Horrible line speeds - WebAfrica unable/unwilling to help

[Zecrates]

I have a 4Mbps ADSL line managed by WebAfrica, and for the past 3 months or so the line quality/speed has been absolutely horrendous. I'm talking about getting around 40Kbps most of the time, 400Kbps when I'm lucky, and anything above 1Mbps only in extremely rare circumstances. The strange thing is my upload speed seems okay and consistent, with speed tests almost always showing around 400Kbps.

I've of course reported this to WebAfrica numerous times, and every time they respond with some template answer of how they will get back to me, but they never do! Once I was lucky enough to receive a call from someone promising feedback within a few days, but that never happened either. I've tried contacting Telkom directly, but their response has been exactly what we've come to expect from them: "the issue has been corrected and the ticket closed." Of course, the problem remains.

I could go on about the trials and tribulations I've had with them (especially WebAfrica, whose customer service it seems has sunk below even Telkom's - which is saying something), but I made this post to get some ideas of the options available to me.

Does anyone know anything I could try? Would it help switching to AfriHost or MWeb - do they actually respond to their customers? Will either of those be able to get Telkom to fix the problem (I've tested on the Telkom guest account with the same problems)?

[Pada]

Zecrates:
Welcome to myBB forums.

I would suggest that you go through the List of congested exchanges thread to check if you're not perhaps in one of those suburbs where the exchange is oversubscribed/congested...
If you don't find your exchange/suburb in that thread (you can make use of the Search Thread function), then I would suggest that you start off by posting a traceroute to like www.google.co.za in this thread.

Secondly, do you find that the speeds differ a lot during the day, compared to late night/early mornings?

Lastly, log in on your ADSL modem's webpage and post your ADSL stats here (in particular your sync speeds, line attenuations and noise/SNR margins).

With the ADSL stats + trace route info, we should be able to give you well taken guess of what the cause of your slow ADSL speeds would be.

[Zecrates]

Hi Pada,

Thank you for your reply and your time and willingness to help!
I had a look at the list of congested exchanges, but the search didn't find any matches for my suburb. Is there any way for me to find out which exchange I'm connected to? I'm guessing it is probably this one (http://www.broadbandstats.co.za/exchange/TMRP), which is probably about 2km - 2.5km from me (as the crow flies).

As for a traceroute, here it is:

tracert www.google.co.za

Tracing route to www.google.co.za [74.125.233.24]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 10.0.0.2
2 17 ms 22 ms 19 ms tbnb-ip-esr-2.ipnet.wa.co.za [41.185.77.1]
3 49 ms 41 ms 42 ms 196.220.59.214
4 52 ms 48 ms 46 ms wnls-cr2-vl-801.wa.co.za [41.185.0.66]
5 43 ms 42 ms 49 ms wbrs-csw1-vl-140.wa.co.za [41.185.1.5]
6 54 ms 68 ms 69 ms google.cinx.net.za [196.223.22.41]
7 * 42 ms 42 ms 64.233.174.105
8 42 ms 42 ms 42 ms www.google.co.za [74.125.233.24]

Trace complete.

I did a speed test as well (through speedtest.net), and the results show a ping of 98ms, down speed of 0.65Mbps and upload speed of 0.43Mbps.

The line quality is very erratic, for example, yesterday this time I could barely reach 0.10Mbps and around the middle/end of May I had two weeks during which the line quality was great - continuously over 1Mbps. In general however, I'd say the quality is worst after work (say around 6pm - 11pm) and it is definitely much better in the early morning hours (1am-6am), as can be attested to by my scheduled downloads. During the day (and over weekends) is always a hit or miss affair.

Finally, my router stats (I have a D-Link DSL-2750U):

Line Coding(Trellis): On (Down) On (Up)
SNR Margin (dB): 231 (Down) 270 (Up)
Attenuation (dB): 95 (Down) 80 (Up)
Output Power (dBm): 31 (Down) 121 (Up)
Attainable Rate (Kbps): 12320 (Down) 1212 (Up)
Rate (Kbps): 4096 (Down) 512 (Up)
D (interleaver depth): 1 (Down) 1 (Up)
Delay (msec): 0.13 (Down) 0.25 (Up)

Once again thanks for helping me!

[grim]

Try a different ISP, I've got some friends that live in Moreletta Park, they don't have any issues with download speeds and WebAfrica's quality has drastically deteriorated the last couple of months.

I sometimes struggle to stream 240p videos from YouTube on my 10Mb line when I'm on my WA account, which is thankfully cancelled with effect end of this month.

Your line stats are great and you are connected to a UMC/DSLAM a lot closer than 2KM, looking at your line stats you're about 700M from whatever you are connecting too.

What still surprises me is that Moreletta Park is still on 4Mb, I'm in Elardus Park just across the road from you guys and our exchange was upgraded to 10Mb just over a year ago.

I've got a prepaid Axxess account you can use to test with if you'd like I can PM you the details.

[WAJeff]

Morning Zecrates,

Not great to read that you aren't getting any love from our Support guys.
Thanks for providing the details in your 2nd post - if you could please drop me a PM with your account details and ADSL line number, I'll have this looked into for you today and hopefully sorted

[MWEB Guy]

I have a 4Mbps ADSL line managed by WebAfrica, and for the past 3 months or so the line quality/speed has been absolutely horrendous. I'm talking about getting around 40Kbps most of the time, 400Kbps when I'm lucky, and anything above 1Mbps only in extremely rare circumstances. The strange thing is my upload speed seems okay and consistent, with speed tests almost always showing around 400Kbps.

I've of course reported this to WebAfrica numerous times, and every time they respond with some template answer of how they will get back to me, but they never do! Once I was lucky enough to receive a call from someone promising feedback within a few days, but that never happened either. I've tried contacting Telkom directly, but their response has been exactly what we've come to expect from them: "the issue has been corrected and the ticket closed." Of course, the problem remains.

I could go on about the trials and tribulations I've had with them (especially WebAfrica, whose customer service it seems has sunk below even Telkom's - which is saying something), but I made this post to get some ideas of the options available to me.

Does anyone know anything I could try? Would it help switching to AfriHost or MWeb - do they actually respond to their customers? Will either of those be able to get Telkom to fix the problem (I've tested on the Telkom guest account with the same problems)?

Good MOrning, we offer a 7 day FREE Trial. Inbox me your contact details and I will hook you up

[Shizzler]

Go with mweb, you won't regret it

[WAJeff]

Go with mweb, you won't regret it

Not stopping him, but if the Telkom guest account is also an issue it may be line related.

[Pr⊕phet]

Good MOrning, we offer a 7 day FREE Trial. Inbox me your contact details and I will hook you up

Go there. However there were dsl issues in that area.

[Zewp]

Not great to read that you aren't getting any love from our Support guys.

More like they're not doing their jobs if they promise to give him feedback but never do.

[Zecrates]

Hi All,

Thanks for the replies.
I've sent a PM to WAJeff, and we'll take it from there. Just to clarify, I don't think the connection problem is WebAfrica's fault (I blame Telkom), but I am very disappointed with the support and empty promises I've received from WebAfrica. If WebAfrica can't help me I'll switch to an ISP who has some influence on Telkom (if it is indeed Telkom's issue).

@grim
Thanks, that's a very kind offer. I decided to confirm for myself yesterday, so I bought a 1GB bundle from Axxess, and the speed was "okay" (I got around 1Mbps on speedtest.net). I'll do some more tests when my WebAfrica line is particularly bad (< 0.10 Mbps).