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Active Member
- Joined
- Jul 23, 2003
- Messages
- 51
I used to connect at 6 MB and then started experiencing bad packet loss about 6 months ago. After 2 months of reporting faults, just to have it cleared without checking with me, I finally got to speak to someone in Telkom that importantly, knew what a packet loss meant as no one in the call centers knows. After explaining my problem to him he came up with the theory that as more people are connected on the cable to the exchange it starts inducing more noise on the cable and there is nothing they can do about it.
I did not feel up to arguing with this person and let it go as he managed to relieve, note I said relieve not fix, the problem by downgrading my line speed to 4 MB. Suffice to say that it was only temporary as the packet loss problem is an intermittent problem with a close correlation to the times when one would expect the public to use ADSL, i.e. after hours and weekends.
I kept reporting the fault and Telkom was unable to resolve the problem until one day about a month ago the technician finally came to my house and decided that the cable from the pole up to the Telkom phone connector needs replacing. I did not argue as honestly, the cables were a mess.
It alleviated the problem to some extent but I was still getting bursts of packet losses at times and during those time if I tried to download something it made it even worse up to the point that I had to throttle my downloads to about 10 Mbps before the line ran relatively clean. I can not go back to 6 MB as that brings back the so called 'noise' and subsequent packet loss. Incidentally, I used to get a latency of about 180 ms to the UK. Now I'm lucky to get 250 ms and that is during non-peak times. I have a 4MB 10GB unshaped ADSL service and I pay a premium for this line as it is (was) good for gaming in Europe. Now I get better performance on 3G!
I am now running Ping Plotter constantly and I can see the patterns in the degradation of the service and I am convinced that Telkom's contention ratios are way out of whack and they are overloading their routers. Whether there is any intelligence in Telkom to acknowledge it an fix it seems like an impossibility.
Suffice to say, I now have 3G from CellC and I find it way better and more reliable than Telkom but the price still puts me off switching to 3G entirely and cancelling Telkom.
A friend of mine had a similar issue also in Helderkruin and he eventually cancelled his ADSL and switched to 3G only because his company pays for it.
The short version of this is that Telkom's service is way below par and just getting them to acknowledge, never mind fix, the problem will never happen. Bring on cheaper optic fiber please!! and God forbid, let it not be Telkom that supplies the service.
I did not feel up to arguing with this person and let it go as he managed to relieve, note I said relieve not fix, the problem by downgrading my line speed to 4 MB. Suffice to say that it was only temporary as the packet loss problem is an intermittent problem with a close correlation to the times when one would expect the public to use ADSL, i.e. after hours and weekends.
I kept reporting the fault and Telkom was unable to resolve the problem until one day about a month ago the technician finally came to my house and decided that the cable from the pole up to the Telkom phone connector needs replacing. I did not argue as honestly, the cables were a mess.
It alleviated the problem to some extent but I was still getting bursts of packet losses at times and during those time if I tried to download something it made it even worse up to the point that I had to throttle my downloads to about 10 Mbps before the line ran relatively clean. I can not go back to 6 MB as that brings back the so called 'noise' and subsequent packet loss. Incidentally, I used to get a latency of about 180 ms to the UK. Now I'm lucky to get 250 ms and that is during non-peak times. I have a 4MB 10GB unshaped ADSL service and I pay a premium for this line as it is (was) good for gaming in Europe. Now I get better performance on 3G!
I am now running Ping Plotter constantly and I can see the patterns in the degradation of the service and I am convinced that Telkom's contention ratios are way out of whack and they are overloading their routers. Whether there is any intelligence in Telkom to acknowledge it an fix it seems like an impossibility.
Suffice to say, I now have 3G from CellC and I find it way better and more reliable than Telkom but the price still puts me off switching to 3G entirely and cancelling Telkom.
A friend of mine had a similar issue also in Helderkruin and he eventually cancelled his ADSL and switched to 3G only because his company pays for it.
The short version of this is that Telkom's service is way below par and just getting them to acknowledge, never mind fix, the problem will never happen. Bring on cheaper optic fiber please!! and God forbid, let it not be Telkom that supplies the service.