, it should meet your needs. Of course, you can't expect too much, since Thailand is still fairly expensive in terms of what you get for your money. However, compare the SME ADSL price of today to the leased line price of yesteryear, and you'll see that todays prices are a pittance in comparison. But really, it was insane back then.

[bkk_mike]

Going back to the original post - you could try the true2m 25 baht/hour temporary upgrade. - if you know when you're going to be using VOIP during the times of day when True's regular performance is bad. (I would say ######ing crap but that will probably get blanked out...)

From posts last year, it seems to get guaranteed bandwidth so that people switching to it from nominally faster packages noticed a big improvement.

[autonomous_unit]

Going back to the original post - you could try the true2m 25 baht/hour temporary upgrade. - if you know when you're going to be using VOIP during the times of day when True's regular performance is bad. (I would say ######ing crap but that will probably get blanked out...)

From posts last year, it seems to get guaranteed bandwidth so that people switching to it from nominally faster packages noticed a big improvement.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Thanks for the reminder! I don't know why I forgot about that upgraded login option. I managed to find some of those threads via google, but for one last stupid question, does anyone have comparative experience of the true2m 25 baht/hr login versus the SME service? Staying logged into true2m all the time would add up to about 18k baht a month, so SME would sure be more convenient than having to modify the router settings all the time.

[sniffdog]

I only use 2m if streaming video is unreliable. And even then sometimes the picture is not perfect.