Is it just me, or is everyone suffering from lousy speed off-island the last week or so?
HiNet ADSL 64/512k and it’s like the bad-old-days of 28.8 dial-up :x
Our poor gateway choked again? Someone been playing with the routers again? Chinese (mainland) phreaking?
(local is fine, but what is there to see?)
I’m in Shida and my ADSL connection has just started improving after a month of almost nothing; I was using a prepaid dialup it was that bad. I have downloaded almost a gig over the last few days.
Although tonight it’s not working too well again.
There was this one router (tp-s2-c12r31.router.hinet.net) giving me trouble for the past week or so, but looks like somebody came around with an aircan and blew the dirt out of the vents. 
Take a look at Internet Traffic Report to check on the latest traffic stats.
I’ve finally gotten Chunghwa to agree to cut off my ADSL service (although I’ve been out of my old house since June, so there’s not much to cut off, physically speaking!) and not to charge me the NT$4000 penalty they would normally assess for the privilege of cutting off your service before the 2 year contract period is up, based on the fact that their ADSL never did work properly for me. I could send e-mail, and surf basic sites, but could not use Net Meeting or any of the net phone services, which is the main reason I chose ADSL in the first place (thinking erroneously it would be better than dialup!!) Actually, my dialup account worked for these applications while the ADSL service would not.
It’s been most amusing fielding the 20 million phone calls from Chunghwa in the last 2 days (don’t know why thye’ve suddenly mobilized to keep me as a customer – maybe it was my visit to Taiwan Fixed Network across the street on Ren’ai Rd. to install a phone line and ADSL service??) I’ve heard everything from “if you can get e-mail, we’ve provided everything we have to provide you” to “you have to take your NetMeeting problem to Microsoft”. So far the best has been the one woman trying to ingratiate herself with me with the old “oh, how did you learn Chinese so well” line…just told her it was from constant practice talking to Chunghwa on the phone about this problem. 
Seems that I finally got them when thye wanted their modem back…she was protesting that “those modems are expensive…they cost NT$3500 or so” and I told them “Yeah, I know. The NT$4000 you want to extort from me is also expensive, don’t you think? Maybe we can do some kind of trade…”
Anyway, just goes to show that a) their ADSL generally sucks and b) you CAN get satisfaction, but it takes a heck of a long time.
(Sorry, only vaguely related to original topic, but some might like to know there are many alternatives to Chunghwa’s ADSL service. I’ll be changing my cell phone from Chunghwa service most likely (it’s a long story, I didn’t get Chunghwa on purpose in the first place, believe me!!) and will then be completely “clean”.
Does anyone have fast connections at work? While my adsl service is slow it is generally far better than what I experience at the office or at Chao Tung University. At the office they have just about every possible port closed and what is open is generally so slow as to be unusable. At Chao Tung it is so slow I can’t even access email. What is up with the network infrastructures on this island? I still remember the seemingly unlimited bandwidth we used to enjoy 6 years ago when I worked for a small town Canadian university. A town, unlike Hsinchu, known more for potatoes and tourism than anything remotely related to technology.
I use HiNet’s ADSL and it is fine. But I agree that this is a fluke (possibly because TFN also provides service in my area). In fact, it has been so problem-free from installation to constant stability that I’m starting to think maybe a HiNet executive lives in my building.
The thing I’m currious about is this: Even if you use another ADSL service provider, most likely you’ll be using Chunghwa’s actual ADSL connection to your house.
As it is now, I get two bills from Chunghwa: One for the “ADSL” and one from “HiNet” for the broadband Internet service over the ADSL. With other services, you’d still get two bills, but one from Chungwa for the ADSL and one from the broadband/ISP guys … I think this is how it works.
I don’t know if TFN can totally bypass Chunghua.
Now, having said that: It is my GREAT SUSPICISION that HiNet ADSL actively disables certain ports for things like streaming media and Net Meeting, etc. It is an easy thing to do actually. Most companies I’ve worked for in Taiwan simply tell the proxy to block certain ports for certain kinds of media. It’s what kept us from using Napster and Kazaa working for Ulead. In HiNet’s case, it would have very little to do with the ADSL physical connection to your house and everything to do with the Internet service itself. Perhaps Chungwa is trying to cut down on bandwidth …
Giga cable is working fine since a week or so. Connecting to Segue is faster and the international connections are up to speed again. I had slow connections since they started promoting ADSL lines everywhere.
And ADSL speed depends on how far you are from the nearest ADSL server/switch/router. I can’t have ADSL because I live more than 6.4 km from Chunghwa. In fact I can have it but Chunghwa won’t install it because the speed would be slower than dail-up.
FWIW, Fujen University is so slow, I don’t even bother to try to go online there anymore. Plus their computers are ancient…come on, guys!!!
i have the opposite experience. the network at school(shida) is always much faster than my connection at home. the times i’ve used an internet cafe i’ve also experienced much better speeds than at home. if we’re all on the same lines leaving taiwan anyway, why is there so much discrepency in speeds?
We use Seednet at the office, quite fast in the downlink direction though streaming video only works at the smallest resolution (without buffering) …
I might be wrong - but I think the edu.tw domain has its own international connection (OK some sort of bandwidth contract since almost everyone uses the same physical connection). I guess this from getting fantastic speed with connections within Taiwan (especially to other educational institutions) and very slow international connections.
Hi:
TFN can provide you with its own ADSL line if your building
is not too old and big enough, I saw they’re offering 2M/384k
for NT1500, but not sure about the quality, it would be great
if someone can share for our reference
For those who are suffering with Hinet ADSL, you can try to
use their Proxy, proxy.hinet.net port 80 and happy surfing 
Cheers,
Yeah, TFN can do that if you’re willing to wait.
I applied 10/21 and waited “two or three days” for them to inform me whether my building could be served. (I applied at an agent office, not the actual TFN).
This morning I got tired of waiting and called TFN directly. They had no data on my “case”, nor were they capable of answering the simple question of whether or not they could serve my building, even given my complete address. But TFN “mentions” that installation will take 30 days. 30 working days. 30 working days? No, 30 calendar days. 30 working days. (This person was speaking Chinese, too – no excuse for this one. In the end we settled on 30 calendar days, but what binding effect THAT has is anyone’s guess.)
Meanwhile, agent calls back, having gotten a piece of my mind after I called TFN, suggests that if I need a phone line in a hurry, I should apply to Chunghwa because “their service is faster”.
I really thought Chunghwa had pretty much plumbed the depths of customer service after their engineer called to schedule another installation for the phone service I had cut off in June, but I guess I was wrong. There are plenty of depths left to plumb, and the phone companies are working diligently to do so. Heck, they have to do something to avoid serving customers. 
372.4 kilobits per second
Your raw speed was 372391.61 bits per second which is the same as:
Communications
372.4 kilobits per second
Storage
45.5 kilobytes per second
1MB file download
22.5 seconds
These are the results my connection received from Bandwidthplace’s speedtest.
As I have a 512/64 DSL Hinet connection, would you say these results are fair? Or can I do better?
When I download, I get a maximum download speed of 55KB/sec. Can I go faster? I have downloaded registry patches, but they do not seem to help. My MTU is at 1492, and I have also altered the tcpip window settings.
Is there anything else I can do?
Thanks,
A
Holy smoking megabytes Batman!
Switched to RASPPPOE adapter on good advice and the difference is shocking. Chuck your Enternet300 in the trashcan where it belongs, NOW!
FYI
[color=blue]2003-05-31 07:37:37 EST: 1134 / 53
Your download speed : 1134143 bps, or 1134 kbps.
A 138.4 KB/sec transfer rate.
Your upload speed : 53662 bps, or 53 kbps.
Your upstream result was very slow! … not good
Seems like broadband … above the 1mbit barrier![/color]
on Chunghwa 1.5mbps/64kbps, so around 75% of the theoretical maximum. Test server in California.
[color=blue]http://www.dslreports.com[/color]
You’re right about the network and its connection speed. The network is called Tanet. Some(or maybe most?) schools don’t rely on Tanet on all computers nor all the time.
[quote=“hsiadogah”]Holy smoking megabytes Batman!
Switched to RASPPPOE adapter on good advice and the difference is shocking. Chuck your Enternet300 in the trashcan where it belongs, NOW![/quote]
I use win98se, do you recommend me trying this. I find Enternet 300 unstable at best. I often have to reboot, since it crashes at the beginning…
Kenneth
An awfully spiffy easy-to-use test for Taiwan (simply click on the link and await the results):
Hit your browser’s refresh button to re-test.
[quote=“KenTaiwan98”][quote=“hsiadogah”]Holy smoking megabytes Batman!
Switched to RASPPPOE adapter on good advice and the difference is shocking. Chuck your Enternet300 in the trashcan where it belongs, NOW![/quote]
I use win98se, do you recommend me trying this. I find Enternet 300 unstable at best. I often have to reboot, since it crashes at the beginning…
Kenneth[/quote]
Have also switched to RASPPOPPE or whatever it’s called. Much handier. You just click on a little picture of a phone and away you go. No annoying Hinet page either. I’m running W2K BTW.