ADSL Woes, Upgrade or switch?

TayeedzSA said:
I'll speak to the Queen when she's back from work.

Now it makes sense.... Telkom you slick individuals...

Gonna stick with Uncapped since many people in the house use the net, also visitors. I had Telkom capped internet in the past but it was an outright nightmare to monitor usage.

One of my bros and I download and stream anime along with Youtube and also upload onto Youtube while my other bro usually does iTunes. Torrents we don't really do as much but we don't mind doing them past midnight. We're pretty happy with the speed and reliability that Mweb offers, it's just the throttling now I'm worried about.
Is the Mweb 6mbps Premium any good? 600gb threshold and 6mbps line for the same price as an Afrihost business line seems tempting.
Click to expand...

Check your account usage with Mweb and see what your normal usage is. 4mbps standard to 6mbps premium is a 545% increase in data usage, but it's your money, pick what you think is best. You will have exactly the same level of service you had for your 4mbps uncapped just higher speed (6Mbps ~600kB/s download after overheads, note that before you could "turbo" the line before, get over the 4mbps speed cap set by Mweb, usually your overheads would have made it download at ~400kB/s.) and a higher data allowance. I prefer my higher speed with a cap, I can always increase the cap later if I need it.

I have a 150GB cap, with it Youtube + Gaming (3 people constantly, lots of updates on all the different machines and then downloading games and stuff to mobile devices), but it really depends on you.
 
Last edited:
No way in hell you are going to use 600GB in a month with normal media (anything a normal household would do -- movies, youtube videos, music, browsing, streaming, games etc.). To use that much, you'll be downloading non-stop at max speed. Trust me, by the time your family downloads everything they ever wanted, you're probably sitting at like 300~400GB max.

I'd suggest the Telkom 4mbps Uncapped "Advance" (Telkom's naming system :confused:): http://www.telkom.co.za/sites/athom...ddatabundles/&productname=do Uncapped Advance
R585/month, cheap as s**t and even includes the DSL line rental. Got a pretty good threshold. I only ever managed to hit it once when I downloaded 12GB a day for about a week.
 
TayeedzSA said:
I'll speak to the Queen when she's back from work.

Now it makes sense.... Telkom you slick individuals...

Gonna stick with Uncapped since many people in the house use the net, also visitors. I had Telkom capped internet in the past but it was an outright nightmare to monitor usage.

One of my bros and I download and stream anime along with Youtube and also upload onto Youtube while my other bro usually does iTunes. Torrents we don't really do as much but we don't mind doing them past midnight. We're pretty happy with the speed and reliability that Mweb offers, it's just the throttling now I'm worried about.
Is the Mweb 6mbps Premium any good? 600gb threshold and 6mbps line for the same price as an Afrihost business line seems tempting.
Click to expand...

Aha .... Paying for 10 meg line and 4 meg account .... You can save some cash here. :D

If you intend going Uncapped - go Premium or business .... MWEB standard and most of the cheaper accounts are ''uncapped'' but shaped to death.

My line was down for a week, and this is what my business account usage is looking like - all unshaped - AH

ah data jan.PNG
 
Considering things like pings and stability MWEB is actually one of the better ISPs.

Definitely go mweb.

The only reason people don't like them is because of the low thresholds on standard.

The connection itself though is pretty decent.
 
Wait if you're on a 10 Meg line, you could also upgrade to 10Meg standard with mweb.

If you drop your line to 4Meg you'll actually lose some speed(4.6->3.6).
 
Chevron said:
Considering things like pings and stability MWEB is actually one of the better ISPs.

Definitely go mweb.

The only reason people don't like them is because of the low thresholds on standard.

The connection itself though is pretty decent.
Click to expand...
+1 Just go 10Mbps standard, its more than double the previous cap of 4Mbps and R100 cheaper than 6Mbps premium. If it doesn't work out, just change to the 6Mbps premium.
 
Chevron said:
Considering things like pings and stability MWEB is actually one of the better ISPs.

Definitely go mweb.

The only reason people don't like them is because of the low thresholds on standard.

The connection itself though is pretty decent.
Click to expand...

@Chevron - I was waiting for you to say - You get what you pay for .... Its solid advice you gave me some time back.
 
Welp, I spoke to the Queen now. She says she'll think about upgrading and will check out the Telkom matter.

Most likely will go with the Mweb 4mbps Premium.

Thanks for the advice everyone. I hope this can be sorted.
 
TayeedzSA said:
Welp, I spoke to the Queen now. She says she'll think about upgrading and will check out the Telkom matter.

Most likely will go with the Mweb 4mbps Premium.

Thanks for the advice everyone. I hope this can be sorted.
Click to expand...

You do know you'll drop from 4.6Megs, to 3.6Megs right?

With a family of 4 you'll feel it most likely.

Consider 10Meg standard too.
 
Chevron said:
You do know you'll drop from 4.6Megs, to 3.6Megs right?

With a family of 4 you'll feel it most likely.

Consider 10Meg standard too.
Click to expand...

This. I have a 4meg line and with tcp overheads I only see ~ 3.6Megs of that. Might be significant for your family
 
What's the talk of tcp overheads? I know about internet lines and all but not that much :confused:
 
TayeedzSA said:
What's the talk of tcp overheads? I know about internet lines and all but not that much :confused:
Click to expand...

I am certainly not the expert as my user name suggests, but I can have go at answering this.

As I understand it, bytes of data sent from one place to another are like a parcel. They need some extras before they are sent.
A parcel needs wrapping and a delivery address, which adds to the size and weight - but in the case of data, the data ''wrapped'' in headers so that the various systems know what the bytes of data parcel is, and so on.

These headers add to the size of the data in bytes, but essentially are just packaging.

And Just like a courier, a whole lots of parcels are sent in a one big bag .... so data is sent in a packet, but when you get that packet, a portion of it is the information headers or packaging around your data. This is the overhead loss to you.

Techies - how did I do?
 
TEXTILE GUY said:
I am certainly not the expert as my user name suggests, but I can have go at answering this.

As I understand it, bytes of data sent from one place to another are like a parcel. They need some extras before they are sent.
A parcel needs wrapping and a delivery address, which adds to the size and weight - but in the case of data, the data ''wrapped'' in headers so that the various systems know what the bytes of data parcel is, and so on.

These headers add to the size of the data in bytes, but essentially are just packaging.

And Just like a courier, a whole lots of parcels are sent in a one big bag .... so data is sent in a packet, but when you get that packet, a portion of it is the information headers or packaging around your data. This is the overhead loss to you.

Techies - how did I do?
Click to expand...

You on the right track there, it also use it for error checking, if some of the packets sent and was corrupted for some reason it will re-send it.

But i will confirm bit later
 
Last edited:
TEXTILE GUY said:
I am certainly not the expert as my user name suggests, but I can have go at answering this.

As I understand it, bytes of data sent from one place to another are like a parcel. They need some extras before they are sent.
A parcel needs wrapping and a delivery address, which adds to the size and weight - but in the case of data, the data ''wrapped'' in headers so that the various systems know what the bytes of data parcel is, and so on.

These headers add to the size of the data in bytes, but essentially are just packaging.

And Just like a courier, a whole lots of parcels are sent in a one big bag .... so data is sent in a packet, but when you get that packet, a portion of it is the information headers or packaging around your data. This is the overhead loss to you.

Techies - how did I do?
Click to expand...

I think I understand. I'm pretty used to this connection and its speed plus no one in the house complains about it. 6mbps would be nice but cost is also a factor I must keep in mind.

I recently heard that Telkom is upgrading their infrastructure. Maybe something good will come along there? Even for us Mweb users?
 
TayeedzSA said:
I think I understand. I'm pretty used to this connection and its speed plus no one in the house complains about it. 6mbps would be nice but cost is also a factor I must keep in mind.

I recently heard that Telkom is upgrading their infrastructure. Maybe something good will come along there? Even for us Mweb users?
Click to expand...

Everyone should have their lines upgraded from 2-> 4mbps, should not affect you. MickeyD said it should be 1st of April 2015, not sure if it is a joke.
 
Chaps, how's the Afrihost 4mbps uncapped non-business line? I'm not too bothered about shaping since I've been used to it for long.

Plus, it's R140p/m cheaper than the Mweb Premium and has a higher threshold from what I was told.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X