11 Important Websites for Student

The following is a look at some of the most comprehensive and reliable educational Web sites a student can bookmark and use to research school projects and homework assignments.

MSN Encarta
The free MSN Encarta site features more than 4,500 articles pooled from Microsoft Encarta and comes with dictionaries, maps, fast facts, interactive quizzes, handy homework tools, and more.

Refdesk
Since 1995, Refdesk.com, which stands for “reference desk,” has served as a one-click springboard to many of the Web’s top dictionaries, encyclopedias, calculators, atlases, news headlines, and search engines. The site also includes a handy “homework helper” section that provides help in all subjects to students in every grade.

Bad ISP

According to Azureus Wiki :

The following is a list of Internet service providers (ISPs) that are known to cause trouble for BitTorrent clients or other P2P clients and the reason why. If you are using one of the following ISPs, please consider finding a new, better one. If your ISP is not on the list and you have reason to believe they are shaping traffic, come to the IRC channel and tell the OPs so that they can add it to the list. However, before you do that, please ensure that you have read about good settings and NAT problems.

One of the biggest problems are providers that that perform traffic shaping on P2P protocols, see Avoid traffic shaping for advice on how to counter that. You’ll need that if your ISP is listed with an encryption level greater than 0 or a question mark.

Malaysia –> TM-Net

Complete Table : Click Here

How to Beat Streamyx Internet Shaping

TM-Net Streamyx, is among Malaysia ISP who practice Internet Shaping technology. In other word, this ISP will limit your P2P download speed drastically. Don’t be surprise if your torrent speed capped at 10 kBps even your subscription line = 1.5 Mbps. Direct FTP download will not suffer from this mechanism.

So…how to beat this???

For those who has extra cash to play with, they can subscribe to any of these services.

• VPN
  • Anonymity and strictly private. TM will not able to tap you thus can’t shape you. A bit pricey.
• TorrentFlux
  • Server in datacenter will download torrent at full speed without any kind of capping or shaping. You will be given certain amount of space (5 GB, 10 GB or 20 GB) base on your subscription package. By using your browser, you may access this server under your account and download any kind of torrent . So, while your PC and Internet is offline, the server keep download your long list torrent non-stop. When the torrents are completed, you may download that file from the server directly (FTP download).

One of Lowyat Forum member provide this service. Click here for more info.

• RapidShare Account
  • More and more files in the internet nowadays are hosted in public file hoster such as RapidShare. Be it full DVD Rip movie, full warez or full version software…the list is on and on.

But, for those who are not willing to spend extra bucks monthly to buy those subscription, you may try to use bittorent client below which is able to beat TM-Net internet shaping mechanism.

• Deluge
  • Enable full stream encryption. Fully tested and verified. Even my NetGear router unable to recognize it and Port Trigger (kinda automatic port forwarding when it detect P2P application request port forwardng) can’t work. I did manual port forwarding and my torrent speed (use streamyx) more than 100 kBps.
  • Drawback : This client is made for Linux and ported to Windows environment. Not very stable.
  • Software : Download here
• Xunlei
  • Also known as Thunder. This is Chinese base P2P downloader. It use port 80 and encrypt it. So ISP will treat Xunlei packet as normal packet not P2P packet. Work best on anime download. For some reason, I can’t make it work with Btjunkie.org torrent file. I use Deluge instead.
  • Drawback : Chinese language. You may google its translation tho. Adverstisement.
  • Software : Download here
  • Translation Pack : Download here
  • 
    
• U-Torrent 1.8
  • Only limited to version 1.8 (perhaps onward), various user reported that they able to download up to 160 kBps using this client.
  • Drawback : Can’t guarantee 100% work.
  • Download here

Note the download speed was 171.6 kBps (equivalent to 1372 kbps). Streamyx package RM88

Latest Izzi Speedcheck

To be fair to my previous review, I re-evaluate Izzi performance base on current environment.

To be honest, after a good review a couple of months ago, Izzi performance drop significantly. It started in somewhere in the midle of November where I only enjoy half of the advertise speed. Roughly 50-60 KBps. It even drop to 30 kBps when peak hour. I call Izzi Customer Service 3 times. The first and second, the customer service just told me that he will check and re-inform me later…but no such luck…he just keep quite. I send them 3 emails, and they only reply the last one. My 3rd call, I speak and complain a bit harsh ( no more gentlemen manner). To be surprise they lodge me a report and give me my report number.

The last customer service guy did call me 2 times and ask me to provide him a screen shot (izzi speed test result + signal strength. I did provide and it clearly state even I received 100% signal, my speed still limited to 500 kbps. This is really piss me off because I pay for 1 Mbps not half of it. And guess what, that guy told me that, each iBurst tower will support up to 50 user simultaneously. And according to iBurst white paper, each iBurst tower only able to provide 24 Mbps downstream. So, if all 50 users doing heavy download (torrent or FTP), there is no way I can enjoy 1 Mbps download speed. Dang. Izzi actually greedier than TM-Net.

Here is my latest screenshot for Izzi speed test result with 100% signal strength. Location : Kelana Jaya. 15th floor.

Mind you that this result is more optimist compare to real world speed. This is my connection (speed test) with Izzi Server as my ISP. So, my speed should be lower when I download oversea content or torrenting.

TCP Optimizer Review

I knew about this method quite sometime. But in indirect way. So to speak, reading description from various of tuning software. But, I never felt any significant different. Maybe it is because I use Streamyx at that moment (wired connection) or simply the tuning software just not efficient.But last night, after reading various recommendation from techies at LYN, I decide to try it on my own. Login to SpeedGuide website, and read those documentations & FAQ, seem the reason between this optimization really make sense.

Basically, for every packet of data we receive and transfer, we want it to be as large as possible. However, fragmented data will hampered the transmission performance. So the idea is, to find the biggest packet possible without being fragmented.

So, i use that software (dont even need to be installed), and let it do its trick. Viola, I gain almost 200 kbps extra when I do heavy download. Reaching a bit higher 1000 kbps now is not a mission imposible now. Compare to 800 to 900 kbps previously, I think it really worth every single minute I spend to explore about this optimization tools and method.