Which HKG isp's 100Mbps fibre optic connection would be faster for international browsing??

international meaning uploading and downloading from my HKG flat to USA / UK.


PCCW informed me that they are the fastest since they have the most international servers. Aren't the isps in HKG all bottlenecked for international browsing? eg if had 1000M with different isps, the maximum speed for international up and downloading is 20M for each of them.

Your 100Mbit circuit will mostly help you when accing HK sites.


Which is faster? Well not HKBN< pCCW or any of them. THe ones are the fastest are the carriers that gurantee you international bandwidth... but you pay for it in tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars depending what you want.


For the hundred of dollars you are paying you are going to share the international pipes and how congested is going to vary where you are going, what path you are taking on the web.


Most peoples advice you will get and hear are typically non-sense about ISPs as their networks are big complex things..... So is 100Mbit faster? Than 30Mbit, in theory yes,but in practice there are many factors:


- who is in your building, and how much congestion there is to the exchange,

- how much bandwidth there is to the exchange.

- whether your circuit to the exchange is shared.

- type of cricuit and SLA it has.

- how congested the chasis you connect to at the exchange

- PCCW can have more international bandwidth, but may have more users, so what matters is the ratio and the type of users...

- How good is your router, most routers can't do the throughput consistently particualy when you run BIttorrent and have many concurrent connections. They choke. If you bought it wan chai computer center, it is bound to be a toy and doubt it can actually do 100Mbit. Look to spend HK$2K+ for a good router.

- type of users they have. One ISP ma yave few users but they could be bandwidth guzzlers, bit torrent junkies, or some old lady looking up the latest sermon at her local parish.


Telcos like PCCW can minimize the traffic they give by ensuring that you face congestion within your building, and in the exchange, before you even get close to their back bone. It si this reason you get some peoplet elling you PCCW sucks or PCCW rocks, it matters where you live when buying the same service at two different locations.


Also the speedtest.net results I are pretty much useless


For me, both of them are s**t, as I consult for companies on their local/global infrastructure and need dependable service, and customer service, neither of those cut it.


Also the speedtest.net results I are pretty much useless, ISPs tune their network for optimail throughput to speednet and their results are biased. You can get a circuit that speedtest reports 1.5Mbit that out outperforms at 30Mbit circuit in real world use.

thanks for good info Fenix2, l have always had good experiences with pccw broadband performance, but l want to consider my options esp because they are considerably cheaper than pccw. but both dont cut it, according to u, so who would u use for internet in hkg?

it is almost entirely international bandwidth l use, since l am not smart enough to read chinese

I use mainly Whart, Netfront, Diyixian.... but would also suggest you look at Pacnet and OneBB....


Pay the premium if you want the service.

what would one expect to pay per month for one of the better value packages? and why would a residential home user require such premium service. I assume you use it for commercial reasons, eg running a business?


u mainly use, meaning you use more than one of the isps you recommended?

My time is worth money. Reliability and customer service are worth the premium.


Price is set by the technology, SLA, and circuit capacity and the ISP.


The technlogy will determine how fast you are allocated bandwidth on the local loop wiether it is ATM, PPPoE, Ethernet or HDLC.

The SLA a bandwith guarantee ratio and also how fast the the telco providing the circuit (not the ISP), has to come out to fix your circuit...


MAinly use = I use and pay for those circuits

Recommend = circuits I've installed for my customers


Pay? HK$600 to HK$4000

l have used pccw for years, and it has almost always been reliable. actually in my ~7yr use, think l can only remember couple of times ,maybe, where l couldnt connect, couldnt say same with an old isp called hknet , that was cheaper but so was its performance, had it for about half a year, and remembered l couldnt get online many times, so how would a premium isp like ones you recommend still benefit me? as well as browsing, l do use internet to trade with a USA brokerage, so international bandwidth is essential, faster the better, hkbn say their international bandwidth is capped at 20Mbps, pccw boast no cap and sent me the link http://www.netvigator.com/netvigator2003/serviceplans/int_bandwidth.html which shows its international bandwidth. please comment.

kind regards

just checked some of these isps Fenix2 works for, and performance seems substandard, eg netfront, http://www.netfront.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=104&Itemid=95&lang=en only has 6Mbps max . I got a 100Mbps connection with pccw, and get about 80Mbps upload and download! for almost half the price of netfronts! and they have cheek to have a 530hkd installation charge! con if you ask me

isps for ppl with more money than sense, pccw are great for reliability. yep customer service can be better

lenox,


I am glad that things are going well for you with PCCW but that as I have stated is just your current expereince, and greatly based on where you live. Your expereince does not define the whole market or what people are dealing with PCCW. I hope you don't discover about thier customers service when things fail and replace the equipment and it is just the same for months.


In terms of day to day web usage the 4Mbit from Netfront is not visibly faster than a 100Mbit Wharf fiber to the premises I have... except when I do large downloads.


They only 6Mbit is a limit due to the circuits PCCW provides to 3rd parties. They do have provide internet access over 10Mbit Wharf LRE circuits. Other ISPs can hook you up over HGC, ant NWT circuits...


BTW I don't work for the ISPs, I help companies run their inrastructure for and have had tried many circuits for Internet connectivity. As for ripoffs one company called me about their Internet access performance and those nice people at PCCW selling a 4/4M DIA for HK$7000/month and supplying a Linksys/WRT which had 2ms latency on the lan and would choke with few sockets open...

Fenix2 ,

hkbn say their international bandwidth is capped at 20Mbps, pccw boast no cap and sent me the link http://www.netvigator.com/netvigator2003/serviceplans/int_bandwidth.html which shows its international bandwidth. What does that mean?

please comment.

that network diagram is very nice but it means sweet F.A.


Those circuits could be provide to people to access HK, ie one single ISP and it does not actually grants trans access to PCCWs users...


Secondly their capacity is irrelevant PCCW has IMS, PCCW BTN, Netvigator and don't know how much Netvigator gets... There is no actual need to cap, no management and overselling bandwith is far less costly for the ISP. You apply a bit of queueing mechanism to give everyone a fair chance. Some will have a crap expereince some a good one... depending onthe destination and latency to the remote end.


The fact that HKBN caps at 20Mbit it is probably a better thing as they are commiting to some service level, and can do capacity planning better. Managed managed networsk will overall give everyone a better service.


The masses try to reach a conculsion on an ISP when it is a very complicated formula as to the result is going to be good or not.

You're tempting me towards moving to HKBN from PCCW, who can install 100M for me but at a price of over 300HKD and 250HKD a month for 24 months, HKBN do a free installation and at a very attractive 189HKD a month , 24month contract with 4 months free. also Telecom Asia have awarded them 2 consecutive years , best fixed line and Broadband carrier, which can only be a good thing. which would you choose out of them two?

But first, find out who in your building is on HKBN and get a test... to find out what is the congestion level like in your building. VIsit during the evening when everyone is online.


HKBN have invested silly money on their network.


Most building have at least 2Gbit to them, they laid fiber pairs and ran single direction transceivers, on for tranmis one to receive, 1Gbit in each direction.. THen replaced them with bidirectional transcevers so they got 1Gbit per fiber, so each switch has 2 Gbit on it. Many buildings have a lot of fiber. Not sure what is the Mbit to apartment or sq ft or ocupant they use, but it would be interesting to know.

I've mostly been using PCCW since being in Hong Kong (over 8 years). I'm by no means a huge fan of them, but I tend to find that they're the best of a poor choice.


A while back I received a leaflet in my letterbox from HKBN, saying that they had just improved the network in my area and offered 100 MB DL speed. I phoned PCCW at the time to see what their plans were and they informed me that my street would be getting 100MB service a month or two later.


As my contract was running out on PCCW I decided to call HKBN and get a quote. It took me 4 attempts to reach somebody in their sales team and when I did they were not able to give me any information and told me they would have somebody call me back (which they didn't).


I am now on 100MB dl service from PCCW and I can indeed check out my speed on speedtest and if I pick a Hong Kong server to test against, my speed is around 80MB dl and I think 30 upload. However, once you select say a US server you'll notice a huge drop.


PCCW's customer service is fairly poor, but from experience (as an English speaking customer) I find them marginally better than i-cable; and given that I couldn't even get through to the sales staff at HKBN, my hopes for the customer services are not high. There is of course a minor benefit that PCCW also has other services, and that sometimes they offer you deals on those other services based on you using their internet services.

The big problem with all this ISP stuff is that everyone comes here spouting off throughput figures and no background to them. A single figure is meaningless.... it proves nothing.


80Mbit... to where? when? is that your top speed to one destination? I doubt very much that you get 80Mbit to most destinations....


It woudld be very easy to give you the full 100Mbit locally, the costs are Negligible... the international pipes carry the costs.