64K dedicated line uber slow

Grimspoon

Grimspoon

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Hi Guys,

We just had a 64k dedicated line installed in our office and the thing is slower than dragging a dead donkey through the Karoo on a scooter! Browsing is unbelievably slow and it takes me back to my days of the 28k modems....We have contacted Telkom and they recon that this is normal for a 64k dedicated line...Now please stop me if I am missing something, but surely it shouldn’t be this slow?! :eek:

From what I can gather this is the setup:

our NTU connects to a Cisco router provided by Telkom which then is connected to our own Router, then to our HP switch and then to our wireless router which pushes connectivity to each work station. My IT guy says that this is setup correctly.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.


Grim
 
Your IT guy is more than likely right. 64kbit = 8kbyte. Do a FTP transfer from ftp.saix.net or something, if you don't get 8kbyte/s transfer speed then something else is wrong. You won't get more than 8kbyte however...

But hey, 64kb aught to be enough for everyone right... ;)
 
64k line

lol

so you have 8kbs for everyone to browse and get emails

eina, i think a 4 meg line would be better but thats just me

how would 64k be enough for everyone? damn imagine there are 7 okes browing webpages and 4 okes trying to get email :), bad call on a 64k dedicated line

also how many ppl are using this line, also how much does it cost a month?
 
All I can say is thank the lord it is not my balls on the line here, cause I didn’t recommend this line :D

The line will need to accommodate roughly 8 people, mostly using it for VPN connectivity and emails, and mybroaband of course for me :p

We did phone Telkom and the dude said he was picking up CRC errors and that he has reset the interface and it should help, which it hasn’t...

We currently running on what is believed to be a 512 line with about 20 users and its nice and fast..O well will have to stick with this for now until they can work out what the issue is.
 
So if my understanding is correct, you're currently running a 512k ADSL line which is being replaced by a 64k diginet line?

Effectively, you are replacing your line with a line that's 8 times slower, so obviously it's going to seem much much slower, because it is.

My first question would be the reasoning behind getting a leased line?
I presume it would be because leased lines come with a better service agreement from telkom and are therefore supposed be more reliable. Telkom are supposed to respond to problems much quicker, at a premium of course.

Might also be because most IT professionals would rightly tell you that if you were considering hosting a domain yourself, the minimum requirement would be a leased line.

The best sollution would be to use both a diginet line (for hosting and reliability) and an ADSL line for speed, if you can afford it. This allows you to at least stay connected when the ADLS line goes down.

If however you're not using the diginet line for hosting, a more cost effective sollution for redundancy might be to use 3G or one of the other available technologies as a backup.
 
quik said:
So if my understanding is correct, you're currently running a 512k ADSL line which is being replaced by a 64k diginet line?

Effectively, you are replacing your line with a line that's 8 times slower, so obviously it's going to seem much much slower, because it is.

My first question would be the reasoning behind getting a leased line?
I presume it would be because leased lines come with a better service agreement from telkom and are therefore supposed be more reliable. Telkom are supposed to respond to problems much quicker, at a premium of course.

Might also be because most IT professionals would rightly tell you that if you were considering hosting a domain yourself, the minimum requirement would be a leased line.

The best sollution would be to use both a diginet line (for hosting and reliability) and an ADSL line for speed, if you can afford it. This allows you to at least stay connected when the ADLS line goes down.

If however you're not using the diginet line for hosting, a more cost effective sollution for redundancy might be to use 3G or one of the other available technologies as a backup.
Click to expand...

I think your understanding is spot on.....

8 X slower :eek: I can smell someone getting fired....I really don’t know who the hell thought that getting this would be a good idea....First thing I said was "well why didn’t you get a 4MB uncapped line?" Makes a sh** load more sense to me! Anyway thanks for the feedback.
 
grimspoon how much they charge a month for this service, do you know?

yea well 8 x slower line hahahaha, damn thats shocking someone would actually suggest making a companies internet 8 x slower than a 512 k line
 
killadoob said:
grimspoon how much they charge a month for this service, do you know?

yea well 8 x slower line hahahaha, damn thats shocking someone would actually suggest making a companies internet 8 x slower than a 512 k line
Click to expand...

But its dedicated! lol. Telkom suckered someone into paying for a Diginet line.

For the same price you could strap 4 x 4Meg lines together. Of course, you have guaranteed speed... of 8kb/s. Ouch. I would rather have unguaranteed speed of approximately 512kb/s. Hell, if you perform at only 10% its still more than the diginet line!
 
Ouch. Whoever recommended a 64k line should be shot. Do they realise that it's not much faster than a 56k modem? :p
 
dedicated 8kbs lol

why not just give all the pc's a 56 modem :) will be faster for each user, as each user will have a dedicated 56k modem and not 64k between 8 ppl :)

can anyone give me some sort of pricing on these lines? do they need contracts as well?
 
Question: why do people even bother buying Diginet lines in this day and age?
 
an even bigger question is wtf telkom have these lines

i mean 4 meg adsl is so cheap, i guess its for the ppl who are not informed like the IT guy at grim's office :)
 
You know what really blows my mind is that these are apparently educated IT professionals that make these decissions!? :eek: I fear these guys even know how to make toast....I am scared of even telling my boss cause he is going to Faaaark someone up I can assure you. Lmao its going to be a hose! :D

As for how much they charge us I heard the round figure of R5k a month flying around the office......R5k for a 56k modem, haha Telkom must be smiling from ear to elbow!
 
From my analysis of the Telkom price list:

Code: 
Diginet Line Charges	Installation	Monthly Rental	0-50km		51-200km		201-400km		>400km	
			Base	Per KM	Base	Per KM	Base	Per Km	Base	Per KM

Point to Point (64k)										
Equipment	2850.00	1026.00	319.20	22.24	1019.16	8.22	2070.24	2.96	2850.00	1.00

Sorry, it pastes quite horribly from excel:

Install fee (Once off): R2850

Monthly Rental: R1026 PLUS the base charge per KM between the exchanges. Usually with SAIX it's just to the exchange, so:

R1026+R319.20 base charge, + 22.24 per km, assuming 1km.

So monthly fee, JUST for the diginet line is around R1367.44. I'm not sure how much extra the ISP port charges are.

Oh yeah, and those Telkom prices are from the beginning of March.
 
Grimspoon said:
You know what really blows my mind is that these are apparently educated IT professionals that make these decissions!? :eek: I fear these guys even know how to make toast....I am scared of even telling my boss cause he is going to Faaaark someone up I can assure you. Lmao its going to be a hose! :D
Click to expand...
No. Just stay away from this...cause its going to blow up in someones face....so you know nothing about this.

Even worse, I'm guessing this thing comes with a long contract like most Telkom products.:eek:
 
timgaul said:
Question: why do people even bother buying Diginet lines in this day and age?
Click to expand...

We have a large number of them for our business and the main reason why is latency. We aren't transmitting large amounts of data but small amounts that need to be transmited quickly and acknowledged quickly as well.

Internet is not what a dedicated leased line is meant for. Secure, rapid, high support and steady transmission of data is.
 
Err!? regardless, it's still mental to pay for a diginet line as opposed to DSL in my experience.
TCP/IP error correction algorithm is very efficient and DSL provides what really should be lossless-enough a connection in most cases, at what should be really low, stable latency (7-15ms). there really shouldn't be any problem with that, especially if using only 64k of even a 384k entry-level line. paying a FRACTION of the cost for a faster line that isnt even going to be utilized at half its capacity (which means no latency spikes), is way more practical in my opinion. If DSL is not sufficient enough for your application, recode whatever software you're using so that it can handle it - you'll save more in the end than paying that kinda money that I could even survive off with in a month.
 
fragtion_ said:
Err!? regardless, it's still mental to pay for a diginet line as opposed to DSL in my experience.
TCP/IP error correction algorithm is very efficient and DSL provides what really should be lossless-enough a connection in most cases, at what should be really low, stable latency (7-15ms). there really shouldn't be any problem with that, especially if using only 64k of even a 384k entry-level line. paying a FRACTION of the cost for a faster line that isnt even going to be utilized at half its capacity (which means no latency spikes), is way more practical in my opinion. If DSL is not sufficient enough for your application, recode whatever software you're using so that it can handle it - you'll save more in the end than paying that kinda money that I could even survive off with in a month.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, practice has proven these statements not true. Adsl is our backup option and can be used to surf on but we don't relay on it. Been burnt there before.
 
ADSL is not always practical. Yes, it's fast, but it's not as secure as a direct peer to peer link. If you want to secure an ADSL link, it means encrypted VPN, which means overhead = latency. It's negligible, sure... but there are some applications where even that is not good enough to satisfy company auditors. :p
 
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