Afrihost Business Uncapped Feedback - 2

[free3dom]

Seeing that your profile shows Centurion, I think you would still be affected by the North network not yet being upgraded. Once that is effected, I expect performance will improve across the board.

Hi Afriman

I am on a business uncapped account and since midnight my NZB are crawling.

I am also located in Centurion and last night (@ 22:00) my connection turned to crap and has remained that way.
Before last night it was up and down but never this consistently low (@20-50Kb/s on 4MB Business Uncapped).
I know that your North IPC upgrades are currently underway - could this be what is causing this? or is there something else going on that would affect my speeds during off peak hours (00:00 to 06:00 was really bad)?

 

[AfriMan]

But I am on a Business account so should not be subject to shaping.

It looks like an MTN issue as ussual:


C:\WINDOWS\system32>tracert afrihost.com

Tracing route to afrihost.com [197.242.144.102]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 3 ms 4 ms 4 ms 192.168.100.50
2 10 ms 9 ms 9 ms 105-236-0-65-esr-lo.mtnbusiness.co.za [105.236.0.65]
3 52 ms 52 ms 55 ms 41.181.221.218
4 85 ms 54 ms 54 ms rb-dca-2.za--qux-b.za.mtnbusiness.net [41.181.165.118]
5 676 ms 693 ms 695 ms rb-dca-2.za--rb-cr-1.mtnns.net [196.44.31.122]
6 587 ms 614 ms 631 ms jh-dca-2.za--jh-cr-1.za-a.mtnns.net [196.44.0.221]
7 819 ms 545 ms 600 ms 196.30.1.53
8 820 ms 791 ms 622 ms 196.31.220.25
9 51 ms 52 ms 52 ms 196.31.63.206
10 421 ms 415 ms 447 ms vl9-ah-ha-2.za.mtnbusiness.net [196.30.42.133]
11 455 ms 462 ms 456 ms cms-gm.afrihost.com [197.242.144.102]

Trace complete.

We're definitely not shaping Business but this does look like latency within the network. What DNS settings are your using?

 

[AfriMan]

I am also located in Centurion and last night (@ 22:00) my connection turned to crap and has remained that way.
Before last night it was up and down but never this consistently low (@20-50Kb/s on 4MB Business Uncapped).
I know that your North IPC upgrades are currently underway - could this be what is causing this? or is there something else going on that would affect my speeds during off peak hours (00:00 to 06:00 was really bad)?

I'm seeing some clients report that when they switch DNS their speeds are improving. This could be an issue on our side, becuase it's strange to see reports of high latency in the East, for example.

It could be the case in the North, but hard to tell with demand issues. Maybe try switching up DNS or static DNS settings to see if this affects your performance at those times (I would expect them to be better).

 

[AfriMan]

Ja, I have heard that one before, anyways, switching to torrents now, maybe better luck. I think the shaping rules are up the creek too.

The are no shaping rulesets for Business, but due to contention we have seen poor performance on some services during high demand periods

 

[diepeterpan]

yeah getting shaped badly again.

View attachment 160002

Thank you, exactly the same experience.

 

[diepeterpan]

The are no shaping rulesets for Business, but due to contention we have seen poor performance on some services during high demand periods

Afriman, with all due respect, you call it Tomato and I call it Tamato, at this moment my NZBs and Torrents are getting 0.1% priority. There, I called it priority and not shaping. Does it change my position I am in, nope. I still have the crap experience. Do we have an ETA on when this thing is going to be resolved?

 

[AfriMan]

Afriman, with all due respect, you call it Tomato and I call it Tamato, at this moment my NZBs and Torrents are getting 0.1% priority. There, I called it priority and not shaping. Does it change my position I am in, nope. I still have the crap experience. Do we have an ETA on when this thing is going to be resolved?

I totally agree, what's important is what you are experiencing is where our focus should be, and I promise that's where we're concentrating all our energies.

We've been told that the upgrades could even arrive within the next 10 days, but we'll have to wait for further confirmation from Telkom via MTN.

 

[sactjt]

Thank you, exactly the same experience.

4Mbps Business account: . Trying to download NZB file since last night:

File size and time remaining:

Yes, I have tried other nzb files and optional server to test. What the hell!

Speedtest: http://www.speedtest.net/result/3847943457.png

 

[zs6cey]

We're definitely not shaping Business but this does look like latency within the network. What DNS settings are your using?

196.7.7.7

 

[AfriMan]

196.7.7.7

Try switching to Google DNS (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4) I've also asked our technical team to check if there any DNS issues on our side. Even if one of the DNS servers in the cluster is not behaving, they should switch out to one that is

 

[AfriMan]

4Mbps Business account: View attachment 160014. Trying to download NZB file since last night: View attachment 160010

File size and time remaining: View attachment 160012

Yes, I have tried other nzb files and optional server to test. What the hell!

Speedtest: http://www.speedtest.net/result/3847943457.png

We're still waiting for an update on the South upgrade. I'm sure that when the IPC goes live we'll start seeing better performance.

 

[Cynicster]

I think we've been very open and many of our clients (who probably don't want to get involved in a volatile forum debate) are happy that we're in communication with them and helping them understand the constraints we're under.

We did establish sometime ago that you are not a client of ours, so I don't think it's really fair to speak on behalf of clients. But I do take your opinion, as you have clearly expressed.

The fact that I'm not a client of yours anymore doesn't matter. I'm making observations on conversations that have taken place on this forum.

 

[AfriMan]

The fact that I'm not a client of yours anymore doesn't matter. I'm making observations on conversations that have taken place on this forum.

Well, the forum is really for client feedback, but the point I am really making here is that it's a little disingenuous to speak on behalf of other clients using a product that you yourself are not using, experiencing something that you are not experiencing.

 

[MrGray]

I think the issue here is that we are being accused of applying policies that we are not, and that is going around in circles. So all the talk of spinning and PR is really what is creating more confusion and become the focus of the thread rather than actual feedback and engagement. If we did implement a policy that contravened the product limits we would say so, communicate to affected clients and change our sales literature. However, this is simply not what is happening, so building new forms of rhetoric isn't really making any progress for anyone, in my opinion

Let's talk about feedback and engagement.

You have feedback from people coming here daily asking why their xyz download/p2p is running at 1kbps while speedtest gives them line speed and when you respond that it can't possibly be shaping because you don't do that, it's just selective degradation due to contention, what do you expect that engagement will degenerate into?

So who is really creating these circles of which you speak? Your customers, or your spin?

 

[diepeterpan]

We're still waiting for an update on the South upgrade. I'm sure that when the IPC goes live we'll start seeing better performance.

I sincerely hope that the current experience on the Business Accounts for the mentioned protocols NZB and Torrent is just incorrect prioritization and that it is fixed quickly.

I read further back you say 10 days before this is fixed (capacity)? Serious? That's a 1/3rd of a month that I am paying for a service where I am not getting what I need. Hmmmmm, my monthly bill to Afrihost is R1600, I have a couple of ADSL accounts, lines and mobile SIMS.

Please don't take this personal Afriman, if it is DNS issues, then fix it, if it is capacity then fix it, and AH be more transparent than a brick wall. AH can also give us discount or a refund so that we can at least buy bandwidth from another provider to download NZB and Torrents with. I am sadly really disappointed in Afrihost.

Just frustrated customer!

 

[diepeterpan]

I sincerely hope that the current experience on the Business Accounts for the mentioned protocols NZB and Torrent is just incorrect prioritization and that it is fixed quickly.

I read further back you say 10 days before this is fixed (capacity)? Serious? That's a 1/3rd of a month that I am paying for a service where I am not getting what I need. Hmmmmm, my monthly bill to Afrihost is R1600, I have a couple of ADSL accounts, lines and mobile SIMS.

Please don't take this personal Afriman, if it is DNS issues, then fix it, if it is capacity then fix it, and AH be more transparent than a brick wall. AH can also give us discount or a refund so that we can at least buy bandwidth from another provider to download NZB and Torrents with. I am sadly really disappointed in Afrihost.

Just frustrated customer!

I notice a slight improvement, doing a 160kbs. Did the email help? How long will it last?

 

[HJF]

Having a lot of issues on my 6Mbps account. Can't even stream Youtube properly. Really hoping this gets fixed soon. First time I have had to use my Telkom backup account.

 

[hawky358]

Try switching to Google DNS (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4) I've also asked our technical team to check if there any DNS issues on our side. Even if one of the DNS servers in the cluster is not behaving, they should switch out to one that is

If you are having problems, rather use the SAIX or IS DNS (you can use Google DNS or OpenDNS as your secondary).

Many services use your DNS server location to determine which CDN to use - Youtube and Steam are examples. (Yes Steam has a manual overwrite, but on auto it will base it on the closest CDN to your DNS server.)

Just some food for thought.
Local DNS servers typically resolve quicker for me as well.

 

[Cynicster]

Well, the forum is really for client feedback, but the point I am really making here is that it's a little disingenuous to speak on behalf of other clients using a product that you yourself are not using, experiencing something that you are not experiencing.

It's also disingenuous of you to state that Afrihost isn't shaping/throttling/etc... when you've been proven to do so or blame an iOS update for all the traffic issues you've had on your network even though those have also been proven to be present well before said iOS update.

Also, I'm commenting on things being said about products and experiences not the products and experiences themselves.


PS: I think you meant to say the "thread" is for client feedback, not "forum".

 

[AfriMan]

Let's talk about feedback and engagement.

You have feedback from people coming here daily asking why their xyz download/p2p is running at 1kbps while speedtest gives them line speed and when you respond that it can't possibly be shaping because you don't do that, it's just selective degradation due to contention, what do you expect that engagement will degenerate into?

So who is really creating these circles of which you speak? Your customers, or your spin?

If you don't like an answer, that's your choice. As I said there is no throttling ruleset or policy that can do what you're talking about. So I don't know how repeating the accusation will make something become reality. If the aim is engagement, let's move on to the next topic.