Modem Qaulity

[ChiangMaiThai]

Does the quality of your modem affect the speed of your connection? TT&T suggests that maybe I would get faster speeds if I use a different modem than the one they gave me for free. (I don't think they see the irony in this). So if I go buy an expensive modem, am I suddenly going to jump from 100Kbps to 500Kbps?

They also suggest that maybe the probelm is with my line. Since I'm not going to have the building rewired, I suppose there's nothing I can do, but does anyone know if line quality can affect speed? If so, what decides line quality?

[Guest Lazarus]

Depending where they did (if ?) the frequency check, the possibility is one of your connections is not very nice.

Look in the box where the line joins the house, for ants and rust. If either, fix. Ask them to re-do the freq check. My opinion has always been 3km max length from node to end user, including insisde the property. They use 5km as the reference copper length.

[think_too_mut]

Does the quality of your modem affect the speed of your connection? TT&T suggests that maybe I would get faster speeds if I use a different modem than the one they gave me for free. (I don't think they see the irony in this). So if I go buy an expensive modem, am I suddenly going to jump from 100Kbps to 500Kbps?

They also suggest that maybe the probelm is with my line. Since I'm not going to have the building rewired, I suppose there's nothing I can do, but does anyone know if line quality can affect speed? If so, what decides line quality?

ADSL? What's the nominal link speed that was sold to you?

Problem with your line: if you are in a tree lined street with individual houses and 3km from the exchange, you may have 20, 30 50 user on the same link, all consuming the same bandwidth.

If you are 1km from the exchange and you have 3-4 Bayoke towers in front of you, you may have hundreds or thousands of consumers tapping off the same link.

Don't know of other link problems: when you apply for subscription, they check if your phone number is wired to the ADSL capable exchange. If it is, that's it.

Cheap modem? In the old days there were modems that will hook up to the first (lowest) speed they can negotiate but I doubt they are still around.

Finally, it must had been said in this forum before, high speed is to/from Thai based sites only. Going outside, all ADSL users use one same throttle out of Thai. I am unaware of separate deals for different companies for backbones leading out of the country.

[Thetyim]

Personally I would not listen to anything that an engineer from TT&T says.

They told me that I would not be able to connect to the internet if a telephone was still plugged into the line. I and all other falangs here have had no problems doing it that way for three years.

They told a thai friend that he would have to pay international rates if he viewed a website outside Thailand using a dial up modem.

[lopburi3]

ADSL? What's the nominal link speed that was sold to you?

Problem with your line: if you are in a tree lined street with individual houses and 3km from the exchange, you may have 20, 30 50 user on the same link, all consuming the same bandwidth.

If you are 1km from the exchange and you have 3-4 Bayoke towers in front of you, you may have hundreds or thousands of consumers tapping off the same link.

Unless I am badly mistaken you are talking about a cable modem above (like UBC); not ADSL. ADSL uses your normal phone line excess frequency capacity which does not have anyone but you on it. There is no bandwidth issue between you and the telephone office. The only limiting factor is the frequency passage ability of the two wires.

[camerata]

Finally, it must had been said in this forum before, high speed is to/from Thai based sites only. Going outside, all ADSL users use one same throttle out of Thai. I am unaware of separate deals for different companies for backbones leading out of the country.

Actually, each ADSL provider deals with one or more ISP for international connectivity, and the ISPs each have different international link providers. So a Samart ADSL customer using Loxinfo ISP would have a different international link to a Samart ADSL customer using KSC. CAT successfully bullied ISPs into using only its own domestic gateway and has tried hard to bully/cajole ISPs into using only its own International Gateway (IIG), but it hadn't succeeded yet. Let's hope it never does. There's a good map of all Thailand's international links at http://www.ntl.nectec.or.th/internet/map/current.html - it's updated at the beginning of each month.

[camerata]

Does the quality of your modem affect the speed of your connection? TT&T suggests that maybe I would get faster speeds if I use a different modem than the one they gave me for free. (I don't think they see the irony in this). So if I go buy an expensive modem, am I suddenly going to jump from 100Kbps to 500Kbps?

They also suggest that maybe the probelm is with my line. Since I'm not going to have the building rewired, I suppose there's nothing I can do, but does anyone know if line quality can affect speed? If so, what decides line quality?

First off, how are you measuring speed? In my experience, the various speed test web sites don't give useful results because the route to them is so long and involves so many hops. There are too many factors involved (your phone line, your ADSL provider's network, the link between the ADSL provider and the ISP, the ISP's network, the ISP's international link, and the overseas networks traversed to get to the test site itself) to get consistent results.

What I'd recommend is get a benchmark from the nearest point possible at a time of day when few users are online. The easiest way is to download a big zip file from your ISP's FTP server after 1am or perhaps anytime on Sunday. Your FTP application or browser will tell you the speed (although the browser may report it in kilobytes per sec instead of kilobits). If your ISP is CAT, I doubt they have any file servers, so you could try the Inet Tucows server at http://inet.tucows.com/ which is in Bangkok. At that time of day, bandwidth sharing with other users should not be an issue. What you'll be measuring is the quality of your phone line and ADSL provider. This is about as close as you can get to measuring the maximum speed your ADSL service can really offer. If you do a similar test at the same time of day with an overseas site, you'll probably find it much slower due to the factors mentioned above.

When I tried the original UBT (Ucom) 128K ADSL service in Bangkok, I could only get about 90Kbps on a local test. A UBT engineer told me that telephone line quality and distance from the exchange made a difference. Various things affect line quality. One of them is if the line runs near any electrical equipment. Another is the insulation of the wire from rain and humidity. Incredibly, some old TOT phone lines use waxed paper for insulation, whereas TA (and I assume TT&T) use PVC. But there's not much you can do about this anyway.

More recently I was told by an SBS (Samart ADSL) engineer that "consumer-grade" (i.e. cheap) modems caused most of the customers' problems. This seems to be true of cable modems too. My guess is you might get a small increase in speed and stability with a high-quality modem but it won't be that significant. Try asking TT&T if they'll lend you a good modem to prove what they say. :-)