Phone Line And Internet Speed

[ChiangMaiThai]

Every time the people from TT&T and now Chiang Mai Internet come out here and try to figure out why my speeds are so slow, they inevitably suggest that there must be something wrong with the phone line outside the house or down the street... Could there be anything to this or is it just another way to avoid responsibility?

Keep in mind that when I go to tttbroadband.com and test the speed, its always fast. Then I go to the McAfee site and its usually much, much slower. I imagine that this is because the former is within the country and the latter is outside, but can anyone shed further light on what this might mean? Knowing that I do get high speeds on the TTT site, is it possible there is something wrong with my phone line?

I can't give up my quest for reliable 'ADSL' (I'd be thrilled with 150Kbps if it was always 150Kbps and didn't drop off to 40Kbps every other minute) internet in Chiang Mai.

[MadFrankie]

cetainly nothing wrong with the "first mile" then...

[Lordfoul]

ChiangMaiThai,

If your DSL works at all then it is unlikely (but possible) that you have a bad line. How are you measuring your speed? have you tried downloading large files?

You may want to try changing your VCI setting from 33 to 66 (or the other way around ) I did have one client that that worked for.

If you want to do a speed test try here http://www.dslreports.com/stest .

/SM

[lopburi3]

If you are getting good speeds at any site the problem is not your phone line as they are all beyond that. If speeds to all sites varied it could the the line; but not if you always have good speed to any one site.

What it probably means is that you are on a limited capacity line with a lot of others and can only get what bandwidth is available at any given minute for sites outside of Thailand. Lines connecting Thailand with the world are expensive so most are overbooked. In other words you get what you pay for (or less).

[ChiangMaiThai]

If you are getting good speeds at any site the problem is not your phone line as they are all beyond that. If speeds to all sites varied it could the the line; but not if you always have good speed to any one site.

What it probably means is that you are on a limited capacity line with a lot of others and can only get what bandwidth is available at any given minute for sites outside of Thailand. Lines connecting Thailand with the world are expensive so most are overbooked. In other words you get what you pay for (or less).

Lopburi, I think you've said it exactly. If I test my speed at a site in Thailand like tttbroadband.com, I get 200Kbps at least. Then I go to the Mcafee site and get 33Kbps. Lordfoul, when I open attachments in my Thai e-mail account, it is very very quick, but hotmail takes forever. I'll try the VCI thing.

If this was still Tspeed, I couldn't complain because you're told from the beginning (if you ask) that you share with 50 other users. But I am now paying a premium to be guaranteed 128Kbps minimum and it doesn't seem they can even get that right.

[camerata]

Every time the people from TT&T and now Chiang Mai Internet come out here and try to figure out why my speeds are so slow, they inevitably suggest that there must be something wrong with the phone line outside the house or down the street... Could there be anything to this or is it just another way to avoid responsibility?

Keep in mind that when I go to tttbroadband.com and test the speed, its always fast. Then I go to the McAfee site and its usually much, much slower. I imagine that this is because the former is within the country and the latter is outside, but can anyone shed further light on what this might mean? Knowing that I do get high speeds on the TTT site, is it possible there is something wrong with my phone line?

I can't give up my quest for reliable 'ADSL' (I'd be thrilled with 150Kbps if it was always 150Kbps and didn't drop off to 40Kbps every other minute) internet in Chiang Mai.

In case you missed it, here's my answer to a similar question under another topic heading:

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.

- camerata

[camerata]

If this was still Tspeed, I couldn't complain because you're told from the beginning (if you ask) that you share with 50 other users. But I am now paying a premium to be guaranteed 128Kbps minimum and it doesn't seem they can even get that right.

Heh. Did you get that in writing? If they guarantee 128Kbps for a 256K service, it means their contention ratio is 2:1! I don't think that's very likely when the best you can get in Bangkok is 10:1 for home users.

Chiangmai Internet is just a re-seller, previously for A-Net (ugh!) and now for KSC I believe. They may not even have a clear idea of what contention ratio KSC is using on its link with the ADSL provider. It might be worth asking them, if it's not in the contract. It shouldn't be a secret - ISPs everywhere use some kind of ratio for ADSL. Overseas it's often 50:1 for home users, but the problem here is you have too many business users on all the broadband services.

[monty]

Camerata,

I do know of contention rates, I have no idea what the capacity of the sattelite networks are(IPTV, IPSTAR) but I'm getting over 200 kBps day, night, weekend or weekday on these outside tests...Mcafee, pcpitstop etc... It seems they don't use that concept on these kinds of connections, maybe because you pay per Mb!!!

Anyway, very happy with it, just downloaded a 14 Mb file in a tad over 7 minutes...

[ChiangMaiThai]

If this was still Tspeed, I couldn't complain because you're told from the beginning (if you ask) that you share with 50 other users. But I am now paying a premium to be guaranteed 128Kbps minimum and it doesn't seem they can even get that right.

Heh. Did you get that in writing? If they guarantee 128Kbps for a 256K service, it means their contention ratio is 2:1! I don't think that's very likely when the best you can get in Bangkok is 10:1 for home users.

Chiangmai Internet is just a re-seller, previously for A-Net (ugh!) and now for KSC I believe. They may not even have a clear idea of what contention ratio KSC is using on its link with the ADSL provider. It might be worth asking them, if it's not in the contract. It shouldn't be a secret - ISPs everywhere use some kind of ratio for ADSL. Overseas it's often 50:1 for home users, but the problem here is you have too many business users on all the broadband services.

No, didn't get it in writing. Just asked about 5 times. I told them today to fix it in two days or I'm coming to the office and I won't leave without my 3000 baht. I realize they are just a reseller, but from what they told me (min 128 unlimited) and after my experiences with TSpeed, I thought it was worth it.

Do you think they just blatantly lie to get you to sign up or are they just incompetent?

[camerata]

I realize they are just a reseller, but from what they told me (min 128 unlimited) and after my experiences with TSpeed, I thought it was worth it.

Do you think they just blatantly lie to get you to sign up or are they just incompetent?

Given the realities of how ADSL works, I think they'd have to be wildly optimistic to guarantee you 128Kbps. Maybe it's just general ignorance. After all, ADSL is still pretty new upcountry. Caveat emptor, I guess.

[camerata]

Camerata,

I do know of contention rates, I have no idea what the capacity of the sattelite networks are(IPTV, IPSTAR) but I'm getting over 200 kBps day, night, weekend or weekday on these outside tests...Mcafee, pcpitstop etc... It seems they don't use that concept on these kinds of connections, maybe because you pay per Mb!!!

Anyway, very happy with it, just downloaded a 14 Mb file in a tad over 7 minutes...

Sounds good. I don't know what the deal is with satellite, but if it's metered per Mb that should keep the link from getting too congested.