GoKunming Forums

Internet speed

Pete B (23 posts) • 0

What’s the best speed anybody has got in Kunming I guess it depends a lot on where you live my apartment is on Qingnian Lu near the Zoo I only get 1.5 Mbps should be able to get better these days also what supplier

GoK Moderator (5096 posts) • +1

They upgraded us to fibre last year, but now the service also provides cable TV in the package. Internet is now worse than ever before. It is not just the size of the pipe, but the amount of traffic.
We are also supposed to have 4G in our area, but people cannot even call my mobile half the time. That is China Telecom.

redjon777 (560 posts) • 0

I was getting a pretty okish 20Mbps on my desktop until recently, then I upgraded the router to the new 5g tech and I get roughly 60Mbps which is using cable not wifi :o) Even on my phone which I just tested for the wifi speed it's 36Mbps.

If you've got a good download allowance with your supplier, you still won't be able to access top speeds until you upgrade to the new tech. They're still giving out the slower routers, probably on purpose!

I don't know what you use to check your speeds but www.speedtest.net is a really easy way.

AlPage48 (1394 posts) • 0

We upgraded to the new 200M service last year. What China Telecom neglects to tell you is that you may need to change your router, and if using a wired connection possibly also need to change the network card in the computer in order to get the max speed.
Even so, the fastest speed I've had is 150M, and with VPN on that drops drastically to somewhere between 4M and 10M

redjon777 (560 posts) • 0

I was just going to say it doesn't really effect the VPN speed to much on mine (maybe a few Mbps with ExpressVPN). That's a huge drop you're getting!

michael2015 (784 posts) • +2

Wow...4M? that's our MAX speed on a good day - and we're subscribed to the 60M rate...and we're on fiber.

Consumer speed ratings are NOT Service Level Agreements (SLAs) - it is the throttled rating of the wire or hardware speed you're allocated...in theory, based on your customer plan. You have 200M agreement, so we would then software throttle your wire speed to 200M max. If you're subscribed to 200M, you're definitely on fiber, which is rated at 10M to 10G (1000x) or 100G (probably/DEFINITELY NOT you), depending on which fiber transmission protocol they're using (Multimode fiber is slower than Single Mode fiber). And if that isn't confusing enough - a single fiber strand can theoretically transmit data at over...100T (1T = 1000G, 1G = 1000M).

SHORT ANSWER
Call China Telecom to complain. Sometimes (frequently) they've mucked with the system. You'll notice shortly after a complaint, your network speed will usually open up to it's former magnificent glory... temporarily, then after a short period of minutes to hours, someone or the the system will probably auto flush any spot changes - and your connectivity will return to its normal murky sluggish behavior.

MEDIUM ANSWER - INDEPENDENT SLEUTHING
Track your IP edge address whenever you reset your router. China telecom IP usually begins with 112.115.xxx.yyy. If the numbers in the xxx range change - you're kind of screwed because it probably means you're sharing bandwidth with up to ≤ 65k other people on that fiber and subject to consumer traffic trends in your area/community. This is typical of Chinese network management, cuz they're really really really really lazy...which equates to wildly varying connection speeds depending on time of day and community traffic.

LONG TECHNICAL-ISH ANSWER
Speed is dependent on a variety of issues:
1. You're probably on a shared fiber - so when everyone's watching IPTV - your total aggregated speed drops.
2. DNS - resolving english sounding names into IP addresses - can suck depending on which DNS addresses your ISP assigns you. Chinese network management is utterly atrocious in general. This being Yunnan - multiply atrocious by 10.
3. 200M. If your computer is aged, you probably have a 100mbps aka 100M card, so you need to upgrade to the 1G or 1 gigabit (NOT gigabyte which is 1 bit x 8 = 1 byte) hardware. HOWEVER although your card maybe be able to handle that kind of traffic, your computer CPU, RAM, and hard drive may not be up to speed. Sounds like you're trying to stream audio/video.
4. If you're REALLY using 1G equipment - then your ethernet cables also need to be 1G (1gbps) rated - not just the CAT5 stuff.Basic CAT 5 cable ≤ 100m can theoretically handle 1G traffic, depending on what and where it's laid - for example if you're running it parallel to electrical wire, have fluorescent lights and or other "noisy" electrical equipment - it will probably interfere with your throughput - even though CAT 5 is supposed to be shielded, braided, twisted, etc to reduce the impacts of electrical noise.

As for VPN speed - that is highly dependent on the path your computer takes to get to that VPN point, the traffic along the path, and the VPN traffic at that point, so you should have a minimum of 3 known, reliable VPN POPs (Point of Presence) in your connection table.

Envy and jealousy is a terrible thing.

AlPage48 (1394 posts) • 0

Thank you Juan,
I'm inclined to change when my current contract expires, but it is still paid up for the next year.
I'm reducing the amount of traffic that actually requires VPN so the problem has lessened as well.

bucko (695 posts) • -1

I used to use ExpressVPN but found it on and off to much. I switched to another and it's much better!

I won't mention name here.

Related forum threads

Login to post