Speed Test, why such variable results?

[lujanit]

Last night I was trying to stream a BBC News video and it kept stopping to buffer. So I did a speed test. Turns out I get two very different results depending on the whereabouts of the server I ping. Within Thailand I get a download speed of 7.3 mb yet when I ping a server in Europe or the US it dropped to 0.5mb.

Just now I did another speed test. A bit better from overseas but not much. Results are:

Server in Thailand download 7311 kbps

Server in the US 2438 kbps, last night 2300 hours 538 kbps

I am using TOT and there is no alternative provider in our moo baan. So why the completely different results? I am thinking of getting IPTV yet with these overseas results that would not be feasible.

Edited September 20, 2013 by lujanit

[Pib]

Servers within Thailand are of course much closer than servers on the other side of the Earth...when connecting to servers in far off Farang Land you will be routed through more hops/relays/gateways/servers along the way to the server you are reaching out to...all of this can degrade your speed. But the biggest problem is Thai ISPs like TOT, True, etc., don't buy enough "international" bandwidth....there are plenty of overland/undersea fiber optic lines from/to Thailand but that don't mean Thai ISPs buy enough of that bandwidth to allow everyone to connect at high speeds to international websites. Basically, the international bandwidth is throttled....ISPs don't buy enough.

Also, for streaming video "consistent, steady" data flow is critical; if the data flow has a lot of stop-and-go's in the milliseconds, peaks and dips in the speed of data flow, etc., streaming video won't work very well...will cause a lot of buffering....maybe so much buffering you lose the connection or the video is just not watchable. Additionally, streaming video sites will also limit the data flow per connection to where you should still get a smooth flowing video "if", repeat, if your total connection pipeline provides adequate, smooth, consistent bandwidth all the way between that streaming video server and your location on Earth.

[lujanit]

Pib Thanks for the reply. TOT are trying to sell me fibre optic, 20 mb at twice what I am paying now. Given as correct what you are saying I would be wasting my money.

[moonseeker]

Pib Thanks for the reply. TOT are trying to sell me fibre optic, 20 mb at twice what I am paying now. Given as correct what you are saying I would be wasting my money.

Hi Lujanit

Have you tried upgrading your regular package? The low end packagers of all providers are declared suitable for surfing within Thailand/National only and are poor internationally.

I have several fiber optic lines / packages from BBB & TOT and am quite pleased. Here the USA results on a 30-MB line:

Last Result:

Download Speed: 32361 kbps (4045.1 KB/sec transfer rate)

Upload Speed: 2693 kbps (336.6 KB/sec transfer rate)

Latency: 9 ms

9/21/2013 8:52:14 AM

[jphantom]

Moonseeker,

What do you pay BBB please...

thanks

[Ton1959]

Pib Thanks for the reply. TOT are trying to sell me fibre optic, 20 mb at twice what I am paying now. Given as correct what you are saying I would be wasting my money.

Facing the same problems here (Ban Phe). Only <4 Mb available (when it is working!) or upgrade to Fiber.

Don't mind to pay more if it's a really faster and stable connection but having my doubts.

Complaining here at the local TOT office doesn't help. They say their only job is collecting the money from the bills and went back to reading their glossy magazines.

Went to Rayong office talking with a friendly lady and got a discount for my poor connection.

But I prefer an improved infra-structure with better performance.

Until now no choice, no True, no 3BB or whatever.

Ton

[mjef]

There is only one answer to your problem. People try to make things out of their imagination, but the reality is that since the international bandwidth is limited in Thailand, ISPs try to throttle and share it equally between their users. But the mechanism of their bandwidth throttling system is not clear to me yet. As some servers in the US for example give me full speed and some don't. Right now I'm downloading a big file on my True 10 Mbps ADSL. The download speed is about 400 kByte/sec. But when I connect my New York VPN and continue the download, the speed goes up to 1+ MByte/sec (which is my full speed). Speedtest.net shows a full speed of 10 mbps (down) / 1 mbps (up) with servers in Thailand. But for the servers out of Thailand it's a different story.

Using a VPN connection is the only way to bypass their throttling system on the condition that your VPN server itself is not throttled by your ISP.

[Pib]

Pib Thanks for the reply. TOT are trying to sell me fibre optic, 20 mb at twice what I am paying now. Given as correct what you are saying I would be wasting my money.

Hi Lujanit

Have you tried upgrading your regular package? The low end packagers of all providers are declared suitable for surfing within Thailand/National only and are poor internationally.

I have several fiber optic lines / packages from BBB & TOT and am quite pleased. Here the USA results on a 30-MB line:

Last Result:

Download Speed: 32361 kbps (4045.1 KB/sec transfer rate)

Upload Speed: 2693 kbps (336.6 KB/sec transfer rate)

Latency: 9 ms

9/21/2013 8:52:14 AM

Unfortunately, above speed test result violate a law of phyics: the speed of light. Since your results reflect a 9ms ping time, where ping time to the U.S. would have been in the 200-300ms ballpark, your test results were from a local cache server. I expect you were using a "Flash-based/OOKLA" speed tester like Speedtest.net or the Flash-based tester the ISPs have for you to use at their web sites which are easily fooled by cache servers.

You may want to test again using some other speedtesters like those at the DSLReports web site (use the Java-based tester) or at the testmy.net web site. You download speed and ping time to international websites should then not violate the speed of light law.

[Pib]

Pib Thanks for the reply. TOT are trying to sell me fibre optic, 20 mb at twice what I am paying now. Given as correct what you are saying I would be wasting my money.

Well, maybe....you could get better international speed as parts of the TOT fiber network are different than their ADSL network. Although a ISP's international gateway seems to be the biggest chokepoint it does appear local circuits can also affect international speed. But "generally" you may not get faster international speed...but it may be a more consistent, steady international speed.

You can go to this website where internet users in Phuket have been logging their results. They are suppose to be using this DSLReports speedtester to the Parsippany, NJ/USA server you can tell in the remarks section that some may not have. Hard to do an apples to apples comparison when people don't follow the instructions. Although the particular DSL reports speedtester being used in the test is a "flash-based" tester its programming is suppose to be different to help avoid being fooled by local cache server. Go to this Link at the website and it should open up to folks who have reported results for their TOT 20/3Mb fiber lines...as you see most speed results are in the 2 to 3Mb ballpark to the U.S. But if that 2-3Mb speed is smooth/steady versus stop-and-go (in the milliseconds) it would flow streaming video just fine.

[ignis]

It is all a big mystery to me..... guess will always be so...

So yesterday try as I may I could not get BBC 1 on BBC Player, or BBC Live using a UK ISP....... yet change to a Australasian one = got + good picture, next watch Practice session of F1, very bad on Australia, changed again to UK, perfect Sky Sports Live HD.... like watching House in the Country on ITV had to change again to get a good picture......

I mean watch the full program live without constant stopping to buffer. yet between the 2 F1 practice sessions was GP2 also at Singapore, no matter where I tried all were the same buffeting all the time.

[wimpey1946]

Pib Thanks for the reply. TOT are trying to sell me fibre optic, 20 mb at twice what I am paying now. Given as correct what you are saying I would be wasting my money.

You can try CAT, they put a pole in your garden for 4000 baht and I think you can get them anywhere.

I have a good speed all the time with them all the time

download a movie 1.5 gb in 20 minutes.

fastest I had sofar in Thailand

I live in rural area near Phichit.

Edited September 21, 2013 by wimpey1946

[Pib]

It is all a big mystery to me..... guess will always be so...

So yesterday try as I may I could not get BBC 1 on BBC Player, or BBC Live using a UK ISP....... yet change to a Australasian one = got + good picture, next watch Practice session of F1, very bad on Australia, changed again to UK, perfect Sky Sports Live HD.... like watching House in the Country on ITV had to change again to get a good picture......

I mean watch the full program live without constant stopping to buffer. yet between the 2 F1 practice sessions was GP2 also at Singapore, no matter where I tried all were the same buffeting all the time.

Can all depend on the data/DNS routing be taken, how loaded the streaming server is, and other magical things. It sure can be frustrating when you really wanted to watch something.

[AjarnMartin]

Servers within Thailand are of course much closer than servers on the other side of the Earth...when connecting to servers in far off Farang Land you will be routed through more hops/relays/gateways/servers along the way to the server you are reaching out to...all of this can degrade your speed. But the biggest problem is Thai ISPs like TOT, True, etc., don't buy enough "international" bandwidth....there are plenty of overland/undersea fiber optic lines from/to Thailand but that don't mean Thai ISPs buy enough of that bandwidth to allow everyone to connect at high speeds to international websites. Basically, the international bandwidth is throttled....ISPs don't buy enough.

Also, for streaming video "consistent, steady" data flow is critical; if the data flow has a lot of stop-and-go's in the milliseconds, peaks and dips in the speed of data flow, etc., streaming video won't work very well...will cause a lot of buffering....maybe so much buffering you lose the connection or the video is just not watchable. Additionally, streaming video sites will also limit the data flow per connection to where you should still get a smooth flowing video "if", repeat, if your total connection pipeline provides adequate, smooth, consistent bandwidth all the way between that streaming video server and your location on Earth.

Thanks Pib, for this very clear and succinct reason for the OP's difficulty. It's great to see there are still TV contributors who can add a valuable insight to posters' concerns instead of constantly moaning and bitching about life in this beautiful country.

[Rorri]

Pib Thanks for the reply. TOT are trying to sell me fibre optic, 20 mb at twice what I am paying now. Given as correct what you are saying I would be wasting my money.

They deliberately restrict your bandwidth hoping you will pay for a more expensive package, it is a swindle. If the bandwidth is there, for higher priced packages, then it is there for ALL packages. 3BB do the same thing, I can accept being throttled back if all bandwidth is in use and more is given to higher paying customers, but not if there is bandwidth available. Another Thai scam.

[mjef]

It is all a big mystery to me..... guess will always be so...

So yesterday try as I may I could not get BBC 1 on BBC Player, or BBC Live using a UK ISP....... yet change to a Australasian one = got + good picture, next watch Practice session of F1, very bad on Australia, changed again to UK, perfect Sky Sports Live HD.... like watching House in the Country on ITV had to change again to get a good picture......

I mean watch the full program live without constant stopping to buffer. yet between the 2 F1 practice sessions was GP2 also at Singapore, no matter where I tried all were the same buffeting all the time.

If you read my previous post (post #7) there wouldn't be any mysteries!!!

This completely proves what I said. SOME international servers (IPs) are throttled. And only some of them! You might get a terrible speed from a fast server in the US, but get the full speed from another server again in the US. This has absolutely nothing with the location of the server. This is a throttling system that limits some IP addresses. That's it!

[Malthus101]

Pib Thanks for the reply. TOT are trying to sell me fibre optic, 20 mb at twice what I am paying now. Given as correct what you are saying I would be wasting my money.

International bandwidth from Thailand is absolute crap. I am seriously thinking I may have to leave the country and go somewhere with better speeds as I cannot study with my US teachers in the evening here. Sometimes I've got as low as 88Kbps with my 10Mbps True "Hi-Speed" ADSL service!

If they offer you fibre optic, ask them in writing to guarantee your international speed.

They probably won't.

Therefore, a waste of money. No one needs 20Mbps within Thailand.

[recom273]

To answer your original question, speedtests results are cached .. Like Pib says, the ping tests defy the laws of physics.

Theres a lot of BS in peoples theories here, yeah, fact, all ISP's throttle the bandwidth after 6.30 PM until 12.00. The only way you are going to get around it is by renting a premium line which has a restricted number of subscribers, these are not throttled.

Im happy with my setup here, I pay 3BB something like 899B because im optimizing my connection for my needs.

To start with, ignore any speedtest - traceroute to the source IP, maybe your path to the BBC server is running through several un-needed hops which will increase latency. Then speak to the ISP, not the monkeys on the help desk, but insist on a call back from Tech support, email them your traceroute and ping to the server and discuss how you can get better performance. I know from experience they can help if you speak to them and they are pretty clued up.

You may also want to talk to your VPN provider to check why you couldnt get a connection at a specific time, the fact that you could access a Auz server sounds like you have a VPN issue which the ISP may have a suggestion to cure, i.e there may be a conflict in the outgoing port.

[ignis]

To answer your original question, speedtests results are cached .. Like Pib says, the ping tests defy the laws of physics.

Theres a lot of BS in peoples theories here, yeah, fact, all ISP's throttle the bandwidth after 6.30 PM until 12.00. The only way you are going to get around it is by renting a premium line which has a restricted number of subscribers, these are not throttled.

Im happy with my setup here, I pay 3BB something like 899B because im optimizing my connection for my needs.

To start with, ignore any speedtest - traceroute to the source IP, maybe your path to the BBC server is running through several un-needed hops which will increase latency. Then speak to the ISP, not the monkeys on the help desk, but insist on a call back from Tech support, email them your traceroute and ping to the server and discuss how you can get better performance. I know from experience they can help if you speak to them and they are pretty clued up.

You may also want to talk to your VPN provider to check why you couldnt get a connection at a specific time, the fact that you could access a Auz server sounds like you have a VPN issue which the ISP may have a suggestion to cure, i.e there may be a conflict in the outgoing port.

Thanks think I understand...

to me just appear odd, can watch something fine, yet next program is no good, for TV normally use UK or Australia, but often via Cyprus is a better picture, maybe not so many use that one...

Not the correct Thread, but often wonder about these IPTV boxes, "watch anything anywhere in the world", sounds good but do they get this Buffeting problem ?

Ask as the past year or so appears that I have to constantly find a better connection on my PC to watch LIVE TV.

[jacko45k]

TOT is my supplier, I don't think much of them.

The landline is why I haven't changed and obviously I don't want to run a second line into the house.

[Anon999]

Pib Thanks for the reply. TOT are trying to sell me fibre optic, 20 mb at twice what I am paying now. Given as correct what you are saying I would be wasting my money.

Hi Lujanit

Have you tried upgrading your regular package? The low end packagers of all providers are declared suitable for surfing within Thailand/National only and are poor internationally.

I have several fiber optic lines / packages from BBB & TOT and am quite pleased. Here the USA results on a 30-MB line:

Last Result:

Download Speed: 32361 kbps (4045.1 KB/sec transfer rate)

Upload Speed: 2693 kbps (336.6 KB/sec transfer rate)

Latency: 9 ms

9/21/2013 8:52:14 AM

Unfortunately, above speed test result violate a law of phyics: the speed of light. Since your results reflect a 9ms ping time, where ping time to the U.S. would have been in the 200-300ms ballpark, your test results were from a local cache server. I expect you were using a "Flash-based/OOKLA" speed tester like Speedtest.net or the Flash-based tester the ISPs have for you to use at their web sites which are easily fooled by cache servers.

You may want to test again using some other speedtesters like those at the DSLReports web site (use the Java-based tester) or at the testmy.net web site. You download speed and ping time to international websites should then not violate the speed of light law.

Pib, thanks for those links. Tried 3 of the options from DSL through Adobe and got some widely differing results.

Link LIne to LA: D/L 11.19 Mbps U/L 642 kbps Latency 258

Net@ccess to Parsippany: D/L 1.6 Mbps U/L 613 kbps Latency 192

Comcast to Washington: D/L 237 kbps U/L 483 kbps Latency 170

Tried the same through VPN and the results were so bad I didn't record them.

Any thoughts on those results?

[Pib]

Anon999,

Just different routing to each of the servers testing to....only takes one of the hops/relays/servers enroute to the destination server to be the speed bump in the road. But I expect the biggest speed bump is right at your ISP's international gateway...then it gets slowed down some more by other speed bumps along the way. Sometimes I use StrongVPN via one of their San Francisco VPN server and the best VPN speed I can get on a good day is a hair over 2Mb on my True 14Mb DOCSIS/cable internet plan. I expect most of that speed reduction happens at my ISPs international gateway server you are still going through to reach that VPN server...but there are also times when my VPN speed is much slower...would be ashamed to post the speeds. But just because a person is say not getting 10Mb speed to LA on their 10Mb plan does not mean the 2Mb they are getting to LA is not enough to make internet surfing, streaming video, etc., work just fine.

Give me a couple MBs of steady, consistent international speed and live video streaming and other internet stuff will work just fine and fast....you wouldn't notice the difference between 2Mb or 10Mb for the most part. Yes, yes, for folks who live in the world of torrents they want the fastest speed possible, but since torrent programs and download managers use multi-thread operations they can possibly get international file download speeds close to that 10Mb plan. But unfortunately, things like live video streaming and browser surfing are single-thread operations.

I noticed the slowest speed is to Washington D.C.....makes sense...nothing gets done quickly in that town...guess that's why Congress and President Obama can't get anything done without a lot of buffering, disconnects, retransmissions, etc.

OK, to make yourself falsely feel better now that you know the real international speed you are getting just go run some tests using Speedtest.net since many people will get faster-than-light ping times and download speeds making it seem like that speedtest server in far off FarangLand is just across the soi (and the caching server fooling Speedtest.net may indeed just be across the soi).

[Anon999]

Anon999,

Just different routing to each of the servers testing to....only takes one of the hops/relays/servers enroute to the destination server to be the speed bump in the road. But I expect the biggest speed bump is right at your ISP's international gateway...then it gets slowed down some more by other speed bumps along the way. Sometimes I use StrongVPN via one of their San Francisco VPN server and the best VPN speed I can get on a good day is a hair over 2Mb on my True 14Mb DOCSIS/cable internet plan. I expect most of that speed reduction happens at my ISPs international gateway server you are still going through to reach that VPN server...but there are also times when my VPN speed is much slower...would be ashamed to post the speeds. But just because a person is say not getting 10Mb speed to LA on their 10Mb plan does not mean the 2Mb they are getting to LA is not enough to make internet surfing, streaming video, etc., work just fine.

Give me a couple MBs of steady, consistent international speed and live video streaming and other internet stuff will work just fine and fast....you wouldn't notice the difference between 2Mb or 10Mb for the most part. Yes, yes, for folks who live in the world of torrents they want the fastest speed possible, but since torrent programs and download managers use multi-thread operations they can possibly get international file download speeds close to that 10Mb plan. But unfortunately, things like live video streaming and browser surfing are single-thread operations.

I noticed the slowest speed is to Washington D.C.....makes sense...nothing gets done quickly in that town...guess that's why Congress and President Obama can't get anything done without a lot of buffering, disconnects, retransmissions, etc.

OK, to make yourself falsely feel better now that you know the real international speed you are getting just go run some tests using Speedtest.net since many people will get faster-than-light ping times and download speeds making it seem like that speedtest server in far off FarangLand is just across the soi (and the caching server fooling Speedtest.net may indeed just be across the soi).

Thanks for that detailed explanation. It certainly explains some things. I have been watching the Ashes Test Cricket and sometimes it was terrible. Completely lost everything particularly >23:00 and couldn't reconnect. I'm not really bothered about speed tests only what I can see on my monitor.

[lujanit]

Thanks for all these replies guys. I have two choices. I can increase to 10mb and it's only an extra 50 baht per month (Bt650) but I have to lock in for a year. TOT will then give their basic IPTV for zilch but there's not much of interest there to me. After that start paying more if you want better channels. They say I only need 3 mb to run IPTV flawlessly and that will probably work as it would becoming from their own server in Thailand.

The second choice is fibre optic starting at 20 mb and costing about Bt1500 a month. I like the idea of trying to nail them down as to a guaranteed speed however I doubt they will do that.

I will check out those links Pib posted tomorrow.

Is any using a specific VPN they can recommend?

[shariq607]

Pib Thanks for the reply. TOT are trying to sell me fibre optic, 20 mb at twice what I am paying now. Given as correct what you are saying I would be wasting my money.

Well, maybe....you could get better international speed as parts of the TOT fiber network are different than their ADSL network. Although a ISP's international gateway seems to be the biggest chokepoint it does appear local circuits can also affect international speed. But "generally" you may not get faster international speed...but it may be a more consistent, steady international speed.

You can go to this website where internet users in Phuket have been logging their results. They are suppose to be using this DSLReports speedtester to the Parsippany, NJ/USA server you can tell in the remarks section that some may not have. Hard to do an apples to apples comparison when people don't follow the instructions. Although the particular DSL reports speedtester being used in the test is a "flash-based" tester its programming is suppose to be different to help avoid being fooled by local cache server. Go to this Link at the website and it should open up to folks who have reported results for their TOT 20/3Mb fiber lines...as you see most speed results are in the 2 to 3Mb ballpark to the U.S. But if that 2-3Mb speed is smooth/steady versus stop-and-go (in the milliseconds) it would flow streaming video just fine.

yes it is true that average home internet users will not get good international speed they desire but it does not mean that it is not possible in thailand, corporate dedicated private lines get better international speed than their home internet counterparts, i have two lines, one is true 599 baht 10 mb adsl package and the other corporate dedicated private line which is 100 mbps and costs 30 times 20-30 times more than cheapest home packages. my 10 mb true gets 2-4 mb outside the kingdom but my private line gets 30% international bandwidth out of the total advertised speed. so yes if you are willing to spend serious bucks it is possible to get good international speeds in bangkok. (not sure of outside bangkok) i also get the option of choosing internet packet routes by calling them plus a few static ip addresses. i can also stream netflix @ 1080 p super HD 3D

Edited September 21, 2013 by shariq607

[pbassham]

So, shariq607, what kind of VPN or proxy or what do you use to get that kind of quality on Netflix? Because the ones that I have tried have not allowed me to get anywhere close to those speeds with a VPN. But my base speed without a VPN is almost 50mbps.