Massive 3Bb Improvements?

[matt111]

Anyone else noticed massive 3BB improvements when hitting international sites, is this 3BB specific or part of a bigger push?

For example pings whilst not a great indication are down significantly, to London are now 238ms vs 320ms two weeks ago.

[Pib]

Recommend you knock on wood, throw some salt over your shoulder, etc., when talking about Thai ISP improvements. Don't know how many times over the years that my ISP, regardless of who it was, went through stages of having good international/in-Thailand download speeds to not so good. It is indeed nice when internet surfing/downloading/connections are working good. But I will have to say my True 20Mb cable/DOCSIS has kept me happy internet-wise. With that being said, I'm now going to knock on some wood (my head).

[smedly]

strange I have found 3BB to be pretty poor recently - maybe the last 2 weeks or so

[Cornichon88]

I find 3BB really reliable and fast here near Chiang Mai. And I paid for one year few days ago and got 1 month free. That's less then 1k baths for 10 Mb.

[NHJ]

I find 3BB really reliable and fast here near Chiang Mai. And I paid for one year few days ago and got 1 month free. That's less then 1k baths for 10 Mb.

your speed tests are local not internationnal, can't travel faster than the speed of light ;-)

[Jdietz]

Aye, no way even traveling at the speed of light:

- Speed of light in vacuum translated to about 180 Miles per millisecond

- Round trip needed for a ping reply

- Cable shortening factor 0.66 (Signals don't travel at speed of light in copper)

- Every hop adds a few milliseconds extra delay (packet needs to be fully received, stored, routed and re-transmitted)

So, everything under a couple 100ms is made up.

[Pib]

The ISPs know most customers take the speedtest results as gospel and don't know how to spot bogus results caused by in-Thailand cache servers.

I'm on a True cable/DOCSIS 20Mb/2Mb plan...Here's my Speedtest.net results to Zurich at 4:30pm. Please note the results are bogus because of cache server effect...notice the faster than like ping time...like the server is just across the soi.

Now, to eliminate the cache server effect I turn on the True proxy server setting and rerun the tests...now I get real world results...notice no more faster than light ping time.

Edited March 20, 2012 by Pib

[Cornichon88]

Ok, I admit you're right.

But those who say 3BB is poor should check their line or complain to the office. In the sticks here near Chiang Mai I never have any problem, it's fast for P2P and internet. I don't play online games tough.

I'm a client of the former Maxnet and then 3BB for 6-7 years and the service improved every year. So what ?

[Pib]

If you want a better idea of what your international download speed and ping time really is, and don't have a 3BB proxy setting option which could possibly eliminate the speedtest skewing of results, try the DSLReports speedtester which usually does not give bogus results/isn't fooled by cache servers. Here's the link and test against the Los Angeles server. Link. Cheers.

[wpcoe]

strange I have found 3BB to be pretty poor recently - maybe the last 2 weeks or so

+10 My throughput has taken a big hit. SOMEtimes it is its usually peppy self, but well over half the time it takes minutes to load a web page. Yeah, I've made the token calls to 1530, just for sh*ts and giggles.

[wpcoe]

Too late to add this as an edit to my previous post, but to continue a perfectly cathartic rant:

This is typical of my 3BB (9Mbps plan) perfomance the past couple weeks. I decided to download a 5.7MB product manual from www.lian-li.com. After tolerating a couple of 3-4Kbps downloads, when this one started at 4Kbps, I decided to tether my iPhone which is on a TrueMove-H 3G plan and the download speed shot up to over 200Kbps!

Up until about 10-12 days ago, I had stellar performance from my 3BB plan, but something has happened recently. SNR seems the same, and my DSL signal speed seems the same when I access my router's web interface.

[Guest]

So what is it with 3BB? Good or bad?

I met yesterday people from 3BB and they said that they can make the line to my house, for free, which does not have phone line.

I'm currently using CAT EVDO, which gives me real 140ms ping to my Singapore server. Downlink is 1.5Mbps and uplink 0.4Mbps.

I suppose 3BB wishes to have 1 year contract, which would be from 12.000 to 30.000 (premium) contract for one year.

I need steady connection for my work. CAT has have it's ups and downs, but at the end of the day the service has been good.

So, I need to make an decision if I wish to make an deal with 3BB or just skip it.

One of the things I have no idea is the real difference between normal account and premium account. What is the _practical_ difference between these two? I have understood that with premium account the connection is shared with less subscribers. How does that affect for the speed during different times of the day?

[Pib]

So what is it with 3BB? Good or bad?

Correct, it could be good or bad. No shortage of posts where people have good speed/service from ISP XYZ and then you can also find no shortage of posts where people have bad speed/service from ISP XYZ. For X-amount of the posts speaking bad speed a person should probably disregard at least 25% of them because there is probably nothing wrong with the service; instead, it's setup/hardware/software compatibility problems with the customer's equipment/computer. And how good internet is many times is determined by Location, Location, Location in Thailand....one person can be getting great speed/service from ISP XYZ but another person a few kilometers away (or across the soi) can be getting bad service.

If you want some info from a database based on direct customer input, take a look at www.KhunWoody.com and use the search function for 3BB speeds in the Phuket area. Here's the link which I used to search/sort on 3BB 10Mb service. Link You may need to redo the search when accessing the site. There is also data on 3BB's Premier service in the data base. And I would disregard any inflated speeds that a few people report...by inflated I mean way higher than other folks are getting...I expect inflated numbers were caused by a cache server which skewed the speed test results.

Edited March 24, 2012 by Pib

[Guest]

So what is it with 3BB? Good or bad?

Correct, it could be good or bad. No shortage of posts where people have good speed/service from ISP XYZ and then you can also find no shortage of posts where people have bad speed/service from ISP XYZ. For X-amount of the posts speaking bad speed a person should probably disregard at least 25% of them because there is probably nothing wrong with the service; instead, it's setup/hardware/software compatibility problems with the customer's equipment/computer. And how good internet is many times is determined by Location, Location, Location in Thailand....one person can be getting great speed/service from ISP XYZ but another person a few kilometers away (or across the soi) can be getting bad service.

If you want some info from a database based on direct customer input, take a look at www.KhunWoody.com and use the search function for 3BB speeds in the Phuket area. Here's the link which I used to search/sort on 3BB 10Mb service. Link You may need to redo the search when accessing the site. There is also data on 3BB's Premier service in the data base. And I would disregard any inflated speeds that a few people report...by inflated I mean way higher than other folks are getting...I expect inflated numbers were caused by a cache server which skewed the speed test results.

Thanks, I tried to find out if there were any reports from Ao Por Phuket, but could only find TOT reports. The search function is a bit broken if there is space on the location name. First page is ok, but second page is empty.

On the reports it seems that 6Mb premier is steady fast if the reports of it are not inflated. But I guess this depends, as you said, of the location.

I did actually order 3BB today.. and 3BB said that they would come to do the installation today. Planing to start with 9Mb/1Mb normal packet and upgrade it to premier if there would be a need for it.

Well, I have been waiting and calling them back. First time they said that they will call me in 10 minutes.. and now they don't even answer. Which brings up the question: how do 3BB handle customer support?

[Pib]

Thanks, I tried to find out if there were any reports from Ao Por Phuket, but could only find TOT reports. The search function is a bit broken if there is space on the location name. First page is ok, but second page is empty.

On the reports it seems that 6Mb premier is steady fast if the reports of it are not inflated. But I guess this depends, as you said, of the location.

I did actually order 3BB today.. and 3BB said that they would come to do the installation today. Planing to start with 9Mb/1Mb normal packet and upgrade it to premier if there would be a need for it.

Well, I have been waiting and calling them back. First time they said that they will call me in 10 minutes.. and now they don't even answer. Which brings up the question: how do 3BB handle customer support?

Maybe when searching by location vs by ISP the search results only give a max of 50 results as I did count 50 rows of data. But all data was from the same person on a TOT 8Mb plan. For a second I thought maybe only TOT serviced the Ao Por area until very recently maybe... then I noticed all the results were from one person. I tried various search methods and couldn't find anything else for Ao Por. Good luck with your 3BB plan...as mentioned I see many posts that give it a thumbs up and other posts that give it a thumbs down.....but a person can find such posts on any ISP in Thailand.

[Guest]

Some pretty long time ago, I put some CAT CMDA information there as well. There was 370 results.

The search places plus mark %2B instead of space %20 to the url when there is a space on location field when going to the next page. Replacing the string on the url does give the next page. I'll notify K Woody of this.

I'll also try to remember to inform about the 3BB connection when I get the line. Now I got information that they should come here on Monday.

[DaamNaam]

Upgraded today from 6M to 9M. A big difference indeed, very happy. And the service to date has been great from them. No complaints at all.

[woodyleonhard]

Some pretty long time ago, I put some CAT CMDA information there as well. There was 370 results.

The search places plus mark %2B instead of space %20 to the url when there is a space on location field when going to the next page. Replacing the string on the url does give the next page. I'll notify K Woody of this.

I'll also try to remember to inform about the 3BB connection when I get the line. Now I got information that they should come here on Monday.

Oilinki -

Thanks for the heads up. I'll try to get that fixed ASAP.

(As noted, the Speedtest.net tests are all cached in BKK. The report may say Zurich, but it's nowhere near Zurich. That's why we switched to DSLReports - see http://phuketgazette...ticle10972.html )

Here's the problem with the current DSLReports speed tests. Both TOT and 3BB are faking their test results. They've deliberately set up the DSLReports sites so accessing them bypasses the normal international throttling. Both of them are doing it because they know people are watching the results at phuketinternetspeed.com - so they're cheating.

I've been trying to figure out another way to run tests that can't be cheated, but so far haven't come up with a foolproof method. (I'm so bogged down in the Windows 8 book that it'll be several months before I can really concentrate on the problem.) In the interim, the only reliable speed reports at phuketinternetspeed.com - the only ones that aren't being jiggered by the ISP - are the tests for True, CAT, DTAC, the cable TV providers, and AIS.

It looks like 3BB hasn't yet figured out that they need to cheat on other DSLReports sites, so the 3BB measurements for cities other than Los Angeles appear to be accurate. But they'll figure it out soon enough...

Edited March 24, 2012 by woodyleonhard

[Pib]

Woody, The believers of faster-than-light speed tests are not going to like your post above. Cheers, Pib

[phuketrichard]

I have seen going down here in Phuket

Triple B makes u sign for a year contract BUT if u get a thai to sign up its month to month

I pay for 6 mbs and just got

1297 Kbs down, 96 Kps Up;

http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest

4.85 Mbs down .23 Mbs up

http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/ SF

Edited March 25, 2012 by phuketrichard

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

Ahh... the old "fake speed test results" discussion and explanation...

I guess it's one of those perennial Thailand things... like learning to spot the difference between a lady and a ladyboy.

There's always someone new who gets fooled at first and then finally learns to spot the fakes...

Edited March 25, 2012 by TallGuyJohninBKK

[HAL9000]

Great thread. I've just got the regular 3BB - what is it now? 6MB service?

Anyway, I ran the tests on all the flash servers and only got close to 4MB on one. The others were less than 1MB, being a bit shy of 900KB.

Uploads weren't that different, running in the 200-400KB range.

I saw TOT's promotion for 6MB at 390 baht per month, but I decided if the problem is oversold service causing congestion, customer flight to a cheaper service might actually help my service improve. I figured the 210 baht per month savings would be offset by poorer service.

[Pib]

I saw TOT's promotion for 6MB at 390 baht per month, but I decided if the problem is oversold service causing congestion, customer flight to a cheaper service might actually help my service improve. I figured the 210 baht per month savings would be offset by poorer service.

Keep in mind that TOT promotion reduces the price to 390 baht per month for only the first two months; after that it's at the regular cost of 599 baht. And actually I think the 6Mb at 390 baht promotion has been replaced by the 7Mb at 390 baht promotion with first two months being at the reduced price.

[nikster]

The ISPs know most customers take the speedtest results as gospel and don't know how to spot bogus results caused by in-Thailand cache servers.

I'm on a True cable/DOCSIS 20Mb/2Mb plan...Here's my Speedtest.net results to Zurich at 4:30pm. Please note the results are bogus because of cache server effect...notice the faster than like ping time...like the server is just across the soi.

Now, to eliminate the cache server effect I turn on the True proxy server setting and rerun the tests...now I get real world results...notice no more faster than light ping time.

Eh... how do you turn on the True proxy server setting? That would be useful.

[nikster]

Some pretty long time ago, I put some CAT CMDA information there as well. There was 370 results.

The search places plus mark %2B instead of space %20 to the url when there is a space on location field when going to the next page. Replacing the string on the url does give the next page. I'll notify K Woody of this.

I'll also try to remember to inform about the 3BB connection when I get the line. Now I got information that they should come here on Monday.

Oilinki -

Thanks for the heads up. I'll try to get that fixed ASAP.

(As noted, the Speedtest.net tests are all cached in BKK. The report may say Zurich, but it's nowhere near Zurich. That's why we switched to DSLReports - see http://phuketgazette...ticle10972.html )

Here's the problem with the current DSLReports speed tests. Both TOT and 3BB are faking their test results. They've deliberately set up the DSLReports sites so accessing them bypasses the normal international throttling. Both of them are doing it because they know people are watching the results at phuketinternetspeed.com - so they're cheating.

I've been trying to figure out another way to run tests that can't be cheated, but so far haven't come up with a foolproof method. (I'm so bogged down in the Windows 8 book that it'll be several months before I can really concentrate on the problem.) In the interim, the only reliable speed reports at phuketinternetspeed.com - the only ones that aren't being jiggered by the ISP - are the tests for True, CAT, DTAC, the cable TV providers, and AIS.

It looks like 3BB hasn't yet figured out that they need to cheat on other DSLReports sites, so the 3BB measurements for cities other than Los Angeles appear to be accurate. But they'll figure it out soon enough...

I've wondered when they'd figure out to just prioritize the speed test sites in the international bandwidth allocation. That would be a cheat that's hard to work around.

You could probably just use a VPN service. Speed test through your VPN in the USA should give you the real speed to the USA (low baseline)

Things have become a little more complicated due to co-locating of servers too. All the big companies are doing it. It works like this: If you hit a co-located server like Apple.com, Youtube.com, Google.com, then your outgoing bandwidth is actually a dedicated line from Thailand to Singapore, paid for by the company (Apple, Google, MS, etc), and it's hitting the international bandwidth from there.

You can't really call it cheating because it actually benefits the end user. You'll always have your full inside-Thailand line speed to these servers. Any time I hit iTunes, or Apple.com, I get more than 1MB/s on my 10Mbit line (TOT Fiber2U).

[Pib]

Eh... how do you turn on the True proxy server setting? That would be useful.

True has two proxies...their web site only mentions one and they even misspelled the proxy name. Oh well.

Anyway, the proxy settings are:

proxy.trueinternet.co.th port 8080

or

proxy.asianet.co.th port 8080

To enter these settings in your browser varies from browser to browser (actually you are just entering the info into your operating system internet connections setup).

But if If using the IE8/IE9 browser or similar version, select Tools, then Internet Options, then Connections, then LAN settings, then in the Proxy Server area check the two boxes where it says "Use a proxy server….". and "Bypass proxy server….. " Also in the Address block enter "proxy.trueinternet.co.th" or "proxy.asianet.co.th" and in the Port block enter 8080. Then click OK and back out of the menus you have just opened. You may also want to close and reopen the browser. Now check your browsing and speed tests. To turn off or on the proxy setting you just go back to the screen where you enter the proxy info and uncheck the "Use a proxy server..." block. This uncheck will deactivate the proxy setting...to turn it back on just check the block again. Once you done this a few times in IE you can open/close above menus in just a few seconds. With FireFox/Chrome/etc it's done a little differently...still easy...but I can't tell you how since I don't use these browsers....but there are other posts on TV telling how.

I use to use the proxy setting "most" of the time up until late last year because it gave me faster browsing, eliminated access problems to some U.S. govt web sites ( could also use VPN to get to the websites), and prevented speed tests from being skewed. But late last year I noticed it wasn't faster anymore (usually same speed as proxy turned off) and my problem in accessing a couple of U.S govt web sites just went away. But I still use the proxy setting when I do speed tests and notice I get faster than light results on speedtest program XYZ...turn the proxy on and I get real word results....and I occasionally turn the proxy on when I can't access site XYZ because sometimes it clears up that access problem.

[4evermaat]

Some pretty long time ago, I put some CAT CMDA information there as well. There was 370 results.

The search places plus mark %2B instead of space %20 to the url when there is a space on location field when going to the next page. Replacing the string on the url does give the next page. I'll notify K Woody of this.

I'll also try to remember to inform about the 3BB connection when I get the line. Now I got information that they should come here on Monday.

Oilinki -

Thanks for the heads up. I'll try to get that fixed ASAP.

(As noted, the Speedtest.net tests are all cached in BKK. The report may say Zurich, but it's nowhere near Zurich. That's why we switched to DSLReports - see http://phuketgazette...ticle10972.html )

Here's the problem with the current DSLReports speed tests. Both TOT and 3BB are faking their test results. They've deliberately set up the DSLReports sites so accessing them bypasses the normal international throttling. Both of them are doing it because they know people are watching the results at phuketinternetspeed.com - so they're cheating.

I've been trying to figure out another way to run tests that can't be cheated, but so far haven't come up with a foolproof method. (I'm so bogged down in the Windows 8 book that it'll be several months before I can really concentrate on the problem.) In the interim, the only reliable speed reports at phuketinternetspeed.com - the only ones that aren't being jiggered by the ISP - are the tests for True, CAT, DTAC, the cable TV providers, and AIS.

It looks like 3BB hasn't yet figured out that they need to cheat on other DSLReports sites, so the 3BB measurements for cities other than Los Angeles appear to be accurate. But they'll figure it out soon enough...

does it matter if you use java? a network guy said java test is more more reliable.

anyway, there is another speedtest here: http://www.measurementlab.net/measurement-lab-tools ndt. what do you think?

"2nd best time to plant a tree is today." Sent from TV android app.

[Cornichon88]

Oilinki - Thanks for the heads up. I'll try to get that fixed ASAP. (As noted, the Speedtest.net tests are all cached in BKK. The report may say Zurich, but it's nowhere near Zurich. That's why we switched to DSLReports - see http://phuketgazette...ticle10972.html )

Here's the problem with the current DSLReports speed tests. Both TOT and 3BB are faking their test results. They've deliberately set up the DSLReports sites so accessing them bypasses the normal international throttling. Both of them are doing it because they know people are watching the results at phuketinternetspeed.com - so they're cheating.

I've been trying to figure out another way to run tests that can't be cheated, but so far haven't come up with a foolproof method. (I'm so bogged down in the Windows 8 book that it'll be several months before I can really concentrate on the problem.) In the interim, the only reliable speed reports at phuketinternetspeed.com - the only ones that aren't being jiggered by the ISP - are the tests for True, CAT, DTAC, the cable TV providers, and AIS. It looks like 3BB hasn't yet figured out that they need to cheat on other DSLReports sites, so the 3BB measurements for cities other than Los Angeles appear to be accurate. But they'll figure it out soon enough...

OK, the speedtests are cached, but who care about a ping of 300ms unless they play online games on a server located in USA or Europe ? People who surf the web, send mails, listen web radios or like to look videos in streaming don't care about the ping.

3BB offers now a very good service at a very decent speed of 10 Mb and you can do comfortably all the above even while downloading torrents. For most of the people it's what they are looking for.

[Pib]

anyway, there is another speedtest here: http://www.measureme...ement-lab-tools ndt. what do you think?

I'm on a True 20Mb/2Mb cable/DOCSIS plan. Above speed test gave a realistic ping time to Tokyo and reported my download and upload speed as 14Mb (seems to high for me based on my other speed testing...something in the 5Mb ballpark would have been believable) and 2Mb, respectively. Ran it several times with and without the True proxy server turned on...it gave me the same results. Had no choice in selecting a server/location to run the speedtest or I couldn't figure out how to pick a location...it just chose Tokyo each time...and it don't specifically say Tokyo you need to look up the IP address it reports which says the server is located in Japan and then there is a location map on the web site saying where it has servers across the world with one being in Tokyo. Maybe a person don't have a choice in picking the server; the speedtest just picks a nearby location.

[Pib]

OK, the speedtests are cached, but who care about a ping of 300ms unless they play online games on a server located in USA or Europe ? People who surf the web, send mails, listen web radios or like to look videos in streaming don't care about the ping.

High ping time can cause problems with Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) like in VOIP calls, and also cause problems in streaming audio or streaming video due to delays/lost data packets. Less of an impact on streaming audio since the bandwidth requirements is much lower than streaming video. Usually the higher the ping the tougher it gets for streaming video since higher ping times usually means going through more hops/servers with each one creating a delay/possibly not being able to handle streaming video well. Each ISP's network will vary in how well it handles streaming video. Heck, you only need a couple Mb's of bandwidth to smoothly stream video "if", repeat, "if" the network provides a smooth, consistent data flow compared to a bursting/speed up/speed down/pausing data flow....streaming video needs smooth, consistent data flow.