China Mobile Vs China Telecom broadband Internet (2019)

[Manuel]

Hi guys, I have been using China Telecom's 20 Mbps fiber optic broadband Internet for the past 3 years without major issues, and I'm currently testing China Mobile's supposedly 200 Mbps service as I can get it for free through my wife's work. Long story short, I haven't ditched China Telecom yet but I'm getting very low bandwidth when using a VPN. On my mobile device, I'm getting like 16 kbps and YouTube videos constantly stop playing and websites don't load or take forever to load. The moment I switch to China Telecom's 4G (still on my phone) speeds jump up to 300-400 kbps.  Wonder if anyone else has experienced this problem.

 

After running a speed test with the VPN on, it seems upload speed is very low. It might be a problem with my fiber cable, or with China Mobile's modem-router. But using China Mobile's 4G network I'm still getting shitty speeds, so maybe they are just deliberately throttling encrypted traffic to annoy people (if that's the case, they are most certainly succeeding).

[Rocky Yue]

China Mobile internet service is worse than China Telecom's, which is without no doubt. I am using China Unicom, wich is better than China Mobile too.

 

[Manuel]

1 hour ago, Rocky Yue said:

China Mobile internet service is worse than China Telecom's, which is without no doubt. 

I've attached my own wireless router to one of the LAN ports on the back of the router supplied by China Mobile and now I'm getting good connection speeds. The technician who installed it seems to have locked the router to prevent admin login, which is dumb because now I have two wireless routers emitting a signal right next to each other, possibly resulting in interference, and no way to turn off the wireless interface. Cheeky bastard. The router they supply now is made by China Mobile themselves and I'm guessing the wireless bit has issues. Will try to get them to replace it. 

[Rocky Yue]

But the speed might still be slow when you connect to VPN. What VPN are you using? I am using expressvpn myself.

[mungouk]

9 hours ago, Manuel said:

currently testing China Mobile's supposedly 200 Mbps

 

Presumably that's fibre/ADSL rather than a mobile service?

 

 

[Manuel]

4 hours ago, mungouk said:

Presumably that's fibre/ADSL rather than a mobile service?

 

It is fibre broadband.

 

5 hours ago, Rocky Yue said:

But the speed might still be slow when you connect to VPN. What VPN are you using? I am using expressvpn myself.

 

I'm using a Shadowsocks proxy. Won't say which one for obvious reasons, suffice it to say it's not a popular one.

 

VPNs etc do slow things down but the point is the problem started only after switching to China Mobile as my fibre provider.

 

Nonetheless it seems to be related to CM's included wireless router, hopefully they can sort it out.

[imron]

6 hours ago, Manuel said:

The technician who installed it seems to have locked the router to prevent admin login

Factory reset?

[Manuel]

11 minutes ago, imron said:

Factory reset?

 

Is it possible that might clear the modem config too though? Don't want to leave myself stranded.

[imron]

Not only possible, but likely.  Maybe you can call customer service and ask for the admin login?

[mungouk]

If it's fibre, do they offer speeds faster than 200Mbps?

 

I'll be hunting for providers in Beijing myself some time in May-June.

I got rather spoiled having 1Gbps in Singapore... ?  For around the same price I used to pay for 20Mbps back in the UK several years back.

 

[markhavemann]

22 hours ago, Manuel said:

The technician who installed it seems to have locked the router to prevent admin login

What makes you say that? You don't know the password or you just can't see the admin login page? 

 

It sounded like you meant the latter but it seems like it would be very unlikely or impossible that they would turn off admin access altogether since at some point someone is going to be wanting to access the admin page, including their own technicians if you are having problems. 

 

Sometimes for security some routers have an option to disallow admin access via the wireless network but you can get around that pretty easily by just plugging straight into the router itself.

[Manuel]

11 hours ago, markhavemann said:

What makes you say that? You don't know the password or you just can't see the admin login page? 

 

It sounded like you meant the latter but it seems like it would be very unlikely or impossible that they would turn off admin access altogether since at some point someone is going to be wanting to access the admin page, including their own technicians if you are having problems. 

 

I can get to the admin login page, but I get an error saying username/password are incorrect. I'm using the factory login details printed on the label on the back of the router.

 

11 hours ago, markhavemann said:

Sometimes for security some routers have an option to disallow admin access via the wireless network but you can get around that pretty easily by just plugging straight into the router itself.

 

The error message says my password is incorrect, but that might just be the router's way of telling wireless clients "you can't log in". The technician did definitely use his mobile phone, wirelessly, to set up the wireless password of my choosing. I don't think he would have changed the admin password because he specifically asked me not to change it to make his own life easier should I need tech support in the future. Whether he slyly ticked a checkbox in the process I don't know. I'll get him to come again tomorrow.

[markhavemann]

11 hours ago, Manuel said:

The error message says my password is incorrect, but that might just be the router's way of telling wireless clients "you can't log in". The technician did definitely use his mobile phone, wirelessly, to set up the wireless password of my choosing. I don't think he would have changed the admin password because he specifically asked me not to change it to make his own life easier should I need tech support in the future. Whether he slyly ticked a checkbox in the process I don't know. I'll get him to come again tomorrow.

Very strange. Ya it doesn't seem like they would change the passwords, unless they change all units that they install to a single easy to remember password, but that doesn't seem secure. I really hate it when the make it difficult to access stuff like this, although I can understand why they would want to keep people from messing things up and adding to their workload. 

 

I suppose you've already tried all the usual combinations of admin/admin admin/root admin/password root/root root/[blank] ? 

 

Well, hopefully the technician can sort out your problem and is willing to share the admin details with you.