Broadband and the Steppe

Thomo is currently sitting is Seoul for a few days. It is the Naadam holiday in Mongolia and I had organised a couple of months ago to spend that break in Seoul. Of course, I am regretting that decision now. Apart from the Naadam holiday, it would have been nice to spend a couple of days out in the countryside with Thomo’s favourite Mongolian Family. However, I am in Seoul where it is hot, sweaty and rainy (unlike Ulaanbaatar where it is just hot). The one advantage in Seoul is that the broadband here is truly broad. Every website I access here anywhere in the world (except Mongolia) fair hops along. Screenfuls of information are blasting back to me in no time at all – with the exception of Mongolian websites.

This is the opposite to life in Mongolia where even with a broadband connection, websites out of Mongolia have their pages come back at a lowly pace – sort of Yak Speed.

The reason for this is, I believe, the gateway between Mongolia and the rest of the world. There is a bottleneck with insufficient bandwidth to handle the traffic either way.

So, whilst I miss my favourite Mongolian family, I am enjoying the speed of the connections from here.