Screenshots

Factually, we're at their mercy. If I were to bang them as with many other dissatisfied subscribers everyday paragraph after paragraph, its been to no avail at all. Afterall..we're still better than blah,blah, same old tune. Image saja ada, quality ta'ada..that's what's happening in Bolehland just about too frequent!

Wrong Jeff. You have confused kilobytes per second with kilobits per second. Your slow streamxy is actually running at around 43200 bps which is far faster than a FAX machine. Nevertheless, 43200 bps is still not fast enough to be called broadband by most.

JEFF OOI says: OK, let me make it clearer. I was referring to file download experience in the case of Streamyx as the throughput speed (kilobits/sec) impedes total time taken to move chunks of files across the network (kilobytes/sec). So, let's use the term "data transfer rate" to give a reference to overall time taken -- measured in kilobytes per second -- to for the data to move across networks to the computer harddisk.

Work it the other way round, at 1.5Mbps and assuming throughput is at 75% optimum performance, I should get 1.125Mbps connection. Divide that by 8, shouldn't I get a fair deal of 140 kilobytes per second downloading my stuff from Gmail? Perhaps we should just blame the international links?

5.4kBbps = 5.4 * 8 = 43.2kbps

To be fair, this crawling Streamyx is still faster than the fax machine. 5.4KBps is 5.4 kiloBYTE per second, but the modem's speed was 9.6 kiloBIT per second, which is equivalent to 1.2 kiloBYTE per second.

kbps is kilobit per second, but KB/s is kilobyte per second.

Of course this is in no way a defense for Streamyx's dismal performance.

fren, 5.4kBps (byte) is different from 5.4kbps (bit).... 5.4kBps is 43.2 kbps. typically ie and firefox use kBps (byte) as download speed...

Err...the download speed is 5.4KByte/sec or (5.4 x 8) 43.2Kbit/sec.

So while it is slow for surfing today's internet, it's still faster than a fax ;)

JEFF OOI says: Which is true though there are fax machines that run on CCITT Group 4 nowadays, 28.8kbps up.

Jeff.. maybe its time for you to use the downloads manager like FlashGet or FlashGot for Firefox. You will see the downloads will become faster.

JEFF OOI says: My download speed on firefox has been OK, and tolerable. But definitely not today. The same file I showed got cut off four times.

I'm not a technical person but I know that the things that can affect the speed of the internet connection really depends on many components.

First, the quality of the copper is important. The older the copper wires, the less bandwidth and speed it can carry. Then there is the effect of distance. The further your house is from the POP, the less speed. Then of course, when everyone logs into the same shared internet connection at the same time, the less speed.

And you have the traffic peering with internet exchange locally and internationally. This peering also will depends on how the internet provider apportion the traffic. That will also depends on the congestion on these internet exchanges.

So, all in all, really tough to pin point the speed issues with internet connection. The best way is to buy a dedicated internet leased line directly from a provider. This will be $$$ of course. So unless TM wire up all homes with fiber connection, you are really at the mercy of all this element.

I was hoping to find out what was wrong with our network from your site...

TMNet's connection is not generally bad, but it's not generally good or consistent either. I'm in Sungai Chua and I would have 3-digit Kbps for downloads and uploads in one day and speeds similar to yours in another.

I had prior problems with local hardware and weather (there was one hell of a rainstorm this afternoon), so I'm having a hard time pinpointing what causes the sluggish connections. I'm not prepared to aim the blamethrower at TM just yet.

The speed provided is still some 60%-70% of their promised bandwidth at best, which is good by local standards, but still below par of global standards.

For the record, 5.4 KB/sec is only slightly above dial-up. Dial-ups, from my experience, tend to top up at 4-5 KB/sec.

I am having similar problem in TTDI. 5 - 15 kBps dwnloading have been the norm. Could be TM keeps on increasing the number of subscribers without the necessary nodes to support the service. MMSC is blind to this. It should impose a mandatory ratio to protect the consumers. - alamak

A friend of mine, his mother is working with some IT comm company said that yesterday (20th), KL (dunno bout other) was experiencing some lag/dcs for the entire day... dunno what cause it, i'm using maxis bb also having some difficulties to get online on Sunday... so hows today Jeff? any improvement? mine was working excellent atm

Nitpicking about bits and bytes and dinnerplates aside, a major issue with TMNet is that they would rather hide problems than announce them, unlike for example Jaring, which has a nifty notice page announcing things from broken international links to maintenance works.

Even if it doesn't fix anything, it keeps the users _happy_ and most importantly, _informed_.

(Which was also my reason for dropping by here, since i couldn't connect to many international servers - effectively keeping me offline).

Not sure if it applies to tmnet users as well, but here's the jaring news page:
https://www.jaring.my/announcement/index.cfm?year=2008

It's 8:30am Tuesday (22th Jan) and I can finally connect to streamyx's international links as normal.

Was up all night doing stuff and checking the line on and off.

Mind you, my exchange is TTDI and I can get > 80kBs most of the time.

TM calls it "best effort". What it means is even if you pay for 1 MB you may get less. I wonder if I can also make a "best effort" to pay; ie my best effort is RM 88 but if that month my effort is not enough then I only pay RM 68

Have you done a traceroute to see where you are routed to? Maybe check on the router/modem to see if the error rate is high or low.

yc

JEFF OOI says: I was told at the material time of tardiness, there was a broken link at the Linggi node in Negeri Sembilan, and the route to Palo Alto was extremely slow.However, the problems was mitigated within two hours. I was getting 120kbps transfer rate yeatedrday, downloadingthe same 6MB file.

I live in Subang Jaya too and the Internet is moving too slow, if it does move that is. This has been happening the past few days.

I called TMNet and they are in denial. As usual pretending not to know. Then I check in the lowyat.net forum, I see so many, to the tune of thousands, have been complaining to TMNet the past few days about slow connection especially to International Sites.

About the comments left in your site, I feel sad that many found time to point out your mistake about bits and bytes. The more important issue here is that Tmnet did not bother to inform its customers about the slowdown.

I have incurred lots of losses because of their negligence. But do they care? Does MCMC care?
I don't think so. A monopoly always can do whatever they want.

Sorry to hear that! It is a real joke to call that broadband! My connection in NZ
constantly getting me 1.4 Mega bits when I download!

You may want to refer to MyNetSentry. Incidentally, the comparative monitoring that I used there would confirm the substandard service (therefore shortchanging customers) provided by TMnet.

In a nutshell, the monitoring is done by two agents, one in Spore and one in TMnet. The results are then compared on the charts.

Screenshots is actually one of the monitoring targets and, as a courtesy, I should have notified you earlier. But too busy doing that communication. Apologies.

other reasons (addition to reasons mentioned above) for downloading process to slow are..
1. The slownes is on the server side....
2. some software is clogging the connection bandwidth... azureus always clogg my bandwidth... and after i exit it... my connection backs to normal....

In Singapore you can get a 3MB ADSL line (with free wireless router cum modem) at S$33.60 a month.

And the speed is blazingly fast.

In the firefox download dialog...I usually see 300+ KB/sec (in Klang Valley, I get 50+. Surprising that you get 5+ only).

And if I use speedtest.net to test my speed in Singapore, I get 3MB download speed - so...I really get what I pay for.

Also... in Singapore, the telcos here are selling consumer broadband packages at 1MB, 3MB, 8MB, 10MB, 32MB and 100MB plans.