By Graham K. Rogers

Is it any wonder that internet connections are slow in Thailand, with or without the rumoured single gateway. Earlier this evening, I had a phishing email that purports to come from Apple. It clearly does not and this is a weak attempt that was perhaps doomed to fail. Maybe not: perhaps some are sucked in by this approach. The simple message, with no Apple logi displayed anywhere on the page was,

Hello,

Technical Support (TSPS) Need Verification Access For All Apple Service Support.

Please Manage Your Account.

I ran the cursor over the link below this purporting to be "accountmanager.apple.com" and that showed program-ssa.com.

As I suggest, doomed to fail. But perfect for me to seek out a source and this was particularly easy. I start with the Mail View menu and select Message > Raw Source. That shows me all the links and in this case the point that it was written using a Microsoft app on a Windows machine.

Turning my interest to the source, I opened Network Utility. The source was found to be a host service, Choopa LLC but like any hosting service, they may not know what is going on below the surface. I turned to Traceroute and watched as the hops were displayed.

I recognised my own machine (that's where this starts) and then looked at the number of servers before the signal touches down in the US at v219.core1.lax2.he.net. A couple more jumps and it is in New York, then connects to Choopa.

Within Thailand, 6 servers belonging to True - my internet provider - are accessed, then 5 Asianet servers before jumping to 122.155.226.133 and 61.19.9.206 which are both IP numbers registered to CAT. Once there, it is a couple of milliseconds to the USA.

Every step from my computer to that final portal has potential for signal delays (latency) and smacks of inefficiency.

Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs. He is now continuing that in the Bangkok Post supplement, Life.