Sophon Fibre Optic Internet In Pattaya - Incredibly Slow International Speed

[roban]

Since a few days, I have a Sophon Internet access via fibre optic cable.

Location is my Shophouse on Soi Kao Noi in Pattaya.

International speed is ridiculous.

I am on a 4 Mbit plan, but the speed to my own root-server in germany/frankfurt is only ~200 Kbit.

Rang the Sophon technician (very nice guy, friendly/competent and decent english). He arrived within a half hour!

Checked the modem via telnet, was ok.

He did a speedtest with his own Laptop, result => only 200 Kbit to a server in Berlin...

Talked with him a little bit, and he told me, that there are 60 (sixty) people connected to a "master" (in his words) access point with a capacity of only 100 Mbit!

He confirmed, that my speed problems is a Sophon (CAT?) problem, and maybe he can do "something" for me...

I will check the speed, the next few days. If there is no improvement, I will cancel Sophon. ( I pay monthly).

Before, I thought the TOT line in my house is crap......but now...I love the speed (~2.5Mbit to my root server in Germany) of my 3 Mbit TOT line with sh*tty cables.

TiT

[Darrel]

"Talked with him a little bit, and he told me, that there are 60 (sixty) people connected to a "master" (in his words) access point with a capacity of only 100 Mbit!"

That's contention for you.

Someone on your loop is a hardline downloader, or maybe CAT are just hopelessly overloaded.

For what it's worth, my international bandwidth with 3BB in Pattaya varies wildly between 4.7Mbs and about zero.

Not much you can do, apart from upgrade your sub to give you better bandwidth outside Thailand, or move to a country where the ISPs give you what you paid for.

In Europe I used to get 6Mbs 24/7, day and night, 365 days a year, rock solid.

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

Not much you can do, apart from upgrade your sub to give you better bandwidth outside Thailand, or move to a country where the ISPs give you what you paid for.

That may or may not be possible... In the True ISP world, from the comparisons we've done with other users, there seems to be relatively little gain to be had on their cable and DSL networks re international connection speeds by switching to True's higher priced/faster plans...

The higher priced/faster plans do provider faster access inside Thailand and perhaps to some other regional connections... But when your destination is the U.S. or Europe, the supposed speed gains made by switching to higher priced/faster plans seem to be pretty marginal and inconsistent.

[roban]

Someone on your loop is a hardline downloader, or maybe CAT are just hopelessly overloaded.

It seems, that CAT/Sophon has some kind of "builtin Bandwidth-Limiter" for international connections.

Because the Speed is relatively constant at ~ 200-250 Kbit.

No matter if I do a speedtest to different german servers, download a file from my root-server or watch a TV-Stream

from my german home server.

All connections stuck at ~ 200-250 Kbit.

I doubt, changing the plan to a higher bitrate, makes much sense.

Changing the ISP, seems to be the only solution...

[Darrel]

The higher priced/faster plans do provider faster access inside Thailand and perhaps to some other regional connections... But when your destination is the U.S. or Europe, the supposed speed gains made by switching to higher priced/faster plans seem to be pretty marginal and inconsistent.

You are correct, but it does seem to vary quite a bit between ISPs. For example, my 3BB Premier connection (shared in the building) does on occasions give the full 4.7Mbs that the modem syncs at. Sometimes it gives that for very long periods indeed (many hours). And sometimes it's up and down all over the place, or (apparently) locked down to just a few kbits. Or it just drops to zero.

As it is a shared service (and not in my name) I cant investigate the router status or do much in the way of testing. Not much point anyway, as I couldnt complain to 3BB about what I might find.

Interestingly I find that at times when I'm getting really low international bandwidth from 3BB, I can generally get much more just by opening my VPN, even though this is capped at 2Mbs by the VPN provider. So it may even be that there is just some really crappy routing going on somewhere.

[kjetil]

I also live in Soi Khao Noi and i am on 3BB good speed no problem at all newer been under 6MB most of the time 8MB on download.

950THB a month.

Used Sophon fiber before only problem,no speed at all or wery low.

[roban]

well,

I made some tests with and without a VPN (Cyberghost premium).

All the same crappy speeds, so doesn*t seems to be a routing problem.

I dont need more than a 4 Mbit download plan, as I dont download big files/movies every day.

BUT, I need a reliable connection to my TV Server in Europe (~ 350-450 Kbit streaming bitrate)

I control my Servers in EUR. via Teamviewer/VNC, but this is a pain in the a**, if your Bitrate is only 200 Kbit.

TOT may be crap in different ways, but they provide me with an ADSL line which fits my needs... (mostly)..

Seems, they have much better international capacities.

[Pib]

Not much you can do, apart from upgrade your sub to give you better bandwidth outside Thailand, or move to a country where the ISPs give you what you paid for.

That may or may not be possible... In the True ISP world, from the comparisons we've done with other users, there seems to be relatively little gain to be had on their cable and DSL networks re international connection speeds by switching to True's higher priced/faster plans...

The higher priced/faster plans do provider faster access inside Thailand and perhaps to some other regional connections... But when your destination is the U.S. or Europe, the supposed speed gains made by switching to higher priced/faster plans seem to be pretty marginal and inconsistent.

Yeap, would agree higher speed plans don't necessary mean much improvement in international speed except to some nearby regional servers like Singapore. Seems whether a person is on a 10, 15, 20MB, etc., "in-Thailand/advertised" speed plan your international speed to most international sites like the U.S./Europe is going to be in the 2 to 6Mb ballpark depending on the time of day/night....and of course that's assuming a peson is getting accurate speed results versus bogus download speeds/ping times which are common with many speedtest programs and Thai ISPs.

But with the OPs description of the contention ratio on his cable internet plan of 60 users sharing 100Mb of total bandwidth and considering how Thai ISPs limit the speed of international bandwidth I wouldn't be surprised if about 1Mb speed to most international web sites is about the best the OP will experience assuming the technician can pull some strings and do something special for the OP. And hopefully if the tech does do something special it's just not a short-term thing of a month or so where the OP's line is given higher priority for X-days before reverting back to standard priority/contention ratio. But that's just my guess....internet in Thailand is such a "Your Results May Vary" situation. Good luck to the OP.