TOT Fibre Optic vs TRUE Docsis Cable - Which is Faster?

[avander]

We have a TOT 20mb fibre connection which seems to be reasonably fast but is certainly not blistering and we do get some lag at time when streaming from Youtube etc.

We have a 5 level shop house with have 3 x 802.11n WiFi routers. One on Level 1 (brand Tenda W309R+), another (Linksys WAG320N) on L2 (as a repeater) and hardwired to L1 and the last another Tenda (same model) as a repeater on L4 and again hardwired back to L1. No problems and consistent performance internally accessing the network from any level.

My question is based on any possible benefit of switching to a True DOCSIS cable setup we have been told (by the True Sales guys of course) that even with a lesser overall speed (17 or 18MB) connection performance will be better for streaming etc than with the TOT fibre connection?

Can anyone back up True's claims based on the merits of the technologies? TRUE seem to be offering a very good value package including internet, cable TV and a fixed line phone (would like one for a fax)?

[lomatopo]

Choose one:

Reply hazy try again

Ask again later

Better not tell you now

Cannot predict now

Concentrate and ask again

Seriously there is no way to answer your question even with a random, single user's experience hundreds of Km away.

Talk with neighbors to see what they have and what works for them. ANd search/read the gazillion threads posted here, many of which have valuable detail re: traceroutes, pings, VPN, real-world performance.

The True bundles (Double/Triple Sook etc.) do represent good value assuming you need/want cable tv, analog voice, mobile etc. See pages 41 - 47 for True On-Line promos (still good now).

http://true.listedcompany.com/misc/PRESN/20140605-TRUE-keyPromotion.pdf

Based on my vaguest recollection of the many, many, many, many, many threads over an extended period of time (FTTx is relatively new), people seem to be more satisfied with True DOCSIS vs. most other access technologies/ISP/offers.

Edited June 9, 2014 by lomatopo

[avander]

Choose one:

Reply hazy try again

Ask again later

Better not tell you now

Cannot predict now

Concentrate and ask again

Seriously there is no way to answer your question even with a random, single user's experience hundreds of Km away.

Talk with neighbors to see what they have and what works for them. ANd search/read the gazillion threads posted here, many of which have valuable detail re: traceroutes, pings, VPN, real-world performance.

The True bundles (Double/Triple Sook etc.) do represent good value assuming you need/want cable tv, analog voice, mobile etc. See pages 41 - 47 for True On-Line promos (still good now).

http://true.listedcompany.com/misc/PRESN/20140605-TRUE-keyPromotion.pdf

Based on my vaguest recollection of the many, many, many, many, many threads over an extended period of time (FTTx is relatively new), people seem to be more satisfied with True DOCSIS vs. most other access technologies/ISP/offers.

Thanks for the reply. I was hoping to get some real-world comments from people who may have swapped from a fibre to a DOCSIS cable connection or visa versa or at least done some research on both from a performance viewpoint.

I am not familiar with either technologies so was also hoping to find someone who is. I will do some further research here on TV as you suggest.

For myself, I also recall DOCSIS getting a pretty good rap but not sure how it stacks against Fibre?

[muratremix]

TOT routing is the worst in Thailand, heck in all Asian continent.

I recommend you get anything but TOT.

True, Cat, 3BB, whatever.

[joncl]

My true 50mbis dosis gives me 2.5 mbis on the international link to the UK

My tot 35mbis fiber gives me 22 mbis on the international link to the UK

[crabdog]

I haven't tried True docsis but I currently have TOT FTTX 15/2. For the most part it's okay but there are very noticeable slowdowns daily from 6pm-11pm and on weekends. I USED to have True adsl and the speeds were more consistent with no noticeable difference during peak hours. Torrents work really well (TOT) but there have been many websites that don't load properly on the first/second attempt recently (since the coup). Not sure if it's related to the bandwidth shaping or the extra monitoring they've slapped on since. I suspect that you would get better streaming with TRUE because as muratremix said, TOT international routing is abysmal.

[arkom]

Sorry if this doesn't help but I have used both TOT and True but on ADSL and feel they are the same with True being slightly better in terms of speed.

Now I am using 3BB Fibre and very happy with it, I feel 3BB is the best of the worst. I always get the advertised D/L speed if 30 Mbs and sometimes get up to 45-50 Mbs bursts. Evening and weekends I do not experience any slowdowns traffic wise. Torrents download very quick depending on size.

I would recommend looking at 3BB Fiber if available in your area.

Edited June 9, 2014 by arkom

[oTwoPies]

Joncl & Arkom:

I, and I am sure there are many others, would be most grateful if you could post speed test results (either cut and paste the graphs or the link to the results) of your True, TOT and 3BB fiber connections using the website:-

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest.html

For those of you interested the Thinkbroadband test is from a UK server and seems to give results that I can correlate to the real world beeb iPlayer video stream and also the program download performance.

I do not know if it has been mentioned in these posts, it has certainly been discussed in many posts on TV, but ALL ISP providers in Thailand are quoting internal internet speeds. Your 10, 20, 30 or even 50mb/sec speed you pay for is only inside Thailand and as soon as you try to access video servers in the UK or the US you have a major shock. The speed test in the link above seems to give accurate results for video streaming. If you are interested in torrrent downloads then I would suggest you base your decisions on speed test results from the link above and also:-

http://testmy.net/

cheers and I look forward to seeing some interesting results

[Pib]

True DOCSIS 15Mb/1.5Mb plan, Bangkok, 5:45pm

[wpcoe]

I, and I am sure there are many others, would be most grateful if you could post speed test results (either cut and paste the graphs or the link to the results) of your True, TOT and 3BB fiber connections using the website:-

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest.html

Thanks for that link! It's nice to finally find an online speed test that checks multi-threaded download speed. Even better that it tests for burst speed.

[nikster]

I have TOT 30Mbit fiber. Pretty happy with it. Obviously I don't have 30Mbit internationally, unless I'm downloading stuff from co-located server farms like Apple, Microsoft, etc. YouTube is co-located as well but I am guessing the line is maxed out at all times. Thais love YouTube.

I am getting the full 30Mbit on parallel downloads and bit torrent - that's as good as it's going to get. Even if you live in the west, you never get the full line speed for single downloads, at least not in my experience. I tested my friend's connection in San Francisco - it's fast, but it was an effective average speed of 6Mbit on a nominally 30Mbit line.

I wouldn't believe anything True marketing tells you, and certainly not something entirely un-provable like "youtube is faster". YouTube will get faster if and when Google adds more / better caching to it. I've heard they are in the process of doing just that, for all of Asia.

[IMScott]

Anyone know how much TOT 20Meg Fiber is per month now? Landlord is putting it in and says I would need to pay half. He said my half would be 400 per month, is that right? Seems too cheap. Thanks

[Steiner]

Just go to the TOT office somewhere like Pattaya on any day and have a seat for 10 minutes, you will see just how pathetic TOT service is, you will see a procession of irate people.

If you have a problem with True they are on it immediately, may have a tech call you back within an hour and will have someone out next day latest.

For TOT you best not hold you breath for any kind of back up service.

Example #1. We had TOT at the office, checked with them if our phone number was portable to our new office, told it was and arranged an installation date for the day before we moved.

No show.

Called them, 'tomorrow.'

No show.

Eventually discovered that the number WASN'T portable and it took them 5, yes 5 f*#kin weeks to fit a phone line.

In the meantime we had True come and install phones and internet within 36 hrs.

Example #2. We bought a condo outside Bkk near the beach, only provider in the complex was TOT **facepalm!

4 weeks and 17, yes I did just say 17 calls, later they installed it, ip tv box took 9 weeks and when the internet failed it took 3 days to get it working.

Engineer said the couldn't take the stress, everyone hated him because they overloaded his workload and every install was late.

Also missed a bill as we were out of the country, had of been True we could have paid it and back on, with TOT we had to waste time going to their office.

Do yourself a favour and stay well away from TOT!

[lannachiangrai]

I have been using a TOT fibre optic line for a couple years now in Chiang Rai. Even though the speed is 15MB for in-country hosted websites, I have noticed a significant performance hit over the past year or so on foreign websites and when I asked the local technician about it, he said that TOT has lost their contract for foreign bandwidth and is now using the military's pipeline. As a test, I installed a TRUE sim card in my ipad and noticed it was MUCH faster on foreign websites, not buffering at all, even when loading HD video. True said they have their own contract to get bandwidth from abroad so if I had the option (which unfortunately I don't yet,) I personally would switch to the True Docsis cable.

[lvr181]

Seems simple to me - don't use TOT

[captainhornblower]

Anyone know how much TOT 20Meg Fiber is per month now? Landlord is putting it in and says I would need to pay half. He said my half would be 400 per month, is that right? Seems too cheap. Thanks

I am paying for a 20MB TOT Fiber optic line 1,605 baht per month in Koh Samui. Not sure if charges vary according to location.

Hope that is of some help

[RichCor]

Anyone know how much TOT 20Meg Fiber is per month now? Landlord is putting it in and says I would need to pay half. He said my half would be 400 per month, is that right? Seems too cheap. Thanks

ToT FTTx Fiber 2U service pricing seems to vary depending on whether the area is already established or if they are rolling out new service and offering promotions.

When dealing with ToT, I've been independently charged a Wire-Run fee, a connection Setup Fee, and then monthly billing.

My 15/1 FTTx service in Chiang Rai Province runs a bit over ฿840 /mo (1-year minimum contract, includes cost of Fiber Optic router)

[thairastawoman]

I wonder what you can do with suck speed when the international connections cannot even bring data as fast as ADSL...

[RichCor]

I wonder what you can do with suck speed when the international connections cannot even bring data as fast as ADSL...

As some in-country or neighboring-country Server Farms have better International Gateway bandwidth, some ThaiVisa members have chosen to pay for access to Proxy Servers or VPS/VPN services so thy can directly access the lower latency / higher bandwidth gateways.

Try using the ThaiVisa search with the word Proxy, VPS or VPN for further discussion.

[muratremix]

I would avoid TOT wherever possible.

Bad routing, overloaded routers that cause high pings, overloaded international internet gateway (IIG).

Although none of them are perfect, True / Cat is still much better than TOT.

But if your main purpose for internet is browsing, facebook and google services + youtube, TOT is sufficent for these.

For online gaming, voip it is not.

[IMScott]

I would avoid TOT wherever possible.

Bad routing, overloaded routers that cause high pings, overloaded international internet gateway (IIG).

Although none of them are perfect, True / Cat is still much better than TOT.

But if your main purpose for internet is browsing, facebook and google services + youtube, TOT is sufficent for these.

For online gaming, voip it is not.

I've been using TOT for a few months with ADSL 8MB service. Landlord just opted for 20MB Fiber so will see if the speed gets any better (it's going in next week). Don't do games, but mostly use Skype while working on client projects. For doing online work, it should be a little better than what I have now, I hope. We'll see.

[belg]

boys & girls, what they give you are theoretical maximum speeds, which are filled with any kind of excuse to give you much less what you pay for

[Pib]

Well, it not "theoretical" speeds because as long as you are not "kilometers" away from your ADSL DSLAM and have a good physical line you can easily get the speed the Internet Service Providers (ISP) advertise and sell to you...and a person needs to understand those speed are "domestic" speeds and not international speeds....your international speed will be much lower on an accurate/unfooled speedtest since the ISPs throttle and/or don't buy enough international bandwidth...bandwidth costs money and the great, great majority of the ISPs customers are Thais accessing "in-Thailand" websites/servers. However, Thai ISPs have no problem selling their plans to folks who they know are at the end of l....o....n....g and not well maintained copper ADSL lines...happens all too often.

[innerspace]

If the money isnt an issue get both.

Different floors on different connections gives your higher max throughput, simpler and cheaper than proper load balancing.

Plus you have a backup if one goes down, TIT.

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