Internet speeds in Thailand are a joke

[rwdrwdrwd]

Woah - Singapore with http://www.broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk/?&again up to 23Mbps - I might owe you a few pints!

Edit - Just got Dallas with Speedtest at 29Mbps, getting London at 22 whilst streaming HD to the TV (thought I'd test it out) - I definitely owe you a few pints! That's an insane improvement - thank you very, very much!

Edited October 17, 2014 by rwdrwdrwd

[IMHO]

Woah - Singapore with http://www.broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk/?&again up to 23Mbps - I might owe you a few pints!

Edit - Just got Dallas with Speedtest at 29Mbps, getting London at 22 whilst streaming HD to the TV (thought I'd test it out) - I definitely owe you a few pints! That's an insane improvement - thank you very, very much!

Not sure what setting you ended up going for, but it's worth doing a little experimenting.. what works for me might not be your particular sweet spot.

Happy to hear you've finally ended 6 months of pain

[A1Str8]

Who would have thought.

[Cypress Hill]

Max out my 50Mbps DOCSIS connection when bringing down torrents. 6.2MB per second.

Streaming from international sites is never a problem.

High end router running DD-WRT

[Pib]

Internet speed "in" Thailand (domestic speed) is generally just fine...more than enough to surf/download from Thailand sites, however, but, "international" speed has a lot to be desired.

[attrayant]

Forgive me fellas as I'm not a digital nomad. What do you use all that bandwidth for?

This is what I came here to ask as well. Back in the states I had best-effort DSL which clocked in at a mighty 768 Kbps. As low as that sounds, it was more than enough to stream netflix in two rooms simultaneously.

[rwdrwdrwd]

My primary use is constant research and communication, with occasional file transfers - up and down. Given that many websites these days weigh in at 2 - 3 meg each since they are designed by US companies for US consumers with less latency or bandwidth concerns, when spending 8 - 10 hours in a day constantly researching and communicating having a page load in 1 second rather than 10 makes a huge difference. Fast bandwidth and low latency leads to more productivity.

On top of that, I run constant media streams some of which require much more than 384Kbps to be watchable, 1Mbps is probably the base level for things like iPlayer and 4od to be playable. Netflix has always been pretty good with low bandwidth but I got rid of it recently - simply wasn't using it any more.

As a follow up - had a couple of hours of fast international speeds but they jumped back to around 2Mbps at 6pm - wonder if there's some time based throttling going on with TOT..

Edited October 17, 2014 by rwdrwdrwd

[thailiketoo]

Forgive me fellas as I'm not a digital nomad. What do you use all that bandwidth for?

This is what I came here to ask as well. Back in the states I had best-effort DSL which clocked in at a mighty 768 Kbps. As low as that sounds, it was more than enough to stream netflix in two rooms simultaneously.

Do you understand what he said? " constant research and communication, with occasional file transfers"

Edited October 17, 2014 by thailiketoo

[rwdrwdrwd]

The team of porn stars I have in the poker grinding room also use loads of Facebook in their downtime from boiler room ops as well.

Sarcasm of course, the reality is very mundane - it is nice to have as fast loading pages as possible when you use the internet most of the day, simple as that - of course I can still use the internet when it is slow, it's just not as productive.

Edited October 17, 2014 by rwdrwdrwd

[attrayant]

Do you understand what he said? " constant research and communication, with occasional file transfers"

Well I understand what those words mean individually, but strung together they don't make the picture any clearer. Yes large files take time to transfer and I know there are people who absolutely must have it NOW and not 5 minutes from now. Anyway I can accept that there's the odd person out there who needs dedicated T3 throughput but certainly that shouldn't be true for the vast majority of folks.

We should also take into account the delays in the upper layer of the OSI stack. Most of the time when we feel a network delay, the slowness is actually in the server or packet overhead (assemby/disassembly). If the local network is busy (at either end), there could be a lot of retransmit requests that keep TCP busy re-sending the same packets over and over again. A lot of this is out of your ISP's hands as the bottleneck is most likely not in their house.

[rwdrwdrwd]

Basic point is that it is is important to me that webpages load fast. 1 second rather than 10. I'm impatient and a heavy internet user.

It's pretty much the same motivation as getting an electric or sit on mower might be for someone who has a big lawn to take care of, rather than using a manual push along one. If I was just checking email and looking at TV for half an hour or so a day I wouldn't care that much about the speed, just as if I had a 4 square meter lawn I'd be likely to use a push mower.

Edited October 17, 2014 by rwdrwdrwd

[bkkcanuck8]

11.45 would be superb if it were international, but it isn't - even those with 50Mb Business Fibre packages only get 2Mbps international, which is awful in this day and age.

I get full speeds internationally for at least 18 hours of the day.... as long as I can use multiple streams (i.e. torrenting, lftp, parallel downloads, etc.).

Lots (Comcast, Verizon, Time Warner) of people in the US have crap international speeds (worse than 2Mbps often). It is just a higher percentage of the sites that farang visit are "domestic" (as opposed to a large number of foreigners using 100% international bandwidth - no domestic).

I just wish they would give you full speeds to a local exchange where multiple international carriers can be subscribed to for routing internationally - i.e. let the customer buy his own international link/speeds.

[bkkcanuck8]

My primary use is constant research and communication, with occasional file transfers - up and down. Given that many websites these days weigh in at 2 - 3 meg each since they are designed by US companies for US consumers with less latency or bandwidth concerns, when spending 8 - 10 hours in a day constantly researching and communicating having a page load in 1 second rather than 10 makes a huge difference. Fast bandwidth and low latency leads to more productivity.

On top of that, I run constant media streams some of which require much more than 384Kbps to be watchable, 1Mbps is probably the base level for things like iPlayer and 4od to be playable. Netflix has always been pretty good with low bandwidth but I got rid of it recently - simply wasn't using it any more.

As a follow up - had a couple of hours of fast international speeds but they jumped back to around 2Mbps at 6pm - wonder if there's some time based throttling going on with TOT..

I find that 3bb will throttle to as much as 15% bandwidth for international transmission between 1830ish to 0001 IF I have been a heavy bandwidth user during the daytime.... otherwise the bandwidth is basically the same as the daytime.

Even then I can download more than 1TB in a month for one ADSL line.

There is a limit to what latency you can get down to to places like the US (around 200 theoretical max, but usually closer to 300 once routing is taken into account). I either go direct, of for some I have a VPN to a server in the Netherlands (both 3bb and my VPN in the Netherlands are on AMS-IX exchange in the netherlands) because the links going across the pacific can sometimes be congested for routes that I am using.... so I route it the opposite direction.

If your application is chatty request/response then the latency will hit you like a brick wall -- but that is a limit given to us by god (or the speed of light).

Edited October 17, 2014 by bkkcanuck8

[innerspace]

I regularly get 9 or 10 out of my 10Mbps 3bb package, majority international, though is with multiple connections - certainly speed restrictions on single connections.

[GaryB1263]

3BB in Jomtien. ADSL. I got 8.5 Down and 0.44 Up just now. 632 TBT/month. Better than nothing. Up to you.

I get 50 Down and 10 up *in Thailand*, which is what you are quoting - not a cat in hells chance you get that internationally on a 600 baht a month consumer ADSL package.

Wrong. I should have said this is to and from New York City.

[marcusd]

11.45 Mbps download is that OK?

Panama

In 2012, Internet users in Panama represented 45.2% of the country’s population, growing 91.6% over the prior 5 years. Speed test results for 2013 showed an average of 3.11 Mbps download

Drummondville (Quebec)

Speed test results for 2013 showed an average of 11.45 Mbps download and 6.36 Mbps upload speeds across all mobile, tablet, and desktop devices tested.

11.45 would be superb if it were international, but it isn't - even those with 50Mb Business Fibre packages only get 2Mbps international, which is awful in this day and age.

The INTERNATIONAL GATEWAY speeds from my little understanding are controlled once they leave Thailand by wherever the lines connect through.

I have LEASED Line 75% guaranteed speed of 3.5mbs to Australia via SINGAPORE with TOT and 2mb guaranteed with another leased line through 3BB through HONG KONG as a redundancy. The speeds are set when they REACH Hog Kong and Singapore to Australia.

If you are going to the USA or Europe I pity you because when I did some testing I want through JAPAN which was fast and once it hit USA it SLOWED way way down. So Snowdon could read each line I guess... JOKING LADS JOKING

Anyway the speeds on ORDINARY internet through an international gateway get thrown in with everything else from everywhere else so you will get hammered.

[JetsetBkk]

3BB in Jomtien. ADSL. I got 8.5 Down and 0.44 Up just now. 632 TBT/month. Better than nothing. Up to you.

I get 50 Down and 10 up *in Thailand*, which is what you are quoting - not a cat in hells chance you get that internationally on a 600 baht a month consumer ADSL package.

Wrong. I should have said this is to and from New York City.

Which site did you go to, to measure your speeds?

[JetsetBkk]

This is what 3BB do if you download too much:

Often I'm throttled during the day and then - bang on midnight - they let it rip.

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/705249-is-unlimited-internet-really-unlimited/?p=7456002

.

[ldnguy]

100 Mbps sounds ok to me. That's what's available in many new condos. In a hotel in Chiang Mai I got 30 Mbps. Maybe it's worse out in the sticks but it's fast in all major cities I've been to. Maybe you only paid for a slow speed. Just upgrade. Or maybe you're too poor to afford the fast speed package.

[Pib]

11.45 Mbps download is that OK?

Panama

In 2012, Internet users in Panama represented 45.2% of the country’s population, growing 91.6% over the prior 5 years. Speed test results for 2013 showed an average of 3.11 Mbps download

Drummondville (Quebec)

Speed test results for 2013 showed an average of 11.45 Mbps download and 6.36 Mbps upload speeds across all mobile, tablet, and desktop devices tested.

11.45 would be superb if it were international, but it isn't - even those with 50Mb Business Fibre packages only get 2Mbps international, which is awful in this day and age.

The INTERNATIONAL GATEWAY speeds from my little understanding are controlled once they leave Thailand by wherever the lines connect through.

I have LEASED Line 75% guaranteed speed of 3.5mbs to Australia via SINGAPORE with TOT and 2mb guaranteed with another leased line through 3BB through HONG KONG as a redundancy. The speeds are set when they REACH Hog Kong and Singapore to Australia.

If you are going to the USA or Europe I pity you because when I did some testing I want through JAPAN which was fast and once it hit USA it SLOWED way way down. So Snowdon could read each line I guess... JOKING LADS JOKING

Anyway the speeds on ORDINARY internet through an international gateway get thrown in with everything else from everywhere else so you will get hammered.

Nah, Internet Service Providers (ISP) International Gateways are the main culprits/speed throttlers.. International bandwidth cost the ISPs money...they don't to connect to international circuits/undersea fiber optics systems for free--the ISPs have to pay for that and I expect the pay by the GB and time of day. And since the great, great majority of Thai ISP customers are Thais connecting to Thai website/servers or international websites "mirrored" in Thailand, little of their customer base needs to connect to farang websites in the U.S., Europe, outside of Thailand.

There is more than enough international circuits/undersea/overland fiber optic circuits....it's Thai ISPs are just not buying X-amount of international bandwidth....it's all economics. There are premium packages available at a healthy price from ISPs...once you get one of those you are unthrottled at their international gateway.

Some of these international speed test results I see showing high international download speeds I take with a big grain of salt, especially if the speed test is Flash-based like Speedtest.net. Many flash-based speed test programs are easily fooled by local cache servers when doing speed tests to international websites....while it appears they are doing a test to the far-off server they are really pulling results from local cache servers. Sometimes this shows up in faster-than-light ping times and/or download speeds pretty equal to your domestic speed. Best to use Java-based speedtester which are much harder to fool. And a lot of these speedtest averages for a country/city are based on "domestic" speedtest results...will tell you little about what the average "international" speed is.

Edited October 18, 2014 by Pib

[MaxLee]

Welcome to Thailand, where during prime time hours, the connection gets interrupted every minute

[GaryB1263]

3BB in Jomtien. ADSL. I got 8.5 Down and 0.44 Up just now. 632 TBT/month. Better than nothing. Up to you.

I get 50 Down and 10 up *in Thailand*, which is what you are quoting - not a cat in hells chance you get that internationally on a 600 baht a month consumer ADSL package.

Wrong. I should have said this is to and from New York City.

Which site did you go to, to measure your speeds?

Speedtest. Let me know if there is a better one.

[Aforek]

Welcome to Thailand, where during prime time hours, the connection gets interrupted every minute

What is you provider, and what do you call prime time hours ? I open Internet ( but not stay all the time before my computer ) from 6.30 am to 11 pm , and never get interrupted

as I told before , 3 bb is the best !

[samuijimmy]

Welcome to Thailand, where during prime time hours, the connection gets interrupted every minute

What is you provider, and what do you call prime time hours ? I open Internet ( but not stay all the time before my computer ) from 6.30 am to 11 pm , and never get interrupted

as I told before , 3 bb is the best !

I agree, very little problem with 3BB....

I can run my television through IPTV and be downloading/uploading on the computer at same time... 13 mgb package....

[robblok]

This is what 3BB do if you download too much:

Often I'm throttled during the day and then - bang on midnight - they let it rip.

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/705249-is-unlimited-internet-really-unlimited/?p=7456002

.

I get capped during 17:00 till 24:00 outside these times I got great download speeds. I won't complain too much as its understandable that it has to be shared. I got fiberoptic usually get 3-4mb down during the day and night.. It gets capped to +/- 700Kb sec between 17:00 TILL 24:00.

I use newsgroups in USA and multiple connections of course.

[Pib]

Speedtest. Let me know if there is a better one.

Don't use a Flash/Ookla-based testers like Speedtest.net for "international" speed testing as most of these testers can be easily fooled by local cache servers....multithreading can also cause unrealistic results for things like video streaming, general browsing, etc. Speedtest.net is fine for local/in country testing but easily fooled for download and/or ping in international testing. ISPs love people to use Speedtest.net for international testing as it almost always gives download speeds similar to domestic speeds. Then people wonder why does there video streaming pause, webpages load slow, etc., when they are getting such great Speedtest.net results?

Use a "java-based" tester like testmy.net. There a section on testmy.net that explains the pitfalls of using a Flash-based tester.

For example, I just ran a speed test to Dallas U.S.A. using Speedtest.net and Testmy.net. I'm on a True DOCSIS 15Mb/1.5Mb plan here in Bangkok. Below are the results...notice on the Speedtest.net results my download speed is very high...no way I'm getting that speed to Dallas. Now when I use the testmy.net tester to Dallas you will notice more real world download speeds...a speed I can believe based on performance I get in video streaming and other downloads.

Speedtest.net Results to Dallas

Testmy.net Results to Dallas

[Gonsalviz]

We know.

[JThai]

Thailand internet is heaven compared the Philippines!! I love it here. I'm actually able to watch youtube, use voip, watch netflix and work on 20 servers at once which is making me more productive than I've been in years. I can't complain at all and this is with hotel internet, it's been great and when it's not I switch over to LTE and keep on working.

You don't know how good you have it here. So sorry your torrents aren't fast enough for you.

[JetsetBkk]

<snip>

So sorry your torrents aren't fast enough for you.

Fast enough for a mate of mine... 66 Mb/s! (8.35 MB/s):

- he's got the new 3BB fibre. Supposed to be 30 Mb/s, but I doubt anyone else is using it where he lives.

[bill1369]

Speedtest. Let me know if there is a better one.

Don't use a Flash/Ookla-based testers like Speedtest.net for "international" speed testing as most of these testers can be easily fooled by local cache servers....multithreading can also cause unrealistic results for things like video streaming, general browsing, etc. Speedtest.net is fine for local/in country testing but easily fooled for download and/or ping in international testing. ISPs love people to use Speedtest.net for international testing as it almost always gives download speeds similar to domestic speeds. Then people wonder why does there video streaming pause, webpages load slow, etc., when they are getting such great Speedtest.net results?

Use a "java-based" tester like testmy.net. There a section on testmy.net that explains the pitfalls of using a Flash-based tester.

For example, I just ran a speed test to Dallas U.S.A. using Speedtest.net and Testmy.net. I'm on a True DOCSIS 15Mb/1.5Mb plan here in Bangkok. Below are the results...notice on the Speedtest.net results my download speed is very high...no way I'm getting that speed to Dallas. Now when I use the testmy.net tester to Dallas you will notice more real world download speeds...a speed I can believe based on performance I get in video streaming and other downloads.

Speedtest.net Results to Dallas

Capture.JPG

Testmy.net Results to Dallas

Capture2.JPG

Hey Pib - testmy.net definitely shows a huge difference than Speedtest (1.2 mbs vs 12.9 mbs - I pay true for 13 mbs). But what to do? When I 1st came to BKK 6 yrs ago and had True and I knew I was in a different world from my US DirectTV satellite connection giving me nearly 1 GB (domestic). I moved to Hua Hin and had 3BB which was marginally better. On my return BKK, I had TOT for a year - suck speeds. Now I'm back at True for last 1 year and think TOT was even better.

BTW: Not too long ago I was talking with my Thai landlord and commented about Thai ISPs not having satellite. His reply - "Bill, they hook up every residence to a fixed line here because there's corruption money to be paid in the millions of individual hook-ups. A simple satellite dish eliminates all of that so don't look for a dish here anytime in the next few decades."

Oh well, least of my worries (as long as I don't throw my computer off the balcony some day).