I’ve got what used to be a tolerably fast Hinet Internet connection - about 10 Megabits down, 1 up. I can still get those speeds with torrents, where the load is being shared by a number of simultaneous connections. But just normal Internet browsing is… about 10x slower than a 14.4 modem. Randomly some pages will load with decent speed. 80% of the time, pages don’t load at all or take many minutes to come up.
Earthquake problem you say? Then riddle me this. When I run my web browser through a USA proxy server, my browsing speeds come back to normal - still not worthy of “broadband” but pretty damn good considering. So this rules out any problem with my router, DSL modem, etc… it has to be some kind of filtration going at Hinet. And since Taiwan web sites all load up damn fast without a proxy - I think they’re purposely de-prioritizing requests from international Web sites to an extreme level, perhaps using the Earthquake as an excuse?
Anyone else having this experience?
UPDATE
Okay I’ve learned a lot in the last hour.
As the other active thread on this topic advises, I just called Hinet and had them switch me to a static IP, I had to speak Chinese but the process was painless otherwise. Basically you get a new username (that 8 digit number) and you use @.ip.hinet.net instead of @hinet.net in your member name. The switch was free for me but I can “only use it on one computer”. Okay…
Results are much better for Internet browsing, pages that weren’t working 10 minutes before I called AT ALL now load beautifully. Torrent speeds are the same (which have been good enough all along). Pings aren’t really improved.
What really struck me was this: on this phone call and on previous calls, the tech will ask “What page are you having trouble with?” It just dawned on my as to why they ask this question - they must filter every single HTTP request through a proxy on their end, which isn’t configured to focus on traffic outside of Taiwan. You complain about a site, they add it to the proxy server’s list, and everything’s okay. Going to a static IP must bypass this proxy server. This explains why HTTP browsing is vastly improved after going static IP (no more proxy filtering) whereas other traffic remains the same - because the other traffic was never being filtered through a proxy!
I’m about 90.653% sure that’s exactly what is going on here.
I have the Chunghwa Hinet 8 down/512 up, I think it’s just one step below yours. However my results are the same but the exact opposite – i get pretty bad bit torrent rates 99% of the time. I never get an overall torrent download rate going past roughly ~35 KB/s. (Once in a while I’ll get a single torrent that will download up to ~125 KB/s.) Anyhow note the 35 KB/s is for ALL torrents in progress, so if there are 10 in progress it’ll be 5 to 10 KB/s for each, less than 1 or 0.5 for others. Strangely, my upload rates level off at what they should be, roughly 55 to 60 KB/s. So downloads are terrible, ups are fine.
As for direct internet downloading, I get hits and misses. If I am downloading a driver, for example nvidia.com or my motherboard drivers, and there are 3 + links (servers) of which to download from, I’ll try a few of them. It will usually go that the first one is a horrible rate (2 ~ 3 KB/s, 2 hours ETA), then a second or third one I’ll get blazing speeds of 500 or even 650 KB/s, >1 min download. Extreme randomness.
I noticed the same during the past two weeks or so on my 2M line at home with websites outside of Taiwan, in particular German ones, at the office (seednet) I can access the same websites much faster.
I have also found my Hinet connection lacking recently, like for the past month or two. Internet radio stations I could listen to before are now constantly buffering, making them unlistenable. I change from a variable to fixed IP, called the Hinet guy who said there was nothing wrong, tried to upgrade and was told I already had the fastest possible speed Hinet could offer. Now I’m thinking of switching to Sonet or something.
You guys are pretty late complaining … I have this shit going on since last year. After complaining they gave me a ‘fixed’ IP, it went smooth for a while … just after the broken cables due to the quake I got even faster speeds from Europe … now, after fixing the cables and rerouting, Europe speeds are sometimes down to a crawl.
But, a wonder it may be … the Joost TV video speeds are fast …
I have the same problems with Hi-Net… I got a 10M down / 2M up connection.
Torrents run well, but normal HTTP, Webradio etc. is very slow most of the time… It got better after the Earthquake, while we were somehow routed through other cables. But since they fixed the broken cable, and the traffic is tun through it again, http speed got slower again (like before the Earthquake)…
Poagao, dont switch to Sonet! Webbrowsing at Sonet is the same slow like Hi-Net. But Sonet is strongly limiting all p2p traffic (Bittorrent, Emule, etc.). Even very well seeded torrents reached max. 20kb/s at Sonet…
See this old thread about the issue: forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopic.ph … t&&start=0
Haven’t you heard the news. All Internet traffic in America gets slowed down because it’s got to be eavesdropped on. They say they need to track who is getting in contact with who so that they can eavesdrop on the people who should not be getting in contact with who they say they should not be getting in contact with.
“Federal agents continue to eavesdrop on Americans’ electronic communications without warrants a year after President Bush confirmed the practice, and experts say a new Congress’ efforts to limit the program could trigger a constitutional showdown.” -Yahoo! news
“The N.S.A.'s backdoor access to major telecommunications switches on American soil with the cooperation of major corporations represents a significant expansion of the agency’s operational capability, according to current and former government officials.” -The New York Times
Yep… Hinet’s 8Mb ADSL has been $hit since Chinese New Year.
And I think it’s definately got to do with network throttling as…
1: speeds improve during weekends like clockwork.
2: connecting to hinet.net goes at full speed, but overseas sites go at <100Kb/s
3: when downloading http from US, even using multiple connections to different servers does NOT give significant improvements
So in conclusion… Hinet is screwing with us. Figured something was wrong when 8Mb is cheaper than 2Mb.
Scumbags
I doubt it. I ran some DSL speed tests and from servers within Taiwan my 2M line gives very good results, but when using overseas servers it’s way slower. Thus it seems the problem is not the “last mile” but rather the connection between Hinet and the rest of the world. Maybe they are still routing traffic via the slower satellite connections?
Just looking at the way everything else is tolerated here (the use of the roads for example, typical IT departments), my cynical view is that they are probably using equipment far beyond it’s designed capability/capacity to save costs and it’s tough for complaining customers to prove that is actually the case.
Most people I talk to have never got anywhere near the speeds they pay for.[/quote]
I dunno, when I run a test from a server in Taiwan it comes close to the max of my 2MB connection. I think what people do not understand is that there are many factors that come into play which effect the speed:
For example when accessing servers outside of Taiwan then you have to share the traffic on the connections to there, and the service itself (web browsing, torrent download, ftp etc.) also affects the speed, so it’s pretty much impossible that you always get a speed close or equal to what your ADSL line offers (can offer) - but that’s not the fault of your ADSL provider.
Remember that e.g. downloading torrents also depends on the uplink of other internet users - and they usually have a slow connection (in comparision to the downlink) - so it does not matter how fast your downlink is, the weakest link in the chain will determine the maximum speed.
The best analogy I can come up with: it’s not Ferrari’s fault that you can’t drive it at full speed on the highway when it’s busy, but the car still can hit the max if the conditions are suitable - in that case the German Autobahn on Sunday morning.
I just did some tests from this cool site and you can see that the downlink result widely varies but it can indeed get close to the max of 2MB that my provider offers:
Server in Taiwan - 1.95 to 1.98Mbs (repeated several times)
Server in Shanghai - 303kb
Server in Hong Kong - 310kb
Server in Makati - 2001-2017kb (!)
Server in Melbourne - 615kb
Server in Jayapura - 30kb
Server in Yokohama - 855kb
Server in Singapore - 288
Server in Dublin - 142kb
Server in Rome - 375kb
Server in San Jose - 433kb
Server in Los Angeles - 294kb
Server in Chigaco - 194kb
Server in Toronto - 84kb
Server in Cape Town - 369kb
Server in Curacao - 509kb
Server in Santiago - 232kb
NOTE: During the test I had often problems with testing from servers in the US and Canada, and as you can see above most servers there are slow in comparision. On the other hand some servers are pretty fast: the one in Taiwan but also the one in Makati, Philippines nearly maxes out, so I see myself supported in the assumption that problems are not necessarily with the ADSL to my provider but at the other side or in the connection to there.
Of course it is possible that some people do not get what’s promised (for whatever reason) but run the test from a near-server first to see if your line is really at fault or something (somewhere) else.
Nice sites Rascal thanks for the links. I just ran the tests and on my 8mb Hinet connection using a wireless G config.
Taiwan - 2.00 to 2.13Mbs (4 times)
Hong Kong - 780 kb/s
Makati - 1800 kb/s (sponsored by BiometriX telecom…wowwee)
Cebu - 58kb/s (upload was 3 times the speed and they are sponsored by the province)
Quezon - 287kb/s
My North American speeds seem to be around the same as yours in some cases your faster in some I am. Save for Curacao I didn’t get anywhere near that speed (200kb/s 3 tries).
I have to say that the modems that hinet uses are just crap. I have gone through 3 in the last 4 months. Always dropping the connection or just shutting down for no reason. Also even tho I live in a newer building I suspect the wiring might not be top grade stuff.
Yeah I got 1.39 Mb/s up and 3.52 down from the local Taiwan server - as expected. Everything you said is correct Rascal, but I remain unconvinced that the cause of the traffic slowdown from US/Europe hosted servers is a “clogged pipe”. As I said, adding a middleman server to the equation in the form of an International proxy server somehow bypasses Chunghwa’s filtration methods and opens my browsing speeds right up.
Incidentally the last day has been much better. Youtube is a prime example - some days videos just never even start downloading. On other days, like right now, I can open 10 videos and they’ll load ridiculously fast, like a broadband connection in the states.
If I had to guess, I’d say they close down international pipes during peak hours to salvage bandwidth for “more important” internal traffic.
I’ll bitch and see if anything improves. Maybe they go by the “fuck everyone over and give decent service to the complainers” cost-cutting business plan.
