3G cap on International only

[jfrancis]

The issue of the 3GB cap is because of the expense of internationally transitive traffic.

Telkom claim that after reaching your 3G limit they will throttle you on International connectivity, but keep Local at full speeds.

This means that they have the ability to distinguish beteen Internationally transitive and locally transitive traffic.

Why then do they include Local upload and download bytes in the 3G cap?

If they are trying to reduce international traffic then it makes more sense for them to perform the traffic accounting on the expensive international link.

It just seems to me that this product was not very well thought out.

 

[VQuest]

A lot of us have had the same thoughts as you about keeping local and international apart. It's obviously possible for them to do, so it makes no sense why they don't do something about it.


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United we stand!
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[seanl]

I suspect that you are imagining that the two things are implemented the same way, when they are not.

They measure our usage by measuring traffic flow between the DSLAM and our modem, and thus cannot distinguish between international and local.

Once we've reached the Telkom network the IP we're assigned determines the routing for any packets that need to travel internationally. If we're assigned an IP in the 165.165.1-9.x range then that routing goes via the capped route.

So the distinction between local and international is made a long way from where they are measuring our usage.

I agree that this is a PITA, but I can understand the difficulties involved.

 

[desraid]

it is easier for telkom to release the cap than counting the international traffics only. []

 

[jfrancis]

Umm, hence the reason for my post. They are trying to reduce or discourage International bandwidth use by measuring in a indiscriminate fashion (at the wrong point).

Fact of the matter is that they could implement International traffic monitoring quite easily in a number of ways -- I am not going to elaborate here, this is not a technical issue (and they are not paying me to tell them how to do it. [8D]) This is an issue about a product with brain-dead logic.

This would also encourage the use of local mirrors for heavy downloads. I agree that the cap is rather irrational, but it's rather like punishing the whole family because one member defaulted...

 

[seanl]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by jfrancis</i>
Fact of the matter is that they could implement International traffic monitoring quite easily in a number of ways<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Certainly they could implement it, I don't know about "easily". Given they seem to have some trouble running the current system smoothly (my ADSL was out for 12 hours or so last week), I'd rather they kept things simple.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">I am not going to elaborate here, this is not a technical issue (and they are not paying me to tell them how to do it. [8D]) This is an issue about a product with brain-dead logic.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

I see, so easy that you're not going to tell us. Forgive me if I'm somewhat sceptical. I suspect you have no idea what it takes to run a successful ISP network.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">This would also encourage the use of local mirrors for heavy downloads. I agree that the cap is rather irrational, but it's rather like punishing the whole family because one member defaulted...<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

I agree the logic is not great, I'm getting better download speeds using BitTorrent than local FTP sites downloading the latest Knoppix ISO, and what incentive is there for me to use the local sites anyway?
[/quote]

 

[jfrancis]

By saying that you are somewhat sceptical -- and then adding that "...you have no idea what it takes to run a successful ISP network..." suggests that *you* in fact do not know or understand how simple it really is, but are willing to infer that someone else does not know either...

Seanl, your are forgiven. Hell knows what for, but you asked for it. []. Full and unadulterated forgiveness.

Looking at you previous posts, you sound like a bright guy. Why don't we concentrate our collective energies on the task of getting the cap lifted, instead of bickering?

 

[habitat]

Hi guys
I am a real newbie at computers so forgive me for a dumb suggestion.
If the cap is only on international that means you will still have a 512K pipe locally?? right. If that is so why don't the computer fundis come up with a way to get the data off a local server. ie fool the computer to think that the data is actually on a local machine meantime it get the data off the overseas machine. Even if it has to access the data from the local machine. Kind of like a mirror site??
I'm sure if the brains really think on this one they can do it??

Habitat

 

[Tharaxis]

This system actually exists habitat, and it's called proxying, where a secondary machine, either on the same network, or on another network is able to accept incoming connections, and then make the connection to an international location (or any location for that matter) on behalf of the individual connecting, this secondary machine acts as a Proxy, or "intermediary", between you and the location you are trying to access, but there are many types of Proxies out there, and with them comes a cost (even the Proxy uses bandwidth).

HTTP Proxy:

This is your simplest form of proxy and lets you connect to any website on port 80, NOTE, I said any WEBSITE, because it's very often protocol specific (HTTP only), you wouldn't for example be able to access an FTP on port 80 via the proxy, the proxy you're connecting to would have to support the CONNECT command, and most don't. There are MANY of these proxies out there that are free for use, even in South Africa, as they belong to ISP's that use them to improve performance for customers on their network. Sometimes though a "freely available" proxy is misconfigured and can go down without warning. You can find a good deal of Proxies via: http://www.findproxy.com. It's worth pointing out though that MSN Messenger can use a HTTP proxy to connect and communicate.

SOCKS Proxy:

These are the most versatile type proxy, and nearly every application out there has support for either SOCKS4 or SOCKS5, and supports every protocol out there (Kazaa, FTP, HTTP, Messenger, etc.), these proxy's tho tend to be very secure (due to their versatility) and finding one for free is EXTREMELY rare, and to the best of my knowledge there are no free SOCKS Proxies within South Africa (can you imagine the abuse) - If you find one, chances are you gotta pay... and pay quite a bit.