Lower ping to US from Thailand with VPN - possible?

[Myran]

VPN´s are probably better known to increase ping rather than lower it, but I´ve talked with people from other countries, like India, who have successfully lowered their ping to US servers when gaming. So, since I´m getting crap pings to the US with my 10 Mbps/0.5 Mbps True connection I´d thought I´d ask if anyone has found a VPN service that manages to lower their ping to the US or Europe. Perhaps one of the gaming-oriented VPN´s?

With my current VPN service, ibVPN, I sometimes manage to get a slight decrease to European servers (from 430 to 400 ms and such), so hope still remains that I perhaps can get decent figures to the US, at least below 200.

Cheers

[RichCor]

Utilizing a VPN or a Proxy Server can/will alter the path/route your data packets take to reach and return to a target. If I redirect my Internet traffic to originate in Singapore, Hong Kong or India, the route the data takes will be different, possibly bypassing hi-congestion, bottle-necked routers or misconfigured gateway routers.

Try using some of the open PROXY Servers first, since these don't force encryption that can add to delays. I use HOLA browser extension to automate the process, but if you're gaming you'll want something you can set either at the system or home-router level.

proxynova.com contains a list of open proxy servers (many of them are provided by google)

Use the Proxy Server List tab at the top to select country

[Myran]

Thanks for the info. The problem is that many games seem to be able to detect he use of proxies and ban people who use them.

[PhanganNet]

Lower pings are almost always possible in standard end user environment. Especially when you are using ISP-s that are filtering content. When traffic is encrypted with safe algorithms (OpenVPN is the only one that I think is left safe), the filtering is rendered pointless and traffic tends to find shorter paths. For avoiding detection, I would not use well known VPN providers such as HMA as their IP-s are also well known and are often automatically added to various blacklists. I have set up a number of private VPN and proxy servers myself in US and can recommend LA data centers that have links to Singapore.

Best of luck

Edited May 24, 2014 by PhanganNet

[Myran]

Thanks mate, I´ll check that out.

[crabdog]

I get pretty good results using WTFast gaming VPN but there are some caveats that go along with it.

I have the TOT fttx (fiber to the network) connection which has so far been reliable but has worse international routing than TRUE, which results in higher pings for me.

For my game servers in Australia I ping 300-400 which is reallly woeful considering the geography. With WTFast my ping can get as low as 140ms. I haven't had the same success with European/UK servers. Normal pings are 230-260 and with WTFast they're about the same.

Now for the caveat: Every day around 7pm (roughly the same time but can vary up to an hour or so) TOT appears to implement some kind of ping limiting where my pings to all international servers increase by roughly 100ms (currently 360 to Australia, 330 to Europe and about the same to US). This limiting stays in place for several hours, usually going back to normal around 11pm. The biggest problem is that WTFast has no effect during these periods. It seems that the limiting applies to any international servers regardless of routing/hops. It's obviously part of the setup they have in place and contrary to popular belief it is NOT due to increased customers congesting the lines during peak hours. This is obvious because the results are always exactly the same ie: the pings don't vary during those peak hours, they're very consistent. Also the change is instantaneous, as if someone at TOT has just flicked the "<deleted> you farangs" switch. Likewise at the end of the period the pings drop immediately to their normal state. Strangely though, torrents and downloads remain full speed during the limiting phase which is another sign that congestion is not the issue. I never experienced this issue whilst I had TRUE adsl but there were occasional slowdowns. On my works' wifi (TRUE) I get fantastic pings to Australia and Europe without the need of any VPN - 220ms to EU and 130 to Aus.

So yeah, WTFast should work for you. You can try it free for the first month and after that if you decide to register it's about 300 baht/month. If you give it a try I'd be very interested to hear about your results with it. Good luck.

[Myran]

I get pretty good results using WTFast gaming VPN but there are some caveats that go along with it.

I have the TOT fttx (fiber to the network) connection which has so far been reliable but has worse international routing than TRUE, which results in higher pings for me.

For my game servers in Australia I ping 300-400 which is reallly woeful considering the geography. With WTFast my ping can get as low as 140ms. I haven't had the same success with European/UK servers. Normal pings are 230-260 and with WTFast they're about the same.

Now for the caveat: Every day around 7pm (roughly the same time but can vary up to an hour or so) TOT appears to implement some kind of ping limiting where my pings to all international servers increase by roughly 100ms (currently 360 to Australia, 330 to Europe and about the same to US). This limiting stays in place for several hours, usually going back to normal around 11pm. The biggest problem is that WTFast has no effect during these periods. It seems that the limiting applies to any international servers regardless of routing/hops. It's obviously part of the setup they have in place and contrary to popular belief it is NOT due to increased customers congesting the lines during peak hours. This is obvious because the results are always exactly the same ie: the pings don't vary during those peak hours, they're very consistent. Also the change is instantaneous, as if someone at TOT has just flicked the "<deleted> you farangs" switch. Likewise at the end of the period the pings drop immediately to their normal state. Strangely though, torrents and downloads remain full speed during the limiting phase which is another sign that congestion is not the issue. I never experienced this issue whilst I had TRUE adsl but there were occasional slowdowns. On my works' wifi (TRUE) I get fantastic pings to Australia and Europe without the need of any VPN - 220ms to EU and 130 to Aus.

So yeah, WTFast should work for you. You can try it free for the first month and after that if you decide to register it's about 300 baht/month. If you give it a try I'd be very interested to hear about your results with it. Good luck.

Yeah I´ll definitely check that out. Thanks a lot. That ping-shaping with TOT sounds like a real pain in the ass though

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

Lower pings are almost always possible in standard end user environment. Especially when you are using ISP-s that are filtering content. When traffic is encrypted with safe algorithms (OpenVPN is the only one that I think is left safe), the filtering is rendered pointless and traffic tends to find shorter paths. For avoiding detection, I would not use well known VPN providers such as HMA as their IP-s are also well known and are often automatically added to various blacklists. I have set up a number of private VPN and proxy servers myself in US and can recommend LA data centers that have links to Singapore.

Best of luck

I've used a variety of VPN services in BKK over the years, and currently use HMA. In my experience, in terms of facilitating video streaming from the U.S., it's the best of any of the services I've ever tried. But, I don't do any kind of gaming so I'm not concerned about any gaming-related performance.

For purposes of this thread, I figured I'd run a couple of tests using PingTest.net comparing Ping and Jitter on my True Online 15 Mbps cable plan in BKK and connecting to a server in Los Angeles CA. The first two tests I ran used the True cable connection direct. The second two tests I ran connected to the same server in L.A. instead using HMA's L.A.-based VPN server.

In both tests, the Ping times were lower and the Jitter was somewhat less on my HMA VPN connection compared to the True Online direct connection.

True Online direct:

HMA VPN L.A. server with PPTP connection:

And, as I've posted previously in other threads, my straight speed test results to the U.S. usually are two or three times faster using the HMA VPN PPTP compared to using a direct True Online connection.