3BB Promotion Fiber to the Home 30 Mb

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

I think the 3BB "engineer" was yanking your chain... more than just a bit.

It would depend on what kind of wifi router you're using to some extent. But as long as the router and the PC aren't too far apart or separated by any disrupting elements, most wifi uses ought to be able to do up to 30 Mbps -- provided the Internet connection is feeding the content at those speeds.

Whether the 5 Mbps down / 2 Mbps up was a good result depends on whether your speed test was done measuring the connection to someplace here in Thailand, vs. someplace international like the U.S. or Europe. And if it was to someplace like the U.S. or Europe, your ping speed would have to be 200+ ms for it to be an accurate test. Ping results in the 10-50 ms range mean the test destination is actually somewhere here in Thailand.

Here's a good site to do a reliable international speed test from, one that doesn't get gamed by the Thai ISPs.

http://testmy.net/download

I'd be interested to see the results. There haven't been many members here who have reported reliable international speed test results for their new fiber connections.

[pomozki]

Fiber may provide increased speeds for connections inside Thailand.

But thus far through many months of posts, I've yet to see any reliable, clearly documented posts here by fiber customers from any of the various retail ISP providers that show meaningful international speed improvements for the added extra monthly cost.

very interesting point - my friend here in Khon Kaen swears by his "3BB Ïnternational Premium" fiber optic deal, which "guarantees" high speeds internationally too

sounds like you're not convinced that is so - in which case, what would you say is the best deal you can get for international websites?

edit: just finished reading the rest of the posts - sounds like he's talking about the "premier" package, which you seem to believe is the only one that provides genuine international speeds - is that right?

Edited May 20, 2014 by pomozki

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

I've never been a 3BB internet customer (my local 3BB shop in BKK wanted 6 months advance payment on a one-year commitment in order to install their fiber plan to my home--no thanks), so I can't entirely answer your questions, except to say a couple things.

1. Whenever a Thai ISP is quoting internet plan download speeds, 30 Mbps or whatever, they're talking about INSIDE Thailand speeds -- not international connections. What a person gets internationally often bears little relation to what their stated/rated plan speed is.

To give an example of that, sometime back, an acquaintance here had a 20 Mbps True cable service, and I had a 10 Mbps True cable service. And we did a series of speed tests together measuring to the U.S. using the same testing website, at the same times, etc etc. For the international connection, his 20 Mbps plan performed no better than my 10 Mbps plan.

2. There's a difference between single stream and multi-stream downloads. The speed test I referred to above was measuring single stream downloads, like you'd get if streaming a video. However, we have seen that higher rated plans will tend to offer higher MULTI STREAM throughput. In other words, you might still be getting only 2 or 5 Mbps downloads, but you could have 3 or 4 of them running simultaneously. So the value or lack of value of that depends on what kind of Internet use the customer is doing.

3. Members here who talk about great Internet performance to international sites either a) often don't post anything that actually documents that performance or b] rely on some common speed test sites that give faulty/overstated speeds because they're fooled by the way Thai ISPs have configured their networks. They think they're getting an international speed test result, but with 20 to 50 ms pings, what they're actually getting is the speed to their ISP's local host server.

4. The Thai fiber network and plans are local ones between your home and their networks. But once beyond that, your data travels over the same international routing that all the rest of Thailand's international data travels over, with all the same limitations and potential technical dropouts over long distances and many hops.

5. There are some "business class" ISP plans that do better internationally, but it seems like those are charging pretty much crazy money in terms of monthly rates, 10,000 baht per month or more. I haven't seen a lot of documented performance results for those, and I don't think they're generally what most ordinary users are willing to pay for their monthly ISP service -- especially for relatively (as yet) unproven performance.

For me, I've found using a good VPN combined with a regular 699b per month True 15 Mbps cable connection gives me what I need.

Edited May 31, 2014 by TallGuyJohninBKK

[sandmonster]

Can anyone recommend a reliable ISP for the sansai noi area ? Not that bothered with extra cost of fibre if it doesnt improve on international speeds as many claim. Just for browsing, streaming movies and BBC iplayer, bit of skype.

Would international speeds to say a Singapore server be much faster than to Europe/USA ? If so, it might be better to go through a singapore VPN ?

[khunphil]

Little bit off topic, but it can help to understand. I was on Cat Telecom 2Mb/2Mb. Then we switched to TOT FIBER 25Mb/3Mb. So is it much better ? Well I can say not really.

Sending/receiving mails are slower, speed is not consistent at International, even for Skype. I am uploading with FTP twice a day a 200 MB backup to US. Result, much slower with TOT (need more time to upload). Upload varies from 10 KB/s to 300 Kb/s. They call it "swinging". CAT was stable 210 KB/s, during all the transfer time.

If I download a new Linux version, using torrent, so yes, I have a very fast download, around 1 to 1.5 MB /s. Except this, the only benefit is the price cheaper, and no Internet cut during strong storm, as we had with CAT.

I think this is the problem we can have with 3BB Promotion 30Mb and 3BB premier (that I have). Speed is "quite" consistent with Premier at international ... But sometimes, yes, it can be slow, and in this case, everything is slow.

Philippe

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

Can anyone recommend a reliable ISP for the sansai noi area ? Not that bothered with extra cost of fibre if it doesnt improve on international speeds as many claim. Just for browsing, streaming movies and BBC iplayer, bit of skype.

Would international speeds to say a Singapore server be much faster than to Europe/USA ? If so, it might be better to go through a singapore VPN ?

It depends on what kind of content you're trying to access, and whether or not it's geo-restricted.

Just for general internet use, a VPN data connection to Singapore is clearly going to be faster than a data connection to a VPN in the U.S.

But, some kinds of internet content (Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, etc) require a U.S. IP address.

Interestingly, the VPN I've been using, HMA (which is not based in Singapore), has as one of their available servers a Singapore based, virtual USA connection. So, for someone in Asia, they're making a connection to the local Singapore VPN. But somehow, that Singapore VPN server is giving you the customer a US IP.

In the speed test results I posted above, the Singapore/virtual VPN server provided somewhat, not greatly faster speeds than a direct U.S. VPN server such as in Los Angeles. But both provided greatly faster speeds (3-4 times faster) than if I was simply using my Thai internet alone to connect to the U.S.

I should add...at least as far as international routing is concerned, TOT seems to have a very bad reputation among members here who have used their services...

Edited May 31, 2014 by TallGuyJohninBKK

[pomozki]

Posters here who want to compare and evaluate the speed of their fiber or other internet services need to be careful about a couple of things:

Speedtest.net speed test results done inside Thailand for international connections are almost always FALSE... A good example is the member above who posted a supposed test to Seattle that showed a 25 ms ping, when in reality, the fastest ping you can physically get between Thailand and the U.S. is something like 200+ ms.

It's occurred to me that you're being grossly inconsiderate here. There are farang all over Thailand who have lived here for years and regularly race to their computers to tell all their friends about the amazingly fast Internet speeds they've just signed up for. Ignorance is bliss and life was wonderful until you came along and spilled the beans about the true facts. What the heck do the facts have to do with it? I've just changed over to True's fiber optic deal, offering 15mbps for 699b/month. Here are the speedtest results from 2 of the sites you mentioned. They're clearly wrong and I fully intend to continue to falsely believe I'm really getting 15mbps Thank you True for my super-fast connection.

Edited June 22, 2014 by pomozki