Is My Problem With 3B Internet, My Pc, Or An Overworked Web Server?

[Lopburi99]

I'm fed up with our 3BB "broadband"! My video streaming is often broken with 10-15 second pauses, not always but often. They just upgraded their service here in Lopburi from 6Mb to 10Mb and I was hopeful that would solve the problem. No change, still awful (especially when I am running USTVnow to watch Sunday morning news talk shows, my #1 viewing interest!). Same problem with YouTube, so probably not overworked remote web servers?

I know many of you out there are very well versed on internet provider issues, please comment regarding the steps I should take to eventually get reliable video streaming. I'm running Windows 7 on a HP Presario notebook with 1GB ram. Same with either Firefox 15 or Chrome.

Thanks.

[givenall]

I have changed many time to different copany and at the end they are all the same. they are all connected to the TOT infrastructure and the international bandwidth is dismal so depending on the location some may have a better rate and for your location probably does not change with any other provider

[miksguevara]

you can test your download speed here: http://www.speedtest.net will give you a rough idea of the download speed from isp. Is 1 GB ram suitable for streaming media? Not really upgrade to 2 GB or more if possible , an easy test would be to borrow a friends laptop and see what the streaming experience is like , make sure all updates are installed for your pc ....browsers, operating system , flash plugins etc etc hope this helps?

[miksguevara]

ps sorry the link doesn't work jus google speedtest!!

[WhizBang]

You didn't say what time of day you are trying to watch streaming video. I know that my download speed varies considerably depending upon the time of day. Plus I find that from Friday evening through Monday morning especially, it can be all over the place.

Two solutions:

1: try different times of day and see if that helps.

2: Capture the streaming video to your HD and watch it later when it's complete.

For the latter, I use the DownloadHelper plugin for Firefox.

[Lopburi99]

The worst times are in the evenings here, and all day weekends. Based on givenall's experience, sounds like we all have to accept hit and miss.

Didn't know about DownlloadHelper WhizBang! Sounds perfect, I rarely need to watch anything 'real time'.

BTW, speedtest shows a full 10Mb/s but that stays the same even when my streaming is breaking up. So it must the a traffic/bandwidth issue as gn said. Oh, not sure 2GB will help and don't need the extra ram otherwise. Since I need to watch my ฿ I'll stay with the 1GB. Thanks.

[Pib]

If you get 10Mb download speed to an "in-Thailand" server, like using Speedtest.net and testing to Bangkok then your physical line is probably OK. If you get less, then you probably have a physical line problem (i.e., bad/corroded connection somewhere between your modem and the DSLAM which means you need to call 3BB). Now, if your in-country speed is 10Mb (or real close), then it appears the 3BB International Gateway or your Local 3BB internet circuits are just not giving you much "international" speed--a common problem in Thailand. With a 10Mb plan you should be getting around 2Mb speed to international sites like to te U.S....and 2Mb (or a little more) international speed is more than enough for smooth flowing live-streaming video, YouTube videos, etc.

I wouldn't use Speedtest.net to do any serious speedtesting, especially to sites outside of Thailand, because it's a Flash/OOKLA-based speed testing program that is easily fooled by in-Thailad cache servers....not uncommon to get the same, or nearly the same speeds, to servers on the other side of the world along with faster-than-light ping times....all bogus....and then a person wonders with such great speeds to the other side of the world why do my YouTube clips pause so durn much....well, it because you are not really getting that great speed Speedtest.net said you are getting....you are getting something much lower. Better to use a Java-based speed tester like found at DSLReports.com or Testmy.net for international speed testing which randomize the data download test files which greatly reduces the chance of the program from being fooled by in-country cache servers and giving bogus results.

[bobl]

1Gb RAM is really, very low.

It's *probably* just a crappy internet connection (verify with aforementioned speed tests and try at different times of the day). Worth getting them to come out and check your wiring from your house all the way to their main DP - it could be you've got a lot of noise on the phone line (e.g. if there's any joints in the cable, where they've twisted the wires together can oxidise,and make for a crappy contact - which can really nuke your speed).

Personally in addition to getting the connections checked out, I'd throw some memory at that thing and upgrade it to whatever maximum that model can handle. With only 1Gb and moderate to heavy surfing (a few tabs open in your browser) your machine could spend 90% of it's time talking to it's pagefile.

Firefox can be a real dog at times I've seen mine hog 750Mb ram (granted with 15-20 tabs open). Right now it's using 260Mb with only iGoogle and 3 Thaivisa tabs, open.

(Hint. If your Hard Drive access LED is OFF and *occasionally* flashing, you're ok. If it comes on solid and stays more on, than off, you're hammering your disk because you're short of memory - which will slow you down considerably)

[rakman]

Put more ram in your pc.. 1GB is minimal for Win 7. If it's 32 bit Win 7, you can only use 4GB (3.7 GB will be shown) It will help your streaming as your pc is probably swapping to the page file.

[curtklay]

If you get 10Mb download speed to an "in-Thailand" server, like using Speedtest.net and testing to Bangkok then your physical line is probably OK. If you get less, then you probably have a physical line problem (i.e., bad/corroded connection somewhere between your modem and the DSLAM which means you need to call 3BB). Now, if your in-country speed is 10Mb (or real close), then it appears the 3BB International Gateway or your Local 3BB internet circuits are just not giving you much "international" speed--a common problem in Thailand. With a 10Mb plan you should be getting around 2Mb speed to international sites like to te U.S....and 2Mb (or a little more) international speed is more than enough for smooth flowing live-streaming video, YouTube videos, etc.

I wouldn't use Speedtest.net to do any serious speedtesting, especially to sites outside of Thailand, because it's a Flash/OOKLA-based speed testing program that is easily fooled by in-Thailad cache servers....not uncommon to get the same, or nearly the same speeds, to servers on the other side of the world along with faster-than-light ping times....all bogus....and then a person wonders with such great speeds to the other side of the world why do my YouTube clips pause so durn much....well, it because you are not really getting that great speed Speedtest.net said you are getting....you are getting something much lower. Better to use a Java-based speed tester like found at DSLReports.com or Testmy.net for international speed testing which randomize the data download test files which greatly reduces the chance of the program from being fooled by in-country cache servers and giving bogus results.

Very good information, Pib! TOT broadband has been really up and down for several weeks, but seems better today. Those international speed test sites you mentioned were new to me. After testing them and reviewing the results, things make a lot more sense now. I knew I wasn't getting the 6Mb that Speedtest.net showed. Both international sites tested at 1.6Mb, which seems about right and agrees with their estimates of what should be expected. Thanks for the tips!!

Have you ever tried any of the "tune up" tools offered on those sites? I have tried others, but they only caused more problems. Kind of gun shy to try any others without some credible feedback.

[Dork]

2: Capture the streaming video to your HD and watch it later when it's complete.

For the latter, I use the DownloadHelper plugin for Firefox.

Reckon this is the best solution. I've come to the conclusion that video streaming as a technology in general is just unreliable. An example is a typical 40 odd minute TV show streamed by youtube - sometimes works fine, sometimes doesn't. However I can always download that directly from youtube in under 2 minutes. Put another way, in the 45 minutes it takes to watch one show I can download 40-50 other shows with a download manager then play them back flawlessly.

[Pib]

Have you ever tried any of the "tune up" tools offered on those sites? I have tried others, but they only caused more problems. Kind of gun shy to try any others without some credible feedback.

When I was "young and dumb" I tried various tune-up tools; now that I'm "old and dumber" I don't try them anymore. Why? I found out the great majority of them are just trying to sell you their program and they programs pretty much just do common computer maintenance tasks like deleting temporary files, cookies, disk fragmentation test, maybe a TCP optimizer (which is not needed on Win7 and had very little effect on XP/Vista), etc., which you can do already in Windows, your browser, etc. I wouldn't waste my time and money on them; instead just use the maintenance/tune features within Windows/your browser. But trying some of them out probably won't hurt anything the great, great majority of the time....just when installing be sure to read the install pages/selection real close to avoid adding toolbars,bookmarks, other programs, etc., along with the program you are installing...probably best to keep all that extra crap off your computer.