Internet in condo not strong enough for watching live sport or any catchup TV (BBC iPlayer etc)

[Shamrock71]

I'm no techie but I don't think this is a speed issue (download speed is 50Mbs - which is perfectly fast enough when I'm in the UK), I think its a bandwidth issue (BBC IPlayer error messages says there isn't enough bandwidth for video playback) and anytime I try to watch any live stream for sport it just constantly buffers, impossible to view.

Its an AIS fibre router in the condo but I don' t know what package it is (I've asked the agent to ask the owner or people in the building) but I know it costs 533 baht/month. I don't mind paying more for a better service as long as its got better bandwidth or reliability (and it has to work on a VPN as well, which I know can throttle your speed).  

I just bought a new firestick and was hoping to watch lots of sport and movies, but unless I get a better service, this won't be possible. 

 

Sound familiar ?    What are my options ?

[Billy Shears]

I've got 3bb and it was mostly perfect until the cables got cut, now I get some buffering especially in the evening.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68478828

Edited June 2, 2024 by Billy Shears

[No-man]

I was thinking to get that firestick, plug or whatever it is so I could get NFL when it comes back.

Sorry to hear its not so good currently. I might still give it a go though, pretty cheap.

I used to could stream any nfl game (5 years), but not this year, they got that stuff locked down tight or I dont know the free working stream sites.

I can still easily download torrents on Piratebay, but unfortunately most movies now really suck lol.

[Ohyesuare]

50 is good so not an internet or bandwidth issue. It's either your VPN or you need to find alternate streams that work better in Thailand. I have 50 mb/s AIS Fibre as well and notice the buffering on streaming can also depend on the time of day, weekend etc.. Sometimes resetting the modem by turning it off and on helps too.

[Thomaz73]

8 hours ago, Billy Shears said:

I've got 3bb and it was mostly perfect until the cables got cut, now I get some buffering especially in the evening.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68478828

Yes. Might very well have to do with this. Been having issues recently. 

Doesn't seem to be any consistency to it, though. 

[Rocketboy]

8 hours ago, Billy Shears said:

I've got 3bb and it was mostly perfect until the cables got cut, now I get some buffering especially in the evening.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68478828

Same here!

[Shamrock71]

On 02/06/2024 at 19:53, Ohyesuare said:

50 is good so not an internet or bandwidth issue. It's either your VPN or you need to find alternate streams that work better in Thailand. I have 50 mb/s AIS Fibre as well and notice the buffering on streaming can also depend on the time of day, weekend etc.. Sometimes resetting the modem by turning it off and on helps too.

It will piss me off big time if its my VPN - I've just subscribed for 2 years - Surfshark - supposed to be one of the decent providers and I've used them before without issues. 

So is there is no superior fibre package that will improve this to the point where any VPN is still going to work ?

[SHTravel]

21 minutes ago, Shamrock71 said:

if its my VPN - I've just subscribed for 2 years - Surfshark

Very easy to rule out your VPN provider as the cause here.  Some VPN providers provide limited bandwidth trials.  Windscribe does for sure, I used that trial last month and it worked flawlessly (on a limited stream basis as you can't watch much before hitting the cap).  Just download/install the client and you get 2GB per month without any account/email being setup.

[Shamrock71]

I'm still waiting on an answer about which AIS package I'm on in the Condo. In the meantime, I've been recording multiple speed tests, with multiple tools, at different times of the day, including disconnecting all other devices except the testing device. With the VPN disabled, I'm getting download speeds between 20Mbps and 50 Mbps. With the VPN switched on, I'm getting download speeds between 5 Mbps and 20 Mbps. Even without the VPN, I'm getting at most 50Mbps download speeds. That might sound ok and was okay when I was at home in the UK, but its way way under (90% less) what AIS is supposed to provide for their basic fibre package - which is 500 Mbps. (that's their minimum, they have packages going up to 2 Gbps)

I've learned that buildings (Condos in particular) can slow down your Internet speed but a 90% drop, I just can't accept that.

There has to be a solution here, a workaround or something surely. 

[Bruce Mangosteen]

4 hours ago, Shamrock71 said:

With the VPN disabled, I'm getting download speeds between 20Mbps and 50 Mbps. With the VPN switched on, I'm getting download speeds between 5 Mbps and 20 Mbps.

You should probably contact Surfshark about this.  Their web site says they should be compatible with streaming apps (although they recommend you start the VPN before starting the streaming app).  

You should also check for any internet problems that might be impacting your service.  For example, there was a cable cut incident in the Red Sea in March that may not be fully repaired yet.  Surfshark should be able to help you with that data too.

In the interim, you could try downshifting the resolution of what you're attempting to stream.  According to a quick google, 4K video requires 25MB/s to stream reliably and 50Mb/s is recommended.  However, 1080P only requires 5MB/s.  

Other suggestions:

- Make sure nothing else is hogging your bandwidth while you're streaming, e.g. no bar chick is video chatting with her bae while you're trying to toob out. 
- As a subset of that, check to make sure that you can identify all the devices connected to your router.
- If you're using wifi, switch to a wired connection.
- If that's not possible, make sure your wifi channel is not cluttered with other routers, and switch channels if it is.  For this, you'll probably need a wifi analyzer app for your phone.
- Also, if you must use wifi, use your wifi analyzer to check wifi signal strength at your device, and try changing the position or angle of the wifi router antenna.

Good luck.

[Harry Brown]

The router Neds to be switched off for a few minutes then switched back on again about once a week, that clears all the caches or packets of data or whatever you call them.

[Gonetothedogs]

Please run a Speedtest (download to your phone) and post the results 

[Shamrock71]

On 24/06/2024 at 14:01, Gonetothedogs said:

Please run a Speedtest (download to your phone) and post the results 

Just ran a test on my phone. here's my results

 

 

 

[Bruce Mangosteen]

11 minutes ago, Shamrock71 said:

Just ran a test on my phone. here's my results

My impression is that your download ping latency and jitter is pretty high.  Is that with or without the VPN?

Edited June 25, 2024 by Bruce Mangosteen

[Shamrock71]

thats without the VPN

 

Other metrics (not inc on screenshot)

Idle Latency 12 ms

Download Latency 116 ms

Upload Latency 38 ms

 

 

 

 

I just ran the same test on my latop, with VPN switched on and the results are

 

Download Speed : 31.97 Mbps

Upload Speed : 12.83 Mbps

 

Idle Latency : 353 ms

Download Latency : 347 ms

Upload Latency : 354

 

The Jitter score doesn't appear anywhere on my desktop version, so I can't give you that.

 

 

[swede37]

Its the high ping thats fking it up, atleast for me. I have around 300ms over vpn and cant stream reliably either. But at the airport for example the ping was lower and it worked fine. And at home the ping is 20ms and then it works of course.

[Bruce Mangosteen]

I don't think you'll be streaming anything over 1080P with these readings I'm afraid.  Even your non-VPN readings aren't up to it IMO, so I'd start by complaining to AIS. 

You could try a few of the things I suggested earlier too, because AIS will probably either ask you to do them, or do those things themselves.  Especially, try a wired connection to your router if possible.  It may save you some time and aggro with AIS if you walk into the shop having tried what I mentioned and recorded the results.

Dunno, maybe @Gonetothedogs has some ideas for you too.

Good luck.

Edited June 25, 2024 by Bruce Mangosteen

[Dingo Brax]

1 hour ago, Shamrock71 said:

thats without the VPN

 

Other metrics (not inc on screenshot)

Idle Latency 12 ms

Download Latency 116 ms

Upload Latency 38 ms

 

 

 

 

I just ran the same test on my latop, with VPN switched on and the results are

 

Download Speed : 31.97 Mbps

Upload Speed : 12.83 Mbps

 

Idle Latency : 353 ms

Download Latency : 347 ms

Upload Latency : 354

 

The Jitter score doesn't appear anywhere on my desktop version, so I can't give you that.

 

 

So, to get readings tailored to your issue - change the server for the speedtest(computer, to do it on android phone just pull up the bottom menu) by clicking here:

 

And choose a server in the UK, where I presume is where BBC iPlayer hosts it's content.

 

A few months back several subsea data cables in the Red Sea were damage by the Houthi militia and as a result there is a severe reduction in available bandwidth. This can influence your access to european sites as the remaining cables are now experiencing increased congestion.

[Shamrock71]

Ok, so I changed the server location to London to run the tests again (no VPN connected, from my laptop). Problem is there are dozens of London servers, so I selected a few different ones. The speeds vary a lot depending on the server you choose, so i'm not sure how helpful that is, but the one constant seems to be the high latency. 

 

 

[Dingo Brax]

7 hours ago, Shamrock71 said:

Ok, so I changed the server location to London to run the tests again (no VPN connected, from my laptop). Problem is there are dozens of London servers, so I selected a few different ones. The speeds vary a lot depending on the server you choose, so i'm not sure how helpful that is, but the one constant seems to be the high latency. 

 

 

Thank you for doing the speed tests and being thorough about it. Your readings seem fine. My thoughts on your situation:

- Your AIS fiber is actually AIS adsl/vdsl 50/20 Mbit/s. Contact AIS and see if they deliver actual fiber to your building, and if not check with the juristic office as there generally is only 1 fiber provider(or none) connected to a building.

- The current data congestion issue has been widely reported, and there is no easy fix. I can give you an simplified example - Let us say that due to limited bandwidth being available to route traffic from Asia to Europe, there is now 50% more traffic than there is available bandwidth. That means that your 50 Mbit/s will be cut down to maybe 3 0Mbit/s. Using a VPN usually forces your data traffic to take a longer route as it has to go via the VPN server and can lower your bandwidth even more, plus add more latency. There is no easy fix for this, they need to repair the damaged cables and increase available bandwidth so congestion is no longer an issue.

- You may have some interference from the wifi's of nearby condos, and this is something you can improve on your own. If you are comfortable with accessing your router's config, do as suggested above and install a wifi analyzer app on your phone and perform a channel scan. Then change the router's wifi channels to the channels with the least noise/traffic on them.

 

Getting proper fiber should help somewhat even with the current congestion issues. I'll attach speedtests of the same servers you used taken from a wired 1 Gbit/s 3BB fiber connection at 05:22 this morning, a time where congestion should be as low as it gets. 

 

TLDR; make sure your router is using the best wifi channels and maybe upgrade to actual fiber internet

Edited June 25, 2024 by Dingo Brax
grammar

[Shamrock71]

On 25/06/2024 at 21:00, Bruce Mangosteen said:

I don't think you'll be streaming anything over 1080P with these readings I'm afraid.  Even your non-VPN readings aren't up to it IMO, so I'd start by complaining to AIS. 

You could try a few of the things I suggested earlier too, because AIS will probably either ask you to do them, or do those things themselves.  Especially, try a wired connection to your router if possible.  It may save you some time and aggro with AIS if you walk into the shop having tried what I mentioned and recorded the results.

Dunno, maybe @Gonetothedogs has some ideas for you too.

Good luck.

So, do I need an ethernet cable (1.5m long minimum) and a USB ethernet adapter for my laptop (I have a chromebook) ?

And if so, will I find this at Tukcom or should I get it online somewhere ?

 

[Kandinski]

1 hour ago, Shamrock71 said:

So, do I need an ethernet cable (1.5m long minimum) and a USB ethernet adapter for my laptop (I have a chromebook) ?

And if so, will I find this at Tukcom or should I get it online somewhere ?

 

A couple of years ago I had a speed issue with a cabled connection and my provider could see/measure? from their office one of the ethernet cables was not the correct category and both 2.4 and 5G was activated on router. No expert on the field but from memory the cable was replaced from cat.4 to cat.6 and router settings adjusted which solved my problem

[Bruce Mangosteen]

4 hours ago, Shamrock71 said:

So, do I need an ethernet cable (1.5m long minimum) and a USB ethernet adapter for my laptop (I have a chromebook) ?

I'd recommend it.  As @Kandinski recommends, make sure it's a cat 6 cable.

4 hours ago, Shamrock71 said:

And if so, will I find this at Tukcom or should I get it online somewhere ?

This stuff might be easier to find online, but you should be able to get it in either place.

[Shamrock71]

With the USB cable adapter, whats the difference between a USB 3.0 version, and a type C version. Both are almost the same price and both have connectivity speed up to 1 Gb, so sounds good. But I don't want to get the wrong one and have to re-order.  Or are they both equally good for my purpose?

[SureShot]

On 18/07/2024 at 06:16, Shamrock71 said:

With the USB cable adapter, whats the difference between a USB 3.0 version, and a type C version. Both are almost the same price and both have connectivity speed up to 1 Gb, so sounds good. But I don't want to get the wrong one and have to re-order.  Or are they both equally good for my purpose?

It depends what your chromebook has.  

Regular USB3 connector is the standard rectangle plug\port that you've used for decades. 
USB C are the smaller connectors\ports  typically used in newer cellphones\tablets etc.

For your case, only having a 50MB connection, a regular USB 3 adapter would be just fine assuming that is what your chromebook has.