fast internet

I’m afraid that the ADSL service provided by China Telecom is about as good as it gets here in Zhuhai. I’ve also heard that ZHTV provided cable-modem internet service, but I’ve also been told that it is often times slower than the ADSL.

Part of the speed problem is that, about 9:00 am every day just about every office girl in town who has a computer on her desk logs into QQ or some other IM service, and they stay logged in all day. This just sucks up all the available bandwidth, and things slow down to something slower than a crawl.

The ADSL service was much faster here 5 years ago than it is today.

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"I've got more problems in my life than a cub scout at the Neverland Ranch."
Larry The Cable Guy From the film "Delta Farce"

I have the same service and it drives me nuts. Within China is not so bad, but offshore it's sometimes nightmarish. If you run an internet connection monitoring program such as NetMedic this will at least give you documentation of your slowest connections and average times. If you want more in depth analysis, try Visual Route or just ping your VPN. You will notice that there are as many as 30 hops within the China (the bamboo firewall) before you reach the first offshore node. I believe that this is one of the main reasons for such slow throughput.

regards,
T. Tempest. DCA

____________________

"I'd love a thousand words in a foreign language." Tang Yuchuan

Tsc Tempest Photography at http://www.kong-xi.com/doc.html

i am getting speeds no where near what was advertised. I mean that at certain times, I wished that I had dialup instead.

However the quality of service varies greatly. From my experience the hotels have pretty decent dedicated connections...still have to pass through the great firewall of china though.

I never have any idea what Doc is talking about when he mentions computers, but I get his gist. Bottom line...EVERYTHING is slow as crap here. No way around it. Took me three weeks to download Smokey and the Bandit III!

@Canrun:
That's because the folks who run the Great Firewall were scratching their heads trying to figure out why someone would want to download a movie as bad as that.
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"I've got more problems in my life than a cub scout at the Neverland Ranch."
Larry The Cable Guy From the film "Delta Farce"

ha ha ha! now that is some fine material orrin.

Orrin...your offer for drinks is now OFF! ;)

"Daddy, does this mean I won`t be your little tick-turd anymore?"

"Junior, you`ll always be my little tick-turd."

I'm sure that all 5 people who saw that film really enjoyed it. ;)

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"I've got more problems in my life than a cub scout at the Neverland Ranch."
Larry The Cable Guy From the film "Delta Farce"

As a man of machines that you are Orrin, I am deeply disappointed in your cynicism... ;)

Oh, the internet is still slow, John Hedin.

So, I see that there is no way to get a faster internet here ...
By the way I don't know that movie, but Orrin might be right as it never took me 3 weeks to download a movie...:-))

L'amitié ne s'use que si l'on ne s'en sert pas

"man of machines" = "gearhead" That I am indeed :D

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"I've got more problems in my life than a cub scout at the Neverland Ranch."
Larry The Cable Guy From the film "Delta Farce"

Well, gdomi, if the French can give Jerry Lewis honorary citizenship, then surely they will appreciate the comedic genius of America's finest living actor, Mr. Burton Leon Reynolds, Jr.

Err...or maybe not.

Hijacking another thread, are we, canrun?

Thanks, John. ;)

Hear ye hear ye: Two tin cups and a string are faster than Zhuhai internet access!

Happy?

This last week the ADSL speed seems to be much worse than any time last year. It has taken me 5 attempts to download a 58 meg program update and it's driven me crazy. The first 4 efforts all timed out and crashed. The only way I got the download done was to set it going at 2am and hope for the best.

I checked my connection speed, the PC said 100mbs - a question to the geeks out there, is that fast or slow, is it the best you can get from China Telecom.

Canrun, you disapoint me. You called me a redneck the other week, and now you admit to wanting "Smokie and the Bandit". I guess you also downloaded the "Dukes of Hazard". Unfortunately I have to admit to knowing what they are. My kids knew what to get me for Christmas, Monty Python - and the search for the Holy Grail. Did that ever reach the USA. That's it for now, I leave you all with another question, What's the average flying speed of a swallow ??

Hijacked thread:

Roy...if you read my words carefully you will see that in no way was I calling you a redneck in a condescending way. In fact, quite the contrary! As a card-carrying tu baozi myself, I say it as a term of endearment.

Alas, however, you have shown that you are actually a man of letters, as you spelled "Hazzard" incorrectly... ;)

Er...disappoint, too. J/K!

Don't let the truth get in the way of a good story, I actually took it the way you meant, so ease up. I am however really happy that I didn't know how to spell haphazzard.

I had an acquaintance about 5 years ago who worked for China Telecom. She told me that ALL internet traffic from the Pearl Delta area, with the exception of HK was funneled through a server “farm” in Shenzhen. Periodically, about once every month to 6 weeks, the staff in Shenzhen would take one or more of the servers off-line for a few days to perform “preventative maintenance”. During those times there would be a noticeable degradation in download speed. The rest of the time, however, the connection speeds in Zhuhai were far better than they are today. The ADSL speed (which was advertised to be 2MB) was good enough in fact to allow me to have real-time video and audio chats with friends in the US at any time of the day or night. I don’t know for a fact if that architecture is the same today as it was then, but I strongly suspect that it is.

Today, of course, there are many, many more people on line in Zhuhai and the surrounding area than there were back then. Another phenomenon we have today that we did not have back then is the wide-spread use in Zhuhai of free IM services such as QQ, Skype, MSN and Yahoo Messenger, etc., etc. Also, just about every office girl in town who has a connected computer on her desk logs into one or all of these IM services from the time she plants her cute little butt in her chair in the morning until she goes home in the evening. Now, I’m no internet techno-geek, but common sense tells me that this practice cannot be doing good things for the internet connection speeds in Zhuhai and other cities in the area.

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"I've got more problems in my life than a cub scout at the Neverland Ranch."
Larry The Cable Guy From the film "Delta Farce"

African or European? btw is it laden or unladen?

Roy wrote:
"the PC said 100mbs"

What your computer is showing is the speed of your connection to your network, that is from your computer via some cable or wireless connection to some box: a switch, router, or your ADSL modem. 100mbs (megabits per second) is a typical speed.

This is not the speed of your internet connection, and in this case does not indicate your internet speed.

For a better idea of your internet 'download speed' you can watch the numbers in the download dialogue box these are typically measured in kbs (kilobits per second) and can frequently drop down to bps (bits per second). Monitor these periodically to get a rough idea of how fast your connection is.

Note Transfer Speed at the bottom...

You can also check your connection speed online via several free speed tests. Try,

http://www.speedtest.net/

Which has a super cool graphical user interface

regards,
T. Tempest. DCA

____________________

"I'd love a thousand words in a foreign language." Tang Yuchuan

Tsc Tempest Photography at http://www.kong-xi.com/doc.html

My 'ping' comes in at a whopping 341/43 kb/s.

Whoopdeedamndoo.

"Top cities by download speed"
--Zhuhai @ 2865 kb/s

B.O.L.L.O.C.K.S

@ Roy:

Discussing the Dukes of Hazzard suddenly isn't as boring now, is it?? ;)

I tested to Shenzhen and scored 3Mbs, to Santiago, 70 kbs, to Johanesburg, 30 kbs and to Moscow a whopping 'no test result'.

As I said some time before, "In China" the speed is good, pop across the border, the connection goes through HK, and it drops to around 1.8Mbs but that's just today.

After 10 tests, it is reported in my summery that I've got it better than 81%, globally. Go figure...

regards,
T. Tempest. DCA

____________________

"I'd love a thousand words in a foreign language." Tang Yuchuan

Tsc Tempest Photography at http://www.kong-xi.com/doc.html

Woo hoo!!!

Up to 1595/369 kb/s through Shenzhen!

Rock on!

Let ya'll know how it goes from my new house in Florida later this month! ;)

It looks like only Doc has got he Swallow bit. Re bits of data, all good stuff to check out Monday when I have some time. The lack of an internet connection killed any thoughts of me signing for a new apartment today. It was quite funny to see the apartment owner / boss (the little lady) telling the monkey (husband) off for being so stupid as to build a nice new apartment and forget to install any internet / phone connections.

Thanks for the link to Speedtest. Checked mine twice this morning via HK as was the sites recommended, and got 363 / 384 kbs with pings of 37 and 46ms. These seem quite similar to 'canrun'. From my memory, in the early days of ADSL it was 256kbs, then 512kbs and now it seems like you can have much more, ADSL2 and all sorts. Several years ago my office in AU upgraded from a 256k service to a 512k service and the difference was staggering.

I guess what I am asking is what speed service is China Telecom commonly supplying - someone else arranged my account so I have no idea what they organised. I guess if I got 384kps it's better than a 256K service, and the reason it's slow sometimes (especially this last week) is as 'doc' suggested, an overload through Shenzhen.

It was time to renew my ADSL account last week, and upgraded from the middle level 2M (RMB1440) to a better 3M (RMB 2180 plus phone thrown in - so it's almost cheaper as a phone connection is RMB50 / month).

Apart from waiting all week for them to press the right buttons to make it work, I have got to say it's a lot better. Mind you the download speeds seem very dependant on traffic loads.

So during the day instead of timing out you have slow and at 2am in the morning instead of having good, it's blindingly fast.

Last night I downloaded 180MB in less than 15 minutes. Wouldn't have dared try that last week, not during the day. Did the Speedtest and got significantly faster speeds but some inconsistency.

My advice, pay the extra money and do any big downloads in the early morning.

Hey roy, who do you get your ADSL from?

Thanks.

dd

Being here in Zhuhai and being someone who spends the majority of his time on-line I can say that I have become a more patient man...

The line speeds here are SHOCKING - a combination of the bamboo firewall Doc refers to, and those cute little butts Orrin speaks of.

I'm in a University on a shared pipe at work and I know for a fact that the majority of students in dormitories (10,000+) have PCs streaming Chinese TV shows on-line in real-time, making it hard for me to work, let alone remain in contact with the outside World. Still, as long as the kids get to watch TV, right? :)

http://www.cooscreations.com

China Telecom. The 2nd floor of the Post Office building, cnr of Jiuzhou Rd and Jinshan Rd in Jida

Perfect. I know right where that is. Thanks roy.

Perhaps our friends at China Telecom should take heed of this article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/13/technology/13net.html?ei=5065&en=765ff...

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"I can't get no respect.............. no respect at all!"

apply for a DDN with fixed IP add can solve these problems.
at least better uploading speed can makes your VPN runs much more stable and efficiency.

@fallen:

Thanks for the advice, but could you please translate that into English.

@JJ:

I think we need a "technobabble" forum.

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"I can't get no respect.............. no respect at all!"

Indeed, looks like we need one !
Technobabble?

.........or "technospeak", whichever rolls easier off the tounge. ;P

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"I can't get no respect.............. no respect at all!"

I like "technobabble"

fallen wrote:
> apply for a DDN with fixed IP add can solve
> these problems.

DDN = Defence Data Network ;-) Dynamic Domain Name, perhaps???

IP add = IP address, Internet protocol address

I think what Fallen is trying to say is, contact your internet provider to setup a fixed address number for you.

fallen wrote:
> at least better uploading speed can makes your VPN
> runs much more stable and efficiency.

VPN = Virtual Private Network

If you're runing a virtual private network, chances are you, or your in-house system administrator would know something about this anyway.

Benefits of a fixed IP address. you can be online 24/7 and host your own web server and internet site rather than keeping it on some third party server (computer system). It means that Domain Names Servers will point directly to your web server and will not have to keep looking for the address.

One problem with this is if the upper level domain is well known as a source of spam then many spam-blocking systems may inadvertently block your address using 'guilt by association' rules.

"Technobabble" is good (as a forum) :-p

regards,
T. Tempest. DCA

____________________

"I'd love a thousand words in a foreign language." Tang Yuchuan

Tsc Tempest Photography at http://www.kong-xi.com/doc.html

DDN = Digital Data Network
which means a direct connection to your ISP with same download and upload speed.

fixed ip address is not required for VPN, u still can use DDNS service provided by a lot third party company for 24x7 connection. But China telecom will have to assign one ip address for u with DDN, so, just use it

DDNS = Dynamic Domain Name Service

the main benefit from a DDN line could be the synchronized up/down speed. cos regardless how fast your download speed is,ADSL only have 512kbit/s upload speed. so it will makes your VPN a lot sluggish.

you can make a home web server if u like, but it has nothing to do with VPN.

BTW, there are no upper level domain can be blocked with a fixed ip address with a top level domain. you can register whateveryouwant.com with a fixed IP address.

I am just a jobless vagrant and hope can help someone with my knowledge. Danke schön :-)

Nice clarification.

regards,
T. Tempest. DCA

____________________

"I'd love a thousand words in a foreign language." Tang Yuchuan

Tsc Tempest Photography at http://www.kong-xi.com/doc.html

Technobabble it will be then :)

Another request for technobabblespeak / explanation from our byte boffins.

Quite a few times of recent my connection just goes mute. The modem says it's busy, but nought works. Best solution has been disconnect, go make a coffee, came back and reconnect. It's not like the line drops, it like the big brother says your going nowhere for awhile.

It actually tends to scramble my Expat9 login, but that's another story.

u meant your ADSL modem,right?
for general trouble shooting. first take a look at the indicator of the modem, if it keep blinking, then it will be the telephone line problem, if it happen when there is incoming call or u r calling out, install a splitter to fix it, only cost 10 rmb.
if u can find nothing wrong pysically. then maybe its normal. China Telecom will disconnect your connection every 48 hours in order to prevent you using an IP address for too long. this will take maybe 1-5 minute before you can get your connection back.
hope it helps....good luck

@Fallen:
Thanks. That explanes some of the wierdness I've seen.

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"I can't get no respect.............. no respect at all!"

Count Zero = count down to zero ;-)

every now and then network traffic gets lost. information is broken up into small packets. these get sent via various different routes to/from your computer. when they arrive your computer checks to see if all the information in the packet arrived safely, if not, it transmits a resend request and starts waiting for a reply and/or the resending of the packet.

Along the way, the packets can be bottlenecked by high volume traffic, redirected, blocked, or simply just expire (time out, TTL = time to live). Other things like line noise, power spikes, shortages, outages, etc. can also interrupt or corrupt the information in each packet. Lastly, there are packet sniffers, data encryptors, govt. filters, network nannies, key/screen/text/data loggers that can slow the progress of these little packets - in the word of the internet, it's a dangerous and scary place for little packets of data to run around.

most likely though, the connection between your modem and your isp is probably stuck in an infinite loop. this could be due to line noise. Ways to improve this, if it is a significant problem, is to change isp, get a dedicated line - if you share with your phone line, go cable or sat. or as you already mentioned disconnect, wait five minutes and reconnect. There are also some software solutions that regularly poll your isp to keep the connection 'alive' especially if you are connected but the computer is generally inactive.

regards,
T. Tempest. DCA

____________________

"I'd love a thousand words in a foreign language." Tang Yuchuan

Tsc Tempest Photography at http://www.kong-xi.com/doc.html

Can someone tell me what ADSL(or any other internet service) costs in Zhuhai?

I read someone's post above that it costs 1440RMB...is that per month or per year?

2mb a month for 200 rmb month to month contract. 4mb is around 300 to 350.

China Telecom is 1700rmb for one year of 2mbps. It is 2200rmb for a year of 3mbps.

I just checked the other day.

In March I paid RMB2178 for 12 months, 5mpbs and it included a free phone and 4 liters of cooking oil !!!, although the phone also costs some minor amount per month. The oil didn't last that long.

The prior year was RMB1440 for a slower service. The service I have now is average during the day and like greased lightning, at times, during the early morning.

Some people have no problems and others have all sorts of issues - my service fluctuates so much it's crazy. Welcome to .....