Who do you recommend as good companies to get an internet account from in Taiwan (ISP provider)?
What ID do you require to make an account?
How much are typical plans in Taiwan?
What the connection speeds?
Any pitfuls/things not to do/bad experiences serious or funny episodes?
Thanks for any information in advance.
I use hinet 1.5M/384 it’s about $1500 per month including extra phone line.
Occasionally drops connection, somtimes takes a long time to find a server, though I suspect that’s my phone line socket’s problem.
Others say latency is a little slow. Have to agree.
Other than it’s fine. I chose Hinet because I used several other smaller ISPs over the years. I liked them but then i realized neither of them had the resources for broadband access. So I chose a well-resourced company because I thought they had the products I wanted, or at least would have.
Kenneth
Yes, go with Hinet for sure. I have a 1.5 and pay less than $1,200 a month and have had little trouble with it since the 3 years I’ve used it. They are reliable and have excellent service- a 24hr hotline in case of any trouble and they do have english operators too. The box also allows you to have two IP addresses so you can hook up two computers.
As for getting an account, you must have a Taiwanese ID- no way around it.
Another benefit of using Hinet ADSL service is if you are in the airport (and probably some other places), you can use your Hinet login to access their wireless network free of additional charge.
I got my account without a Taiwanese ID, but since then, I think that has changed, in that you need either a Taiwanese ID or a guarantor now.
If you make your ADSL modem wireless, how many wireless laptops can connect at the same time?
Same question for using a hub.
The reason I ask is that I often have my desktop connected and my laptop through the wireless router with no problem and no apparent great los of speed.
Sorry - the reason I ask is that I would like to add another desktop via the wireless connection
[quote=“tonygo”]If you make your ADSL modem wireless, how many wireless laptops can connect at the same time?
Same question for using a hub.
[/quote]
Most routers will support up to 253 clients, regardless of whether this is wired or wireless. As to how many can you hook up practically speaking, that depends more on usage than anything else. 1 client heavily into p2p can easily take over an entire connection making it useless for anything else. On the other hand if you juat have web browsing and emailing, you can support 10-20 computers on a good ADSL line without it getting too slow. If you do gaming or audio streaming then the answer will be somewhat lower.
(The 253 clients limit is because most routers use a /24 or Class C network for the LAN. This size network has 256 addresses, but 2 of these are reserved, and one is used for the router itself, so you end up with 253 usable. If you use a Linux box as your router you could use a larger sized network address for your LAN, although there’s little practical reason to do so on an ADSL line as you’d likely run out of bandwidth way before you run out of addresses.)
Practically speaking, you can put about 10-15 clients on a wireless access point/router before performance degrades heavily. I think this would also be the point where the shared ADSL becomes dialup speed for each user.
thanks for that jlick and answerer - should have no problem with 3 light usage computers
Anybody tried So-net? Their 1 year contract 1.5M/384K plan sounds pretty cheap/competitive…I just arrived in Taipei less than 2 months ago and am also shopping around for an ISP…thanx!
I have used So-Net’s 1.5m/384k service for over a year and a half. It has been very reliable. Actually you can find better deals out there, but you will get crappy performance. I was on giga.net.tw for about 6 months and though the price was very cheap, you could just about forget about going to any sites outside of Taiwan on the nights and weekends because their international link was so clogged at those times. Other cheap ones have time limitations which is fine for occasional users but not others. After the horrors of my first ADSL ISP, I would really advise against any ISP that is priced ‘too good to be true’.
One thing you should be aware of is that So-net (and other ADSL services) only provide the ISP service. You need to pay a monthly fee for the ADSL line itself to Chunghwa Telecom each month.
One of the nice things about So-Net is they offer you either 1 fixed IP address or 8 dynamic addresses. Having a fixed IP address is nice for some of the more advanced networking folks, and the 8 dynamic is nice if you want to use multiple computers but don’t want to hassle with buying a router, though I’d advise anyone on a broadband line to get a router anyways as it acts as a basic firewall. The added security is well worth it, and they only cost around NT1000.
anyone have any experience or thoughts on the digital cable TV / ISP deals that are on offer of late?..
i’ve heard that the digital cable ISP system can get bogged down during peak hours, but it cetainly is cheap… plus you get digital cable…