True Ultra Connection Speed Bloody Awful The Past Week Or So

[neek]

We upgraded our home ADSL connection to the True Ultra service about 6 months ago. The service has been patchy at times, but in general it has been good. We're in Lad Phrao, the northern suburb of Bangkok. Up until now Skype and so on have been very reliable.

For the past week or so, my connection to computers in the UK (Teamviewer remote desktop, Skype conversations) has been really awful. Skype calls are stuttery, so you hear half of every word spoken by the other end. They say I sound crystal clear. Remote desktop lags, sometimes 5-10 seconds between actions appearing on my screen.

"Technical Call Info" in Skype shows an outgoing packet loss rate of 25%, and received loss of 30%/50% (whatever that means). Shirley that can't be good.

Just today I'm trying to browse to a UK based server where I host a Joomla website. The admin login page doesn't even load, I get a "ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE" message in Chrome. If I turn on foxyproxy so my requests go through a squid proxy running on _the same damn box_ in London (port 3128), the pages come up in the blink of an eye. I've seen this kind of behaviour when some aggressive traffic limiting policy is in place at the ISP, e.g. slowing port 80 traffic to a few bytes per second, but other ports like 3128 that aren't in the policy operate normally.

Other activities I've tried have been excellent. I told Steam to download the Portal beta for Linux yesterday, it came down at between 1.5 and 2 Mb/s, which frankly is the fastest download I've seen yet.

I've tried an ADSL speed test website, such as http://speedtest.adslthailand.com/ .. the results seems rigged. The Thailand server reported over 22Mb/s download and over 1Mb/s up, with 11ms ping. The UK server reported the same, with an 8ms ping. It seems to be either lying deliberately, or using cached data somewhere. http://www.speedtest.net/ is a bit more believable, 525ms ping to an AIS server in Thailand, with between 3 and 5 Mb/s down and 1.3 Mb/s up. While not amazing, those figures shouldn't result in stuttery Skype and poor remote desktop to the UK.

The poor Skype performance is proving a real killer in my day to day business activities. Can anyone say if True are experiencing any particular problems at present? Anyone else having similar trouble? I'm loathe to call out an engineer, last time I tried to explain that my upload via scp to the UK were being cut off after only a few Mb, the engineer didn't know what SCP was, or FTP, or telnet. They were happy to show me that the modem's connection to the ISP had been rock solid, any talk of TCP/IP packet loss over that connection was beyond them.

Nick

[davejonesbkk]

See my thread too:

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/637882-anyone-getting-dodgystrange-internet-today-and-last-24-hrs-with-true/

Im getting the "ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE" on some sites in Chrome too.

I wouldnt bother with Speedtest.net it will tell you all day long that you have a ping of 9ms to the US or something

[JetsetBkk]

I've tried an ADSL speed test website....

Yes, don't bother with those two. Try http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest?flash=1 or http://testmy.net/download

[davejonesbkk]

lol.....

Download :: 623 Kbps 78 kB/s

Your Speed :: 623 Kbps
81% slower than your Host average 3.2 Mbps
74% slower than your City average 2.4 Mbps
72% slower than the TH average 2.3 Mbps

[Pib]

I've tried an ADSL speed test website....

Yes, don't bother with those two. Try http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest?flash=1 or http://testmy.net/download

I would even avoid the dslreport "flash-based" tester in the link above simply because it's a "flash-based" tester which can be fooled...not as easily as the Speedtest.net flashed-based tester, but it can still be fooled even on fiber connections. Use the dslreports Java-based tester at this Link. The testmy.net speedtester mentioned above is a good Java-based tester.

[jellydog]

I signed up for the ADSL 10Mbps package a week ago. Average performance until today. Today has been horrific. Speed tests have shown from 1Mbps up to 9. All over the place.

Get out the pitchforks.

[neek]

I signed up for the ADSL 10Mbps package a week ago. Average performance until today. Today has been horrific. Speed tests have shown from 1Mbps up to 9. All over the place.

Get out the pitchforks.

Thanks for all the replies guys. I've only just had time to come back and follow up. jellydog, when we first got our True Ultra package we were 'upgrading' from an old package (AIS I think) and my business because almost impossible to conduct. Skype conversations would simply disconnect every few minutes. Checking the modem's Log via the web interface showed me it was experiencing serious errors every 10 minutes or so and disconnecting. The engineer came out, hummed and hawed a few times, couldn't figure out our (admittedly bloody old and weird) wiring routing, and ended up doing tests on the lines in the street. He found the junction box outside our house had more than one port, switched us to a different port, and it has been much better since. You might try calling True, if you can tell them your modem Log is showing clear errors regularly they'll probably send a guy out to investigate.

Since I posted, our connection seems to have improved. The java test at dslreports.com shows for the New Jersey server, 330ms ping, 1034Kb/s down, 641Kb/s up, which is reasonable. Not great, certainly not 10Mb/s, but hey, TiT and that is NJ.

It's still a very fraught experience, trying to run a business relying on the internet connection to your house when it's so unreliable.

davejonesbkk - I'm very glad I have a server in the UK, I run squid on it and use it as my proxy. On really bad days I can click FoxyProxy to use that proxy for all requests, and can get on with my day. You might want to invest in a proxy service too, if you find the web just stops serving pages to you for no reason sometimes. If I could be bothered I might investigate. I met an Indian guy here who specialises in optimising web traffic and his general opinion of the way Thailand connects home users to the public internet is atrocious, it didn't sound like a situation that would be any fun at all to investigate. Your average HTTP request from your desktop is certainly not a simple connection out to the internet, which is why my proxied traffic performs so much better, it goes straight to the UK through a tunnel and initiates the HTTP request from there.

Nick

[joncl]

For the last two days and for the next two days True is doing "technical work" all over Bangkok and here we are in the middle of the working day and no internet they say until 6pm tonight and then we are told to expect the same for the next two days.

Thanks goodness for cheap mobile 3g modems/routers that can be plugged into the LAN.

[Pib]

Guess they are not doing any of that work in western Bangkok....my True DOCSIS/cable 14Mb/1.4Mb plan is humming along (and has been) just fine (knock on wood).

[joncl]

Guess they are not doing any of that work in western Bangkok....my True DOCSIS/cable 14Mb/1.4Mb plan is humming along (and has been) just fine (knock on wood).

Yes my guess is that was a form reply as the DOCSIS/Cable came back at 8pm last night for a few hours and is now gone again. When I say gone I mean "connection denied" so there is nothing on the other end to connect too ..

[Pib]

Guess they are not doing any of that work in western Bangkok....my True DOCSIS/cable 14Mb/1.4Mb plan is humming along (and has been) just fine (knock on wood).

Yes my guess is that was a form reply as the DOCSIS/Cable came back at 8pm last night for a few hours and is now gone again. When I say gone I mean "connection denied" so there is nothing on the other end to connect too ..

Problem must just be in your area....no DOCSIS/cable problems in my moobaan over here in western Bangkok. Well, I lie, last week for about an hour the cable TV and internet went dead for about one hour...shortly after it went dead we jumped in the car to go to Lotus and as driving out we saw True technicians working on a trunk line amplifier box at the entrance to the moobaan...expect they were just doing some maintenance which was the cause of the short outage as enough time had not passed for an outage to be reported and responded to....when we got back to the house about an hour later the TV and internet were back up.

Knock on wood, but since True installed cable TV & internet in my moobaan in mid 2011 it has been super reliable...it didn't even go down for the approx. month I had 0.5 to 1.5 meter deep flood waters in my moobaan during the late 2011 flood. Now most of the people that were on TOT ADSL in my moobaan lost internet day one of the flood waters arriving my moobaan since the near ground level junction boxes got flooded whereas all the True cable internet/TV equipment and lines are high on the utility poles.