Slow International Internet in Thailand

[Malthus101]

I have already posted elsewhere about my crap True 10Mbps package (599 baht per month)

I have at peak times (6pm - midnight) been getting international speeds as low as 88Kbps.

I am trying to watch a live webinar and this is impossible.

I've had True technicians here 3 or 4 times. They always say they have fixed it and my local speeds are indeed 10Mbps.

I asked how I could get better international speeds and the phone rep said they do not guarantee international speeds. If I want that, I have to get a business package.

What strikes me as interesting is how many people on this forum have been saying "only in the last month or so..." It does indeed seem that something has happened in the last month to seriously decrease international speeds.

Can anyone hazard a guess at what this may be?

So, I am in Ekkamai, Bangkok.

Can I get this CAT service that sound so great?

What about this SinetFTTx ? Never heard of it before.

I REALLY need higher speed. Not local, 10Mbps for local is ample. But I HAVE to have higher international speed. Even 1Mbps is just enough to hear and see most of my webinar. 2Mbps would be amazing! (sad to say)

I am with a 12 month contract with True but really, what weight does a contract have in Thailand?

[muratremix]

Too many farangs wants to stream TV over internet, which is not possible with the current infastructure. You should remember this is not your western country, Internet BW in Asia is expensive.

I really don't understand the idea of watching TV over international internet gateway. If it was possible, netflix would be open to all countries. You may watch your TV via VPN or via underutilized domestic/international line if you are lucky but you are wasting resources.

It isn't that hard to download TV shows via torrent/usenet and you can watch in better quality after download finished. As for sports, satellite is your friend.

Until some farang invest lots of money on IPTV (with servers located in Thailand), you don't have much choice.

[Estrada]

Earlier this week there was only a connection to Thailand and none to any International gateways from 04.00hrs until 08.00hrs. It was then very slow until the afternoon. Perhaps they didn't pay their bill. Or was it engineering. In the past we have lost connections due to earthquakes, and ships snagging the main cables with their anchors. At one time there was only one cable connecting Europe with Africa, The Middle East and Asia. The Egyptians snagged the cable twice resulting in weeks of internet overload. Now there is duplicity so the problem is one of increasing demand against rate of building the infrastructure. In Thailand their rate of building the infrastructure lags the demand so there will always be problems at peak.

[shariq607]

Sorry guys but if you live in high farang population areas you are just not going to get what you want for instance I have a Thai friend who lives in the woods In north Thailand where there is no 3g and edge barely works but he managed to get tot winet (10 mb) which works so he being western movie admirer I got him a setup of Netflix and the village he lives in barely even know what YouTube or Facebook is so he can steam Netflix in 1080p super HD no matter what day or time and that's because he is only one of the few who even has a connection and even if some of his neighbors have internet they only browse Thai websites which means all the limited international bandwidth in neighborhood is now being used by him which explains why he can steam Netflix in 1080p super hd , same cannot be said for bangkok where although high international bandwidth exists but it Is sadly shared among every one which is at least true in my area in central bangkok asok

Edited September 14, 2013 by shariq607

[roban]

I really don't understand the idea of watching TV over international internet gateway. If it was possible, netflix would be open to all countries.

Wrong.

It would be technically possible, but services like Netflix, Hulu, Zattoo, Wilmaa are very limited by Copyright issues.

This is the reason, why people are "geo blocked" from their streams, if they don't have a "matching" IP.

I guess, most people here want to watch sport events or news, but not shows..

I was able to watch "Wilmaa" streams (from Switzerland) for two, three years without any issues.

But as mentioned above and many times before, the speed is just crap since some months!

As for sports, satellite is your friend.

Well, which satellite would you suggest, for german sports or news, Bundesliga, Formula 1 in german language etc.?

Not everybody here is from the US/UK or any other english speaking country.

So absolutely no option.

Edited September 14, 2013 by roban

[ESCAPIS]

....

It isn't that hard to download TV shows via torrent/usenet and you can watch in better quality after download finished. As for sports, satellite is your friend.....

I agree.

As many know, the internet is a conglomerate of protocols: http, https, ntp, ftp, sftp, torrent,telenet and the list goes on.

Sadly, most people ignore them and rely on http for their facebook, livestream ...whatever.

I have experienced with my modest 4-6 mb from TOT (the only one available in my area) all sorts of connection problems. I upgraded speed but in vain.

One thing remained constantly fast: torrents. No matter how slow or fast website or youtube was, the torrent client gives me 400-600mbs download speed, while the Internet cafes and neighbours indulge in their frenzy feeding sessions.

Yes, the infra structure in Thailand is deplorable. Yes the level of greed here makes a Tasmanian devil looks like a finicky cat. We can't change that and might expire way before the Thai sense of business alters.

Whats wrong with watching Breaking Bad or any tv show a day or 2 later than its programmed for?!

Use torrents guys. It is still little known to the masses and offers decent speed for the rated connection that you subscribed for.

Acquiring

There is a very nice preference panel for MacOsX called TVShows. Windows users are similarly and definitely catered for, I'm sure!

This pane lives in your System Settings. Presents you with a plethora of tv options, some going back many years and download the latest episode of your favourite tv show silently, efficiently and rapidly in the background. Transmission is the torrent client I use. It is set up to download episode in their own folders.

Presentation

There are many media presentation apps that make your tv watching a pleasure. I have used Plex and xmbc.

Both of them are programmable and can simulate a tv experience, if not close to the real thing, better.

Get your news broadcast subscribe to an RSS feed for instant alert or from you tube maximum few hours late. Locate the channel that you like to watch ( or believe), subscribe and watch news till you have enough or get depressed, whichever comes first.

You don't miss an episode. You go for a pee. You can fix your dinner. Madame can have her bowl of friskies. You can actually fix a drink without spilling half of it at the instant the hero is about to get screwed by his wife or arch villain..Thanks for the pause button.

What I am trying to say is, become your own boss, rather than let the tv companies dictate to you what and when to watch tv, keep you out of its fenced zone while acquiring a hernia from tot, true or bbb.

If anyone who uses a Mac and need advice on set up, please pm.

[Tywais]

Too many farangs wants to stream TV over internet,

My wife (Thai) streams TV or YouTube over Internet often as do most other Thais I know so you can't point fingers at the foreigner in all cases.

[bangarang]

Just pay for 3BB public wifi for 99thb a month and experience the same speeds. They advertise 10mbps and speedtest.net showed 8.02MBPS download. I am so lucky there is a hotspot here in my village in Phuket. The wifi is good speed and super cheap, not to mention you can use hotspot account info in so many places across the country.

[shariq607]

Too many farangs wants to stream TV over internet,

My wife (Thai) streams TV or YouTube over Internet often as do most other Thais I know so you can't point fingers at the foreigner in all cases.

YouTube has has cached servers in th,Singapore and hong Kong so it does not really count as international bandwidth compared to others such as netflix , I'm not pointing finger at us farangs but would say international bandwidth is shared among all internet users

Edited September 14, 2013 by shariq607

[Muhendis]

I live 17km from Buriram where internet service providers just don't go. For a long time I used 3G from True Move 900 Baht/month and could get nothing worth watching from the international internet. To check my traffic speed I downloaded a lovely little program (especially since it is free) called NetWorx (http://www.softperfect.com/products/networx/) which told me that my regular download speed was about 13K. I have recently had an internet mast placed on my property by TOT which is giving me an excellent up to 10Mbps download speed (590 Baht/month) and no problems with international internet. I was warned that TOT can be intermittent and frustrating at times however with only the two options to chose from I think I've made the right choice.

[shariq607]

Just for info Singapore(top 10 in world internet ranking) is also not doing quite good in international bandwidth, their common internet starts at 100 mb fiber plan by singnet or star hub and goes all the way to 1 GB but guess what they only guarantee 60% of local bandwidth not even international and at peak times local bandwidth is also very slow but guess what at peak times even Singapore struggles to get 1 mb single thread bandwidth to us and UK and Netflix struggles to even stream properly at least in Thailand one can get 4-5 mb single threaded bandwidth to us

[muratremix]

Too many farangs wants to stream TV over internet,

My wife (Thai) streams TV or YouTube over Internet often as do most other Thais I know so you can't point fingers at the foreigner in all cases.

Youtube has direct peering to thai isps and local cache for most viewed content, so it cant be compared to usa based iptv. Youtube is always fast for me, no matter what time is it.

[roban]

Youtube has direct peering to thai isps and local cache for most viewed content, so it cant be compared to usa based iptv. Youtube is always fast for me, no matter what time is it.

correct.

But you can't also compare Youtube with TV streaming.

When you watch a clip on YT, the browser downloads a file and starts playing it, while downloading/preloading/prebuffering the complete rest of the file.

In the best case and with a halfway decent speed you will be able to download the clip a few times faster, as it's play time/duration.

But with LIVE TV streaming, you need a constant feed, because you can't preload anything (except a few seconds possibly)

And exactly this is main problem here, even streams with a very low, let's say 400kbit bitrate tend to buffer every few seconds nowadays. (since a few months).

The only solution at the moment, are imho P2P streaming programs, like Acestream/Torrentstream/Sopcast.

With these you can even watch (sport) streams with a 1.5-2 Mbit bitrate...(thanks to Russia at this point )

Some Tv streaming sites, are using a (similar) P2P technique via Flash.

"Schoener Fernsehen" and "http://torrent-tv.ru" as example.

Works also ok, most of the time.

Edited September 14, 2013 by roban

[muratremix]

Youtube has direct peering to thai isps and local cache for most viewed content, so it cant be compared to usa based iptv. Youtube is always fast for me, no matter what time is it.

correct.

But you can't also compare Youtube with TV streaming.

When you watch a clip on YT, the browser downloads a file and starts playing it, while downloading/preloading/prebuffering the complete rest of the file.

In the best case and with a halfway decent speed you will be able to download the clip a few times faster, as it's play time/duration.

But with LIVE TV streaming, you need a constant feed, because you can't preload anything (except a few seconds possibly)

And exactly this is main problem here, even streams with a very low, let's say 400kbit bitrate tend to buffer every few seconds nowadays. (since a few months).

The only solution at the moment, are imho P2P streaming programs, like Acestream/Torrentstream/Sopcast.

With these you can even watch (sport) streams with a 1.5-2 Mbit bitrate...(thanks to Russia at this point )

Some Tv streaming sites, are using a (similar) P2P technique via Flash.

"Schoener Fernsehen" and "http://torrent-tv.ru" as example.

Works also ok, most of the time.

I am not comparing youtube to anything. I am just voicing my opinion. I am against wasting resources by streaming directly from us or eu servers for purpose of watching tv.

[petedk]

Well there's certainly something wrong today.

I can't open Gmail (it's been trying to open for 5 minutes now)

A local speedtest shows 30 Mbps but when I try with a server in the USa it shows about 3 Mbps and in fact is still running after 5 minutes

[brucegoniners]

I've just had a Chat with StrongVPN which they say . . .

"we have no limits on speed but the vpn still depends on your local isp so it will most likely not make your internet faster sorry."

"we do not have servers in Thailand, speed depends mainly on your local isp and route, distance to our servers."

I checked the speed using the StrongVPN test and it came in at 2.33 Mbps Download and 0.265 Mbps Upload to the USA.

Checking with the TRUE ADSL Speed Test gave TRUE came in at 9.5 Mbps Download and 0.79 Mbps Upload (to Thailand), and 9.37 Mbps Download and 0.76 Mbps Upload (to USA).

Are there any VPN providers with servers in Bangkok?

I like the second idea of using 2 Internet providers. I could use TRUE and TOT since I have both phone lines.

Any idea about quality Modem-Routers which have dual capability?

Hide My A*s has a server in Thailand, but I just tried it using the Bangkok server. It's considerably SLOWER. I smell refund...

[brucegoniners]

Youtube has direct peering to thai isps and local cache for most viewed content, so it cant be compared to usa based iptv. Youtube is always fast for me, no matter what time is it.

correct.

But you can't also compare Youtube with TV streaming.

When you watch a clip on YT, the browser downloads a file and starts playing it, while downloading/preloading/prebuffering the complete rest of the file.

In the best case and with a halfway decent speed you will be able to download the clip a few times faster, as it's play time/duration.

But with LIVE TV streaming, you need a constant feed, because you can't preload anything (except a few seconds possibly)

And exactly this is main problem here, even streams with a very low, let's say 400kbit bitrate tend to buffer every few seconds nowadays. (since a few months).

The only solution at the moment, are imho P2P streaming programs, like Acestream/Torrentstream/Sopcast.

With these you can even watch (sport) streams with a 1.5-2 Mbit bitrate...(thanks to Russia at this point )

Some Tv streaming sites, are using a (similar) P2P technique via Flash.

"Schoener Fernsehen" and "http://torrent-tv.ru" as example.

Works also ok, most of the time.

So how does this work (since it's in Russian)? Is this something that I download?

[roban]

I am not comparing youtube to anything. I am just voicing my opinion. I am against wasting resources by streaming directly from us or eu servers for purpose of watching tv.

However, I have another point of view.

Watching Live sport events via Internet is absolutely ok for me. (The other crap on German TV is absolute Bullshit anyway )

But the Bittorent guys, who are downloading with full speed, 24/7 full blueray-discs@20-30GB for just one movie per disc, are the real traffic wasters!

Not the few people, who watch a little bit TV in crappy quality from their home countries .

But who cares...

Edited September 14, 2013 by roban

[aalek85th]

International 'internet' is slow because of distance. It takes 400 ms for a single icmp packet to reach US/EU, and it passes through a bunch of countries before reaching US/EU.

Google and companies like that are having caching servers in large cities.

Local (asian) internet is great. My 6 mbps 3bb was working superb, now I'm on true (shared in condo building, but all cable) and I'm getting 1.2 megaBYTES/s when I'm downloading stuff from torrent.

[roban]

So how does this work (since it's in Russian)? Is this something that I download?

The program itself and most of the HQ Live sport streams come from Russia.

Download Acestream HERE and install it.

Than visit THIS SITE to get the streams.

[mjef]

I've just had a Chat with StrongVPN which they say . . .

"we have no limits on speed but the vpn still depends on your local isp so it will most likely not make your internet faster sorry."

"we do not have servers in Thailand, speed depends mainly on your local isp and route, distance to our servers."

I checked the speed using the StrongVPN test and it came in at 2.33 Mbps Download and 0.265 Mbps Upload to the USA.

Checking with the TRUE ADSL Speed Test gave TRUE came in at 9.5 Mbps Download and 0.79 Mbps Upload (to Thailand), and 9.37 Mbps Download and 0.76 Mbps Upload (to USA).

Are there any VPN providers with servers in Bangkok?

I like the second idea of using 2 Internet providers. I could use TRUE and TOT since I have both phone lines.

Any idea about quality Modem-Routers which have dual capability?

Hide My A*s has a server in Thailand, but I just tried it using the Bangkok server. It's considerably SLOWER. I smell refund...

I think you didn't get the idea behind using VPN connections. Of course in a normal internet connection a VPN cannot make your internet any faster than it is, but at least a little bit slower because of the overhead! But in this case VPN is used to bypass a speed throttling system implemented by Thai ISPs. Most of the time we get speeds as low as 1 mbit/sec for INTERNATIONAL connections. Now with StrongVPN you got 2.33 mbit/sec (actually international speed) which is a great improvement from 1 mbps. But all the traffic will go through the StrongVPN server, meaning that your speed will be reduced to 2.33 mbps for almost all connections. So you have to use it on and off for international/domestic usage.

Now there is absolutely no reason for you to use a Thai VPN server (for speed improvement). All your traffic will go through their stupid speed limiter systems! So what's the point?

Edited September 14, 2013 by mjef

[aalek85th]

Again, you cannot have (advertised) speeds when contacting servers that are far away.

http://www.cat.net.th/map/connectivitymap.html

[NomadJoe]

They have been saying that the internet will soon slow to a crawl primarily due to video streaming. I think this is just happening in Thailand earlier than elsewhere.

[brucegoniners]

I was going to bring this up. I've been here for almost 1 month now and extensively tested my internet speed in different situations. What I found out is that some international links are throttled and some not. For example when I download a file from a server in Netherlands I get a bit lower than full speed (which is 5 mbps in my case) but when I try downloading a file from another server in another country it's limited to 1 mbps. Now when I download this file on a VPN connection I get much higher speeds than 1 mbps. So it's definitely limited by the ISP.

Now the funny story is that I once ordered a trial VPS service in a major datacenter in Bangkok and ran an international download on it. Guess what! It was limited to 1 mbsp! Now when internet in a datacenter is throttled like that, we can't expect anything better. Let's just hope that everything gets better.

But for now IMO the only thing you can do is to get yourself a VPN account. But test the server speed on your ISP before actually buying a long-term account.

I've tried VPN's and unfortunately they seem to make things worse, not better.

I tried Hide My A*s today and the performance was terrible using the Bangkok server.

[brucegoniners]

I've just had a Chat with StrongVPN which they say . . .

"we have no limits on speed but the vpn still depends on your local isp so it will most likely not make your internet faster sorry."

"we do not have servers in Thailand, speed depends mainly on your local isp and route, distance to our servers."

I checked the speed using the StrongVPN test and it came in at 2.33 Mbps Download and 0.265 Mbps Upload to the USA.

Checking with the TRUE ADSL Speed Test gave TRUE came in at 9.5 Mbps Download and 0.79 Mbps Upload (to Thailand), and 9.37 Mbps Download and 0.76 Mbps Upload (to USA).

Are there any VPN providers with servers in Bangkok?

I like the second idea of using 2 Internet providers. I could use TRUE and TOT since I have both phone lines.

Any idea about quality Modem-Routers which have dual capability?

Hide My A*s has a server in Thailand, but I just tried it using the Bangkok server. It's considerably SLOWER. I smell refund...

I think you didn't get the idea behind using VPN connections. Of course in a normal internet connection a VPN cannot make your internet any faster than it is, but at least a little bit slower because of the overhead! But in this case VPN is used to bypass a speed throttling system implemented by Thai ISPs. Most of the time we get speeds as low as 1 mbit/sec for INTERNATIONAL connections. Now with StrongVPN you got 2.33 mbit/sec (actually international speed) which is a great improvement from 1 mbps. But all the traffic will go through the StrongVPN server, meaning that your speed will be reduced to 2.33 mbps for almost all connections. So you have to use it on and off for international/domestic usage.

Now there is absolutely no reason for you to use a Thai VPN server (for speed improvement). All your traffic will go through their stupid speed limiter systems! So what's the point?

So what you're saying is the Strong VPN will actually increase my speed using their closest server (Singapore) because it bypasses Thailand altogether?

Please clarify this for me.

[mjef]

I was going to bring this up. I've been here for almost 1 month now and extensively tested my internet speed in different situations. What I found out is that some international links are throttled and some not. For example when I download a file from a server in Netherlands I get a bit lower than full speed (which is 5 mbps in my case) but when I try downloading a file from another server in another country it's limited to 1 mbps. Now when I download this file on a VPN connection I get much higher speeds than 1 mbps. So it's definitely limited by the ISP.

Now the funny story is that I once ordered a trial VPS service in a major datacenter in Bangkok and ran an international download on it. Guess what! It was limited to 1 mbsp! Now when internet in a datacenter is throttled like that, we can't expect anything better. Let's just hope that everything gets better.

But for now IMO the only thing you can do is to get yourself a VPN account. But test the server speed on your ISP before actually buying a long-term account.

I've tried VPN's and unfortunately they seem to make things worse, not better.

I tried Hide My A*s today and the performance was terrible using the Bangkok server.

Listen I'm trying to help you here. But you need to read my posts! Please read post #51.

Of course using a VPN server in BKK makes things worse! You just need to try different servers to see which one is not throttled by your ISP. I have a New York VPN connection which gives me about 2 mbps on average. I also get full speed from a server in Netherlands. Once you found your server you can stick with it.

Good luck!

[brucegoniners]

That's not my experience at all. I have excellent service and I do mostly international net connections.

have you ever tried LIVE video streaming from Europe?

Even Youtube sucks many times.

Download speed is throttled at ~1Mbit per feed. (A download manager gives better results....sometimes)

I use a virtual server in Singapore as "relay" for streaming, VPN and Proxy.

Not ideal, but much better.

A virtual server, you mean a VPN? Which one?

[brucegoniners]

Youtube has direct peering to thai isps and local cache for most viewed content, so it cant be compared to usa based iptv. Youtube is always fast for me, no matter what time is it.

correct.

But you can't also compare Youtube with TV streaming.

When you watch a clip on YT, the browser downloads a file and starts playing it, while downloading/preloading/prebuffering the complete rest of the file.

In the best case and with a halfway decent speed you will be able to download the clip a few times faster, as it's play time/duration.

But with LIVE TV streaming, you need a constant feed, because you can't preload anything (except a few seconds possibly)

And exactly this is main problem here, even streams with a very low, let's say 400kbit bitrate tend to buffer every few seconds nowadays. (since a few months).

The only solution at the moment, are imho P2P streaming programs, like Acestream/Torrentstream/Sopcast.

With these you can even watch (sport) streams with a 1.5-2 Mbit bitrate...(thanks to Russia at this point )

Some Tv streaming sites, are using a (similar) P2P technique via Flash.

"Schoener Fernsehen" and "http://torrent-tv.ru" as example.

Works also ok, most of the time.

Any idea if any of these apps have similar Mac applications? These all only work with PC's and I am a Mac user.

[mjef]

I've just had a Chat with StrongVPN which they say . . .

"we have no limits on speed but the vpn still depends on your local isp so it will most likely not make your internet faster sorry."

"we do not have servers in Thailand, speed depends mainly on your local isp and route, distance to our servers."

I checked the speed using the StrongVPN test and it came in at 2.33 Mbps Download and 0.265 Mbps Upload to the USA.

Checking with the TRUE ADSL Speed Test gave TRUE came in at 9.5 Mbps Download and 0.79 Mbps Upload (to Thailand), and 9.37 Mbps Download and 0.76 Mbps Upload (to USA).

Are there any VPN providers with servers in Bangkok?

I like the second idea of using 2 Internet providers. I could use TRUE and TOT since I have both phone lines.

Any idea about quality Modem-Routers which have dual capability?

Hide My A*s has a server in Thailand, but I just tried it using the Bangkok server. It's considerably SLOWER. I smell refund...

I think you didn't get the idea behind using VPN connections. Of course in a normal internet connection a VPN cannot make your internet any faster than it is, but at least a little bit slower because of the overhead! But in this case VPN is used to bypass a speed throttling system implemented by Thai ISPs. Most of the time we get speeds as low as 1 mbit/sec for INTERNATIONAL connections. Now with StrongVPN you got 2.33 mbit/sec (actually international speed) which is a great improvement from 1 mbps. But all the traffic will go through the StrongVPN server, meaning that your speed will be reduced to 2.33 mbps for almost all connections. So you have to use it on and off for international/domestic usage.

Now there is absolutely no reason for you to use a Thai VPN server (for speed improvement). All your traffic will go through their stupid speed limiter systems! So what's the point?

So what you're saying is the Strong VPN will actually increase my speed using their closest server (Singapore) because it bypasses Thailand altogether?

Please clarify this for me.

Something like that. I'm saying that some links are throttled by the ISPs and some are not. Once you find the right server (which is not throttled) you can use it to bypass the throttling system. Maybe a server in Singapore or maybe a specific server in USA. You should try getting some test accounts on different VPN servers and see which one works for you. Then you can stick with it. StrongVPN has lots of servers in different countries and once you buy a proper account from them, you can switch between different servers.

[brucegoniners]

I was going to bring this up. I've been here for almost 1 month now and extensively tested my internet speed in different situations. What I found out is that some international links are throttled and some not. For example when I download a file from a server in Netherlands I get a bit lower than full speed (which is 5 mbps in my case) but when I try downloading a file from another server in another country it's limited to 1 mbps. Now when I download this file on a VPN connection I get much higher speeds than 1 mbps. So it's definitely limited by the ISP.

Now the funny story is that I once ordered a trial VPS service in a major datacenter in Bangkok and ran an international download on it. Guess what! It was limited to 1 mbsp! Now when internet in a datacenter is throttled like that, we can't expect anything better. Let's just hope that everything gets better.

But for now IMO the only thing you can do is to get yourself a VPN account. But test the server speed on your ISP before actually buying a long-term account.

I've tried VPN's and unfortunately they seem to make things worse, not better.

I tried Hide My A*s today and the performance was terrible using the Bangkok server.

Listen I'm trying to help you here. But you need to read my posts! Please read post #51.

Of course using a VPN server in BKK makes things worse! You just need to try different servers to see which one is not throttled by your ISP. I have a New York VPN connection which gives me about 2 mbps on average. I also get full speed from a server in Netherlands. Once you found your server you can stick with it.

Good luck!

Thanks!

What would you suggest, a US VPN server for US programming or the closest (in this case Singapore, since both Overplay.net and StrongVPN have that as their closest servers other than Thailand?