Afrihost Business Uncapped Feedback - 2

[OrbitalDawn]

How is it that there are just endless problems with AfriHost? I had to switch to a business account because of the pathetic shaping on the home uncapped package but problems still persist. If it isn't IPC upgrade excuses then there are just random network problems that go on for weeks/months.

 

[TEXTILE GUY]

Just to throw my 2c worth in ....

I have had enough problems with ISPs during my time ... and although I admit, I am a bit concerned with the excuses for AH side, or rather the substance of these stories, I am still confident that AH will sort their sh*t out before year end.

Sure I get annoyed and sure I voice my disatisfaction .... and thats not going stop, but on the whole, I am still not quite ready to throw in the towel.
Some positive things have come out of my time with AH.

AH please prove me right.

 

[cortexenslaver]

Morning Guys

I see a few theories about peering or trying to get rid of clients being thrown around, and I just want to clear the air here. This is completely untrue.

Over the weekend, ourselves and our upstream vendors ran updates on the firmware that controls our shaping and traffic management systems. This is basically the software that controls how we classify traffic and then determine what must be shaped or not shaped (on Uncapped accounts, we don't shape Business or Capped). After the rollout, we saw reports of poor throughput and this is basically because of contention on the network as a result of shaping not being as effective as it should be.

Our technical team, along with our vendors, are now working to try to find what gaps have opened up that are allowing traffic through that should be shaped, and once they have been able to identify and classify the traffic correctly, we should see contention where it should be, and performance within the range that we expect.

I hope this explains what's happening, we want to be as open as possible so that you guys understand what is happening. If you hav questions, please PM me, I'm happy to explain as much as I can.

From a Capped and Business user perspective, it appears that your system is blanket shaping ALL users. The fact that the slow-downs for us are happening at exactly the same time every day, tells us that we are ALL being "managed".

Furthermore, if it is as you have described, that means that you do not have enough capacity for all the clients on the network, therefore causing more contention. If you look at all the trace routes many have supplied here, you will see that there are latency spikes on every hop... this points to an artificial enforcement of traffic management of ALL data on your network. Proof of this is highlighted in the equivalent traces done from Axxess accounts that follow the EXACT same route as Afrihost accounts, and the fact that even your Home Uncapped users are all complaining about the same issues. That is, they are not getting more priority than anyone else on your network, and are still being horribly shaped (especially Cape Town).

What is completely laughable is that we are expected to believe that it is just a coincidence that this has happened at precisely the moment that you "supposedly" bought more IPC. From a user perspective, this issue was evident the moment Afrihost issued a statement to MyBB that all upgrades were complete and working well - this was NOT true for ANY region, and was evident from the first region to be upgraded, namely EAST (take a look through this thread for proof if you doubt me).

 

[cortexenslaver]

Just to throw my 2c worth in ....

I have had enough problems with ISPs during my time ... and although I admit, I am a bit concerned with the excuses for AH side, or rather the substance of these stories, I am still confident that AH will sort their sh*t out before year end.

Sure I get annoyed and sure I voice my disatisfaction .... and thats not going stop, but on the whole, I am still not quite ready to throw in the towel.
Some positive things have come out of my time with AH.

AH please prove me right.

Same here... just adding my 2 cents.
Would love for all to go back to normal, for as I have said before, when this account works, it is by far the best account I have ever used - such a pity that it has become so unstable and erratic

 

[AfriMan]

How is it that there are just endless problems with AfriHost? I had to switch to a business account because of the pathetic shaping on the home uncapped package but problems still persist. If it isn't IPC upgrade excuses then there are just random network problems that go on for weeks/months.

I know we've been going through a series of issues in the last month or so, and nobody is more eager to put this behind us than us.

I really do believe we'll have these issues sorted soon, now that we have a good idea of what is happening.

 

[Type RSA]

Ok I am looking at unbundling my account and moving onto a free 1gb account. Can I do this now and will my line still be active if I want to come back whenever this crap is over?

 

[AfriMan]

Just to throw my 2c worth in ....

I have had enough problems with ISPs during my time ... and although I admit, I am a bit concerned with the excuses for AH side, or rather the substance of these stories, I am still confident that AH will sort their sh*t out before year end.

Sure I get annoyed and sure I voice my disatisfaction .... and thats not going stop, but on the whole, I am still not quite ready to throw in the towel.
Some positive things have come out of my time with AH.

AH please prove me right.

Thanks for the faith in us. I know you've also had your share of problems and luckily we've managed to get you through them. I believe as long as we are always motivated by doing the best for our clients, we'll always find the best way forward, even when we hit difficult times.

 

[AfriMan]

Ok I am looking at unbundling my account and moving onto a free 1gb account. Can I do this now and will my line still be active if I want to come back whenever this crap is over?

If you downgrade your account now it will take effect in the new month. Downgrading to a 1GB account will effectively unbundle you as we don't have bundle for that combination.

 

[HelterSkelter]

So...

I put Business Optimization ON. Torrents become dead slow, as it should, because the torrents are now shaped. Now, if I bypass the shaping, with optimization still activated, the torrents go to about 80% of line speed.

BUT: If I deactivate the optimization and deactivate my shaping bypassing, and wait a good while for the deactivation to kick in, torrents go about, 10, 15% of line speed.

My deduction from this observation is:

When optimization is activated, torrents are shaped, as it should be.

When optimization is deactivated, torrents are not unshaped, call it what you want it is.. optimized, deoptimized, managed, handled, scrambled, whambled, sedated, comatised, put on a slow strike...

 

[Type RSA]

If you downgrade your account now it will take effect in the new month. Downgrading to a 1GB account will effectively unbundle you as we don't have bundle for that combination.

That is perfect. I am moving to a new ISP, this issue with AH is driving me insane at the moment.

 

[Bursty-dude]

Yes, the North is flying along very nicely indeed:
View attachment 166599

Compare the crap I sat with most of yesterday to today:

 

[Hellocat]

Morning Guys

I see a few theories about peering or trying to get rid of clients being thrown around, and I just want to clear the air here. This is completely untrue.

Over the weekend, ourselves and our upstream vendors ran updates on the firmware that controls our shaping and traffic management systems. This is basically the software that controls how we classify traffic and then determine what must be shaped or not shaped (on Uncapped accounts, we don't shape Business or Capped). After the rollout, we saw reports of poor throughput and this is basically because of contention on the network as a result of shaping not being as effective as it should be.

Our technical team, along with our vendors, are now working to try to find what gaps have opened up that are allowing traffic through that should be shaped, and once they have been able to identify and classify the traffic correctly, we should see contention where it should be, and performance within the range that we expect.

I hope this explains what's happening, we want to be as open as possible so that you guys understand what is happening. If you hav questions, please PM me, I'm happy to explain as much as I can.

So what you are saying is this:

- As a provider or business critical services to companies around the country, you rolled out a major update to your core system software with NO rollback plan whatsoever.
- Your internal testing is so shoddy - perhaps even non-existent - that you had no idea what a catastrophic failure these updates had caused until CLIENTS told you about it. Did you do any testing whatsoever?
- An update done over the weekend has by THURSDAY not only not been fixed, but has not even been improved upon whatsoever. On our 20 MB business uncapped line, we are getting 0.3 MB down and 0.2 MB up this morning. This is WORSE than yesterday.

Even if everything you say is true, I find it extremely disturbing that a lapse like this was possible at all. It points to extremely shoddy internal procedures which positively encourage disasters of this nature without having any measures in place to deal with them effectively.

How exactly is this revelation supposed to put us at ease? Do you know how much 3G data we have consumed this week due to your pathetic service? Is Afrihost going to reimburse us for this extra cost due to its failures? I think not.

Make no mistake, this was no act of God or circumstance out of Afrihost's control. This was incompetence through and through. How exactly is the company going to ensure this sort of thing does not happen again?

 

[AfriMan]

So...

I put Business Optimization ON. Torrents become dead slow, as it should, because the torrents are now shaped. Now, if I bypass the shaping, with optimization still activated, the torrents go to about 80% of line speed.

BUT: If I deactivate the optimization and deactivate my shaping bypassing, and wait a good while for the deactivation to kick in, torrents go about, 10, 15% of line speed.

My deduction from this observation is:

When optimization is activated, torrents are shaped, as it should be.

When optimization is deactivated, torrents are not unshaped, call it what you want it is.. optimized, deoptimized, managed, handled, scrambled, whambled, sedated, comatised, put on a slow strike...

I think while there is a known problem on the network, it will be difficult to pin down issues like this. We know that speeds are poor, so it's likely that this will affect speeds on torrents, not through shaping but due to available bandwidth while we solve the network efficiency issue.

 

[PurSpyk!!]

We did see some improvement on an overall network level, but it's hard to say how that would translate from an overall network perspective. Clearly some users here did not experience significant improvement, while some other clients did.

The work that needs to be done is by no means complete, and our team are going to continue to work on this, and fly in more expertise if required. At the moment though, we working directly with the hardware & software vendors to find the quickest solution as well as a suitable long term one.

Maybe its time your so called experts give Axxess support a call as they seem to know how to configure their network? What happened last night, we were told experts were working on the issue and would not sleep until it was fixed, woke up this morning and my speeds were actually even slower than the previous evening?

 

[PurSpyk!!]

Me, I am an extremist by nature, a real pussycat to a point. I put up with a lot of bull but when I reach a certain point then I just dig my heels in and go for it. My problems with inconsistent speed and a bad performing account have been going on for about 3 months. I have been patient and understanding for some time now, but have finally reached the end of my patience with all the nonsense and lack of time period to resolution that we have been given. – first it was the fault of OS8, then it was the fault of Telkom, then we were assured that it was definitely not because of a lack of capacity, then we are told that bus accounts are not shaped/throttled/ prioritised/whatever term you care to throw at it, then Afrihost admits that they have asked for more capacity, then we are told that more capacity has arrived and the problems are resolved, then its not a capacity issue anymore but a maximising of the backbone which they are working on – notice that nowhere in this whole 3 month fiasco is there ANY form of time to resolution mentioned. During this whole period I am constantly being asked to do tracert on various accounts when Afrihost are fully aware of where the problem lies.
Right now, if Afrihost told me it was nightime at 23h00 hours I would go out and check for myself that this is so.
Long story short, I have had enough and am not going to be in a reasonable frame of mind when I meet with them.

This is so true and exactly what I have been experiencing, and I am sure most here can relate to this.

 

[Segg]

I can confirm, speeds are in the longdrop this morning, and its as if Afrihost has diarrhea they are so erratic

 

[AfriMan]

So what you are saying is this:

- As a provider or business critical services to companies around the country, you rolled out a major update to your core system software with NO rollback plan whatsoever.
- Your internal testing is so shoddy - perhaps even non-existent - that you had no idea what a catastrophic failure these updates had caused until CLIENTS told you about it. Did you do any testing whatsoever?
- An update done over the weekend has by THURSDAY not only not been fixed, but has not even been improved upon whatsoever. On our 20 MB business uncapped line, we are getting 0.3 MB down and 0.2 MB up this morning. This is WORSE than yesterday.

Even if everything you say is true, I find it extremely disturbing that a lapse like this was possible at all. It points to extremely shoddy internal procedures which positively encourage disasters of this nature without having any measures in place to deal with them effectively.

How exactly is this revelation supposed to put us at ease? Do you know how much 3G data we have consumed this week due to your pathetic service? Is Afrihost going to reimburse us for this extra cost due to its failures? I think not.

Make no mistake, this was no act of God or circumstance out of Afrihost's control. This was incompetence through and through. How exactly is the company going to ensure this sort of thing does not happen again?

I think it's more complex than that and I wouldn't want to to judge the work of others so harshly. I know the guys worked through the weekend on the updates, which were prepared by an internationally recognised development firm who do similar work in the US and EU. I wouldn't jump to label people as incompetent at this level of technical complexity and proficiency. It's certainly something that I would not be able to do, and given the constraints they have to work in, I believe they have done their best and few would do better in those circumstances.

 

[Type RSA]

I think it's more complex than that and I wouldn't want to to judge the work of others so harshly. I know the guys worked through the weekend on the updates, which were prepared by an internationally recognised development firm who do similar work in the US and EU. I wouldn't jump to label people as incompetent at this level of technical complexity and proficiency. It's certainly something that I would not be able to do, and given the constraints they have to work in, I believe they have done their best and few would do better in those circumstances.

Their best??!!! They completely ****ed up everything. Is that now good work. Sure go give those brainy folk a good tap on their shoulders mate. They did a splendid job of ****ing everything up yes!

Cancelled!!

 

[AfriMan]

Maybe its time your so called experts give Axxess support a call as they seem to know how to configure their network? What happened last night, we were told experts were working on the issue and would not sleep until it was fixed, woke up this morning and my speeds were actually even slower than the previous evening?

They did literally work through the night and are already back at it. The issues we are experiencing affect Axxess's network as well, but the experience may be different based on where their clients are concentrated and the amount of traffic they are moving. But they are also involved in this process.

 

[Orihalcon]

So...

I put Business Optimization ON. Torrents become dead slow, as it should, because the torrents are now shaped. Now, if I bypass the shaping, with optimization still activated, the torrents go to about 80% of line speed.

BUT: If I deactivate the optimization and deactivate my shaping bypassing, and wait a good while for the deactivation to kick in, torrents go about, 10, 15% of line speed.

My deduction from this observation is:

When optimization is activated, torrents are shaped, as it should be.

When optimization is deactivated, torrents are not unshaped, call it what you want it is.. optimized, deoptimized, managed, handled, scrambled, whambled, sedated, comatised, put on a slow strike...

What you are doing is having your torrent data being classified as a different type of data. This let's it be pulled from a different data pool where there is less contention. If more people do this the contention from that pool will ALSO increase and performance on real time services will go to hell as well.

This is evident because even while the downloads are so slow I can still stream at 1080p at full speed.


I think people need to understand how Afrihost's data setup works.

It's NOT just one big ocean of data that everyone siphons off of with shaping being applied at the different outlets of said ocean.

They have different data pools for different services. So, for example, one for downloads and one for real time services.

So with the shaping software having this glitch the demand on the download pool is too high - with home uncapped users now being able to pull more data - the contention increases making the whole experience useless. It's not shaping. It's insufficient data in that pool.

Now while this is going on real time pool still has enough capacity to service youtube, browsing etc.

If people start bypassing the data classification en masse...it's going to screw even that up.

This is an extreme oversimplification