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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.