My contract with Hinet is up soon, and I’m wondering if I should switch ISPs. Any advice as to the best ADSL provider to go with in Taiwan?
On a related note, as my ADSL modem is two years old, I think this would be a good opportunity to get a new one. When I signed up with Hinet, they included the modem. Two years seems to be the life span for a lot of this stuff, so I’d like to get a freebie with a new contract.
Any advice appreciated.
I’ve heard good things about SeedNet. Maybe the newer ADSL modems have more features, I dunno; back home mine lasted five years and still ran fine (but was only selling for $15 on EBay by then, if one could even find a buyer). If you need new features (integrated hardware firewall, maybe?) it might be good to get a new one, else I wouldn’t bother unless it was really a freebie. JMHO.
I guess it’s difficult to say. I’m using HiNet at home and it works alright. My boyfriend uses Seednet and some some problems to connect from time to time…don’t know which one is better, I guess they are all about the same.
Yea, that’s sort of my guess. Same problems with hinet from time to time. Thanks.
I use Sonet, it seemed to be the best deal when I looked into the various companies. I can’t remember what I pay, as my wife pays all the bills. So far I haven’t had anything to complain about.
[quote=“hoedad”]My contract with Hinet is up soon, and I’m wondering if I should switch ISPs. Any advice as to the best ADSL provider to go with in Taiwan?
On a related note, as my ADSL modem is two years old, I think this would be a good opportunity to get a new one. When I signed up with Hinet, they included the modem. Two years seems to be the life span for a lot of this stuff, so I’d like to get a freebie with a new contract.
Any advice appreciated.[/quote]
I remember somebody a while back having a lot of trouble with Sparq (they throttled his bandwidth). So I guess I’d avoid that.
Depending on where you live, your cable TV provider may have broadband service. I recall others saying that it costs NT$400/month (above and beyond the base fee for the cable TV). So if you’re a cable subscriber already, maybe this makes sense. There are more security issues with cable - you need a good firewall, or buy a firewall/router.
I’m using Hinet now myself. No real complaints, other than somewhat bureaucratic to get it installed.
Hinet’s offering a lot of different speed options now, at different prices, so look into that. You can’t say that Seednet is cheaper than Hinet or vice versa unless you’re also looking at the speed.
I assume you don’t plan to run a server - if you do, that’s a different ball game (you need fast upload speed, not just fast downloads, plus a fixed IP address - this all costs more). Let us know if want advice on that.
regards,
Robert
I use So-Net 2.0m/512k service and have been very happy. They have good links outside the country, so I seldom have problems with slow speeds. Their prices are pretty competitive, and they offer fixed IP for no extra charge. They have a few different package deals that include free hardware and reduced rates for the first few months, so it is hard to do apples to oranges comparisons on the prices. That said, Hinet’s service is pretty good. Their prices used to be pretty pricey but they are more competitive now. The main problem with Hinet is they have lots of spam and virus sources on their network, so your mail is more likely to get rejected as spam.
Any updates ? I am finding it difficult to get on certain websites as hinet IPs have been blocked from them. I’d like to find an alternative to Hinet.
I’m not sure what sort of updates you’re after. I still like SoNet and have not had problems with mail or other things getting blocked.
What sites are these? I have Hinet and have never ran into a blocked site. I guess some IRC servers are blocked, but I’ve been able to connect to all the ones I’ve wanted to.
i am always able to connect to that us navy site with my hinet. i have to click on a “security certificate” dialog box to get in, could this be a question of your security settings?
No problem connecting here. I got the “security certificate” box too. Even if there was a site that blocked Hinet IP’s you could just use a proxy server and that would take care of that problem.
We use the Chunghwa Telecom commercial network with two lines to the office at work and I use Hinet at home. I have never run into any blocked sites on my home account, but the one of commercial IP address is blocked on many of the .gov and .mil sites in US. To look at these I normally go through a free anonymous proxy. The page: aliveproxy.com has a decent list of free proxies.
We have spoken with the Chunghwa Telecom “engineers” assigned to us, who are little more than sales people who know what IP stands for, and the only remedy they had was swap the IP address around until at least part of our network could reach the above domains.
I checked the specific site mentioned from home and their is no problem. As for work, I cannot reach it.
If you look over on the Typhoon! thread in “Living in Taiwan” you’ll see a few people on HiNet had trouble getting to the JTWC web site. Hexuan posted a traceroute that (compared to mine) shows pretty clearly that his address was being blocked as it came into the military network.
I recently saw a presentation done by security and spam expert Joe St. Sauver who estimates there’s 55,000 compromised hosts on HiNet being used for spamming, distribution of viruses, and breaking into other hosts. He is not alone is this assessment, and as a result, HiNet or portions of HiNet are being blocked more and more aggressively. Spamhaus.org lists Taiwan as the fourth largest source of spam by country, much of this due to HiNet.
HiNet has thus far denied that there is any spam or security problem and will blame any problems on the other end of the connection.
So-net is the same price as Hinet. Perhaps a move will solve things…
I use Hinet and couldn’t be happier. I can also get into that JTWC web site. I just checked no problem. About two years ago, my ADSL with them wasn’t very stable, but it has been extremely reliable lately. I also use them in three other locations and they are very reliable. I switched once two or three years ago when Hinet wasn’t stable (I was one of the first 10,000 ADSL subscribers in Taiwan). The company I switched to was worse, so I switched back. Been stable the last year and half or so.
Doesn’t everybody’s lines touch Hinet’s lines one way or another anyway? Aren’t the routers that direct traffic off the island Hinet routers? I thought Hinet was the bigwig company here. For example, when another service is having trouble with a phone line, they have to contact ChungHwa Telecom to get the lines checked (right?) Correct me if I’m wrong, I’d like to know the DSL breakdown here. This is all based off assumptions I made when I signed up for hinet.
What am I doing wrong ? No firewall, and I have accepted their security certificate.
09/17/04 17:53:53 Fast traceroute metoc.npmoc.navy.mil
Trace metoc.npmoc.navy.mil (199.10.200.33) …
1 61.228.168.254 31ms 31ms 47ms TTL: 0 (61-228-168-254.dynamic.hinet.net ok)
2 168.95.72.2 47ms 31ms 31ms TTL: 0 (tp-gs-c6r1.router.hinet.net bogus rDNS: host not found [authoritative])
3 203.75.232.66 31ms 32ms 31ms TTL: 0 (tp-s2-c6r15.router.hinet.net bogus rDNS: host not found [authoritative])
4 211.22.34.34 31ms 31ms 31ms TTL: 0 (tp-s2-c12r1.router.hinet.net fraudulent rDNS)
5 210.65.200.122 31ms 31ms 31ms TTL: 0 (tp-s2-c12r2.router.hinet.net fraudulent rDNS)
6 211.75.91.205 31ms 32ms 32ms TTL: 0 (tp-s2-c12r32.router.hinet.net bogus rDNS: host not found [authoritative])
7 211.72.108.133 172ms 172ms 172ms TTL: 0 (la-c12r11.USA-LA.router.hinet.net bogus rDNS: host not found [authoritative])
8 144.232.154.193 172ms 172ms 172ms TTL: 0 (sl-st21-la-9-1-2.sprintlink.net ok)
9 144.232.20.68 187ms 171ms 172ms TTL: 0 (sl-bb24-ana-9-0.sprintlink.net ok)
10 144.232.1.149 172ms 172ms 172ms TTL: 0 (sl-bb22-ana-13-0.sprintlink.net ok)
11 144.232.8.157 234ms 219ms 235ms TTL: 0 (sl-bb20-prl-10-1.sprintlink.net ok)
12 144.232.30.26 234ms 234ms 234ms TTL: 0 (sl-gw2-prl-1-0.sprintlink.net ok)
13 160.81.200.214 250ms 234ms 234ms TTL: 0 (sl-timewarner-12-0.sprintlink.net ok)
14 216.136.8.79 234ms 235ms 219ms TTL: 0 (216-136-8-79.gen.twtelecom.net ok)
15 66.162.246.34 234ms 219ms 234ms TTL: 0 (66-162-246-34.gen.twtelecom.net ok)
16 No Response * * *
17