True Ultra Hi-Speed Internet

[Neurath]

I don't have true hi speed. Meager 6MB package. However, does anyone know if True is now applying data transfer caps? Certainly seems like it.

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

Bangkok to San Francisco

Pib, as you know, I don't put a lot of faith or credit in any of the results that come from Speedtest.net. But it was interesting to see your higher than advertised speed rates for BKK and Singapore via the Networx Speed Meter.

Unfortunately, the BKK to San Fran results there strike me as pretty normal kind of numbers, both the average and the peak download rates, especially for a late Sunday morning test.

As we both know, BKK and Singapore tests are pretty much local-type speed tests, because of the significant regional data connections between BKK and Sing... But the S.F. result is probably more indicative of international performance, and I'm not seeing much of anything different there with a 3.3 Mbps avg. and a 5.27 Mbps peak for a morning BKK time test.

As for Networx and its "Maximum Transfer Rate" download numbers, I'd assume those to really mean the peak download speed during whatever period is being monitored, and not some average figure with higher amounts lopped off. Networx does seem to monitor speeds in pretty much real time.

Edited October 29, 2012 by TallGuyJohninBKK

[tinfoilhat]

my 30 mb plan has degraded over the past few months, sure, I can burst over 50 mbps, but overall average speeds have dropped to 20 and the jitter is huge.

I am most unhappy with true after years of rock solid service.

[NickHypnosis]

I have had 3 weeks of no service from True. Internet goes down and up all the time.... now we have perhaps 1 hour of connection a day (True Cable).

"Engineers" have been around to the house 5 TIMES... and no luck in finding a solution. Perhaps it would help if they had some training?

When I complain on the phone etc etc just Thai's pretending that there is no problem. Requesting a call from a manager, then a call back is promised - and of course never comes.

I will be looking to fire True this week.... although I am in "contract".

My advice DO NOT GET TRUE INTERNET

Disgraceful

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

Nick, it comes and goes with True...

I've had period like yours with True cable internet, where my service was constantly dropping out/disconnecting for hours per day. Multiple, repeated and many fruitless service calls... And then finally, if you're lucky, you get a technician who has a brain and can go outside and figure out where something has broken in their cabling/equipment setup.

But then, as in lately here in BKK, we've had many months of almost flawless service...no downtime... no outages... decent speeds... Not a single service call or tech support call for many months.

I know it can be frustrating...but persistence and patience is key in dealing with True, and not letting your temper show. You can always try a different Internet provider, depending on what's available in your area. Check around with your neighbors and see what they're using. But don't expect any guarantee that any of the other ISP's are going to be any better or more reliable over time.

Edited July 7, 2013 by TallGuyJohninBKK

[Thunder26]

Since I've been in Thailand and of course using True internet service, I have never been pleased. I had it in Bangkok for a couple of years and it was on and off without any reason, Calling True wasn't the solution. Then I gave up and shifted to TOT. It worked well, but unfortunately I had to move my place of living and then again True in Pathum Thani. Same sh*t over again what I had experienced before. Internet connection on and off for no reason. Calling True "The team will come in 3 days". I have never seen them. During the waiting time internet reappears miraculously, then it goes off in a couple of days again and it continues in circles. At the moment I type the internet is sh*t as I can barely browse any foreign websites. Even "youtube " won't load videos and this is with their promised 10 mb/s. Bullsh*t! With proper internet even 2mb/s can give you satisfaction in surfing and watching videos, but the service I get is total crap!

Edited November 22, 2013 by Thunder26

[YeahSiam]

Since I've been in Thailand and of course using True internet service, I have never been pleased. I had it in Bangkok for a couple of years and it was on and off without any reason, Calling True wasn't the solution. Then I gave up and shifted to TOT. It worked well, but unfortunately I had to move my place of living and then again True in Pathum Thani. Same sh*t over again what I had experienced before. Internet connection on and off for no reason. Calling True "The team will come in 3 days". I have never seen them. During the waiting time internet reappears miraculously, then it goes off in a couple of days again and it continues in circles. At the moment I type the internet is sh*t as I can barely browse any foreign websites. Even "youtube " won't load videos and this is with their promised 10 mb/s. Bullsh*t! With proper internet even 2mb/s can give you satisfaction in surfing and watching videos, but the service I get is total crap!

Sorry to hear your woes, buddy. Internet here can be a real crap shoot. I've heard it said that location is crucial but as I've never lived outside Thong Lo in BKK, I couldn't say whether that's true or not.

I can say though that the DOCSIS cable internet I get now is light years ahead of the quick but patchy DSL I had with them a few years ago. More or less bullet proof, always up and very fast. They throttle bandwidth at peak times but a vpn will get around that.

If you're getting no joy, ask True if DOCSIS is available in your area. If it is, better to go that route

[Bmouthboyo]

I have just signed up for True 35Mb/s Docsis (Cable) to be installed in the new property we will be renting here in Bangna in may. Can anyone advise what equipment we are most likely to recieve? Seperate Modem and Router or all in one?

Secondly can anyone comment on fair use policy, traffic throttling? I often torrent (legal linux distros)...frequently...Do true send letters about usage limits etc?

Cheers Guys. Sick of this 3Mb ADSL

[muratremix]

I have just signed up for True 35Mb/s Docsis (Cable) to be installed in the new property we will be renting here in Bangna in may. Can anyone advise what equipment we are most likely to recieve? Seperate Modem and Router or all in one?

Secondly can anyone comment on fair use policy, traffic throttling? I often torrent (legal linux distros)...frequently...Do true send letters about usage limits etc?

Cheers Guys. Sick of this 3Mb ADSL

You will get Docsis 3.0 thomson wifi router (one device).

I never used torrent on true, I use seedbox for this.

I download frequently from http server of my seedbox and True never complains.

[HooHaa]

My True-provided Thomson Wifi modem/router is a DOCSIS 2.0 version...it was provided to me when I was on still on the 20Mb plan, and I kept it on the switch to the 14Mb plan. It could just be the different speed plans...it could be the Wifi router...and of course it could be just some DOCSIS change that is really not causing bursting but instead just making Speedtest.net think there is a faster, short term speed. It's hard telling with these flash-based/OOKLA speed testers that seem to give noticeably different results to servers in the same city sometimes.

My Wifi router is laptop are on different ends of my concrete house and on different stories of the house....router upstairs shooting the signal through two concrete walls and a floor to reach my laptop downstairs...so maybe this reduced signal strength is also having an effect. Later on, I'll take the laptop upstairs next to the router, and maybe do a hard wire connnecton, to see what I get....if the speed gets up to around 28Mb then that means about a 100% increase like you are getting versus my current 70% increase. But before when putting the laptop close to the router it would only sometimes increase the speed by a hair since the signal strength I was getting downstairs was still good....but I check later and see what happens.

But doing a test just now/this morning with the concrete still separating my router and laptop, below is what I'm getting for my 14Mb/1.4Mb plan according to Speedtest.net and also the TOT Speedtester at Link. Whether there is bursting going on or not, these two speedtester sure think so and could very well be right....they sure never reported results like this below where I'm achieving so much above my plan's advertised in-Thailand speed...below they would only report about 5% above the max speed (e.g., 14Mb plan reported 15Mb and 20Mb plan report 21.4Mb) compared to the current 70% above.

TOTCapture.JPG

OK, I decided to get off my butt and carry my laptop upstairs and do a Speedtest.net test again standing next to the router....below is what I got...basically the same as being downstairs...as mentioned this Thomson 802.11g router gives good signal coverage. I may try a hard wired connection between the router and my laptop later on today to see if get an approx 100% increase like you are seeing on your 20Mb plan....but I'm already tickled to death in getting an apparent 70% increase on my 14Mb plan...don't know if I could stand to be even more tickled.

i doubt ists the router. i have the thompson and a 30/3 connection and it will do 50 mbps easy over wifi

[HooHaa]

I have just signed up for True 35Mb/s Docsis (Cable) to be installed in the new property we will be renting here in Bangna in may. Can anyone advise what equipment we are most likely to recieve? Seperate Modem and Router or all in one?

Secondly can anyone comment on fair use policy, traffic throttling? I often torrent (legal linux distros)...frequently...Do true send letters about usage limits etc?

Cheers Guys. Sick of this 3Mb ADSL

will not be an issue.

[oTwoPies]

Hi Folks

Over the last few days I have been reading ALL of the info contained in this post as I have an avid interest about the International Internet Gateway (IIG) download speed from the UK to Thailand. The reason for my interest is simple, I want to watch the BBC rugby streams and, as some of these matches cannot be downloaded, I am really interested in the video single thread stream speed. To this end I am now using the following test site:-

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest.html

and here is a link to the result of a recent speed test I performed using the Thinkb.... testsite:-

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html?id=140257129902434961851

apologies but with the security settings on this browser I am not able to paste the test results directly into this conversation.

The results of the green single stream speed with an average download speed of 0.6Mb/sec and a burst of 0.7Mb/sec seems to correlate well with the beeb video stream stuttering somewhat. The beeb recommends a download speed of better than 1.5Mb/sec to watch their Standard Definition video stream. The multi-thread stream speed also correlates quite well to the download speeds I see from the beeb iPlayer when I am able to download and store the files to my hard drive. Downloads are not a problem as I can set multiple download streams to run in parallel overnight. My interest is solely with the single thread video stream speed that can be consistently attained in Thailand.

A little background:

I am a resident of a guest house in CM that has, or at least had, reasonable International internet access.

In the past the GH was subscribing to the CAT small business 50Mb/sec fiber optic plan though I have reasons to suspect they have recently changed to the CAT domestic residence 30Mb/sec fiber optic plan. Even though the GH has a high speed fiber optic internet plan, and forgetting about the problems and congestion of the International Internet Gateway, the GH have, unfortunately, configured the available BW allocation very badly. The GH rooms have LAN and WiFi access with the LAN and WiFi's 1-4 all having different internet connection speeds, dependent on number of users, time of day etc. etc. I have measured internal to Thailand GH internet speeds of less than 1Mb/sec on the LAN / WiFi in my room whilst their office / management had speeds in excess of 30Mb/sec. Frustrating but TiT comes into play here as they state, "My internet is working as you can see, it must be your computer." I could have live with this as it used to be I could access the beeb video stream in the early hours i.e 5 or 6am which was not a problem but since the change to the residential plan I have completely lost the ability to stream video content.

To overcome this bottleneck I wish to install my own internet connection and would be very grateful if you guys could run a test on the Thinkbroadband link above.

If you could post your speed test results, the connection speed plan you subscribe to, the provider and cost of said plan I would be very grateful.

For those of you interested the Thinkbroadband test is from a UK server and seems to give results that I correlate to the real world beeb iPlayer video stream and download performance. The beeb, in their wisdom, removed their speed test so I have only recently started using the Thinkb...... test site. Another site I also seem to have meaningful results from is:-

http://testmy.net/

We all know the problems with trying to run realistic speedtests so please don't nit-pick on my technical appraisal. It is the best I can achieve at the present time with the limited tools at my disposal and certainly not helped by the continual adjustment of the many GH LAN and WiFi parameters by their IT professional.

cheers and many thanks in anticipation

[crabdog]

TOT Fiber 2U 15/2. Note that this is off peak time. During peak hours (6pm-11pm) speed tests are always much slower for me.

[ThaidDown]

@oTwoPies as requested

True DOCSIS 15/1.5

[Pib]

True DOCSIS (cable)15Mb/1.5Mb...Bangkok...run Saturday at 8:10pm (peak time)...would probably be faster before around 6pm and after midnight.

[crabdog]

Same test during peak hours.

/sigh

[Pib]

Just remember, even with Fiber and Cable/DOCSIS, that's only the "Last Mile" of the connection so to speak....then that Last Mile of ADSL, Fiber, or Cable connects into the ISP's backbone, goes through the same international gateway, etc. Any connection is only as fast as its slowest link in the chain. And your "local" network bandwidth can be a weak link.

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

True Cable Internet Bangkok - 15 / 1.5 Mbps plan -- 9 pm Sat.

Interesting, I have a VPN service that allows me access to both U.S. and UK servers. For the main U.S. VPN server I use, it's always several times faster to the U.S. than a direct True cable connection. But tonight, for the OP's purpose, I figured I'd try my VPN's London server (which provides a UK IP address) to see how it compared to a direct True connection, and for the UK, the VPN came out slower, as follows:

Edited June 14, 2014 by TallGuyJohninBKK

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

Same test during peak hours.

/sigh

Hope you're doing better for non-UK connections, especially considering you're paying for TOT fiber.

FWIW, I've seen a lot of UK/European folks here complaining that TOT has TERRIBLE routing configurations to the UK, which will tend to result in lousy speed/connection results.

As evidence of that, I note your ping time -- 466 ms -- is more than double the 220+ ms times both Pib and my True cable connections recorded to the same UK speed test server.

Edited June 14, 2014 by TallGuyJohninBKK

[crabdog]

Yes the pings are absurd and sadly, online gaming is one of my primary uses of the internet. Just did a TRUE speed test to Singapore ( http://speedtest.trueinternet.co.th ) and got this:

Download Speed: 289 kbps (36.1 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 486 kbps (60.8 KB/sec transfer rate)
Latency: 414 ms
6/14/2014, 9:22:32 PM

I actually re-registered for TRUE adsl today which should be up some time tomorrow. In order to play my preferred game online (Team Fortress Classic) I now have to pay for 2 internets as I'm tied down with TOT's contract for another 9 months. Trying to remind myself that TiT and stay calm but I can feel the rage building by the minute.

EDIT: sorry didn't mean to hijack the thread, take it as a notice to steer well clear of TOT

Edited June 14, 2014 by crabdog

[Pib]

I just did a True speedtest to Singapore also and below are are the bogus results. I'm on a True cable 15Mb/1.5Mb plan in Bangkok. Why bogus? Because the ping time is 12ms which means the True speedtester which is a "Ookla/flash-based" speedtester was fooled by local cache servers...a common problem with many (not all) flash-based speedtesters like Speedtest.net, the True speedtester, the TOT speedtester, etc. ISP's like using Ookla/flash-based speedtesters because they can be easily fooled in giving inaccurate (high) download speeds and inaccurate ping times (low) to international/far-off servers due to local cache servers.

Last Result:
Download Speed: 3326 kbps (415.8 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 1701 kbps (212.6 KB/sec transfer rate)
Latency: 12 ms
6/14/2014 9:44:20 PM

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

Yes the pings are absurd and sadly, online gaming is one of my primary uses of the internet. Just did a TRUE speed test to Singapore ( http://speedtest.trueinternet.co.th ) and got this:

Download Speed: 289 kbps (36.1 KB/sec transfer rate)

Upload Speed: 486 kbps (60.8 KB/sec transfer rate)

Latency: 414 ms

6/14/2014, 9:22:32 PM

I actually re-registered for TRUE adsl today which should be up some time tomorrow. In order to play my preferred game online (Team Fortress Classic) I now have to pay for 2 internets as I'm tied down with TOT's contract for another 9 months. Trying to remind myself that TiT and stay calm but I can feel the rage building by the minute.

I'm not sure I'm remembering this right. But I think, some of the UK folks here were claiming that TOT actually routes traffic to the UK THROUGH the U.S. -- which would be crazy.

I don't know if that's true, and I've never been a TOT customer. But I do know this, 466 ms is about 25% longer than the usual times one might expect for a normal Thailand to U.S. connection.

[Pib]

a

True DOCSIS (cable)15Mb/1.5Mb...Bangkok...run Saturday at 8:10pm (peak time)...would probably be faster before around 6pm and after midnight.

Capture.JPG

And here's my results at 9:38am this Sunday morning....slower than the Saturday night peak time. Days of the week and time of day/night can make a big difference as to how many people are online and how much bandwidth is being shared between you and "wherever the server is in the world" you are connecting to....so a person's bandwidth issue/slow download problem could actually be with the server in FarangLand versus a local bandwidth problem. But it well known that Thai ISP throttle international speed at their international gateways....been hundreds, probably thousands, of ThaiVisa speedtest results basically confirming the throttling or simply not buying/having enough international bandwidth.

And just a comment without reading up on this particular speedtester's results I'm assuming where it says "X1" in the results that means "single-threaded" operations which is used in video streaming and the "X6" is "multi-threaded" used by Download Managers, Torrents programs, etc. For your video streaming goal the single-threaded results are the most important.

Edited June 15, 2014 by Pib

[crabdog]

TOT Fiber 2U 15/2. Note that this is off peak time. During peak hours (6pm-11pm) speed tests are always much slower for me.

Well my TRUE adsl has just come online so I thought I'd share the results of the same test for comparison. Note that this is 11:20 Sunday morning.

[Pib]

Although above results are a half a day apart I think it still gives a good example of how just because you may have Fiber or Cable for your Last Mile that newer technology may not be any faster...or can be slower....than the older technology of ADSL for various reasons such local bandwidth, local backbone, international gateway, etc....your connection is only as fast as the weakest/slowest link in the bandwidth chain.

Hopefully your ADSL connection will stay fast but there are many ThaiVisa posts saying after a few weeks or month their connection slowed downed significantly...can give a person the impression a new customer is initially setup on a priority circuit to get faster speed/ping times "for X-period"...keep them really happy for first 30 days or so. But hopefully your connection will stay fast.

[IMHO]

I thought the title of this thread was ultra speed?

most posters here aren't even getting 10mbps reliably - hardly something you could call fast internet, let alone "ultra"

[oTwoPies]

TOT Fiber 2U 15/2. Note that this is off peak time. During peak hours (6pm-11pm) speed tests are always much slower for me.

Well my TRUE adsl has just come online so I thought I'd share the results of the same test for comparison. Note that this is 11:20 Sunday morning.

Many thanks folks:

There is little point in my individually addressing each of your test results but suffice to say I am extremely grateful to all of you for the assistance you have given me and the results you have posted here. I hope these results will also assist you, and others, to optimize their internet performance. The speed test results seem to match my findings that True has the edge for International (UK) internet bandwidth. Many many thanks.

Crabdog 1 Regarding TOT:

I went to two TOT service centres and tested the speed of their internet.

At the first centre I tested the ADSL line and when I showed the TOT representative my test results, which were abysmal, I was told there had to be a problem with either my computer or the speed tester I was using. Quite a normal Thai response so I just smiled and asked if they had a fiber optic Internet connection I could test. I was told they did not have a fiber connection at the office but they did give me an address, which for reasons that should be apparent, I will not post. I went to the TOT offices with the fiber connection, told them I was interested in having fiber installed in my building and asked permission to test the speed of their fiber connection. When I showed the TOT representative my speed test results he questioned both where the server was located and why I wanted TOT fiber. I explained the server was in the UK and I wanted to stream UK video. I could not believe his statement which was something to the effect of, "Then may I suggest you go elsewhere and do not use TOT. Our international connections are not good enough to stream video." A good honest and correct answer. Also, one of my Thai friends owns a restaurant and he has a TOT ADSL internet connection and he also told me that speed wise, TOT are no good. Says it all and apologies for the digression from True to TOT.

Crabdog 2 Regarding True ADSL:

I suspect there could be something amiss with the speed test result from your True ADSL line which I have copied above. If you have the time I would like to see some more True ADSL speed test results but I would definitely like to know the details of exactly what True ADSL plan you have signed up to. I have never seen international download speed test results attaining speeds anywhere near 10Mb/sec. and, more importantly, the shape of the download graphs is close to the ideal flat topped response. A most interesting result if it is repeatable.

The reason for requesting more speed test results is simple, I do not understand why the green speed test result is faster than the yellow speed test result. Let me try to explain my understanding of these tests:-

The green is a single thread which is meant to represent a video stream.

The yellow is x6 parallel threads which is meant to be more realistic of torrent downloads.

If you have a good internet connection Thinkbroadband state the single thread should have a speed that approaches the speed of the 6x threads..

I decided to look into the above discrepancy a little more deeply and found this statement on the Thinkbroadband speed test site:-

My httpx6 result is a good bit slower than the tbbx1 result, why is this?

If you are using Firefox then a good chance that the problem is the Firefox Plugin-Container.exe. This container runs each plugin in an individual to reduce the chance of a plugin crashing Firefox, unfortunately this can affect speed test performance. The solution is to disable the Plugin Container or use an alternative browser.

the above info was at the end of this link:-

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/faq/sections/flash-speed-test.html

maybe this could be another reason for Crabdog to repeat the speed tests

Again folks, I am very grateful for all of your posts, it is much appreciated and if I either install my own internet connection or a VPS (Virtual Private Server) I will update this link.

[oTwoPies]

And just a comment without reading up on this particular speedtester's results I'm assuming where it says "X1" in the results that means "single-threaded" operations which is used in video streaming and the "X6" is "multi-threaded" used by Download Managers, Torrents programs, etc. For your video streaming goal the single-threaded results are the most important.

You are dead right Pib which is why I am using this particular speed test. Even though it is Flash based it seems to give the real download speeds of a video stream which is my main interest, UK television aka BBC and ITV. My main problem is the rugby internationals have to be streamed.

[crabdog]

Here's another test with TRUE adsl done in Internet Exploter (previous were done with Firefox) at 7am. It may be correct what Pib said about new connections being faster for the first few weeks but I'll have to wait and see what happens. As I stated before I'm most concerned with pings to the UK and not bandwidth and I've found with TRUE they're much better and seem consistent. I'm on the cheapest plan - 10/1 which is 599 p/month.

[oTwoPies]

Crabdog:

Those are the best single stream speed tests results I have seen and this time, the results are more in line with what I expect re streams x1 & x6 so thanks for re-testing.

It will be interesting if you monitor your speed so we can see if Pib is correct re BW degrading over time..

I think (know) you are stuck with the latency problems as this really is a fact of life as Pib has explained many times.

Thanks again folks, most appreciated and informative.