VPN, bandwidth

[Marc33]

Hi,

New here - I don't actually live in Singapore but in Thailand, but this is probably the best place to ask so here goes...

I need faster speeds to Europe from Thailand (apparently, my ISPs routing to Europe & US sucks big time) and have read from several sources that routing through Singapore is the way to go. For the record, I live in southern Thailand and get marginally better speeds & ping to Singapore (ping 30ms, speed ~1000kBs/100kBs) than Bangkok (~35ms, ~900kBs/90kBs). I have a 15/1 ADSL line.

So my question is - which Singapore ISP should a VPN provider use in order to get good speeds to/from Europe? I've looked at a number of VPN providers with a server in Singapore and read a number of reviews, and don't seem to be able to figure out which one to pick.

Or should I look for something else than VPN?

DL speed is the most important consideration, UL speed second and ping third. Online games are not a consideration, I mostly need a good quality video link & fast file transfer to/from servers in Europe (~300kB/s would be plenty).

Anyone?

[zzm9980]

I've never used the internet extensively in thailand, but Singapore's connectivity to Europe and the US is pretty shitty also. The backbones out of here are almost all run by Singnet (which is Singtel), so you don't really have much choice. The big three consumer ISPs all use the same backbones, and the service is terrible. Singnet does heavy QoS for business vs consumer services, and all three big ISPs force web caching/proxying. I'm not saying your VPN provider will also do that, but as an end user in Singapore there are no good options.

If I were in your situation, I'd just look at any Singapore-hosted VPN services and ask for trials, or just pay for a month at some of the more promising ones.

[Marc33]

Thanks. That sucks. What kind of speeds do you guys get to/from Europe/US?

So corporate clients get the hi-speed lane while private customers have their speed throttled. Maybe I could find a VPN provider who is on the hi-speed lane... I guess I'll just have to give a couple of them a shot. It's usually around 8-12 USD/month.

[zzm9980]

Thanks. That sucks. What kind of speeds do you guys get to/from Europe/US?

So corporate clients get the hi-speed lane while private customers have their speed throttled. Maybe I could find a VPN provider who is on the hi-speed lane... I guess I'll just have to give a couple of them a shot. It's usually around 8-12 USD/month.

Yeah, I think your best bet will be to just try a few here. Preferably some with performance guarantees.

The very best you can do for latency will be about 200ms to the west coast of the US. My DSL is Singtel, and 15mb down/1mb up, and I routinely max it out on torrents. I can't seem to get more than 750kbytes/sec though on a single session with say something like FTP. The really annoyances come in from DNS latency and latency from the web caches. All HTTP/HTTPS connections go through these proxies, and there is no way around that (short of a VPN or ssh tunnel).

Here is a speed test (speedtest.net) to San Jose, CA.:




Here is one to London:


And during the time it took to compose this message, I let ping run against 4.2.2.1, a very popular DNS server hosted by Level3 in San Jose:

--- 4.2.2.1 ping statistics ---
388 packets transmitted, 385 packets received, 0.8% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 190.624/306.558/1207.617/171.263 ms

Not the most scientific of results, but it gives you an idea.

[zzm9980]

Also note that if you buy one of the 50, 100, or 200mb fiber connections offered, they all go through the same ISP consortioum, and there is a limit on "overseas" bandwidth. I believe the cap i about 30mb for overseas.

[Hidy Ho]

I have fiber optic (can't remember but it's over 100 mbps service) and it caps at 25mbps for oversee so I don't see the full benefit of my supposedly awesome capability (e.g. torrents). I have started using usenet instead of torrents and have tapped into some hyperspeed downloads.

For OP, I would get those VPN service that has servers around the work (around $8 USD/month) and find the best server to VPN through (e.g. StrongVPN or Witopia). Witopia has pretty nice UI and easy to change servers. Someone I know use Witopia to watch US based streams and it works fine. However, using either, I've never even remotely come close to 25 mbps speed.

[stiwi]

I have fiber optic (can't remember but it's over 100 mbps service) and it caps at 25mbps for oversee so I don't see the full benefit of my supposedly awesome capability (e.g. torrents). I have started using usenet instead of torrents and have tapped into some hyperspeed downloads.

For OP, I would get those VPN service that has servers around the work (around $8 USD/month) and find the best server to VPN through (e.g. StrongVPN or Witopia). Witopia has pretty nice UI and easy to change servers. Someone I know use Witopia to watch US based streams and it works fine. However, using either, I've never even remotely come close to 25 mbps speed.

This is because of your ISP international bandwidth speed cap. I am on ViewQwest 150Mbit (no caps) and can max out full connection through VPN.

[Hidy Ho]

This is because of your ISP international bandwidth speed cap. I am on ViewQwest 150Mbit (no caps) and can max out full connection through VPN.

This is very good information and thank you.

I originally got SingTel fiber optic + mio TV package. It turned out I don't watch the TV at all. I think I will benefit more from ViewQwest.

I don't recall ViewQwest or Myrepublic when I came here and was shopping for internet in early 2012.

Anyone know if Myrepublic has int'l cap?

[stiwi]

MR doesn't cap AFAIK.

[zzm9980]

Anyone know if Myrepublic has int'l cap?

That don't enforce a cap, but they will tell you that you can't always expect full speed to international sites due to the backbone out of Singapore.

If there is a specific site or test you want to try, let me know, and I can run it for you. I have the MyRepublic 'Pure' no-contract plan, which is 100/50. I regularly hit 100mbit on torrents, but that's not a great comparison since i don't pay attention to what proportion of peers are in SG or outside.

[Hidy Ho]

Int'l cap on my SingTel fiber optic is one of the reason I moved away from torrent to usenet (with servers in SG).

Once I configured SickBeard for all my TV series, I no longer use my Hulu+ account (although I still pay for it).

[zzm9980]

I am loading up my iPad for a long trip today. On my MyRepublic 100/50mb fiber, I'm currently sustaining 80mbit/sec aggregate across 15 torrents. Most of the peers are in US, Canada, and Australia. Very few are in Singapore.

[naanwar]

background - currently on M1 fibre broadband with AsusN56 router plugged into Huawei ONT LAN port 1.

I would like to set up another VPN installed router, in addition to the above router, to access content in the US.

I called M1 to inquire if LAN Port 2, 3, and 4 in the ONT are available for my 2nd router and they told me NO.

What are my options?

[zzm9980]

background - currently on M1 fibre broadband with AsusN56 router plugged into Huawei ONT LAN port 1.

I would like to set up another VPN installed router, in addition to the above router, to access content in the US.

I called M1 to inquire if LAN Port 2, 3, and 4 in the ONT are available for my 2nd router and they told me NO.

What are my options?

Cancel M1 and sign up for a provider who will give you more than a single static IP.

Or, just setup your VPN Router with a NAT'd IP off the current router. Double NAT can cause problems, but those should be mostly mitigated by creating a VPN tunnel from that second router. Just make sure you're assigning different non-overlapping RFC1918 subnets. (Say, 10.something/24 for the primary router, and then 192.168.something/24 for the secondary VPNing router)

[Tanuki]

Cancel M1 and sign up for a provider who will give you more than a single static IP.

I have been in the process of narrowing down my choices for the ISP when we move in to our place in 2 weeks. ViewQwest is a few bucks more for an extra 50 mbps (over MR) but the kicker to me is the 5 IP's you get with it. Nice!