.

Great post. Thank you for taking the time to do this.

In your opinion based on the data you collected, would Home-COnnect/Cipherwave be a good FTTH ISP to use?
 
Workonline sells pretty decent bandwidth from what I've experienced. They also handle a lot of redundancy for you with physically separate (by geolocation/datacenter if you require) bandwidth entrypoints to a customer's network and by using multiple international fibre carriers.

dabouncer said:
You wont know what a provider is buying unless they tell you, most of what happens on ISP networks is a closely guarded secret. We can assume, but we know assumptions are just that.

HE is present in ZA, you can buy transit from them out of Teraco Isando, same with some other large Tier 1 carriers.
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1) Hardly that much of a secret. You can find out really easily using a few online tools. Take a regional ISP like Faircape for example. They peer with Workonline and Hurricane Electric but only buy transit from Workonline. https://bgp.he.net/AS37363#_graph4. Deducing this kind of information is simple by using Looking Glass tools on major carriers and looking for AS announcements to other big carriers, along with some BGP AS-path lookups. Sure, you have no idea what their business agreements are but you can definitely see a finite list of who is providing transit.

2) ZA does not have any "Tier 1" carriers. IS, Neotel & MTN come close but they are not true Tier 1 as they still buy transit at one point or another.
 
stroebs said:
1) Hardly that much of a secret. You can find out really easily using a few online tools. Take a regional ISP like Faircape for example. They peer with Workonline and Hurricane Electric but only buy transit from Workonline. https://bgp.he.net/AS37363#_graph4. Deducing this kind of information is simple by using Looking Glass tools on major carriers and looking for AS announcements to other big carriers, along with some BGP AS-path lookups. Sure, you have no idea what their business agreements are but you can definitely see a finite list of who is providing transit.
Click to expand...

In the context of the discussion it was to determine who the provider is using for local transit, local peering, international transit and international peering. Determining if a provider is buying local only transit is not easily identifiable from LG and the likes. One would need to look deeper at communities for example on the LG and then to know what the upstream does with the communities, perhaps there are no communities in use on the ebgp session between downstream and upstream.... Example of communities for those interested:http://as37100.net/?bgp

stroebs said:
2) ZA does not have any "Tier 1" carriers. IS, Neotel & MTN come close but they are not true Tier 1 as they still buy transit at one point or another.
Click to expand...

Never said there were but there are non-ZA Tier 1 providers.
 
Truly. A large amount can be deduced from looking at communities and routing tables in INX-ZA and NAP but that still doesn't take into account those buying Layer-1/2 backhaul between cities, which I've found to be commonplace. Peers appear as native connections at a peering point but are actually just sitting on a VLAN on another provider's network.
 
Definitely. It also helps when users on those networks assist in figuring it out since they have access to do traceroutes and deduce some information from that. I never expected to have 100% factual information, but as much as one can get by looking at a few things.
 
stroebs said:
Truly. A large amount can be deduced from looking at communities and routing tables in INX-ZA and NAP
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More so on transit LG. IX communities are often to prevent learning prefixes through the RS where you have a BL session to same peer or you don't want X to receive your prefixes or dont want to advertise any prefixes via the RS.

stroebs said:
but that still doesn't take into account those buying Layer-1/2 backhaul between cities, which I've found to be commonplace. Peers appear as native connections at a peering point but are actually just sitting on a VLAN on another provider's network.
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Im not really seeing the issue/point. Everyone that is multi site is buying some sort of L1/2 product. A provider such as DFA has no business in the L3 market and only sells L1/L2 products. Maybe tomorrow Cool Ideas decides there is a better market in L2 and they sell long haul L1/2 to smaller providers to allow them to become multi site.
 
Could you perhaps add RocketNet(Directel) back to the list of ISPs?
It seems they have added 200Mbps+ packages (up to 1Gbps) and they have some pretty competitive deals.
Capture.jpg

Edit: Image of higher speed options on order form

Capture2.jpg
 
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Waylander said:
The addition of the Netflix results was simply to supplement the conclusion of my own research, not to validate it in any way, but thanks.
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Interesting article. It will assist me on my final decision.

Do you know who Rocketnet uses? Didn't notice it on your list.
 
Webafrica is turning out to be the biggest mistake i made. their 100mbps fibre is rubbish. I can hardly get over 25mbps TO SA servers.
 
Great post! :)

Can someone maybe suggest which ISP is best for VPN access to US?
Also, would a network access make a difference? I have an option of going on Vumatel or SADV.
 
zeck said:
Great post! :)

Can someone maybe suggest which ISP is best for VPN access to US?
Also, would a network access make a difference? I have an option of going on Vumatel or SADV.
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Yes network access makes a difference.
#1 - Choose Vumatel over SADV.
#2 - Use Coolideas for your ISP.
Can't go wrong with that. I am on Vumatel trenched 100/100 with coolideas, and it is absolute bliss. True uncapped and true unshaped. Most other ISPs, if not all, have shaping devices on their networks that slow you down. On my coolideas line, I have to slow my torrents down if I want to play games. They easily max my 100mbit line if well seeded.
 
Tinuva said:
Yes network access makes a difference.
#1 - Choose Vumatel over SADV.
#2 - Use Coolideas for your ISP.
Can't go wrong with that. I am on Vumatel trenched 100/100 with coolideas, and it is absolute bliss. True uncapped and true unshaped. Most other ISPs, if not all, have shaping devices on their networks that slow you down. On my coolideas line, I have to slow my torrents down if I want to play games. They easily max my 100mbit line if well seeded.
Click to expand...
Awesome, thanks! Is there a big difference between Vuma trenched and aerial?
We have Vuma aerial but our SADV line runs straight to DFA node less than 100m away.
 
zeck said:
Awesome, thanks! Is there a big difference between Vuma trenched and aerial?
We have Vuma aerial but our SADV line runs straight to DFA node less than 100m away.
Click to expand...
Aerial was another fibre network bought out by Vumatel. So the infrastructure works different technically and practically. While not exactly the same as trenched, I would still take that over SADV personally. Just my opinion.

But if you want the more technical answer, I think you can ask in the Coolideas thread and PBCool will be able to answer it.
 
Tinuva said:
Yes network access makes a difference.
#1 - Choose Vumatel over SADV.
#2 - Use Coolideas for your ISP.
Can't go wrong with that. I am on Vumatel trenched 100/100 with coolideas, and it is absolute bliss. True uncapped and true unshaped. Most other ISPs, if not all, have shaping devices on their networks that slow you down. On my coolideas line, I have to slow my torrents down if I want to play games. They easily max my 100mbit line if well seeded.
Click to expand...
I`ve got Vumatel via MWEB and also pretty much have the same experience. Never tested the uncapped limits yet , but can confirm it appears to be completely unshaped.
 
eyc said:
I`ve got Vumatel via MWEB and also pretty much have the same experience. Never tested the uncapped limits yet , but can confirm it appears to be completely unshaped.
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ROFLMAO, you have to be joking. MWEB shapes and throttles all their accounts. Even the capped accounts are shaped, with gaming traffic suppose to be prioritized
 
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