TOT problems & international websites like youtube

[maidee]

anybody else experiencing slow international speed on sites like youtube?

normally I like to download some videos to watch on my tv

normally I get a good full speed of 800 kb/sec

just did a speedtest and they claim i have a 5 mbit connection

now i am downloading at 80 kb/Sec !

already renewed my ip, to no avail (tought i was in a bad ip range)

[Pib]

All Thai Internet Service Providers (ISP) seem to be stingy on the amount of international bandwidth they purchase/provide. Remember, international bandwidth costs money and the great, great majority of Thai ISP customer are Thais who primarily access Thailand/domestic websites. While your slow international connection could be a local bandwidth problem it's probably occurring at TOT's international gateway server which provides its international connection.

When you say downloading the youtube videos if you really mean realtime streaming of the video, well, video streaming is usually a single-threaded operation vs multi-threaded like in torrents/download managers and video streaming needs a "steady & consistent" flow of data....stop & go streaming of even a few milliseconds can cause constant pausing or even loss of the connection with the video stream. Low international bandwidth or herky, jerky international bandwidth makes video streaming very frustrating.

[KernelPanic]

Since we got a new modem on the TOT glassfiber i can not connect to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (http://www.usno.navy.mil/JTWC/).

Further things as usual. But a lot of disconnections (no internet on the line), sometimes for a longer period.

Edited February 27, 2015 by KernelPanic

[muratremix]

TOT has the worst management of all Thai ISPs ever.

They have largest international bandwidth but it is poorly set up.

[clokwise]

I just got TOT 30/3 fiber this week here in my new home in Chiang Mai and am seriously regretting it. It's possibly, AT BEST, half the speed of my 3BB 10/512 ADSL - lots of timeouts or complete loss of connectivity for a minute or two, youtube & torrents and even jdownloader all crawl at pre-global-warming glacial speed now. I sometimes also can't connect to any PureVPN int'l datacenters for extended periods (although the Bangkok point always connects). I would cancel the TOT service now but I had to pay several thousand baht to get the fiber run out to our place which is at the far side of our moobaan, no other service provider offered to do that, and there is also no ADSL out here either. I'm stuck with this TOT rubbish.

[KhunBENQ]

youtube is the one site where I have NO problems at all.

youtube is NOT a typical example for an "international website".

Most if not all (except maybe the very latest content) is mirrored by the Google worldwide empire to a site/server farm near you.

I can not tell whether the Google data center for SEA is in Singapore or in Thailand.

They like to make some secret about their infrastructure.

if I do a ping to youtube.com I get 39 ms! Like "around the corner", no further than Singapore.

If I open a typical smash hit video like this:

my netspeedmeter goes through the roof (30 MBit/s and peaking).

The whole video in standard resolution is completely buffered in 2 sec or so.

In 720p HD: less than 10 sec and the video is completely in the buffer.

Download speed steady above 25 Mbit/s.

Good performance on youtube and other Google services as well as facebook, MS update etc. is the reason why most Thais are "happy" with their internet connection while the grumpy farangs always complain

Google, Facebook and MS have dedicated bandwith and/or mirrors in/for the region.

I have:

ToT fibre, 30 Mbit/s, Firefox 36, using HTML5 player for youtube.

So if you have a problem with youtube, it is a serious problem and a reason to complain!

Edited February 27, 2015 by KhunBENQ

[KhunBENQ]

To the topic starter: which way (software/plugin) do you download the videos?

If have just seen that the "ssyoutube" (savefromnet) IS actually slow.

80 kB/s, what a coincidence.

Just fighting with my download plugin

Edited February 27, 2015 by KhunBENQ

[KhunBENQ]

As written the "ssyoutube" works slow currently.

My plugin used so far (DownloadHelper) fails completely, reason unclear so far

So now I tried another standalone program named "Youtube Downloader HD".

Works excellent, full speed.

Just beware: the setup tries to install additional bloatware/crapware.

Select "user defined" and uncheck all.

[Kron]

After nearly three weeks of moaning two TOT men came to the house to check things out. Whilst driving a TOT pickup and wearing new uniforms, the gear that mattered was an old laptop, running a pirated version of windows and bloated with other software such as line. In the end he admitted that TOT were selling too many packages for the available infrastructure, hence our slow speeds at the times we want.

So when we paid our bill the other day, did ask about a credit and just got a load of teeth. Guess that's why Thailand is still called 'The Land of the Smiles'.

Edited March 7, 2015 by Kron

[nikster]

TOT seems to have some problems of late. It's been slow for a few weeks now. I have 30/3 fiber, used to be fine. Now it's slow. Speed test to BKK yesterday was 17Mbit which is strange, inside Thailand it always used to go full speed. Might be time to change providers.

[Guest StephenB]

I have slow international speeds for the last few days as well. Down to 1 Mbps, I am subscribed for a 10 Mbps connection and get the full 10 only inside Thailand. Currently downloading adobe reader 11 @ 28 KB/s. Reminds me of the GPRS days. lol

Youtube seems to work ok though. I spent the last 3 days troubleshooting my network. Glad to hear I'm not alone. Whats the deal? Over subscribed international gateway? Data center issues? I feel as though I may have had a bandwidth cap placed on me QOS or something similar.

[Turkleton]

I have slow international speeds for the last few days as well. Down to 1 Mbps, I am subscribed for a 10 Mbps connection and get the full 10 only inside Thailand. Currently downloading adobe reader 11 @ 28 KB/s. .....

I can confirm this.

Since 2-3 weeks, TOT is noticeably more crappy slowly than usual.

Especially on weekends/evenings.

1Mit/s (if you are lucky!) per single connection.

What I've also noticed, that TOT seems to cap the bandwidth at ~ 21.15 (9.15PM) to a fraction of this 1Mbit/s.

Yepp, TOT really sucks, but which ISP in Thailand does not.......?

[chuppachops]

Itsvery very bad for me in phuket after 8pm.. for 2 weeks now. pathetic very peed off. grrr

[phycokiller]

Im on 3BB Broadband. facebook completely blocked on windows but works on android. youtube only shows the first few seconds and then freezes, but again seems ok on android, and various other random sites blocked

[Turkleton]

Im on 3BB Broadband. facebook completely blocked on windows but works on android. youtube only shows the first few seconds and then freezes, but again seems ok on android, and various other random sites blocked

run a virus/malware scan on your Windows machine, this is NOT TOT (or 3BB in your case) related.

[muratremix]

I have slow international speeds for the last few days as well. Down to 1 Mbps, I am subscribed for a 10 Mbps connection and get the full 10 only inside Thailand. Currently downloading adobe reader 11 @ 28 KB/s. .....

I can confirm this.

Since 2-3 weeks, TOT is noticeably more crappy slowly than usual.

Especially on weekends/evenings.

1Mit/s (if you are lucky!) per single connection.

What I've also noticed, that TOT seems to cap the bandwidth at ~ 21.15 (9.15PM) to a fraction of this 1Mbit/s.

Yepp, TOT really sucks, but which ISP in Thailand does not.......?

I get much better with True Online docsis using a singapore / los angeles based personal proxy (on a vps server), even at prime time.

[nikster]

Seems like it's only slow at night? This morning it's nice and fast - almost 30mbit to BKK and websites load quickly, torrents are flying.

Yesterday night, on the other hand, it was so slow as to be useless, used my mobile phone 3G connection instead. Websites took forever to load, speed test to BKK was 17Mbit, torrents did not move at all.

Might simply be a case of having added too many customers. There's lots of advertising for "Sinet" up here in Chiang Mai, and sinet is using TOT infrastructure.

I'm leaving the country for a month but if it's still the same when I return I'll cancel and switch to 3BB.

PS: When it was slow, using the VPN with a US based server made no difference. I don't think these are routing issues (where a VPN would help).

I think it's just an internet traffic jam, too many people downloading too many things. The lower speed to BKK is a huge red flag here - even though 17Mbit would still be great, and I got nowhere near that web surfing and so on, it's very unusual.

To use the road analogy, the line to Bangkok is a 10 lane superhighway, and everything going out of the country is single lane roads. If the 10 lane superhighway is slowing down that's a serious amount of traffic, way beyond what than the outgoing lines can handle.

Edited March 13, 2015 by nikster

[pieeyed]

I have been using TOT for many years and yes it seems to be slowing down and intermittent. Did a speed test yesterday, Download 6.84 Mbps and Upload 0.34 Mbps.

[Pomthai]

My normally good TOT connection is rubbish tonight. Torrents will not work properly, and many connection time outs or page not found errors. But, when I test everything appears fine.

[Xircal]

If you're using a VPN, it will slow downloads and even halt them midstream.

However, if slow download speeds persist after disabling a VPN, what you can do is to install Firefox and then install this add-on: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/download-youtube/?src=ss

What you'll see the next time you go to Youtube is a button called "Download" underneath the video (see screenshot). That gives you the option to download it to your own machine in one of the formats shown and then watch it locally whenever you want.

Download Firefox from here: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/#download-fx There's a dropdown menu at the foot of the page to change the language.