Broadband: Singtel vs. Starhub

[zjules]

If you are on cable and in a condo, it will be really slow, as you share the cable with everyone else. During the day its not too bad, but evenings its prob faster to connect through my phone... Is ADSL any better?

[durain]

you are also sharing with ADSL. is it no better if a lot of people are using the same exchange.

[ksl]

Manipulation is the name of the game, service providers promise the world to get your $, and will never give you anything free, which means economies of scale, no matter what you paid for, bandwidth is controlled until sufficient complaints are received to do something about it, losing one or two customers is no big deal to them.

And they will squeeze the bandwidth to get you to upgrade too that's business....don't believe for once, that the cable laid doesn't have the capacity, that is bullshit, it's also bullshit to say well more people are surfing at that time of day, that isn't the problem...the problem is, if they can get away with giving you less bandwidth, than you paid for, they will do it, they will never give you more than you really need. that costs them money. So every upgrade does have capacity issues, mostly controlled ones, also in accordance with the infrastructure in place.

The last mile is important too! It can only be as good as the weakest link. (bottle neck effects will occur)

[durain]

it's all about contention ratio.

[MikeDirnt]

If you are on cable and in a condo, it will be really slow, as you share the cable with everyone else. During the day its not too bad, but evenings its prob faster to connect through my phone... Is ADSL any better?

actually the dedicated line of singnet and not sharing bandwidth is just a myth. in the real world, once you are connected to the www, your bandwidth are all shared.

there is a sharing of bandwidth somewhere along the communication line but probably not from your computer to the exchange

[ksl]

If you are on cable and in a condo, it will be really slow, as you share the cable with everyone else. During the day its not too bad, but evenings its prob faster to connect through my phone... Is ADSL any better?

actually the dedicated line of singnet and not sharing bandwidth is just a myth. in the real world, once you are connected to the www, your bandwidth are all shared.

there is a sharing of bandwidth somewhere along the communication line but probably not from your computer to the exchange

You are not wrong, but not quite right either in my opinion, bandwidth is purchased from telcos, and sold to subscribers, consumers purchase their packages in accordance with bandwidth offered, the ISP, will not free up bandwidth until its over subscribed, and complaints start to role in, only then will, they release more bandwidth. In the case of Singtel and the others, they are telcos as well, which makes matters worse, for getting good service.

When I meant the last mile, I mean from the main road, to the home, for speed to be increased the last mile would have to be optical cable, with large capacity for data transfer, I know the UK, is still suffering because many places are still on the old delivery system for the last mile, with private contractors hired, for the change over, but again, all related to subscribers.

My first job in Denmark was a cable layer, real phyisical hard work, lifting paving stones and digging down 90cm to place the cable, normally next to other cables at different depths, electricity, one wasn't allowed to use machine, because of the electric cables, once laid the telco's would connect to the exchange.

So actually it's from PC to road side in most cases, were the problem would be, because the cables laid from the exchange would run all the way along main roads, but not up side roads or from the road to the houses, so the last stretch from road to house, needs to be optical cable and not the old telephone cable. But bandwidth is $ so subscribers count,, and bandwidth would not be released or purchased until consumers were screaming for it. My wife was also VP of a Taiwanese ISP, so most of my knowledge came from, my wife, when I was using their crappy service in Taiwan not from when i was putting the cable in back in the 80's

This link will give more understanding about it.

http://www.hitachi.us/supportingdocs/fo ... al_QoS.pdf

[besito]

From my point of view and in my humble opinion.

If you will be accessing general websites like yahoo, google, youtube, cnn, etc., then getting the least bandwidth from the ISP should be fine. However, if you will be accessing more local sites (SG related websites in our case since we are in SG now), then getting the high end package will make sense since what you are paying for is just the local loop (from your house to the ISP).

Simple explanation.
The bandwidth from the ISP going overseas is being shared by all of the ISP's subscribers, so, whether you subscribe 100MB line or you subscribe for 1MB, you will all be weighted equally when the packet/data go out of the country (unless you are corporate users who pays for international bandwidth as well).

Some facts I gathered (working for the internet industry in asia). If most websites you will visit/access will be in asia, get your ISP liine from pacnet (which is now owned by asianetcom), they are backbone provider within asia. If you visit websites mostly in the US and other parts of the world outside of asia, get it from singtel. They have the most capacity going to the US. If you will visit websites mostly locally in SG, get your internet line from starhub, it is cheaper but will give you at par performance with singtel if you will be accessing websites locally.

One thing to note, base on my personal research, 60% of websites resides in the US .

This is ofcourse, the technical side of things only. For the customer service support side issue... then, I don't know yet since I was just transferred here in SG last month.

My landlord is using starhub and I share his internet connection. I never seem to have any problem. Although when I access youtube and other video streaming websites, I get better results when I connect VPN to my office. Our office has a direct connection to backbone providers .

Hope this helps!

[MikeDirnt]

1) if a telco has 1 million subscribers, in order to be bandwidth and cost efficient, the telco is not gonna buy bandwidth for 1 million subscribers.

instead the purchased bandwidth is bought based on study of what is the likely peak traffic. probably peak when 600k subscribers are online at the same time. so what happens if 800k subscribers go online together? dont the total bandwidth be shared?

2) internet is an end to end communication. you can have a satelite connection at your house, but if the hops in between are down or the other end got a slow connection, then your overall speed is reduced

what im trying to point out is, there are definitely sharing of bandwidth somewhere along the communication line. you dont get a perfect or ideal direct connection between 2 points