Is the great firewall of Thailand in place?

[Cheesekraft]

Seems like many people including myself are having internet problems at random times, and intermittent outtages. Anyone else experiencing any weirdness?

[RichCor]

All my Internet issues are Windows 10 related (all my other Internet connected devices work fine).

...though I did just post an SMS I received from AIS saying they're doing 'system maintenance' for 3 hour later tonight. Yea, right, system maintenance.

[wanderingstray]

UK Daily Mail not available Have to use VPN

[stoneyboy]

UK Daily Mail not available Have to use VPN

That is due to an article they published sometime ago,nothing else.

[dabhand]

UK Daily Mail not available Have to use VPN

Can still be accessed in Thailand, without VPN, under certain circumstances, just depends on ISP and hardware being used.

As another poster noted, limited access has nothing to do with possible 'great firewall of Thailand' actions but everything to do with them publishing an article with banned content.

The sky is not falling just yet!!

[Deli]

it always was in a certain kind of way, as many urls are blocked

[Srikcir]

The government was building the firewall using state-owned CAT.

But all internet traffic has not been required to be routed through it as yet; just CAT users I suspect.

When CAT starts expanding its storage capacity fivefold or more beyond its current needs, that may signal the government's readiness to move all internet traffic through the Wall.

Once the gateway firewall is required, VPN will not circumvent the wall. Likely the government will then require registration of VPN users including user ID and password so that it can check content. You'll be told that you can trust the government to keep your personal and corporate information safe.

That's not to say a hypothetical Wall can't be jumped. Requires a smart phone. Plenty of discussions on the internet for that process.

[user82374298374]

It's amazing how people who have no understanding of TCP/IP, routing, and the Internet in general just spout off utter nonsense.

As I've posted elsewhere on ThaiVisa, the 'single gateway' nonsense isn't happening. It's too expensive, would take years, and the pooyais and amart are all opposed to it, for good reason.

[whatproblem]

I canceled my cat Internet for that ,I now use true which is faster and get free tv ,tv not good but internet better and it's the only way to protest by not giving them my money

[rodroy]

The government was building the firewall using state-owned CAT.

But all internet traffic has not been required to be routed through it as yet; just CAT users I suspect.

When CAT starts expanding its storage capacity fivefold or more beyond its current needs, that may signal the government's readiness to move all internet traffic through the Wall.

Once the gateway firewall is required, VPN will not circumvent the wall. Likely the government will then require registration of VPN users including user ID and password so that it can check content. You'll be told that you can trust the government to keep your personal and corporate information safe.

That's not to say a hypothetical Wall can't be jumped. Requires a smart phone. Plenty of discussions on the internet for that process.

Seem to recall that all International traffic is routed through a CAT server!

Traceroute confirms that!

Maybe I'm wrong!

[gandalf12]

It's amazing how people who have no understanding of TCP/IP, routing, and the Internet in general just spout off utter nonsense.

As I've posted elsewhere on ThaiVisa, the 'single gateway' nonsense isn't happening. It's too expensive, would take years, and the pooyais and amart are all opposed to it, for good reason.

It wil cost a fortune if they are silly enough to try and put it in place

[sawadee1947]

2 days ago internet was extremely slow for 5 hours/TRUE

[TheRascal]

Past 2 evenings True has been much slower than usual. Skype calls are usually super clear and speaking to my dad yesterday and the night before it was breaking up every few minutes.

[TheCruncher]

All my Internet issues are Windows 10 related (all my other Internet connected devices work fine).

...though I did just post an SMS I received from AIS saying they're doing 'system maintenance' for 3 hour later tonight. Yea, right, system maintenance.

Until 2 weeks ago my provider would do a 6 to 8 hour " maintenance " every day during business hours.

That was until I had my friend at OCPB give them a friendly call. Since that day the " maintenance" is reduced to 30 minutes at the maximum, but most of the days i don't even notice something happens.

Edited December 3, 2015 by TheCruncher

[notbkk]

It's amazing how people who have no understanding of TCP/IP, routing, and the Internet in general just spout off utter nonsense.

As I've posted elsewhere on ThaiVisa, the 'single gateway' nonsense isn't happening. It's too expensive, would take years, and the pooyais and amart are all opposed to it, for good reason.

Thank you for the first and only clear, straightforward answer on the question, among all the jargon babble babble!

[peterrabbit]

I have noticed a marked slow down in the last week especially in accessing foreign sites (using 3BB FTTH) and a lot of refreshing required when sites are not being loaded properly.

[off road pat]

It's amazing how people who have no understanding of TCP/IP, routing, and the Internet in general just spout off utter nonsense.

As I've posted elsewhere on ThaiVisa, the 'single gateway' nonsense isn't happening. It's too expensive, would take years, and the pooyais and amart are all opposed to it, for good reason.

It wil cost a fortune if they are silly enough to try and put it in place

Wouldn't be the first time they waist billions of Thai baths........

[TheCruncher]

I have noticed a marked slow down in the last week especially in accessing foreign sites (using 3BB FTTH) and a lot of refreshing required when sites are not being loaded properly.

The refreshing is required when you have package losses.

You can check it out by running an extended ping to the gateway.

As you will notice from the thread I started 2 months ago I experienced package losses up to 30% most of the days for almost 2 months.

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/862736-do-you-think-the-single-gateway-is-in-place-already/

All complaints to the provider were waived as me dreaming them up, and at the end they just told me they didn't want to talk to me anymore.

That was when OCPB gave them a call ( 20 November) and explained they were monitoring the case. My problems stopped there and then.

[Krataiboy]

I have two computers running off the same network and ISP. Over the last month or two the service has resembled one of those old Victor Sylvester dances - slow, slow, quick, quick slow. At times it is not existent, then, inexplicably, everything starts working normally for a while. I checked for viruses (none) and was thinking of changing my service provider at the end of the contract. But if you are right there is no point.

The question I would like answered is: Is there any way of finding out for sure whether the patchy, slow service is the result of the single gateway having already been implemented or tested?

[wandasloan]

The question I would like answered is: Is there any way of finding out for sure whether the patchy, slow service is the result of the single gateway having already been implemented or tested?

Yes, in fact, there is a way to find out. You will find out definitively if you read the following:

If you notice patchy, slow service, it is not the result of the single gateway, since there is no single gateway, even to test.

And now you know for sure.

[elgordo38]

You have to spend money to make money and like the government here internet suppliers want your business but do not want to spend money on expanding their services. Again like everything else nothing is done till the crisis bell is rung.

[chilli42]

I know it has nothing to do with the mythical gateway but the Internet service in my home has taken a nose dive in the last year. I tried going for True fiber optic 50mb. It really did not help. The download speed has never reached over 39mb and randomly drops as low as 10mb for long periods. Upload speed and ping response are always glacial. I understand that the isp's and CAT have not invested in the best equipment. However it seems absurd that internet speed never achieves what was paid for.

[KamalaRider]

The government was building the firewall using state-owned CAT.

But all internet traffic has not been required to be routed through it as yet; just CAT users I suspect.

When CAT starts expanding its storage capacity fivefold or more beyond its current needs, that may signal the government's readiness to move all internet traffic through the Wall.

Once the gateway firewall is required, VPN will not circumvent the wall. Likely the government will then require registration of VPN users including user ID and password so that it can check content. You'll be told that you can trust the government to keep your personal and corporate information safe.

That's not to say a hypothetical Wall can't be jumped. Requires a smart phone. Plenty of discussions on the internet for that process.

They won't require users to give out their VPN Usernames and passwords.

The reason is easy to figure out, but if you can't I will give the most important reasons.

1. Very wealthy people from all around the world will never invest in Thailand again, not until that requirement is gone.

2. International Bank transfers will be halted with immediate effect and never resume, not until that requirement is gone.

But the normal traffic will still not be able to be read, if the traffic is transferred under certificate protocols, like HTTPS and SFTP.

Unfortunately (Sending emails) locally with SMTP will most likely not encrypt the email message but Username and passwords will be encrypted making it more difficult to steal usernames and passwords.

If web mail is used, most mail servers, like Hotmail, Yahoo, gmail etc., outside Thailand use HTTPS which mean encrypted traffic but not if the mailserver is within Thailand.

Even if HTTPS protocol is used to access the mail server inside Thailand, if the mails destination is outside Thailand, any router between the server in Thailand and server outside can sniff the email and store sender, receiver and message, but that's already possible right now.

This means you can still access your bank accounts in respective country as long as the bank supplies with encrypted communication (HTTPS) but be very sure the certificate really belongs to your bank, you can see that in the browser under the green lock.

My recommendation is that you ALWAYS check by clicking on the lock icon to be sure. EV certificates are not easy to obtain and also presents an easy way to track the owner so it's IMO 100% safe.

Example of safe site:

The difference between a standard SSL certificate and an EV SSL certificate is that EV stands for extended validated certificate while standard SSL doesn't require the certificate requestor to validate their presence and historical presence with address, responsible person(s), phone numbers and trackable records for the company/organisation.

The firewall Thailand wants to install would be quite obsolete if everyone using internet for international surf, mail and VPN, used it with highest possible security concern in mind.

I have been called a paranoid person, but the future is here now for my paranoia, now people without, are in a big transition using internet freely.

[KamalaRider]

I have two computers running off the same network and ISP. Over the last month or two the service has resembled one of those old Victor Sylvester dances - slow, slow, quick, quick slow. At times it is not existent, then, inexplicably, everything starts working normally for a while. I checked for viruses (none) and was thinking of changing my service provider at the end of the contract. But if you are right there is no point.

The question I would like answered is: Is there any way of finding out for sure whether the patchy, slow service is the result of the single gateway having already been implemented or tested?

The government (read ISP's) are already sniffing and storing all communications even without the famous firewall.

The only difference that will be in effect when it's in place is that the government doesn't have to request the data from all ISP's and could actually without any court order sipher through the data.

You can only imagine the power a single individual with access to all that data has if it's not encrypted.

Today's slow or unresponsive internet is because of data collection (which has been in place for many years already) and under developed international bandwidth, especially during high season with the extra burden of tourists.

Edited December 3, 2015 by KamalaRider

[KamalaRider]

It's amazing how people who have no understanding of TCP/IP, routing, and the Internet in general just spout off utter nonsense.

As I've posted elsewhere on ThaiVisa, the 'single gateway' nonsense isn't happening. It's too expensive, would take years, and the pooyais and amart are all opposed to it, for good reason.

Don't be too sure, the Thai government even the military gov. has track records of spending millions of THB, if not hundreds of millions THB on technology they don't understand or comprehend.

It could be that the kickbacks are immense.

Edited December 3, 2015 by KamalaRider

[hawker9000]

The government was building the firewall using state-owned CAT.

But all internet traffic has not been required to be routed through it as yet; just CAT users I suspect.

When CAT starts expanding its storage capacity fivefold or more beyond its current needs, that may signal the government's readiness to move all internet traffic through the Wall.

Once the gateway firewall is required, VPN will not circumvent the wall. Likely the government will then require registration of VPN users including user ID and password so that it can check content. You'll be told that you can trust the government to keep your personal and corporate information safe.

That's not to say a hypothetical Wall can't be jumped. Requires a smart phone. Plenty of discussions on the internet for that process.

'Not really how encrypted tunnels work. Having your username & password might allow them to start up a VPN session/bring up a tunnel in your name, but not sniff a session in progress. That's done with a key exchange which would take more than just having your username and password to invade. Admittedly though, VPN protocols are not all created equally in terms of confidentiality and the means & robustness of its implementation. Bottom line though, I don't think the claim this is going to happen is an informed one. Even if it were somehow achievable, it would be terminally disruptive. Edited December 3, 2015 by hawker9000

[KC 71]

My macbook went crazy yesterday - like it was being hacked !

Fortunately a kind lady from support got me back up and running

I am certain that the powers that be were checking me out

All they will find is Music and tv

I have nothing to hide

[hawker9000]

I think just the mere talk of a Thai Great Firewall now has everybody a bit paranoid, with a tendency to jump on it as the sure explanation for every disruption, slowdown & hiccup - things which are just business as usual and normal for Thailand.

[KamalaRider]

The government was building the firewall using state-owned CAT.

But all internet traffic has not been required to be routed through it as yet; just CAT users I suspect.

When CAT starts expanding its storage capacity fivefold or more beyond its current needs, that may signal the government's readiness to move all internet traffic through the Wall.

Once the gateway firewall is required, VPN will not circumvent the wall. Likely the government will then require registration of VPN users including user ID and password so that it can check content. You'll be told that you can trust the government to keep your personal and corporate information safe.

That's not to say a hypothetical Wall can't be jumped. Requires a smart phone. Plenty of discussions on the internet for that process.

'Not really how encrypted tunnels work. Having your username & password might allow them to start up a VPN session/bring up a tunnel in your name, but not sniff a session in progress. That's done with a key exchange which would take more than just having your username and password to invade. Admittedly though, VPN protocols are not all created equally in terms of confidentiality and the means & robustness of its implementation. Bottom line though, I don't think the claim this is going to happen is an informed one. Even if it were somehow achievable, it would be terminally disruptive.

I have seen backdoors in code for a VPN client/server. Supply username, password the key exchange was transparent and would suffice for logging traffic.

Edited December 3, 2015 by KamalaRider

[brucegoniners]

Internet problems? In Thailand?

This is my surprised face...