Anyone Experience With Cds56k (in Pattaya)

[sillyfools]

Check out http://corporate.ksc.net/corporate/corporate.php?page=G12

It's been there for a while. I know to get to that speed you need 4 multilink modems but this can we seen as a one time investment.

Has anyone tested this or experience with it?

The advantages from my point of view:

1) Near ADSL download speed (224 Kbps resp. 256Kbps for ADSL)

2) Higher upload speed (correct me if I'm wrong but I thought modems had an almost equal upload speed in comparison to their download speed (so I'm thinkin of 75% resp. 50% for ADSL)

3) No disconnection of the phonelines so Always on

4) No download limitation

5) No satellite lag due to the satellite communication crossing 35.000 kms a couple of times so Voice over IP much smoother and more easy telnetting and remote server maintenance

6) Since land-connection more reliable and speedy VPN connection

Disadvantages:

1) Higher initial setup cost (4 modems, 4 phonelines)

Anyone care to elaborate?

[francois]

hi'

at the time, ADSL is coming to major cities in Thailand for a quite reasonable price, why pay 7,000 baths/month for almost the same?

and I do not count the bills that phone-lines generate ...

is that reasonable?

I do think that you have to be in a real need of a fast connection to spend this much

francois

[monty]

Hi SF,

Before we had the iptv system I experimented quite a lot with these multilink systems....

A few things I found out:

A modem is an assymetrical connection : 56 down/33.6 up.

A modem hardly ever connects at the maximum possible speed. Blaim phonelines etc. You're lucky if you get close to 50kbps!

The way the multilink system works is as follows :

The first modem logs on. This will be your main link with your isp and this link will control the whole connection. If you have a disconnect on this line, the whole multilink will fail. Only this first link is used for uplink, the others only for download! You request a file, request gets sent over the first modem link, file starts to get sent back to you. The packets are distributed over the four modems, along with the necessary data for your pc on how to put all those packets back together. This means there is a large overhead, a lot of data sent which is not actually part of the file you requested...

Out of this I distilled following cons and pro's:

Pro's

You get higher speeds in places where no broadband is available(this was before iptv existed of course)

No lag like we have on the sattelite systems

Any modem will do, I had 3 different brands, a mix of 1 internal, 1 USB and 1 parallel...

No volume metering, only time metered..

Con's

Speed not nearly as fast as expected : over a 3 modemlink I got an indicated connectionspeed of 132Kbps( 3 X 44 kbps) yet my downloads wouldn't go faster then 10kBps. Theoretical maximum would be 16 kBps. This is due to the large overhead associated with multilink systems...

No increase in upload speed

Long time necesary to establish link, all three modems have to go through the complete stuff of handshaking, authentication etc... They do this one after the other.

If you lose your first link (disconnect due to phoneline noise, modem error, etc) the whole link is gone. All modems have to reconnect one by one... You lose one of the subsequent links, only that one will have to reconnect...

In short, what you can expect with a 4 modemsetup:

Indicated connection speed of around 200kbps ( 4 times 50 kbps)

Practical speed will be around 150 down / 36 up (due to overhead)

You will have the same amount of disconnects as you would have otherwise with any modem connection, but only a disconnect on your initial link will have loss of connectivity as a result...

At 7500 (7000 + 7%vat) a month for the KSC offer this might be reasonable at the moment but would be expensive when other options get available...

As you've said before on another post the iptv system works reasonably fast, pretty reliable, not too much lag (uplink is still a modem) and for 6000 Baht you'll get 3200 Mb datatransfer. (the same 7500 Baht would get you 3800 Mb which is already quite a lot)...

Up to U as they say in Thailand...

Cheers, Monty

[MadFrankie]

6) Since land-connection more reliable and speedy VPN connection

really?

I think u will find a VPN will run on effectivly on almost any medium.

[sillyfools]

Thanks monty for the terrific post. This is really helpful. Somehow I was hoping of a combined upload speed that would be higher with less the lag of satellite.

Madfrankie, as what I've heard VPN can be set up on iPSTAR (2-way satellite) but not on iPTV since iPTV is sort of a VPN itself.

I have to say that I have pretty bad results with VPN over iPSTAR and that is why I am looking into other 'land' options. VPN is an encrypted network connection allowing you to connect your pc or whole network at home or a remote office over the internet with no worries about security. The problem is that every piece of information is encrypted as it is sent along the internet. Now the problems comes in when it is transmitted over satellite because of the satellite lag (remember those shiny fridges hang a couple of thousand kilometers above our heads). Now every packet of data has to wait for the key and confirmation that it has arrived correctly. This slows down the network tremendeously. The fastest VPN I have established over iPSTAR so far is about 8Kbps !!!! Yes Kilobits.

Now what I am interested in especially is to print documents from here directly to my home in Europe. Whenever I try to do this over VPN I run into troubles that my thailand site cannot see the printer at the other end. I suspect due to sat lag so that the pc thinks there's something wrong with the printer.

Another reason why I am interested in other options is because of VoIP (Voice over IP). It allows you to by 2 phone sets that you can hook up to your network. You can then call from one location in the world to the other location for free (well, apart from download costs but if you are on an unlimited plan you can have an intstant connection between yourself and the family or between offices.

What is even more interesting about this is that there are certain VoIP devices that you can hook up on the other end and have it connected to a phoneline over there and a fax machine over there. This way you can from Thailand make local calls in your homecountry and even send out and receive faxes within your own country all for the price of .... say it all together ...yes FREE :-)

'

[monty]

SF,

I'm not sure this is going to be of any help, but in researching long distance wifi links I noticed they were getting problems on links longer then 30 miles. In short the problem was that the sending unit expected confirmation that a packet was received within something like 3 ms. When the confirmation didn't came in time (reaction time of the receiving unit + 60miles roundtrip) the sending unit would consider the packet dropped and just resend it. This resulted in extremely slow links, even with the activity lights going full blast...

On the cheap access points we use there is no option to change that waiting time, but on the expensive units, designed for long links you can change this. It is necessary to compensate for the extra time lost on the roundtrip! It is a trade off : make the waiting time to long, you get slower links, make the time to short, you get dropped packets...

I have this hunch that this might be what is happening with your VPN over IPSTAR...

I am certainly no network expert so I have no idea if there are settings to play around with... Maybe worth some research?

Monty

[sillyfools]

Da*n... and I thought you would be the expert on that :-D.

Yes that is the problem with iPSTAR vpn as well. Not at all an idea however how I can change the response time. I guess nobody over here has a printer hooked up at the other end of the globe right ????

Anyone ;-)?

[MadFrankie]

which VPN client have u been using? Aint done much with VPNs but surely provided its using TCP/IP it will work.

It would be the TTL monty..

[sillyfools]

Hi frankie.

Using the standard VPN in XP over TCP/IP indeed but I would have no clue as where to enter TTL's.

Any pointers?

Thanks mate.

[MadFrankie]

judging by the " Vpn Over Ipstar " post by monty it wouldnt make any diff anywayz mate, seems to be a general problem with latency when using the IPsec protocol.

Yer probably best off using a diff client by the looks of it.