mahjongguy

Often called a "hard reset". Yes, it wipes out your settings. A reset should not be necessary. Just power-cycle the router to clear the stuck connections that cause poor performance.

Warning: Boring Pendantic Reply follows --------------------------------------- As a kid in the West I read about monsoon in Asia and got the idea that it meant some kind of heavy rainstorm. Well, no. A monsoon is a system of winds that change direction seasonally. Many parts of Asia have a monsoon season which comes after a long dry season, bringing frequent rains. They may be brief heavy downpours in the late afternoon, or occasionally just a light all-day rain. Arrival and duration of the monsoon season varies depending on location. Tropical storms and typhoons have their seasons too but they are a completely separate occurrance.

The scenario I described is paraphrased from the brochure of a load-balancing router. I doubt that it is unrealistic or incorrect. There is much more to be said on the topic, of course, but as you say yourself this is not a techie forum so I have limited my remarks to simple and practical advice. It puzzles me that you have been so dismmissive. In any case, I think the fail-over function is what's most interesting and useful to the home user, so fine, let's forget about load balancing. - Having two Internet providers is affordable and useful. - For the home user who merely seeks reliability, having a dual-Wan router is a luxury; reasonably affordable but far from necessary.

As mentioned, for me the point (the only point) is that the router would handle fail-over without me having to get up and move a couple of cables. Lazy as I am, that's not enough for me to spend 8,000 baht. But, the documentation on TP-Link's website describes this product as suitable for small business or an Internet cafe, so consider an arrangement of more than two users. Two ISPs and six computers. The boss has a 4Mbps ADSL line and everyone else is mapped to an 8Mbps cable provider. The boss is insulated from the heavy load of porn downloading by everyone else, but he and the rest are protected from an outage on one ISP. Bottom line: for two users it's a luxury option, because with two ports in and two ports out there's nothing to balance.

It is true that currently Sophon is running a separate coax to the house for the Internet service. They could use a "combiner" out on the pole but so far as I have heard they are choosing not to do that, not at this time.

Although the bandwidth of the two ISPs cannot be summed and used by a single PC, the router can be set up so that one PC is mapped to provider A and the other PC is mapped to provider B. In a setup like that, one user could be downloading music without slowing down the other user's surfing, and both users would be protected against failure of their default provider. It's just a matter of convenience. You could accomplish the same thing in a minute or two by swapping cables, although then you may not have a way of noticing when the failed provider comes back online.

The word "switch" probably shouldn't be used for this device. It's a router. I'm very glad to hear that it works well. My only disappointment is that it doesn't appear to be available with a built-in WiFi access point.

It's not clear if you are in a condo or house, but in either case probably the inside wiring has 4 wires, enough for two ADSL lines. If you order service from two different providers (e.g. TOT & TTT) then you will have protection against some (but not all) types of failures. Be aware, though, that ADSL failures are usually fairly brief, but international link failures can last all day, and that sort of problem will probably affect both your providers. The router that you mention is known as a "fail-back" device and will probably perform as desired. I keep a TOT 2mb ADSL as backup to my 8mb internet cable service. I can switch from one to the other just by powering up the ADSL modem and pulling one cable off my router. It's not ideal but it's sufficient.

There's definitely something going on but I don't think it's about torrents. Wednesday night there was very little throughput on the CAT international links. This morning Sophon Internet is completely down, but my TOT ADSL is working fine with pretty good connectivity to the US. It's a holiday but probably all will be normal by noon.

I have the 10 Mbps service from Sophon. Speedtests to San Francisco sometimes (like now, at 4am) score in excess of 10 Mbps. I think that's astounding. Most of the time, though, overseas sites download at something like 2 Mbps. And of course there are crappy times when links within Asia go down. Sophon uses CAT for the route to Bangkok and for all international traffic. That means you are sharing the bandwidth with everyone else in Thailand, regardless of their local provider, except for True. They have their own international links. Fact is, since you can only get international speeds above 4 Mbps at inconvenient hours, it's a dubious luxury to purchase internet access at speeds above 4 Mbps. In terms of reliability and customer service, I would rank TOT at the top, Sophon in the middle, and (from what I hear) BB3 towards the bottom. However, these providers are not everywhere. Most locations in Pattaya and Jomtien are served by only one or two of them. Note that Jomtien Beach is too far from Central Pattaya for ADSL service greater than 2 Mbps.

If you are curious about the origins of motoring in Thailand, this is a terrific site: ThaiClassicCar.com => Auto Heritage Note that these early cars had the steering wheel in the center. To this day, I think that explains a lot about the way people drive around here.

I assume you're not volunteering. I just had an email discussion with American Citizen Services about this. Not surprisingly, they avoided providing actual legal guidance, but they did make several useful points: - if you have a U.S. will and a Thai will, make absolutely sure that they are in no way conflicting. I feel it's best that your U. S. will mentions the existence of a Thai will and its executor. - where you keep your passport, keep a witnessed Letter of Instruction to the U.S. Embassy that mentions your Thai will and contact info for its executor. Also include specific wishes as to the disposition of your body. Identify your next of kin. The bottom line is that if you have significant assets here and it's important to you that they go to a particular beneficiary, then get a proper Thai will (and update it when appropriate).

I found this database at Death of U.S. Citizens Abroad by Non-Natural Causes You can, for example, search for all US citizen deaths in Thailand in 2008. You get no names but you get the location and category of cause. It's chilling to see how many committed suicide, died on a motorbike, etc. There was even one execution! So, folks, no matter your country of origin, you'd best keep your affairs in order.

It's an easy and thus tempting solution, but the use of a deceased person's ATM card is a crime, with or without written permission. Chances are you've got a possession or two in addition to the baht in your bank. Get a Will.

What, exactly, is not the case for you? That you didn't wire the money in, or that you didn't use it to buy then sell a condo? Regardless of the purpose for which you wired money in, you can wire it back out. You just need to get the wire transfer details report from the bank that received it. Similarly, if one has the declaration made when one carried in a big chunk of cash, one can use that documentation to carry the cash back out. If someone has cash that they cannot justify possessing, they would best take it out of the country in amounts less than US$10,000.

Foreign tourists may freely bring to the Kingdom of Thailand foreign banknotes or other types of foreign exchange. Upon leaving Thailand, a foreign tourist may freely take with them the foreign means of payment they brought in, with the exception that foreign notes or coins do not exceed the equivalent of US$10,000 or the amount declared in writing to customs upon arrival. Taking foreign currency that exceeds US$10,000 into or out of Thailand must be declared at the Customs Office upon arrival or departure. Failure to do so may lead to arrest, confiscation of the excess amount involved and / or prosecution.

Ditto. Two or three thousand is enough to give to the wat for robes, rice bowl, and such. And, yes, a big send-off party could easily cost as much as a hundred thousand, but none of that goes to the temple. The only possible reason for giving twenty-five grand directly to the head monk would be if the family feels the dire need to make merit beyond giving up their son for a month.

Thanks for the link, GB. Having read the article, I would say that they mis-used the term "storm surge". A surge moves ahead of a tropical storm or hurricane and tends to come ashore en masse, similar in some ways to a tsunami. They can add as much as 15 feet to the tide level of the hour. In this case, the warning was really about high surf, waves created by strong chaotic winds rather than the focused push of a swirling storm mass. These are the waves that sink many a small boat. I pay attention to this stuff, not because I enjoy marine activities but because I live uncomfortably close to sea level.

To be clearer, the law covers all your accounts outside the States. If you have $9,999 in a Thai bank and $1 in the Cayman Islands, then you must file the form. If you use Turbo Tax to prepare your 1040, it will also create the overseas assets form for you, even though it's not due until June 30.

I like Ganymede. It's a place I can go with another farang and have a drink without any pushiness. I've even been there alone and didn't feel pressured by any of the hosts. I've never been ignored, either, so I think I can say that the OP was there at an unlucky time. There is a mid-30's guy there whose name tag says "Joe"; he's not the manager but he seems to be the resident adult. According to him, the boss is usually home in the UK. He didn't point out to me who's officially running the place. Next time I'm there I'll talk with him about the happy ground between too much attention vs. too little.

Probably they're all home, waiting for high season. Which is silly, 'cause high season is when everything costs a lot more, the tourists get in each other's way, and the city decides to tear up the streets. I like the month of June. It's a lovely quiet period between the Spring riots and the late summer monsoon.

I have no problem with paying 7-11 an extra 10 baht for taking my bill payment, but: even though it's a monkey drill getting the form from the biller (electric, water, TOT), taking it to the bank, and taking it back to the biller, at least then you don't have to worry about getting your electricity turned off, your water meter removed, or your phone & ADSL terminated. What if you are away when the bill comes? We have a neighbor who often goes upcountry for several weeks; each time she leaves some cash with us so we can pay it at 7-11 for her. Lucky her.

- Why would they want to do that? Vietnamese rice is now cheaper in dollars than Thai rice and it's hurting Thailand's exports. - The only way the BOT could prop up the baht vs. the dollar is by selling USD, and they don't hold enough USD to influence the exchange rate.

What TV were you watching? Listening to what the red leaders said from on stage on the People's Channel was chilling. Holding up a picture of Abhisit and saying "someone must kill this man". I was hoping that the red shirts would stubbornly and peacefully insist on legislation that would tilt the economic balance towards fair treatment of all classes. But the only real agenda they articulated was revenge towards those who chased Thaksin away. Again, they didn't call for legislation, only for re-installment of their legislators. So, for me, it was about power, not about change. It was about how defiantly they could break the law, not about new laws that they wanted to see implemented. The good news, I like to believe, is that over time this movement may actually evolve into a positive force for Thai society, but first the leaders need to figure out what they want instead of just what they hate.

My #1 complaint: the hypocrisy of their whining in English about "we are peaceful protestors and the gov't wants to murder us" when their Chief of Security is bragging in Thai about how much military hardware he has at his command. I think their current campaign would have accomplished a lot more had the leaders not allowed (and not participated in) so much hateful posturing.