Since i last posted on the forums long ago i have now finally worked for one of the core ISPs, so i get a lot of insight and also experience into different ISPs. So if you're going to grab some internet from the big main 3 heres a brief guide to help you choose. Sadly i can't provide speed test only information of how they work and do things.

Previously TM unifi was the package you wanted if you wanted cheap "high speed" international traffic, nowadays this isnt true and i have to VPN just to work datacenter (we have a few) just to get decent access to sites located outside the country, though our connections is pretty fast in terms of global latency but really not cheap.

I write this review having tested all 3 before with good hardware/configuration, so if you are experiencing a problem, consider changing your router to a good one. your wifi woes are the fault of the device not the ISP. Make sure your optical cable is in good condition and they hate sharp bends. The cable you plug into your modem is called GPON - gigabit passive optical networking. It is a plastic cable with a single core (hence you can't call it fiber). One problem all ISP staff have is if you live in a "rich" area they will treat you like crap

So first, TM. TM is currently the worst ISP offering out of the main 3. You'll never get the speeds you subscribed for (this past 1 year speeds have been slow. while upload is still okish on the 800/200 package, the downloads you can expect half in speed test). TM is currently still a wide provider of connectivity as many still rely on their infrastructure such as maxis but thats going to change soon. Currently i find that TM has significantly decreased in speed significantly though i never got close to what i subscribed long ago. While they also have mobile packages, they dont have much of a combined package like others offered. Speed to datacenters are good though so local traffic is fine (though most datacenters are managed by TIME). p2p transfers between maxis and TM home users are very very slow. Only good thing is that TM can move with you within contract.

Maxis. Maxis does decently in speed test in terms of what you subscribed and has quite a few offers to add on including mobile packages. So if the extra stuff you get cheap and having both mobile and broadband unified into a single package of lower cost, this is what you'll want. International traffic sucks except for links that maxis have (such as to india) while local traffic is fast but p2p transfers between maxis and TM home users are very slow.

Time. Although time offers very fast internet cheap, their coverage is small combined with a lack of other offerings. Not everyone needs high speed internet and doesn't need anything else or prefers to ala carte everything. TIME owns a lot of datacenters in malaysia both directly and indirectly and has the best localised internet speeds (not just subscribed but also you get what you pay for for local traffic). The only problem with TIME is that you have the worst international traffic speeds, this is based on my own experience as well. If you plan to host or visit sites outside malaysia such as video streaming some site at the corner of the internet in the US, you won't even get 1Mb/s of consistency that you will end up buffering a lot and calling support daily.

When picking a mobile telco, consider your main use whether it is in a static location or on the move. In main cities many of them have coverage everywhere. Its important to understand like with regular ISPs that they have tiers. maxis, celcom, digi own their own towers (or have some they share) while unifi mobile, yes, etc use other peoples towers, so you will find that their offers differ in this way. For instance digi may have a cheap offer compared to yes but yes coverage may be better due to being able to use more towers from different towers.

Like with all things, please make sure to read between the lines before you subscribe. Maxis cannot move if you move place but TM unifi can, so if you move before the contract is finished, this is something to take note. Things like traffic throttling and FUP on mobile packages are a problem so make sure to read it carefully. If you try to exit early while not paying, you could end up on telco blacklist or something which means you may not be able to subscribe to another provider till you finish paying up. Make sure to read early termination penalties.

Working in a malaysian coreISP sucks, because of the usual malaysians. I cant even approach someone without being complained about when i try to figure out how things work in the company and better understand the product. coreISPs essentially give you good routes and dedicated internet, along with other protections like DDOS and the company also offers other products such as physical server hosting, educational platform hosting, etc. The problem is its still a malaysian company and suffers from the usual mindset issues being a malaysian company, despite being better than average. I like the work, just hate the people. Unfortunately malaysian hosting will still suck since they still reject my designs (good hosting in malaysia is difficult to find).

This post has been edited by System Error Message: Oct 23 2021, 12:34 PM

Isnt Digi merge with Celcom Axiata?

Priority time if available
Unifi less headache
Maxis too cunning
The rest haven't try

Used all for personal, SME and Enterprise in professional grade except MyKris (which is about to be acquired by Maxis).

I have different experience for US traffic for Time. It was pleasantly smooth. TM is okay too but stutters in terms of Ping and several instances of packet loss at high peak.

Time has lowest latency and most consistent speed.

Time is just simply unbeatable in its consistency. The price and speed is just the icing on the cake.

Outside of coverage zone, TM would be the next best thing on average.

My experience with Maxis Home Fiber with custom GPON ONU SFP Stick.

First, I can override TM OLT bandwidth limit (Force 2.5G) and managed to reduce Bufferbloat that TM limit to make other ISP look worst... so I can do more fair testing...

Maxis did not filter or block any port! I managed to host own Mail Server (Incoming POP3, IMAP, SMTP) at home! also done little tutorial!

How to host own Mail Server:
https://gist.github.com/Anime4000/59ade3017...9f4e8c6dc032681

Unlike TM, they filter and block many ports, I tried Incoming POP3 and connection never received, only outgoing.

Yes, TM kind worst for now, hosting mail server is not allowed, only simple stuff, that's why TM afraid to give symetrical speed, or at least 2:1 speed ratio, instead giving 5:1 speed ratio, upload always slow.

Hmm what about Allo? They seem to offer similar to what TIME is offering, but not sure on how their peering is

thanks i'll double check on this


Also maxis is buying MYKRIS asia and not MYKRIS international

Local traffic TIME is unbeatable out of the 3 but for me international traffic sucks, both for hosting and streaming.

If I remember correctly, TIME used to have Global Transit (AS24218) as international traffic.
But seems they no longer use it for some time.

TQ TS,

We all know long time.

And it isn't just the ISP that sucks

Seems like Global Transit is a part of them now?
http://www.globaltransit.net/ just redirects to time's website

TIME under global transit used be hosting service or wholesale IP-transit.

In my experience UniFi > TIME.
TIME downtime at least 3 times over the past 6 months vs 1 downtime for UniFi in my parent's house for the past 10 years.

maxis still using TM's BTU right? so how do you tweak that thing? login using admin privilege?

agree, back in the day when around the world too paranoid about anonymous sendmail, TM with their brilliant think tank come with an idea to just block the incoming port-25. and it stays until now.
another funny thing is, they still blocking outbound port 6667.
when there is too many n00b users subscribing the internet and their modem/router has ssh access and they are too n00b to configure it, TM help them by blocking inbound access to port-22. of course it affect all users.

you can anyway, by subscribing the "corporate" version. of course with a huge monthly package price.

Under Unifi, yes, other ISP will using TM ONT,
Known VLAN Internet:
1. 621: Maxis
2. 622: ?-DiGi/Celcom
3. 623: ?-DiGi/Celcom
4. 624: Viewqwest

I using own GPON ONT SFP Stick like this, it attach directly to router:


TM can disable WebGUI after GPON Authenticated, I can override TM OMCI, and giving me full control and troubleshoot:




Custom ONT has OMCI CMD TOOL inside that you can fine tune and send fake reply to TM OLT

PLUS, you can use MTU 1500 on PPPoE! no need to clamp

Well, those port are required for IoT to send alarm, notice, etc.. without subscribing Cloud...

I tried on @unifibiz, still apply same as residential restriction, my customer very frustration and mad to TM since his system cannot connect oversea, I suggest him to rent VPS WireGuard until Unifi contract expired then change to TIME Business



yet we still using PPPoE instead of dot1X, Native Viewqwest just DHCP dot1x, when Viewqwest using Unifi, had to use PPPoE

Adding another overhead is very bad and wasting...

PPPoE such wasteful and ancient...

AWS blocks incoming and outgoing SMTP. You'd have to request from them with proper details for them to lift the block.

ubiquiti edgerouter

From experience they are more towards general purpose all in one devices that dont do well to their intended audience, most notable is their performance when used by their intended audience while ubiquiti is quite sus as a business as well. I have both mikrotik and ubiquiti.

Still good work on the modem part.

System Error

thats why do not subscribe from them. there are many vps provider out there that doesn't care about that. i subscribe one of the cheap kvm vps and doesn't filter any of my tcp/udp ports. its up to me to filter it using my own firewall. and thats a different between a service provider for a 1337 vs service provider for a n00b.

actually it makes a huge difference between stopping spam and keeping good reputation of your IPs

Yeah cause if some bad actor spams using your IP with their mail server, the IP will end up on a bunch of blocklists, then the hoster has to go and fill out unban requests for each single one painstakingly

How about Allo, been thinking about jumping ship from Unifi to them
But the majority of their routes are being handled by NTT if I didn't remember it wrongly...Heard from a Chinese forum any ISP that uses NTT is complete garbage...

NTT still ok still better then Hurricane Electric. Allo added Cogent/Hurricane Electric/TM into their BGP recently

TS, how about the issue of double speed cap on ISP that uses TM's infra? Those other ISP could never achieve full speed while TM's own unifi has access speed. For example if you use 100mbps, chances are you will get a bit more than 100mbps for speed test on Unifi, but slightly less on other ISP.

NTT is pretty good for Asian ISP but not Chinese ISP.

China Telecom interconnect with NTT in Tokyo and Singapore. But their Tokyo link is highly congested as the bandwidth is insufficient and QoS. (Heard somewhere that the link is only around 60Gbps).
Even their newly Singapore link (in use from 2020) also highly congested.

As for China Unicom, they interconnect with NTT in Osaka. The link also highly congested but depend on area. Some of the area usable, but mostly area is congested.

China Mobile mostly interconnect with NTT in Hong Kong and Tokyo. Depend on area, but mostly usable.

NTT SG to CT still ok... they connecting one of CT CN2 route for egress traffic and this route is limited for ISP use.

You are right, CT CN2 route is a lot better than normal CT consumer route as it utilize different link.

This post has been edited by michaelkkl: Oct 30 2021, 05:51 PM

So, by the looks of it Allo's upstream is better than TM then
I wont be using routes to China anyway, hopefully I wont regret ditching TM for TNB

if Allo can add 1 or 2 more upstream like (TATA or PCCW for Asia) or (GTT or Telia for US/Europe) would be better overall can do balancing on their NTT and Cogent.

CT normal route also not bad but only latency slightly higher abit or loss packet during peak hours

Softbank/KDDI/IIJ currently using normal route which many mainland using which is better then NTT.

not so true.

At the edge, the wiring is TM's, basically from your house to the switch box on the street and from that box to some central location within the area or it may be wired far. There are a couple of things that have to be considered here
- are the upstream ports of sufficient bandwidth? (if you use a 24 SFP port switch, are there 2 SFP+ to upstream)?
- then if there are, what are the other ISPs connecting to TM connecting with?

So i dont think there is any point limitting the bandwidth at the edge. THe issue here is that if say you want to transfer to a nearby house, you would have to go all the way far and back due to using layer 3 routing and not layer 2 switching (though this is also to prevent people from being able to see each other). The ISPs connecting to TM also need to have sufficient bandwidth at that connection too, so since your traffic goes through here before the internet you might be slightly lower speeds because of this. But that doesn't mean you can't use other speed tests.

For instance you can try TM's speed test tool, and other ones. You can also set up libre speedtest at one location to test p2p transfers, though this is useful for testing LAN connections to see if there is some wire in between being slow. Librespeedtest is useful in that you only need a browser while other tools require installation on the client.

Basically TM isn't secretely throttling other ISPs, just other ISPs may not have good connection with TM or may be limitting TM as well just like singapore limits malaysian ISPs that go through it unless the ISPs themselves have presence there (the one i work for have presence in singapore and we partner with an international one but we only cater to core rather the end). From my experience, that peering done between TM and other ISPs don't use a high enough bandwidth link for your speedtest to get the same speeds, so this may be where the problem is.

dear sir, stop pulling facts from your ass. I've been seeing this misconception floating around for a while here.

my celcom speed 100mbps package. damn right, its constant symmetric 100mbps for whatever reason.


after upgrade to 300mbps. still get excess, but upload speed back to normal spec.


TM contractor pull onu straight out of box plug and play no reconfigure anything. So you get exact same gpon config whether you use unifi/celcom/digi/maxis.

This post has been edited by failed.hashcheck: Nov 11 2021, 12:38 PM

It's ok sir, I'm glad it did not happen to you but it did happen to others. I would also gladly say the same thing as you in the above situation.
And thanks TS for the clear explanation on post #31.

Sounds like you didnt read what i said. The traffic goes throuth TM first and then switches at a central exchange far from your house. The ISPs have multiple exchanges and peer points at different locations and TM will not divert traffic to exchange at another location (more cost and configuration), so for those that dont get full bandwidth, the exchange/peer between TM and your ISP is the choke point for that location, typically whats been set as nearest to you and you have to all complain to your ISP. With enough complaints they will increase the bandwidth which requires both TM and your ISP to negotiate for more bandwidth. Peering is cheap and easy but are limited by config and physical, and not everyone will want to increase their bandwidth for no reason.

For example lets say you peer with google and all your traffic that goes to google goes over one link, you are going to be setting a static route rather than use bgp because why pay the extra cost for hardware and processing? so if that link is full than any traffic using that link is going to be slow. If google wanted to increase their link speed with you both they and you have to change hardware to a better optical transciever at higher rates and use internal switches of higher speeds. We aren't talking 10G here by things like 40G, 100G, 120G depending on high much traffic one needs. The equipment for supporting higher bandwidths are not cheap either but so is laying more optical cables and joining multiple NICs together. To a big ISP like maxis, celcom, digi, its easy to drop the bigger bucks needed for a large link, but theres a lot of negotiating like who bears the upgrade cost, you who needs to peer, or the other guy who you are peering is because at times the other guy doesn't need you and so will ask you to bear the cost of upgrading on their side.

So this is why you must complain to your ISPs and use mcmc because your ISP can afford the upgrade and mcmc can ensure both sides work together and equally bear the cost rather than just 1 side.

Lastly, test with TM's internal speed test as well.