Thailand Connected To High-bandwidth Submarine Cable

[george]

The state of internet in Thailand:

Thailand now connected to AAG high-bandwidth submarine cable

Asia-America Gateway in use from today

CAT Telecom will today open

the Asia-America Gateway.

BANGKOK: -- CAT Telecom will today open the Asia-America Gateway it has jointly built up with other 18 leading telecom parties. The gateway is a high-bandwidth fibre-optic submarine cable system that connects Southeast Asia to the United States.

Internet users throughout Asia should start to see a dramatic increase in internet speed for websites located outside of the region when the $US550 million Asia-America Gateway (AAG) comes into operation today.

The new 20,000km (about 12,400 miles) AAG - an optical fibre cable network stretching from Malaysia to the West Coast of America via Guam and Hawaii - is now open, according to CAT Telecom.

The cable has additional landing points in Hong Kong and the Philippines, with branches to Singapore, Thailand, Brunei and Vietnam.

The cable became a reality in June 2006, when AiTi of Brunei Darussalam, CAT Telecom (Thailand), PLDT (Philippines), REACH (Hong Kong), StarHub (Singapore), Telekom Malaysia (Malaysia) and VNPT (Vietnam) all signed a Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU) for its construction.

In addition to being one of the longest undersea cable rollouts in history, the AAG will actually shorten the route for data from Asia to America, avoiding some of the wolds’ areas most prone to seismic activity in the process.

The demand for better quality communications services throughout Asia has been an ongoing battle between foreign and local businesses and regional communications carriers, and one that has affected economic growth in some countries.

The AAG uses the latest Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) technologies with a minimum design capacity of 1.28 terabit/s and a design capacity of 1.92 terabit/s.

The last of the undersea cable work was completed in June and all 10 landing points were completed months ago.

The new cable will improve e-commerce traffic and help meet the increasing demand for faster and more reliable internet, video and other multimedia services and applications.

-- Thaivisa.com / The Nation 2009-12-16

Is your internet faster now?

Check your real broadband speed here:

http://speedtest.thaivisa.com

[mythBuster]

Having an operational cable does not equal a faster operation in Thailand. There are probably numerous commissions of people who want to look like they are important who have to deal with the subject first, than maybe, they may start giving the consumers a bit more bandwidth. So do not get to exited. It will take a long long time before we actually see an improved internet speed.

[george]

Smoother video-streaming

SINGAPORE: -- VIDEO-streaming from YouTube and access to other sites in the United States will be smoother - and less prone to disruption - for internet users when a new undersea cable system now starts operations.

The US$500 million (S$696 million) Asia-America Gateway (AAG) will increase the Singapore telco's overseas Internet bandwidth by 30 per cent and is designed to provide a capacity of up to 1.92 Terabits per second of bandwidth.

Built over three years by StarHub and a consortium of 18 other telcos, including America's AT&T and Malaysia's Telekom Malaysia, CAT Telecom in Thailand, the cable system stretches 20,000km from the eastern part of Singapore to the Philippines, then directly across the Pacific Ocean to the US.

StarHub chief executive Terry Clontz said the cable system avoids the 'volatile and hazardous Pacific Ring' - which existing Internet submarine cables connecting Singapore to the world run through - which is prone to earthquakes and other natural disasters that could damage the cables.

Damage to submarine cables in that region in 2006, when a 7.1-magnitude earthquake struck off Taiwan, cut off Internet connectivity between Southeast Asia and the rest of the world. Online economic activity in the region ground to a nearhalt.

Traffic was re-routed through other cables, but it took almost two months to restore full capacity.

While StarHub has invested in other submarine cables, it will route most of its current network capacity to the AAG, said a spokesman.

As the AAG offers a more direct route to the US, through fewer routers - which are devices that forward data packets - access to US-based Internet websites, the main online destination, will be quicker.

Mr Clontz said that it was hard to measure the improvement precisely as factors like the number of users trying to access the websites also matter.

Industry analyst Adeel Najam said that the AAG's increased bandwidth would not necessarily translate into a vast improvement in broadband speeds, adding: 'The bottleneck in Internet traffic for users here mostly occurs within Singapore itself...not in cables linking Singapore to overseas.'

Minister of State for Trade and Industry and Manpower Lee Yi Shyan, at the official launch of the AAG at The Ritz-Carlton Millenia yesterday, stressed that Singapore's connectivity must continually improve as IT and media technology evolve rapidly.

Another submarine Internet cable to the US, being built by SingTel, PacNet, Google and other telcos, is expected to be ready in the first quarter of next year.

--asiaone.com 2009-12-16

[ekachat]

yeah well everyone from yesterday claiming MICT bans can now rest assured, this was an outage. The routing tables got f'd up for a while and you lost traffic or got rerouted to an overwhelmed network link. your browsers started redirecting per the rules set in the various ISP routers, load balancers and filters.

so all the nutty net behavior, there you have it, your main contributing factor.

if there's ever another "event" where everyone thinks it's a censure, try out traceroute command in windows its faked up name is tracert. have one done with your known good setup, and compare it to when there's a problem. once you know all the routers and ASNs you should pretty much know when there's a ban, attack, or outage.

p.s. -You will see better performance on the transport undersea to CONUS, like, NOW. It should be about 100-200ms faster from here to your desired IP in US. And if your signal continues on across US to EU or AFR then notice also. I have measured already, I see 200ms faster that all of the last few months.

[george]

Internet: South East Asia speeds to increase with new cable, say operators

A 20,000 km cable called The Asia-America Gateway is on. For those who suffer interminable delays in web traffic, the new cable should provide welcome relief.

The new cable, AAG for short, is a dedicated cable from Singapore and Malaysia to the US West Coast, providing a shorter and more direct routing than current cables.

And it's faster with a capacity of 1.92 terabits (million bits) per second and a capacity of 500 Gb per second of data.

The cable is a joint venture between Malaysia's Telekom Malaysia, CAT Telecom (Thailand) and 19 other partners, the subject of persistent criticism for its appalling international data connections which are often reduced to a crawl, particularly during school holidays and early evenings when children and workers take over the network for social networking, downloading and streaming.

Even users with optical fibre connections rated at 2mbps regularly see download speeds of around 40kbps, an intolerable situation for the business community - and the subject of recent criticism from Australian companies who said that their inward investment decisions were coloured by poor connectivity.

But Starhub, which has a fast network within Singapore, also suffers from slow connections - in part due to high contention ratios but also due to international traffic.

It has taken three years and more than USD500 million to lay and install the cable.

The question will now be whether there is a wholesale switch to it or whether priority will be given to premium customers.

-- Agencies/ Infotech/chiefofficers.net 2009-12-15

[elcent]

Google will be bringing the best and the fastest internet cables to SEA and should be ready by 2012. Broadband speed will be increased dramatically. Live video stream in HD will be no problem then.

[infernalman7]

Oh may be this was part of the cause of Monday's internet outrage. CAT did something to the IIG, may be this is it.

[fxe1200]

That'll be why international browsing has been like a drugged slug today then?

Bandwidth still has to be paid for, either undersea, satellite or digital tuk-tuk!

As long my emails will not be dilluted with seawater I don't mind.

[powderpuff]

Seems a heck of a lot faster at my house right now. I'm on 4mb from TRUE.

[ScubaBuddha]

Great news. Just in time for me as I am installing a Slingbox HD in the states next week. As of now pingtest.net rates my line quality as a D. Maybe this will help. All those moaners, why don't you wait to see if the thing helps before bitching that it won't.

As of now, presumably the new cable is not in use yet. I have 4mb down/ 1mb up Maxnet Premier. I'll test again later to day and see if there is improvement.

Edited December 15, 2009 by ScubaBuddha

[elcent]

I't faster here too. Probably due to the time. Not so many playing games online now.

[ES1]

NSA will love that...

Great, now I can get 10 times more SPAM mail from Asia in 1/10th the time and can expect a lot more efficient Asian based brute force attacks on my US based servers.

Sorry to be such a downer about it. Over all still a good thing.

[thetravellingcat]

quick everybody do a speed test to the same website at the same time!

[george]

quick everybody do a speed test to the same website at the same time!

Check your real broadband speed here:

http://speedtest.thaivisa.com

Please paste in the results, and also which ISP and plan you are using, Thanks!

PS! I'm right now on CAT-CDMA (800 Baht/month) and it looks very good:

Download Speed: 1373 kbps (171.6 KB/sec transfer rate)

Upload Speed: 352 kbps (44 KB/sec transfer rate)

source: http://speedtest.thaivisa.com

[hugocnx]

Daytime Chiang Mai internet speed was like a turtle. I tried with some food but no way.

Suggestion of Thavisa to check speed gave just a 323 Ping. Was that all the way to BKK?

Download speed same as ever.

To be positive about this, I hope that slow speed will come to a halt, specially after the months of terror we had from TOT.

I go to speedtest.net and see what I get.

[ScubaBuddha]

Seems a heck of a lot faster at my house right now. I'm on 4mb from TRUE.

According to the article, it's not connected yet. Article is dated Dec. 16th.

Internet users throughout Asia should start to see a dramatic increase in internet speed for websites located outside of the region when the $US550 million Asia-America Gateway (AAG) comes into operation today.

Edited December 15, 2009 by ScubaBuddha

[hugocnx]

Los Angeles, Ping 276 Down 2.27 Up 0.31

Amsterdam Ping 838 Down 2.61 Up 0.11

Melbourne Ping 354 Down 2.26 Up 0.17

With TOT 3Mb. Not to bad figures, but why is Europe always low (or high, what you prefer) on Ping?

Stiil good download from Europe...

Edited December 15, 2009 by hugocnx

[ekachat]

Oh may be this was part of the cause of Monday's internet outrage. CAT did something to the IIG, may be this is it.

yes exactly. see above.

[hugocnx]

Whatever. Gives them one more day to solve problems.

Mai mee phan haa.

[ekachat]

Seems a heck of a lot faster at my house right now. I'm on 4mb from TRUE.

According to the article, it's not connected yet. Article is dated Dec. 16th.

Internet users throughout Asia should start to see a dramatic increase in internet speed for websites located outside of the region when the $US550 million Asia-America Gateway (AAG) comes into operation today.

think about the time zones. what day is it here in thailand now, what hour? what does your timestamp show?

[ScubaBuddha]

Check your real broadband speed here:

http://speedtest.thaivisa.com

george, do you know where the thaivisa speed test server is located? I get intra-country speeds on it, which obviously if it's in country then it gives us no measure of speed improvement outside Thailand.

[ScubaBuddha]

Seems a heck of a lot faster at my house right now. I'm on 4mb from TRUE.

According to the article, it's not connected yet. Article is dated Dec. 16th.

Internet users throughout Asia should start to see a dramatic increase in internet speed for websites located outside of the region when the $US550 million Asia-America Gateway (AAG) comes into operation today.

think about the time zones. what day is it here in thailand now, what hour? what does your timestamp show?

I did, whats your point? Mine says 0209 on the 16th. Are you seeing something different?

Edited December 15, 2009 by ScubaBuddha

[george]

Here is a better map:

Source: www.asia-america-gateway.com

[hugocnx]

Haha, fiber technology has wide bandwidth and many channels.

Cannot put all these connectors in new order in one day ca n you.

Sorry

[Twin]

True on lower Sukhumvit:

Last Result:

Download Speed: 2989 kbps (373.6 KB/sec transfer rate)

Upload Speed: 500 kbps (62.5 KB/sec transfer rate)

Latency: 80 ms

Wednesday, December 16, 2009 2:10:25 AM

[hugocnx]

Is that BKK to BKK?

Same for me CNX to BKK

Never was a problem

[george]

Check your real broadband speed here:

http://speedtest.thaivisa.com

george, do you know where the thaivisa speed test server is located? I get intra-country speeds on it, which obviously if it's in country then it gives us no measure of speed improvement outside Thailand.

Speedtest server is located in Singapore. Local time in Thailand is now 02:13. So it's the 16th of December for sure.

[elcent]

at this site you can set the speed test to and fro any locations. http://www.speedtest.net/

[hugocnx]

Chiang Mai Singapore

02.18

Ping 151, Down 2.61, Up 0.39

Hurray

[ekachat]

Check your real broadband speed here:

http://speedtest.thaivisa.com

george, do you know where the thaivisa speed test server is located? I get intra-country speeds on it, which obviously if it's in country then it gives us no measure of speed improvement outside Thailand.

it's the SF server.