ADSL network congestion concerns
Industry players complain about growing congestion on Telkom’s ADSL networks, resulting in poor ADSL speeds
Telkom ADSL network congestion concerns
ADSL network congestion concerns
Industry players complain about growing congestion on Telkom’s ADSL networks, resulting in poor ADSL speeds
Almost feel sorry for them. The second they upgrade one, another one pops up.
I wonder if Telkom will still be around when I'm old and grey.
Tell me about it.
Yesterday was exceptionally frustrating. Battled all day with pings of >1000ms and 0.18Mb/s download speeds to local servers on a 4Mb/s line.
It only seems to have resolved itself (touch wood) at 00H45 today.
What's annoying is it's not even a graceful degradation. Not like your 4Mbps just performs like a 384kbps, the whole connection becomes totally unpredictable and just randomly drops packets. Even if you're not doing much on your line, they apply no QoS so that you can at least have slow and reliable, it just becomes both slow and unreliable/spiky. Makes it really difficult to use anything latency sensitive, even if you're only using a tiny amount of bandwidth.
But how do you know if the exchange is congested and if the ISP is throttling/shaping you?
Easy. Run a couple of speed tests to one server. In my case I ran all my speedtests from the SAIX website to the Durban base and my 4mb line on first run performed alright. The next 2 tests straight after the first one performed like a 56k dial up line. Log a complaint with your ISP (if they hold your line) and carry on complaining. In my case I live less than 2km's from my Exchange and my line is perfect, Mweb agrees with me. However my download speeds be it Steam, http or torrents were failing 24/7. Its only recently that I have started seeing some improvement. Which brings me to my question...Originally Posted by skimread
Where does 8ta traffic get routed? AFAIK Telkom has not put up towers for 8ta and will more than likely use the Exchange towers, if thats the case then those Exchange boxes are going to be highly saturated therefore causing more strain on a fragile network...
If any of you guys have a dyndns address on your modem that you're willing to share then please pm me. I'm busy gathering performance data on a number of lines at the moment.
@skimread. That's easy. Just get a 1gig account from another ISP to test with.
But it's a BEST Effort service
Telkoms typical response in such a situation is that ADSL is a best effort service....
I persoanlly experienced their bad service 2 years ago, when my business 4Mbps ADSL line couldn't get more than 56kbps, they weren't insterested in fixing it so I moved to Neotels Wimax. I've had 2 service interruptions lasting 15 minutes in 2 years and performance is great.
If I was a business, I would seriously choose them over ADSL again!
Telkom has so much to learn about customer retention and satisfaction.
We had a bonded solution in my old company. We maybe got 1.5mbits over 3 lines. Was just horrible.A bonded ADSL service provider, who spoke to MyBroadband on the condition of anonymity, said that some exchanges are so congested that they struggle to provide a 16Mbps solution to clients. He explained that while their own ADSL bandwidth allocation is more than enough, speeds are severely limited by congestion on Telkom’s network.
As much as it is not ISP's fault, but telkom's fault that this is happening, I blame uncapped.. When our company used adsl as a primary connection, we always had congestion problems. Then one day MWeb had a problem with their international uplink, and our adsl was fine.
Lack of Telkom transparency
Easy - try 2-3 different ISP's.
In my case, I tried MWEB, WebAfrica, FNB Connect, and a private business ADSL.
All exhibited the same problem, slow during peak times, 0.2Mbps on a 4Mbps ADSL, and fast 3.5Mbps during quieter times (4am-5am)
Also keep tabs on mybb forum on reported ADSL congestion
http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthre...sted-exchanges
Also create an account on speedtest.net to keep track of your tests and their run times.
Look for patterns - fast at 4-5am and slow during prime time.
Log call with Telkom and don't close the call, until the issue is resolved.
Ask telkom for a refund (I got 6 months refunded)
And finally - switch to another technology
Telkom should be forced to provide access to the end-to-end network statistics to the ISPAt the time Telkom would neither confirm nor deny whether there is congestion on their ADSL network, instead explaining that congestion can happen in many places on the network.
ISPs do not have access to vital network information - and are blamed for issues, when it's telkom's fault.
Telkom needs to provide visibility and transparency to their customers - ICASA - please help.
Last edited by system32; 19-04-2012 at 08:07 AM.
NOT using Telkom POTS or ADSL since 5 Sept 2011
FYI: Telkom ADSL "legal" contention ratio is 20:1
"Telkom previously said that traffic profiles on the backhaul bandwidth between the DSLAM and the ESR are continuously monitored and any subsequent congestion is addressed accordingly".... I guess they are addressing the issues the same prompt and efficient manner as most government and city council departments
Maybe the same story too... "we've allocated Rxxxx mil to improve the service".... yeah, but dont just allocate and keep aside the money... go and f*n spend it on what it is meant for already!
I've noticed some degradation myself... my 4meg line not doing so well... sometimes a speed test gives less than 1Mbps download
Uploads seem fine.
At the end of the game, the King and the pawn go back into the same box
Use a decent ISP
Also, doing a traceroute to any site, the first hop after your gateway should have a latency of around 10-40ms. Anything over that(like mine was running into 700ms on first hop) means congestion. Even 40ms is pushing it as you should have a total ping time of 40ms on dsl to any local site
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks