Not sure how speed is affected with vpn for online gaming though. My brother plays fine without vpn when playing Starcraft on Korean servers.

Yeah, as I said, try play Warcraft on West Coast servers and you will see how crap it is now, before it was great playing at 110-150ms, better latency than most Chinese players have to CN servers. Now it's 250ms+ always, Battlefield is unplayable, connection drop even to HK servers, only few servers available at <50ms for me and they are all in HK, but even they are dropping connection.

I thought it was just me and my crap new connection. It's like being back in Shanghai 2006 again.

Game ping to Chinese servers has gone from a very stable 15ms to now anywhere between 15ms to 50ms with very regular spiking as high as 2500ms (all on fixed connection, not wireless). Youtubing through VPNs has gone from almost-but-not-quite streamable to 'ROFL! Faster flying to HK, watching it, then flying back'. Everything in general seems generally slow and unresponsive.

If Speedtest.net, which none us us can seem to access, has indeed been blocked, this is a definite new contender for Top 5 Pettiest Things I've Ever Seen In China.

By the way, how are you guys checking your latency, speed and packet loss now?

In game.

mine bounces around severely between 400-2k. Whilst my official in game indicator is normally hovering somewhere between 400-800, the "cast bar", for want of a better word, shows the true story. It's rarely below 400, mostly above 800, occasionally 2k. PvP has become literally unbearable.

As for packet loss, just ping your server (or the tunnel you use). It's pretty damn bad.

I'd kill for 50ms lol. I've never, ever had 50ms. My best was a couple of years ago when using a tunnel, I achieved 180ish. I was "happy" with anything below 300 as long as it was stable. It's the lack of stability that makes it so much worse.

NorthernLights wrote:In game.

mine bounces around severely between 400-2k. Whilst my official in game indicator is normally hovering somewhere between 400-800, the "cast bar", for want of a better word, shows the true story. It's rarely below 400, mostly above 800, occasionally 2k. PvP has become literally unbearable.

As for packet loss, just ping your server (or the tunnel you use). It's pretty damn bad.

I'd kill for 50ms lol. I've never, ever had 50ms. My best was a couple of years ago when using a tunnel, I achieved 180ish. I was "happy" with anything below 300 as long as it was stable. It's the lack of stability that makes it so much worse.

In WoW? I was getting 110-120ms to LA Datacenter just few weeks ago without any tunnels (had this really good connection since mid 2011, before I was at 170-180ms), now it's 250ms+. At least I mainly do PvE, but still kinda affect me on intense fights and I have to sit out for other players with better performance just because of crap connection.

P.S.
If anyone play on same Oceanic realm as me:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/s ... s/advanced

If I can ask what is your monthly cost for China Telecom internet? Seems I have to pay about 129 rmb a month and that includes a little phone with 200 minutes a month. HOWEVER I don't need the little phone as I have Unicom on my Iphone so I want to ditch the little phone if I can save money.

no idea, I think it's like 1200 per year or something, they tie you in to a yearly fee from memory.

I'm still stuck on the shyte 2MB/4MB (lol) ADSL service. I'm thinking I need to get a new modem, I just have their stock crap which I think is 50% of the problem - there's a whole lot of throttling going on, every time I hit a load screen my latency goes up and up and up, it won't fix itself until I relog completely. There's probably some crappy QoS **** going on.
I've been having trouble finding a plain modem (I don't want a router). Any suggestions on a model that works well? When I get a new modem, do I need them to come out and activate it or anything or will it just work?

Sputnik-11 wrote:

Kickaha wrote:

ThomasCaron wrote:I have no problems whatsoever with the speed of my service from Telecom. Is that because I don't live in a compound, but in a sixth-floor walk-up in an all-Chinese working class neighborhood? Wannabe robber barons who choose to insulate themselves from the society they came to cash in on deserve what they get.

We live in a lane house in an all Shanghainese block (I believe "working class" is the correct term for here as well), so certainly have not insulated ourselves (nor are we robbers or barons or wannabes or any combination). The internet has been slow since we moved here last year, but this is much less of a problem since we are not doing any massive downloading (though movie streaming would be nice again). It is the instability of the network that is a problem for us. Particularly since CNY began the number of dropped connections has increased dramatically, often every ~15 minutes or so there is a dropped connection.

Does any one know of options that would allow for better connectivity? We have four computers, two iPads, one iPhone for three people who need the internet for work and school, as well as keeping in touch with family and friends in the US.

Do you use VPN? If most, if not all, of the websites you go to are foreign, I think using a VPN is more stable and FASTER (b/c it skips the virtual Chinese borders that scan for banned keywords or sites). The VPN I subscribe to includes a PPTP service, which allows my Iphone and ipad to go online via VPN as well.

Anyway, if not for VPN, I wouldn't be able to survive in China w/o swearing at the internet a couple of times a day (which was what I did in my early days in Shanghai).

We use a VPN ( the one frequently recommended on this site). Also we use all three protocols available for the iPad. The instability exists on computers and iPads. There has definitely been an increase in these issues since CNY and our use of computers/iPads/VPN have not altered.

Kickaha wrote:

Sputnik-11 wrote:

Kickaha wrote:

ThomasCaron wrote:I have no problems whatsoever with the speed of my service from Telecom. Is that because I don't live in a compound...

...The internet has been slow since we moved here last year, but this is much less of a problem since we are not doing any massive downloading (though movie streaming would be nice again). It is the instability of the network that is a problem for us. Particularly since CNY began the number of dropped connections has increased dramatically, often every ~15 minutes or so there is a dropped connection.

Does any one know of options that would allow for better connectivity? We have four computers, two iPads, one iPhone for three people who need the internet for work and school, as well as keeping in touch with family and friends in the US.

Do you use VPN? If most, if not all, of the websites you go to are foreign, I think using a VPN is more stable and FASTER (b/c it skips the virtual Chinese borders that scan for banned keywords or sites)...

We use a VPN ( the one frequently recommended on this site). Also we use all three protocols available for the iPad. The instability exists on computers and iPads. There has definitely been an increase in these issues since CNY and our use of computers/iPads/VPN have not altered.

It could be just because of the end of CNY or something. The internet became unacceptable right after CNY for us. For better stability and speed I also recommend you connect your laptops and computers to the internet with a good cable. The connection is far more stable than using wifi.

Chuck Norris does not have latency cause the internet knows to hurry the hell up! I on the other hand have a jitty connection, I miss my cable modem

Kickaha,

Just an afterthought: what VPN company you use, and which of their servers you're using can affect your experience as well. I'm not sure which vpn you're referring to, but I tried 2 other ones before settling on my current one, which is based in San Francisco.

Right now, I can watch youtube on my ipad via pptp vpn smoothly with no buffering. So thats a huge improvement from 2 days ago, when the internet was so throttled the youtube video gave up on starting.

findus wrote:By the way, how are you guys checking your latency, speed and packet loss now?

(Hey findus, long time no see )

Seems they can't

redacted..

Most of the time only reason why "internet and web serfing is better" with VPN is because of that damn Facebook "like" button and gay "Tweet" thingies on pages, I literaly see how Chrome loading page and since most of those FB/Twitter codes are put in header it just make all browsers "hang" on that part of page until they get timeout.

I also use L2TP VPN and can even watch videos on YouTube without buffering with 720p resolution (only during night) or 360p during day.

Can it be that someone from Telecom/Unicome read this thread? (tinfoild hat) I got my connection down this morning for about 20mins, after it went back online I got completly new IP (before it was XX.XXX.[random].[random]), so completly new IP range. Since speedtest is blocked I used 2ip.ru to get info about my IP, it display country as "Unknown" and ISP as "Unknown" as well. When before it always showed China and "China Unicom" as ISP.

More important my latency is ULTRA low 40-50ms to Japan and 110-120ms to West Coast, and my speed through VPN and generaly oversea is very fast. I am getting 7-9Mbps through VPN on YouTube and can watch videos in 720p and 1080p without any Buffering. Made a screenshot with Data Info on YouTube from video in 720p: http://i.imgur.com/dRpcg.jpg

Probably coincidence and it will be "fixed" soon back to 1999 style 56Kbps level.

Mine is the same as always.

Shyte.

Don't worry, back to good ol' level of "China quality" internet. And yeah, router dropped connection for few mins again and got old IP as well.

I've had major issues this week with the internet on all of my devices.

I just tried to proceed to the latest posts page here and it hangs for minutes and eventually just stops.
I start vpn and it does the same thing. Usually it loads faster.

Even China hosted websites just sit and hang. Thought it was just me but then I found this thread. Apparently not.

I would guess the it's a "in China thing" slowing everything down. Perhaps everyone and their brother got iPhones for the New Year and it's clogging traffic? I wouldn't doubt it.

I've never had problems like this before. Unicom 3G on ipad and iphone acting funny. Slower then normal. Regular internet kicking me off vpn because it's losing connection. Internet too slow. Can't watch Hulu without letting it buffer. Youtube, yeah good luck with that. It will load a bit then just stop and never start again. It's worthless. From around the 4th of this month or later it started acting funny. Even wifi at Starbucks is crap.

Sound fishy to me.

i just signed up for their 20M download 1M upload this morning and it's working fine when i visit local sites.
188 per month (e8 bundle plan) service was great and no installation fee.

i was told this was a month to month contract. does anyone know if there's a penalty if i end the agreement early?

It's pathetic - nothing seems to work. Hulu is way Fing slow. FB actually seems to be working better

The key to surviving here is not to have lower expectations but none. Life is happier then

Some apps on my iphone are not working as they did pre-new year. I have to turn the you know what on to get them to work and connect to their respective servers where ever they are. Probably the States.

Just a minute ago I started updating apps through itunes and a few raced through 40mb in like 30sec, but then died to just about nothing.

It's been very inconsistent as of lately.

LtSaw wrote:Most of the time only reason why "internet and web serfing is better" with VPN is because of that damn Facebook "like" button and gay "Tweet" thingies on pages, I literaly see how Chrome loading page and since most of those FB/Twitter codes are put in header it just make all browsers "hang" on that part of page until they get timeout.

A huge pet peeve of mine that I've destroyed by using Chrome and installing the Ghostery and Disconnect extensions. Be sure to turn on the 'Enable bug blocking [experimental]' option in Ghostery.

tihZ_hO wrote:

findus wrote:By the way, how are you guys checking your latency, speed and packet loss now?

(Hey findus, long time no see )

Hellloooooooo! Getting bored of Indo expat forums already?

findus wrote:

tihZ_hO wrote:

findus wrote:By the way, how are you guys checking your latency, speed and packet loss now?

(Hey findus, long time no see )

Hellloooooooo! Getting bored of Indo expat forums already?

Haha, Yea, they're rather boring...the bitches and gripes are nowhere near the scale I'm used to...meh!!!

are there any local sites that stream international tv or sports games, please pm me....

random note- anyone know how to stream tv off ipad2?

THX!

I'm getting crazy speeds on some torrents, 1MB+ for hours on end for a single torrent. Downloaded 26GB of StarWars in HD last week in a few days

Yet, getting on google, bing, yahoo, is driving me INSANE

The reason why i'm posting this is cuz hotmail has been inaccessible for hours on end for two days now, and my VPN sucks lately.

when i become president of the united states, i'm blocking alibaba!

There must be some WTO regulation about this....

It has been fairly ridiculous in the past two weeks or so, I am trying to stay calm, but seriously in any other country I would have just switched providers and gave them the big middle finger... Too bad that in here there would probably be no improvement whatsoever...

I'm on swtor btw, and the lag and dc's at times is driving me up the wall.