Afrihost vs Mweb international routing consistency (EU) – noticeable difference

P

PaulB_

Senior Member
Joined
Sep 25, 2012
Messages
536
Reaction score
109
Location
/\/‾‾‾‾‾\/\
Hi all, I posted this already in the Afrihost forum - but posting it again here, as this also involves Mweb - and I feel people with Mweb should also see this.

I’ve always noticed that streaming and other long-lived connections have been somewhat inconsistent over Afrihost, and others on this network have shared similar experiences. Because of that, I decided to dig into it a bit more, especially since I’ve consistently found Mweb to perform noticeably better in this regard.

For context, I’m based at a school where there is a shared Afrihost fibre line (1 Gbps). I also have my own separate Mweb fibre line (50 Mbps), which I originally installed before the Afrihost service was rolled out to the residences. I’ve kept the Mweb line due to consistently better performance, and have now started comparing the two more formally.

Lines:

  • Afrihost (1 Gbps, typically 300–400 Mbps throughput)
  • Mweb (50 Mbps)
Observation:
Despite the large difference in available bandwidth, the Mweb line is consistently delivering a more stable experience to European-hosted services.

I’ve been running a sustained stream test (~25 minutes so far) to a server in Germany (152.53.124.56), and:

  • Mweb: stable playback throughout, no interruptions
  • Afrihost: noticeably less consistent under the same conditions, with buffering occurring to the point where playback becomes difficult to sustain
Local testing (ping to 8.8.8.8) looks fine on both lines:

  • ~18–20 ms
  • no packet loss
  • minimal jitter
So the issue doesn’t appear to be last-mile or local congestion.

Traceroute comparison:

Afrihost:

<span>Cape Town → Liquid Telecom → EU<br>hu-0-0-0-11.luk-p1-gsw.liquidtelecom.net (~150ms entry)<br>→ some variation (~150–178ms) across EU hops</span>
Mweb:

<span>Cape Town → local backbone → EU<br>→ stabilises more quickly (~160–170ms)</span>
Takeaway:
The Afrihost route (via Liquid Telecom) appears to introduce more latency variation (jitter) once traffic reaches Europe, whereas Mweb’s path seems more consistent even at lower throughput.

This shows up in real-world usage as:

  • Afrihost: higher speed but less consistent performance to EU
  • Mweb: lower speed but more stable session behaviour
Questions:

  • Is anyone else seeing similar behaviour with Afrihost international routing (EU specifically)?
  • Could this be related to upstream/transit via Liquid Telecom?
  • Any possibility of alternative routing or peering paths being used/considered?
Happy to run more tests if needed.

Thanks

Quick update:


I’ve now been streaming a ~15GB 4K file from the same German server over the Mweb line for ~25 minutes with zero buffering.


Under the same conditions on Afrihost, playback becomes inconsistent with buffering.


This reinforces that the issue seems to be route stability rather than bandwidth.
 
I would do some iperfs to test packet loss on both lines to check packet loss.

The internet is not a simple thing with transit providers and their undersea/Upstream transit and peering locations.

Afrihost has 2 transit providers one being Liquid the other Openserve.
 
PaulB_ said:
Hi all, I posted this already in the Afrihost forum - but posting it again here, as this also involves Mweb - and I feel people with Mweb should also see this.

I’ve always noticed that streaming and other long-lived connections have been somewhat inconsistent over Afrihost, and others on this network have shared similar experiences. Because of that, I decided to dig into it a bit more, especially since I’ve consistently found Mweb to perform noticeably better in this regard.

For context, I’m based at a school where there is a shared Afrihost fibre line (1 Gbps). I also have my own separate Mweb fibre line (50 Mbps), which I originally installed before the Afrihost service was rolled out to the residences. I’ve kept the Mweb line due to consistently better performance, and have now started comparing the two more formally.

Lines:

  • Afrihost (1 Gbps, typically 300–400 Mbps throughput)
  • Mweb (50 Mbps)
Observation:
Despite the large difference in available bandwidth, the Mweb line is consistently delivering a more stable experience to European-hosted services.

I’ve been running a sustained stream test (~25 minutes so far) to a server in Germany (152.53.124.56), and:

  • Mweb: stable playback throughout, no interruptions
  • Afrihost: noticeably less consistent under the same conditions, with buffering occurring to the point where playback becomes difficult to sustain
Local testing (ping to 8.8.8.8) looks fine on both lines:

  • ~18–20 ms
  • no packet loss
  • minimal jitter
So the issue doesn’t appear to be last-mile or local congestion.

Traceroute comparison:

Afrihost:

<span>Cape Town → Liquid Telecom → EU<br>hu-0-0-0-11.luk-p1-gsw.liquidtelecom.net (~150ms entry)<br>→ some variation (~150–178ms) across EU hops</span>
Mweb:

<span>Cape Town → local backbone → EU<br>→ stabilises more quickly (~160–170ms)</span>
Takeaway:
The Afrihost route (via Liquid Telecom) appears to introduce more latency variation (jitter) once traffic reaches Europe, whereas Mweb’s path seems more consistent even at lower throughput.

This shows up in real-world usage as:

  • Afrihost: higher speed but less consistent performance to EU
  • Mweb: lower speed but more stable session behaviour
Questions:

  • Is anyone else seeing similar behaviour with Afrihost international routing (EU specifically)?
  • Could this be related to upstream/transit via Liquid Telecom?
  • Any possibility of alternative routing or peering paths being used/considered?
Happy to run more tests if needed.

Thanks

Quick update:


I’ve now been streaming a ~15GB 4K file from the same German server over the Mweb line for ~25 minutes with zero buffering.


Under the same conditions on Afrihost, playback becomes inconsistent with buffering.


This reinforces that the issue seems to be route stability rather than bandwidth.
Click to expand...

If you're in Cape town, have a look at Atomic. Most ISPs also have looking a looking glass ; so you can at what to expect in terms of routing and latency to specific ips.

e.g.

Atomic Looking Glass - Cape Town - AS328266

We make fibre epic!
lg.atomic.ac lg.atomic.ac

i have found that CISP and afrihost cater more to the mainstream users; so perhaps have dropped the ball in terms of their international speeds (this is purely subjective - I was on afrihost and they were not able to help me with my work VPN , but this is a very specific issue)
 
chrisGolf said:
If you're in Cape town, have a look at Atomic. Most ISPs also have looking a looking glass ; so you can at what to expect in terms of routing and latency to specific ips.

e.g.

Atomic Looking Glass - Cape Town - AS328266

We make fibre epic!
lg.atomic.ac lg.atomic.ac

i have found that CISP and afrihost cater more to the mainstream users; so perhaps have dropped the ball in terms of their international speeds (this is purely subjective - I was on afrihost and they were not able to help me with my work VPN , but this is a very specific issue)
Click to expand...
What's the definition of a mainstream user :).

We almost do everything differently to most ISPs.
 
PaulB_ said:
This is really affecting things. I had buffering again, switched over to my mweb line - and problem solved.
Click to expand...

I assume buffer you mean IPTV right? Can you open a stream in vlc and then grab the serving IP and then run a MTR/Pingplotter to it contiously to see if there is any loss.
 
This is with WebSquad

Code: 
Keys:  Help   Display mode   Restart statistics   Order of fields   quit
                                                                                                                    Packets               Pings
 Host                                                                                                             Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
 1. XXXX                                                                                                 0.0%    49    0.3   0.4   0.2   1.1   0.1
 2. 192.168.1.1                                                                                                    0.0%    49    3.0   2.3   1.6   8.3   1.5
 3. 100.102.0.221                                                                                                  0.0%    48   11.1  12.4  10.6  23.6   2.6
 4. 100.94.253.249                                                                                                 0.0%    48   10.9  12.2  10.5  23.4   2.1
 5. core.cr-01.cp1.za.ws.net.za                                                                                    0.0%    48   10.9  11.9  10.7  16.8   0.9
 6. core.pe-xe-ix01.cp1.za.ws.net.za                                                                               0.0%    48   11.0  12.4  10.7  18.9   1.9
 7. 160.119.232.183                                                                                                0.0%    48   11.1  12.6  10.8  22.1   2.2
 8. 63-222-113-24.static.as3491.net                                                                                0.0%    48   12.5  14.4  11.7  68.6   8.3
 9. Hu0-0-0-20.br03.jnb01.as3491.net                                                                               0.0%    48   26.2  28.9  25.8  46.7   3.5
10. 63.218.151.2                                                                                                   0.0%    48   27.3  28.5  26.0  35.1   2.2
11. be8440.ccr31.par04.atlas.cogentco.com                                                                          0.0%    48  177.5 194.0 177.1 302.7  23.1
12. be3184.ccr42.par01.atlas.cogentco.com                                                                          0.0%    48  179.9 195.0 177.5 294.6  22.3
13. be2922.rcr21.b032899-0.par01.atlas.cogentco.com                                                                0.0%    48  188.1 192.5 178.5 235.0  10.1
14. 149.6.115.67                                                                                                  16.7%    48  190.2 198.1 178.3 300.8  21.6
15. 50.7.213.26                                                                                                   14.6%    48  177.7 186.8 162.9 292.7  27.7
16. 50.7.213.21                                                                                                    0.0%    48  234.2 185.9 163.9 239.3  19.5
17. XXXXXX                                                                                                   0.0%    48  176.5 172.8 162.6 182.0   5.2
 
This is with axxess


Code: 
Keys:  Help   Display mode   Restart statistics   Order of fields   quit
                                                                                                                    Packets               Pings
 Host                                                                                                             Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
 1. XXXXXXX                                                                                                   0.0%    31    0.4   0.3   0.2   0.8   0.1
 2. 192.168.1.1                                                                                                    0.0%    31    1.7   4.5   1.5  71.3  12.4
 3. 100.127.128.117                                                                                                0.0%    31   12.6  12.2  10.9  18.6   1.9
 4. 100.127.2.186                                                                                                  0.0%    31   12.3  11.7  10.6  14.9   0.8
 5. 100.127.3.137                                                                                                  0.0%    31   11.4  12.0  10.4  20.6   1.7
 6. 41.60.135.152.liquidtelecom.net                                                                                0.0%    31   12.3  12.3  11.2  15.3   0.8
 7. hu-0-7-0-7.lza-p2-tdn.liquidtelecom.net                                                                        0.0%    31  192.3 187.7 175.8 202.5   7.2
 8. hu-0-6-0-2.lza-p3-jhb.liquidtelecom.net                                                                        0.0%    30   35.2  34.9  31.8  41.2   1.9
 9. hu-0-0-0-1.lfr-p1-mrs.liquidtelecom.com                                                                        0.0%    30  188.1 183.6 171.7 189.8   6.0
10. 80.249.215.85                                                                                                  0.0%    30  211.0 207.8 193.2 256.5  11.9
11. 50.7.7.123                                                                                                    36.7%    30  232.9 216.8 199.6 246.8  10.2
12. 50.7.213.21                                                                                                    0.0%    30  223.5 650.1 200.8 3903. 1022.
13. XXXXXXX                                                                                                   0.0%    30  218.3 212.1 198.3 235.1   8.4
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X