It seems like Chunghwa is offering 50 and 100Mbit FTTH, anyone tried these services?
The 50Mbit service seems to have 3Mbit upload and the 100Mbit has 5Mbit up.
cht.com.tw/PersonalCat.php?CatID=898
The prices seems resonable as well, but what are all the extra costs?
Yeah, just like the 8 and 10 M accounts … they don’t guarantee the speed … they only promise to give you at least 2 M …
I DL too many movies already.
I’d have to buy another HD with more speed.
Then what’s the point of even offering connections at that speed?
Although I have to say that my current 8Mbit ADSL connection have been getting faster.
There’s a shop in the new computer market that has a special on 500GB Seagate drives from tomorrow, NT$2,499.
Yeah, I’ve been hitting 200+ kbps lately. Not all the time but its been better and better.
Per torrent you mean I presume? When I download drivers and stuff I’ve hit over 500kb/s and on a good day I’m getting 250kb/s on torrents.
extra-lan only operates in Xindian. I have their 10 megabit FTTH for about NT$1300 a month and its pretty great. I can get 1 megabyte up and down all day long. They do throttle eMule every evening, but BT gets through if you turn on encryption. They used to offer 100megabit and 1000megabit for about US$300 and US$2500 a month. Not sure about what is guaranteed, but I’ve been basically happy.
One important difference vs ChungHua is that extra-lan offers the same speed up as down. Bit torrent rewards uploaders. I’d rather have 5/5 than 10/2 any day. Technically though it is FTTC (Curb) not FTTH (Home), that is twisted pair copper not glass fiber coming into the apartments here. For that matter, are we even sure ChungHua is not just using ADSL? Maybe those speeds are too high for ADSL, but I wonder why their stuff is always A-symmetric (up speed is lower than down), except maybe to save them money on peering.
In cities they have FTTB (fiber to the building) … from their switch board there (the basement?) they use copper …
Nah, ADSL2+ does 24/3 if you’re lucky, but more resonable speeds are around 20/1.5. It just depends on how they set it up and how far from the exchange you live. The best speed I ever had in the UK from Be was about 12-13Mbit down and just over 1Mbit up.
What’s people’s experience of Extra Lan compared to Chunghwa? I’ve got Chunghwa ADSL at the moment and it’s very up and down, but I presume they own the lines out of the country anyhow, so does it make a huge difference depending on which ISP you pick here? Or does Chunghwa impose a lot of artificial restrictions that other providers don’t seem to have?
I think Cht will continue to roll out FTTB or FTTC and then start making the last leg (to the user’s modem) with VDSL. HDTV and other bandwidth-heavy applications over copper shouldn’t be too costly for them.
Since VDSL brings 52Mbps to the user, I think it’s a good next step. Probably could get faster, but not sure if it would be really cost-effective for them.
Plus, if they give everyone too much at once, they’ll start expecting such progress all the time!
AFAIK its hard to make this comparison because Extra LAN only covers Xindian and not all of Taipei. I have heard the general opinion that Zhonghua in general sucks. Not because of restrictions but just because they overload the lines. Furthermore, many smaller ISPs (or cable modem) really just feed into Zhonghua eventually and then suck; traceroute may reveal this. There are probably some other threads on this issue.
After reading a few of the posts in this topic I thought I’d pop one up as well.
There are generally a lot of variables that can affect your connection…
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Need of hardware/software upgrade. (You’d be surprised as to how much of a difference 1 GB of RAM or a faster CPU can make)
This, and even something as simple as updating your P2P software can make a huge difference. -
General neighborhood(area) usage is high when you use the network.
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The DHCP/DNS servers your modem logs you into are overloaded.(Usually happens with Dynamic IP services)
Hi-Net had a problem with their infrastructure a while back, but have since, made great improvement and are still far and away more consistent than any of the other ISPs. That being said, be sure to email yourself your Hi-Net username/password as that’s the most common problem my customers run into with Hi-Net. IF you loose it, you have to fax the ID of the person who registered for the service into their service department with a request for a new username/password. If you’re ADSL is provided by your landlord, be sure to get all the particulars before you sign the lease or it may become a headache later. -
Use of higher port range can improve P2P performance as well as (in some cases) eliminate threat of throttling.
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Improper P2P software/ security software configuration can choke your system
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Most locals only use Taiwan based websites anyway. This means that they never even tap into the international trunks to begin with.
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The reason for all the accessibility to higher speed connections these days is due to the “Dot-Com” boom of yester-year which never really came to fruition. Communication companies were expecting the boom to last much longer than it did and hence,
were left with massive stock piles of unused hardware and trunks of laid cabling around the world. This is all a mute point now anyway as recent guesstimations show that we’ll likely still surpass current throughput capacities in a decade or so and things may eventually even slow down to Dial-Up/ISDN speeds. (Although I wouldn’t really bet on it) -
Current VDSL modems are actually capable of maintaining bandwidth speeds of 100Mb+(Although the higher bandwidths are only available in a limited number of neighborhoods)
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The torrent network is pretty strictly controlled by the you ratio of downloads to uploads. This again is also extended to individual trackers who only care about your ratio in direct relation to the files you use on their trackers. (Just because you have an overall ratio of 3.0 (3 shared file fragments to every 1 downloaded), doesn’t mean you’ll get great speeds from a tracker that you are downloading from for the first time.
The above are just a few of the possibilities that I hope I put into lingo that’s comprehend-able enough to most.
Issues vary with each system and environment they’re used in as much as they do with ISP plans and their providers.
Sure, I get all this, but the general Internet speeds in Taiwan seems to vary a lot based on time of day and it really sucks against European servers for some reason. Towards the US and even more so Oz, speeds are generally quite good even on my CHT 8/640 connection I have at the moment, but again somewhat dependant on the time of the day.
I was hoping to be able to use a different ISP and not have this issue, but from what I gather, this isn’t going to be the case, so I should pretty much look for the best deal in the area I’m moving to, or?
ISP service quality varies from neighborhood to neighborhood and town to town.
For example; Extra Lan is only available in Xindian and Cable ISPs in Taichung are currently offering much better performance/ cost packages than CHT (To date anyway).
Besides this, cable is generally the more efficient medium for broadband as it needs less equipment to maintain signal strength than twisted pair (telephone cable). This too is becoming less important as ISPs are moving towards fiber on the whole (or at least to the curb or building).
I would say that Hi-Net is your best bet in most of the Taipei area aside from Xindian. Aside from that, the only way to tell is to ask any friends in the area of what they think of their ISP’s service and how often there are interruptions in it, if any.
Poor speeds are one thing, but service interruptions can seriously upset your schedule.
Well, ok, let me re-phrase poor speed, it’s so slow that web sites time out for me. This is fairly random though and there are days when I can use MSN Messenger, but email and browsing doesn’t work. Resetting the modem makes no difference either, so there got to be a problem somewhere down the line.
I was hoping to avoid this by either going with Extra Lan or possibly cable, but the cable company in Xindien doesn’t seem to offer that great packages.
Is it possible that someone that has Extra Lan in Xindien could go to this website - speedtest.net/ and report the results?
I know the speed will vary, but at least inside Taiwan it seems to be quite stable around 6Mbit/s down for me and about 500kb/s up and I even hit 7Mbit/s down one time towards Japan.
Hi Nam, good info.
[quote=“Nam”]
- The DHCP/DNS servers your modem logs you into are overloaded.(Usually happens with Dynamic IP services)
Hi-Net had a problem with their infrastructure a while back, but have since, made great improvement and are still far and away more consistent than any of the other ISPs. [/quote]
Have you ever tried CHT’s fixed IP service? I know there have been those that have suggested it on here. I’ve considered it but not really sure if it would make that much of a difference. I’m pretty happy with my download speeds anyway so not too much to complain about.
The Static IP is definitely worth the change, but is a little bit of a pain to get going.
You have to do it yourself via the Hi-Net website.
I’m on it myself and also recommend it to all of my customers.
It allows you to access different DNS servers lo login to the Hi-Net network. (In basic terminology)
This means that you can by-pass the bottle-necking that occurs with the dynamic DHCP/DNS servers for more stable and efficient connectivity without waiting in line for new IP/network identity/ routing info for your computer.
I’ll look into that when we move if we go with CHT. Extra Lan supposedly has some good deals with cable thrown in as well, anyone using their cable TV service or is it some kind of on demand service via their data service?
hi guys, couple of questions about CHT FTTx service any help appreciated:
can a foreigner sign up without a taiwanese co-signer?
what CPE modem does CHT provide?
does the service include a static IP?
does the landlord have to be involved? i rent a house and can’t get in contact with the landlord but do have a copy of the lease.
As I understand it, foreigners can now register for landlines and internet services without guarantors.
Static IPs are available from Hi-Net, but only on services above 2M.
The static IPs can only been applied for(not really applied for, but rather, registered) via their web site.