Dead Slow Dsl Speeds With True?

[rainman]

since about two days my TRUE dsl connection has started dying. i was downloading a large file from a US server when suddenly the speeds dropped from 90kb/sec (which is the average i get since many months) to 2.0 to 4.0kb/sec, which is slower than dialup, really. i called TRUE and after a long time on hold they said that nothing was wrong at their end and that i should reboot my PC. well i work in the IT industry for over 5 years and i know that rebooting the PC isn't going to fix my DSL speeds. i can get to thai sites fine but just to international, especially north american sites, i am getting terrible download speeds. this leads me to believe that either their connections are severely maxed out or they throttle the traffic or...who knows.

they keep telling me to reboot the computer. anyone experiencing the same thing or am i alone in this madness? i need to download 200-600MB files for my work almost daily and its driving me nuts.

[clokwise]

Same here, True's been near-dead for the past two days. Glad it's not just me.

[Firefoxx]

Any call to True usually goes like this:

Customer: My DSL speeds are really slow, what's the problem?

True: It's certainly not our fault. Reset your computer.

Customer: Tried that. No joy.

True: Check your splitter, check your modem, and check your line.

Customer: But only my international speeds are slow, my local speed is fine.

True: Our network is the best. It's not our fault. Reset your computer.

Customer: But I just did that. Didn't I?

True: Then check your splitter, check your modem, and check your line.

Customer: I did that already, too!

True: We have no problems! Reset your computer.

Customer: Let me speak with your manager!

True: Eeek, ook! (at this point, you've gone beyond the chimp's vocabulary)

Really, you can't depend on anyone in True knowing much about anything. If you can get an answer, you probably will get a different answer if you call again.

[rainman]

my calls too went just like you wrote above. what amazed me was the last thing they said before i hung up:

so, what is the problem you are having, sir?

..that's after i tried to have them fix my slow DSL line for approximately 30 minutes. sigh, after 30 minutes they have the nerves to ask me what the problem is. i think they're not even listening. and they dont understand anything about the environment they're working in. everything in their opinion can be fixed with a reboot. the time of reboots was 10 years ago, not these days.

[simcity]

Regarding true , I know sometime it is slow ! But I remember when I was on dialup , few year ago !

Anyone of you switch from the 256 contract to the 512 or over ?

Did that really improve the speed ? I am thinking of doing it ..

[stumonster]

If you are on a true home adsl plan , I don't think you can complain .

compared to dailup I think my true adsl connection is better and cheaper.

[rainman]

If you are on a true home adsl plan , I don't think you can complain .

compared to dailup I think my true adsl connection is better and cheaper.

i think if i pay 960 baht per month for my DSL and i'm getting download speeds of 2.0kb/sec (which is slower than dialup) i have every right to complain.

[Tarragona]

I had problems for a couple of days but back to normal today.

[rss]

I had problems for a couple of days but back to normal today.

Did you call True to get it sorted out?

I am still getting 56K modem speed. Ever since Friday early morning. Domestic isn't any better either. Even my voice phone is dead. When I called on Saturday, I got a recording that said there was a network problem.

[Thaising]

It is TRUE; they never promised you the speed. If complains, they were MOVE your call to the dead end. True Move.

[Oleg_Rus]

well i work in the IT industry for over 5 years and i know that rebooting the PC isn't going to fix my DSL speeds.

or...who knows.

i need to download 200-600MB files for my work almost daily and its driving me nuts.

Kinda interesting work you've got

if they keep telling you to reboot your PC -> interesting//

btw, true installed newer cache servers, messed up with users database and did few other nonsense things. hence international bandwidth is going down.

seriously, what kind of job required 200-600Mb daily ? we can't stop laughing guessing

[rainman]

well i work in the IT industry for over 5 years and i know that rebooting the PC isn't going to fix my DSL speeds.

or...who knows.

i need to download 200-600MB files for my work almost daily and its driving me nuts.

Kinda interesting work you've got

if they keep telling you to reboot your PC -> interesting//

btw, true installed newer cache servers, messed up with users database and did few other nonsense things. hence international bandwidth is going down.

seriously, what kind of job required 200-600Mb daily ? we can't stop laughing guessing

well, i probably should have mentioned it does NOT involve editing porn movies. seriously, its just data files. quite harmless and boring, especially with a dead slow connection.

[Firefoxx]

Most people have never actually used their broadband for downloading anything *big* other than copyrighted stuff and porn, so when somebody says that they're downloading seriously, people assume that they're doing the same thing. I have a friend who does database, and he uses his connection to download/upload huge database files every day.

Sometimes True says they guarantee bandwidth, sometimes they don't. Depends on who you ask. Also, they suck on their corporate DSL accounts too, not only home accounts... I had a 512k corporate connection, and my international speeds were consistantly around 80k(bits), with slight improvement during 3am-8am, which is pretty useless. Not worth the money.

Some people will remember that I did advocate True's SME stuff last year... I've used True for too long to remember, and probably have made them very rich, for an individual account. But things change, and True's SME service has taken a turn for the worse.

Having installed buddybb, it's a mixed experience. Extremely cheap, and great website performance... but lousy for everything else, with a very quirky login setup and unstable lines.

Looking at ji-net's SME packages, and 4,800/month for 1mbit sounds decent. Has anyone had any experience with ji-net's SME packages?

Edited February 27, 2006 by Firefoxx

[melus]

4,800 baht per month for ji-net's 1Mb SME package sounds pretty steep. Is this on a leased line? I'm recently back on True's 2Mb SME for 2,900, and so far very stable. Who knows for how long. Maybe they give you a grace period before they start throttling your connection speed.

I'm downloading huge files every day in my business, so I have to pay the extra money.

[uhuh]

2 days ago we had a slow international connection, too, so we called True.

They immediately told us it was their probblem, not ours, and it should be fixed in maybe 2 hours.

We spoke Thai to them.

[rainman]

2 days ago we had a slow international connection, too, so we called True.

They immediately told us it was their probblem, not ours, and it should be fixed in maybe 2 hours.

We spoke Thai to them.

the question is ...did they fix it?

[Firefoxx]

4,800/month for 1mbit sounds decent to me since I was originally paying 2,500/month to True for only 512k/month... and getting the abyssmal speeds I mentioned before (80k average). I don't know, maybe I'll ask my friend about his experience with True's SME package before deciding. Not many people are using Ji-net, which may be a good thing.

I do know that True's home 2mb package is horrible... my friend has it installed, and I can't imagine how it could be any worse. I'm a bit ashamed that I recommended it to him.

[Oleg_Rus]

Ji-net is ok, but what the heck - same same ppl and hardware, just brand different

True is sharing bandwidth between all of users - that's bad, even worse - they pipe all through "cache" servers - sort of bottle neck for your connection speed and IP limitation.

I'm sure all others use the same practice, maybe less loaded, but the same

no body can guarantee bandwidth - pitty cannot sue m/f/ who said that he can. No, even provider cannot do it right.

rainman - loading datafiles of 200-600 Mb, using proxies and so... can I have a look on trailers. pls ?

firefox - friend does databases of online shops and payment gateways, right? for mere programmer no need to load all files back and forth, only exec. modules - not more than 2-5Mb.

Interesting ppl we have here

[Caoimhín]

Been experiencing the slow speed and intermittent nature of True internet for months now. Seems better during the day than evenings and weekends. Problem is that in this building it's the only option. To move internet provider I would need to move to another apartment. I work building and maintaining websites; if I have a lot of stuff to download or upload then I go somewhere with free wireless access. Was looking forward to listing to BBC Radio while I worked but that's difficult, sometimes I get an hour's listening in but mostly the connection lasts 15 minutes and then times out.

[rss]

firefox - friend does databases of online shops and payment gateways, right? for mere programmer no need to load all files back and forth, only exec. modules - not more than 2-5Mb.

Interesting ppl we have here

He could be doing statistical analysis on the data and generating different graphs to see if there is a pattern and to predict in which direction things are going. If he didn't download the whole database, he would have to access it remotely for each analysis or each graph which would take a lot longer than the time it would take to download the whole database.

Some interesting ppl do have interesting jobs.

[Firefoxx]

I got some interesting information from a friend, who talked to a True engineer. It seems that the reason for the slow speeds at True was that TOT (Telephone Org of Thailand) was limiting True's bandwidth (somehow) to get even with True for the current dispute between them about compensation (which True won). It's possible...

As for my friend, he manages the database for his company, which has offices in the US, Europe, China, Thailand, and Taiwan. He's the only person responsible for the various databases, so he has to do a lot of downloading.

[Mobi]

I got some interesting information from a friend, who talked to a True engineer. It seems that the reason for the slow speeds at True was that TOT (Telephone Org of Thailand) was limiting True's bandwidth (somehow) to get even with True for the current dispute between them about compensation (which True won). It's possible...

As for my friend, he manages the database for his company, which has offices in the US, Europe, China, Thailand, and Taiwan. He's the only person responsible for the various databases, so he has to do a lot of downloading.

I've written about this on other TV forums. I've tried True, TOT and Loxinfo. Loxinfo is much better than the other two and I had a year's fast, 'rarely down' service. True and TOT were abysmal. Others have shared my experience.

Now I'm near Pattaya, I rely on Ipstar, which is always slow, sometimes nearly dead, and crashes not infrequently. yesterday and today it has been a nightmare. Tonight it is much better. (it's just crashed yet again!)

I also have a back up dial up, and very often this works faster than my Ipstar. I have a friend on

on Koh Sri Chang who is so frustrated with his Ipstar that he has gone back to using his dial up.

I've never, or rarely had any probs with BBC timing out. Even on dial up.

Anyone had similar experiences?

[monty]

Mobi,

Only thing you can do is take care the receiver box of iPSTAR is kept as cool as possible.

Either put it in an airconditioned room, or put a big fan on it (preferably both).

They are absolutely incompatible with tropical weather! Thats why tech support always tells you to shut it down for half an hour when it stops working. Gives it a chance to cool down!

In the end (when I still had it) I used to shut off the iPSTAR box whenever I was not using it, and just start it whenever I need access. Worked much better apart from the long wait to let the box log-on every time...

[Mobi]

Mobi,

Only thing you can do is take care the receiver box of iPSTAR is kept as cool as possible.

Either put it in an airconditioned room, or put a big fan on it (preferably both).

They are absolutely incompatible with tropical weather! Thats why tech support always tells you to shut it down for half an hour when it stops working. Gives it a chance to cool down!

In the end (when I still had it) I used to shut off the iPSTAR box whenever I was not using it, and just start it whenever I need access. Worked much better apart from the long wait to let the box log-on every time...

Thanks for that Monty, I will bear it in mind.

The ipstar box is in my little office, which is not too hot, and whenever I am in there (which is pretty often) I either have a ceiling fan on, or. from around 11 am to 4 pm, an aircon.

I am not a technical guy, but I'm not sure if I have the same problem you had. The box itself never shuts off, and if I go to the Ipstar 'transmission' web site, it always shows as 'on' with a signal strength of around 90%. It just disconnects from the internet itself, and the login status message box, reports that is continually trying to log in. Eventually it does, and I am back on the net. Then, like yesterday, when I had the aircon on most of the day, it just kept continually disconnecting. That's the worst its ever been - the main problem is that its so bloody slow most of the time.

Is this the same problem you had? Or did your box shut off completely?

Thanks

Mobi

[monty]

When it was stuck, the box seemed to work normally, always trying to connect, failing eventhough the signal looked OK.

Shut it down for half an hour and everything was fine again...

Looked to me that when the box was hot, data communication became garbled, causing the log on process to continiously fail...

Just an educated guess though...

Where exactly is Moo 2 in Pong? I live in Moo 5, Pong, and was able to get ADSL through my TT&T line.

Although not perfect due to the distance to the phone exchange (normally TT&T would not even hook me up to ADSL, but some gentle prodding made them try it out), it still beats dial-up and iPSTAR by a big margin, and it's cheaper as well!

[Mobi]

When it was stuck, the box seemed to work normally, always trying to connect, failing eventhough the signal looked OK.

Shut it down for half an hour and everything was fine again...

Looked to me that when the box was hot, data communication became garbled, causing the log on process to continiously fail...

Just an educated guess though...

Where exactly is Moo 2 in Pong? I live in Moo 5, Pong, and was able to get ADSL through my TT&T line.

Although not perfect due to the distance to the phone exchange (normally TT&T would not even hook me up to ADSL, but some gentle prodding made them try it out), it still beats dial-up and iPSTAR by a big margin, and it's cheaper as well!

I'm within 5 minutes walking distance of Wat Pong, there is a big school in front, and there is a small fresh food market along the side of my Soi. I can't be too far from Moo 5. When I moved in, I asked both TT&T and True about ADSL, but they both told me I was too far out. Obviously I shouldn't have believed them. I am signed up for Ipstar for a year, although I did get a special rate of 1500 baht/month. So when the contract is up I'll try the ADSL route again

The problem you had with Ipstar sound eactly the same as my problem.. I'm sure you're right about overheating, although I find that even if I re-start the box straight away, it aften connects Ok. A bit like the bloody UBC TV signal. When it fails, just switch channels or turn off and on and you're up and running again.

Anyway, thank God for my dial up, which is more reliable than anything else in this place - until some friendly truck rips out the phone lines, or some desperate Thai decides to steal the phone cables. TIT

[simon43]

I recently had a problem reaching websites outside Thailand. I did a traceroute and identified a router in the Maxnet network which was causing a problem.

But every 'engineer' that I spoke to at their company had never heard of Traceroute or tracert...

That worries me VERY much!

Simon