I’ve been in Taiwan for a little over two weeks now and I am a subscriber to Hinet’s 8M DSL service. I was getting extremely frustrated because my Internet was painfully slow when connecting to servers physically located outside of Taiwan (which is reflective of nearly all of my internet use). It was literally so slow at times that it would have been faster to call up the company who owned the server I was attempting to connect to and have them read me the HTML code character by character of the page I was trying to access while I copied it down and then saved it as an html file to view. I’m barely exagerrating here. When I managed to get Forumosa to load up (sometimes the main topic screen would take 5-10 minutes to load up) I read some similar complaints from other Forumosa members, so I knew I wasn’t the only one experiencing trouble with the Internet here.
Since my job depends on my abilitiy to communicate over the Internet (I don’t teach English) this was obviously a huge issue, with 3MB email attachements taking half an hour or more to download. The problem for some reason got much worse this weekend, where I couldn’t even get web pages with nothing but text to load up. One 50k image took 15 minutes to load up. I thought that it was because it was the weekend and there was just too much internet traffic. However, at 2am (hardly peak usage time) I was still having the same problem. Finally I had enough, and I had my wife call up Hinet to ask why we were paying for Internet service that we were not getting.
The tech support person explained that if I was having trouble accessing sites outside of Taiwan, I needed to switch from Hinet’s dynamic IP address service to their static IP service. So she walked me through the steps on the Hinet website necessary to do this. After making the switch, I had to change the settings in my router to log on using username@hinet.net.
Too make a long story short (too late, I know) this solved the problem. Web pages and images load up fine, and large attachments aren’t an issue either. So, if you’re having trouble with slow Hinet service to non-Taiwan based servers and you have their dynamic IP service (check your username if you’re not sure), I suggest calling up Hinet and have them walk you through how to switch to their static IP service. I’d walk you through the steps myself except that the pages were all in Chinese - my wife was talking to the tech person and telling me where to click.
Sorry if this is a repost - just trying to help.
Edit: My wife called back today to find out how much more the static IP service costs. She was told that we are not being charged anything additional. Please DOUBLE CHECK this for yourself when you call if you decide to switch over to the static IP service.
I wouldn’t be surprised this is the case. But it’s so cheap and I don’t need to use it as frequently as before so I dropped to the basic service. In any event, TFN static is the way to go IMO. YMMV.
To be honest, I’m not sure. My wife says the tech support person didn’t mention it. Either way, its a necessary expense for me, as my job depends on being able to use the Internet. Prior to making this switch, some sites were literally non-functional. The ones that did work were so slow that from the time I tried to access the site to the time it finished loading up my beard was noticeably longer. I’m going to have my wife call Hinet again when she wakes up from her nap and ask her what the difference in price is.
Honestly, I wouldn’t use Hinet/CHT if I had a choice for my internet needs, especially if my work depended on it. We’ve had many posts here that talk about the relative (de)merits of the major providers. By far, Hinet has had the most complaints.
I’ve used both personally and professionally and I would still pick TFN over CHT. Sparq has been a mixed bag.
My wife just got off the phone with Hinet, and apparently there was NO change in price. I’ll believe it when I see the bill. The guy told my wife that because we are still using the 8MB service (but with a static IP now) our billing would be the same.
If anyone is having trouble with Hinet DSL and takes the advice from my original post, I suggest you DOUBLE CHECK with Hinet to find out for sure about the pricing.
No you’re not … read their english hinet service pages … than you’ll know what you get and it’s idiotic why they market it as they do …[/quote]
Yeah, I agree. Although I did realise that it was nowhere near 8megs. Funny though where they get that figure from. Actually I’m pretty happy with my connection usually, which is often around 200KB download speed. But these past few days have indeed been pitiful.
Thx for that vertigo I will have to look into this. Weekends Im seeing some problems but generally using the proxy it fixes. This is about the only problem Ive had with Hinet over the years and before that was with Giganet and that was really bad, much like the experience you were having before you switched to a static ip.
If you are username@hinet.net for login its dynamic.
I managed to changed to static ip by going to the following site service.hinet.net/2004/adslstaticip.php and agreeing there, entering details and selecting static ip. I had to first register an email account with hinet before it would allow me to change to static ip, but once that was done, in theory it said I have now changed to static ip and gave me an ip number. See how it goes
Yup just disconnected and logged in using @ip.hinet.net and let me in fine, previously on dynamic when I tried it was rejected, so looks like thats how its done, or I hope anyway Testing a site now with no proxy that was causing me lots of blood and pain and its working beautifully. Vertigo man thanks heaps for this, at least for now it seems to be going fine, will know more when I hit the horrid weekend everyone get on the internet rush
Go to: Control Panel - Network Connections. Then right-click your Local Area Connection and select Properties. Now scroll to Internet Protocol and click the Properties button. If ‘Obtain an IP address automatically’ is selected you are using a dynamic address.
Here is the short version, just saw it after typing the above :
Go to Network Connections and highlight the Local Area Connection icon. In the lower left corner you find the Details (click the double arrow if not visible). If the last line says ‘Assigned by DHCP’ it’s dynamic. DHCP = Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol
Actually forget it, I think the above is just for your PC, not the ADSL connection itself (modem or router).
jlick, I can’t post a step by step of how I made the switch. I was on the computer, my wife was on the phone with tech support, and since everything was in Chinese my wife was just telling me where to click and what to select. But what Creztor said above is the same thing that I did. First I had to register an email address with Hinet, then I could switch to the static IP service. I believe I went here to register the new email address: msa.hinet.net/
I just got the HINET dude over the phone to change me from dynamic to static. He had me add the username@ip.hinet.net part from my end in the log-in part of my connection, and I’m good to go!
I know it is very frustrating, but if you are nice on the phone, they might help you out. It helps if you’ve been with them for 10 years too.
Testing a site now with no proxy that was causing me lots of blood and pain and its working beautifully. Vertigo man thanks heaps for this, at least for now it seems to be going fine, will know more when I hit the horrid weekend everyone get on the internet rush 
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