a Question around unshaped and shaped

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avanie

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This just doesnt make sense to me, hoping someone can explain.

Technically i cannot understand why a unshaped account should be more expensive than a shaped account.
but over and above that, since the little proice war stared a few months back, we have seen the prices steadilly drop down from about R80 per gig to about R20 as it is now.
However during this time the Unshaped accounts has remained around the R125 per gig mark... totally unchanged.

so please if someone can explain why unshaped is 6 times more expensive than shaped?
I have always used Webarica to purchase my unshaped bandwidth ( for online gaming ) and yes it is a great service. but so far absolutely NONE of the price reductions experienced over the past 2 months has filtered down into this product of theirs.

anyone know of a good prepaid alternative for unshaped and hasnt become such a total rip off?
 
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Why they're like 6 times more expensive? Well I guess because the pressure to lower unshaped prices is not nearly as high as with shaped - shaped being the default choice for most consumers, meaning demand for unshaped isn't high enough and people who really want it generally pay the price for it. So yes they're extremely overpriced at the moment I think, so I wouldn't waste my money - the difference is barely noticeable especially if you're using the account for mostly locally accessible stuff. As far as I'm concerned, there won't be a the shaped/unshaped distinction going for much longer... I may be wrong but I think the competition is going to force all accounts to be unshaped by default in the near enough future. Let's hope that's the case at least...
 
Unfortunately if you are a online gamer and the game servers is in europe, then the difference between shaped and unshaped is 750 ms ping times compared to 350ms Ping times... so it makes a huge difference. Now when i started using their service a year back, the difference in price was not than much... shaped was about R95... so it was an easy decision to pay the little bit more for the better ping times. but now that is just not the case anymore... the difference has become Huge.
If any webafrica emloyees read these forums, can you shed some light as to why your prices havent reflected the recent price reductions?
 
I logged a call to webafrica asking them the question .
and this is the response i got:

We will be launching our new prices and packages from 1st March. We have moved to our own network so our package will give more bandwidth to our clients. Below is a link to a comment from Web Africa on our blog. http://blog.webafrica.co.za/2010/01/web-africa-entering-2010/ Thank you for being patient. Please let us know should you have any further queries.
 
Not all unshaped prices are high, we offer unshaped data packages the range from R76 per gig right down to R24 per gig. The speed difference between shaped and unshaped is very noticeable when doing any that requires rapid downloads or low pings.
 
I still play WoW on US servers and I can honestly say there is almost no difference between my unshaped (Imaginet) and shaped (Axxess, Mweb if I'm desperate) accounts, ping wise. My Mweb account is actually often the most stable of the three.
 
Normally gamers who are playing games such as World of Warcraft would need to purchase unshaped bandwidth if they wanted to play competitively with low latency. Web Africa ADSL packages have prioritization on gaming protocols and while using a shaped 10GB ASDL account I am playing (Raiding in ICC and all other activities) and my latency is constantly staying within a comfortable and stable 200-300 ms range. Bear in mind in my case I also have 2 VOIP applications running as well as a linux programmer working and updating content for a future release and 2 -3 copies of the games running :)

Additionally Web Africa ADSL subscribers can download the WOW patches from the WAGE downloads section (http://www.wage.co.za/downloads.aspx) without using ANY bandwidth. We are also running VOIP servers which are within our FreeZone area of the network and can setup guild channels for our subscribers who want to save additional bandwidth while playing;)
 
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WAJohnathan said:
Web Africa ADSL packages have prioritization on gaming protocols and while using a shaped 10GB ASDL account I am playing (Raiding in ICC and all other activities) and my latency is constantly staying within a comfortable and stable 200-300 ms range.
Click to expand...

thats better than i am gettng from the WA unshaped account ( usually 300 to 450 ms) :P
This Prioritisation on gaming protocols, is this specific to WoW, or would this affect other games as well such as Aion online/ warhammer online/ Eve online?
Well this is good news, it means i can stop payng the rediculous 125 per gig, and change my access to shaped.
 
Unfortunately if you are a online gamer and the game servers is in europe, then the difference between shaped and unshaped is 750 ms ping times compared to 350ms Ping times... so it makes a huge difference
Click to expand...

That's more or less what I used to contend with :)

thats better than i am gettng from the WA unshaped account ( usually 300 to 450 ms) :P
This Prioritisation on gaming protocols, is this specific to WoW, or would this affect other games as well such as Aion online/ warhammer online/ Eve online?
Well this is good news, it means i can stop payng the rediculous 125 per gig, and change my access to shaped.
Click to expand...

Gaming traffic is prioritized, not to be confused with torrent traffic which is a different ball game :D
 
Well thanks Jonathan you made my day :) now if you can just hep me with my telkom line fault youl be my hero forever ;P
 
You can get Unshaped MTN adsl accounts @ R69 per GB or SAIX based unshaped bandwidth @ R89 per GB

http://www.openweb.co.za/unshaped/

I have never used the MTN one before. but SAIX unshaped and SAIX shaped there is a noticeable difference. I'm going to try that MTN unshaped soon. looks like a good offering.
 
avanie said:
Well thanks Jonathan you made my day :) now if you can just hep me with my telkom line fault youl be my hero forever ;P
Click to expand...

If you have already transferred your ADSL line to Web Africa then our support department can log a fault and follow up with Telkom to assist with getting it resolved ;)


Our FreeZone does not use any bandwidth off your account, so be sure to get a freeZone enabled package to take advantage of this exceptional value add and play with low latencies :)
 
@ WAJohnathan :

If I buy a prepaid shaped account today, will the bandwidth expire in 3 days time or is it valid for 12 months? I want to test out this "shaped" account that gives me 200ms in WoW.
 
Right..

So I got capped yesterday and after reading a post in the WoW section. I bought a prepaid 1 gig shaped account from WA. My latency is ~450ms without any proxy or anything. Now if only they'd drop their prices to the likes of Afrihost, I would consider changing to them asap.I also have 384k line.. Was hoping for200-300 ms
 
Kuga said:
@ WAJohnathan :

If I buy a prepaid shaped account today, will the bandwidth expire in 3 days time or is it valid for 12 months? I want to test out this "shaped" account that gives me 200ms in WoW.
Click to expand...

Our prepaid accounts do not expire :D
 
Kuga said:
Right..

So I got capped yesterday and after reading a post in the WoW section. I bought a prepaid 1 gig shaped account from WA. My latency is ~450ms without any proxy or anything. Now if only they'd drop their prices to the likes of Afrihost, I would consider changing to them asap.I also have 384k line.. Was hoping for200-300 ms
Click to expand...

Leatrix Latency Fix work very well with WOW. Actual latency will vary based on player location, quality of the exchange and other factors.
 
Well I must say after installing the Leatrix Latency Fix my ms has dropped to around ~350ms on average. I am impressed with the latency I'm getting. I want to switch to you guys just for WoW but at R70/gig it's costly.. Can you guys match the price of Afrihost ? If so, I will jump ship asap :D. My TI account is getting me ~950 ms :(
 
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