Afrihost Business Uncapped Feedback

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Zertop said:
I promise you its worth it. The bliss of not worrying whether you are shaped or not just makes it. As well as the general snappiness of business accounts - just try the 1GB capped account and you will see what I mean. Its basically the same type of connection
Click to expand...

I have one and just this weekend I switched over to it to watch the rugby on Supersport streaming. I could not really compare though as my usual account is an MWeb uncapped account limited to 1Mbps. The Afrihost obviously ran at my line speed of 2Mbps :) And it was the weekend.
 
Dubes said:
That is very useful info to me and would mean the extra R100 for a business account would be a waste. I could rather put it towards a faster line speed.

Any ideas of the hours the downloads are shaped? Realise I could probably find it somewhere but so much easier to ask someone who seems to know :)
Click to expand...

Where are you based? The shaping system doesnt really work in hours, but instead with demand. For Example, if the JHB area is busy, JHB clients will be shaped from the top down - however CPT clients will not be shaped, and visa versa. ( Top Down = usage patterns, for eg. if I use 10GB in one hour, and you use 2GB in one hour, I would be shaped first)

These hours can be anytime during the day, so I schedule my downloads for between 11 and 6am, therefore they run when the network is pretty quiet. New capacity has just been introduced into the JHB (Northern) region, meaning there is hardly any shaping up there. However, down here in the Cape, the new capacity is still on its way :) (However, there is not much shaping present for me).

Z

EDIT: Also - there is no harm in getting an account, as it is so simple to cancel it if you need to - as there is no contract involved :)
 
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Dubes said:
At what cost?




Please could I ask someone to explain the benefit of the business uncapped over the home uncapped? When looking at the Afrihost "Big Bosses of Bandwidth" charts I see the 2Mbps home "supreme overlord" has done 659GB, the 2Mbps business "supreme overlord" has done 567GB.

If the business account offers priority for downloads etc then how can the home user have achieved higher GBs per month? My usage is nowhere near these amounts at well under 100GB but people are advising I use the business offering. Where will I notice the benefit of this?
Click to expand...

Business is basically like a capped account, except that it has a rate limit to the product specification (like 2Mbps, for example) and it is also limited to 1 concurrent connection. Otherwise it is essentially constructed as a capped account which unshaped and unprioritised. So there is also no QoS unless you have set this at your router to prioritise downloads over realtime services etc.

Uncapped (regular) is semi-shaped, which means that we shape at times when demand is high, however only non-realtime services are shaped - such as torrents, news server traffic and HTTP downloads to a lesser extent. Realtime services are never shaped like gaming, streaming, browsing, VoIP and terminal services (like SSH).

Uncapped also has a built-in QoS that prioritises realtime services over downloads for the best experience.
 
Dubes said:
As far as I understand it, it is P2P, news servers and the like that suffer most at the hands of shaping/prioritising. If the home account is severely "shaped" during business hours then surely this should reflect in the amount of data the different "hogs" in each sector are able to push each month?

"Only R100" more but as mentioned where will I see this advantage? Another R100 and I could get 4Mbps elsewhere... another R100 and I could get.... you see how this only R100 more can end up with you sitting with a R2000pm internet connection :)
Click to expand...

It depends on what you're wanting to get more out of. If you just want to move more traffic, then maybe that R100 will translate into more GB's moved. But if you're just looking for the best overall experience, especially if you're more into realtime stuff, then you could definitely look at a faster line rather than going unshaped. We structure our prices so that you're always getting best value whichever you choose, so decide on your priority and your budget and work from there ;)

I'm always available on PM if you need some help :)
 
Zertop said:
Where are you based? The shaping system doesnt really work in hours, but instead with demand.

EDIT: Also - there is no harm in getting an account, as it is so simple to cancel it if you need to - as there is no contract involved :)
Click to expand...

I am Durban based. I hear you re getting an account, I already have the 1GB account but am never really sure whether the different accounts have the same shaping rules applied. My line is with Telkom so I suppose as you say it is easy to chop and change ISPs. I would prefer to get to know the accounts a little better before doing that though :)

AfriMan said:
Business is basically like a capped account, except that it has a rate limit to the product specification (like 2Mbps, for example) and it is also limited to 1 concurrent connection. Otherwise it is essentially constructed as a capped account which unshaped and unprioritised. So there is also no QoS unless you have set this at your router to prioritise downloads over realtime services etc.

Uncapped (regular) is semi-shaped, which means that we shape at times when demand is high, however only non-realtime services are shaped - such as torrents, news server traffic and HTTP downloads to a lesser extent. Realtime services are never shaped like gaming, streaming, browsing, VoIP and terminal services (like SSH).

Uncapped also has a built-in QoS that prioritises realtime services over downloads for the best experience.
Click to expand...

Thank you very much! That is exactly what I needed to know. My usage currently involves downloads mainly running overnight so it seems home may suit me. In due course I might look into more streaming which seemingly won't be affected anyway.

Is there still any rules applicable to shaping? At one stage it was mentioned that you will get throttled (different I know) to half your account speed. Will non-realtime be totally unusable during busy periods or would you still possibly be able to get half your line speed?
 
Dubes said:
I am Durban based. I hear you re getting an account, I already have the 1GB account but am never really sure whether the different accounts have the same shaping rules applied. My line is with Telkom so I suppose as you say it is easy to chop and change ISPs. I would prefer to get to know the accounts a little better before doing that though :)



Thank you very much! That is exactly what I needed to know. My usage currently involves downloads mainly running overnight so it seems home may suit me. In due course I might look into more streaming which seemingly won't be affected anyway.

Is there still any rules applicable to shaping? At one stage it was mentioned that you will get throttled (different I know) to half your account speed. Will non-realtime be totally unusable during busy periods or would you still possibly be able to get half your line speed?
Click to expand...

Shaping on Uncapped is kinda split into two parts. The main part is demand. If demand is high, then our system automatically starts shaping. If demand is low, then we unshape accordingly.

Once we start shaping, we determine the most aggressive users and index from most to least aggressive bandwidth users. We start shaping from the top until we achieve a balance between demand and available capacity. Once the network levels out, we won't shape any further users unless demand increases. If demand decreases, then we'll start unshaping the bottom towards the top until we achieve the same.

So it's demand and capacity driven, so there are no guidelines to never be shaped, but our aim is to always shape as little as possible and shape the least number of clients as possible :)
 
Dubes said:
As far as I understand it, it is P2P, news servers and the like that suffer most at the hands of shaping/prioritising. If the home account is severely "shaped" during business hours then surely this should reflect in the amount of data the different "hogs" in each sector are able to push each month?

"Only R100" more but as mentioned where will I see this advantage? Another R100 and I could get 4Mbps elsewhere... another R100 and I could get.... you see how this only R100 more can end up with you sitting with a R2000pm internet connection :)
Click to expand...

You're exaggerating now.

You're starting to look like a troll or have some type of agenda.
 
AfriMan said:
Shaping on Uncapped is kinda split into two parts. The main part is demand. If demand is high, then our system automatically starts shaping. If demand is low, then we unshape accordingly.

Once we start shaping, we determine the most aggressive users and index from most to least aggressive bandwidth users. We start shaping from the top until we achieve a balance between demand and available capacity. Once the network levels out, we won't shape any further users unless demand increases. If demand decreases, then we'll start unshaping the bottom towards the top until we achieve the same.

So it's demand and capacity driven, so there are no guidelines to never be shaped, but our aim is to always shape as little as possible and shape the least number of clients as possible :)
Click to expand...
The nub of this is that the customer has no control over how much bandwidth you buy and release. If your compnay wants to take a profit, it just has to stop increasing bandwidth and/or take on more customers. The clients on uncapped have no comeback because your AUP stops any complaints.

When it comes down to honour and assurances, a corporate has no concience. Profit will win and we will be shaped.

The answer is to be more net neutral and avoid conflicts.
 
Pretty poor performance today on my account :(

1 MB down on a 4MBit account

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3333910108


C:\Users\Francois>tracert google.com

Tracing route to google.com [74.125.195.113]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 4 ms 5 ms 10 ms Billion.400G [10.0.0.2]
2 18 ms 8 ms 18 ms 105-236-234-65-esr-lo.mtnbusiness.co.za [105.236
.234.65]
3 14 ms 13 ms 14 ms 41.181.221.254
4 9 ms 8 ms 76 ms tb-dca-2.za--qux-c.za.mtnbusiness.net [41.181.19
8.188]
5 13 ms 23 ms 9 ms unc-cpt-1.mtnns.net [196.44.18.8]
6 11 ms 11 ms 10 ms 196.44.31.106
7 156 ms 153 ms 153 ms am-cr-1.am--lt-cr-1.uk-a.mtnns.net [196.44.31.22
1]
8 193 ms 158 ms 154 ms ls-pr-1.uk--ls-cr-1.uk-a.mtn.net [209.212.111.83
]
9 153 ms 152 ms 152 ms 195.66.224.125
10 153 ms 153 ms 154 ms 209.85.245.110
11 158 ms 154 ms 153 ms 209.85.253.196
12 168 ms 161 ms 159 ms 66.249.95.173
13 178 ms 169 ms 160 ms 209.85.250.161
14 * * * Request timed out.
15 160 ms 159 ms 158 ms wj-in-f113.1e100.net [74.125.195.113]

Trace complete.

C:\Users\Francois>tracert speedtest.net

Tracing route to speedtest.net [216.146.46.11]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 7 ms 3 ms 1 ms Billion.400G [10.0.0.2]
2 10 ms 7 ms 7 ms 105-236-234-65-esr-lo.mtnbusiness.co.za [105.236
.234.65]
3 10 ms 18 ms 9 ms 41.181.221.254
4 10 ms 10 ms 11 ms tb-dca-2.za--qux-a.za.mtnbusiness.net [41.181.18
4.28]
5 13 ms 10 ms 10 ms unc-cpt-1.mtnns.net [196.44.18.8]
6 12 ms 10 ms 15 ms 196.44.31.106
7 153 ms 153 ms 164 ms am-cr-1.am--lt-cr-1.uk-a.mtnns.net [196.44.31.22
1]
8 171 ms 162 ms 181 ms ls-pr-2.uk--ls-cr-1.uk-a.mtn.net [209.212.111.20
3]
9 154 ms 152 ms 152 ms 195.50.122.181
10 228 ms 222 ms 222 ms vl-3607-ve-231.csw2.London1.Level3.net [4.69.166
.26]
11 221 ms 236 ms 225 ms ae-59-224.ebr2.London1.Level3.net [4.69.153.141]

12 249 ms 236 ms 254 ms ae-43-43.ebr1.NewYork1.Level3.net [4.69.137.74]

13 235 ms 235 ms 221 ms ae-91-91.csw4.NewYork1.Level3.net [4.69.134.78]

14 221 ms 222 ms 221 ms ae-43-90.car3.NewYork1.Level3.net [4.69.155.197]

15 226 ms 222 ms 222 ms DYNAMIC-NET.car3.NewYork1.Level3.net [4.53.90.15
0]
16 222 ms 222 ms 222 ms redirector2.dynect.net [216.146.46.11]

Trace complete.

C:\Users\Francois>
 
+1 Fdaniels

2MB Uncapped Business just pathetic today, can't even stream 144p YT:

 
My account is working okay. I was unable to connect at all though around midnight and was mightily annoyed at having to forgo my usual nighttime downloading.
 
Catal said:
+1 Fdaniels

2MB Uncapped Business just pathetic today, can't even stream 144p YT:

Click to expand...

That looks like exchange congestion - due to the high ping - and is therefore out of Afrihosts Control. Please would you run the new Afrihost support tool so that we may see where the fault lies :)
 
High ping doesn't have to mean high congestion on the exchange. I too had very poor ping times. See my traceroute and you will notice where the first big latency bump is.
 
Taranis said:
The nub of this is that the customer has no control over how much bandwidth you buy and release. If your compnay wants to take a profit, it just has to stop increasing bandwidth and/or take on more customers. The clients on uncapped have no comeback because your AUP stops any complaints.

When it comes down to honour and assurances, a corporate has no concience. Profit will win and we will be shaped.

The answer is to be more net neutral and avoid conflicts.
Click to expand...

I doubt that any company would last very long if it didn't actively strive to deliver the best service possible. While you might make a few extra rands today, you'll have no clients tomorrow. Also, in order to deliver better pricing and more capacity, you do have to maintain a balance between taking on more clients and ordering more infrastructure. When you add to this the long lead times for getting IPC from Telkom, it's a very delicate balance and capacity planning is very, very difficult.

At the end of the day, I believe that our clients do feel that we're there to get the very best we can for them. It's that social contract that really enables us to keep growing and improving, cos they know we're not about corporate greed at the end of the day :)
 
When I was with a different ISP (other than Afrihost), I was trying to download a legit 4gig ISO from Microsoft - at that ISP's speed the browser said it would take 4 days.
It bombed out a few times, after a week I gave up.

With afrihost : 1 night and it was done. No problems at all.


Afrihost, at this stage things are going really smoothly with you guys
 
fdaniels said:
Pretty poor performance today on my account :(

1 MB down on a 4MBit account

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3333910108


C:\Users\Francois>tracert google.com

Tracing route to google.com [74.125.195.113]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 4 ms 5 ms 10 ms Billion.400G [10.0.0.2]
2 18 ms 8 ms 18 ms 105-236-234-65-esr-lo.mtnbusiness.co.za [105.236
.234.65]
3 14 ms 13 ms 14 ms 41.181.221.254
4 9 ms 8 ms 76 ms tb-dca-2.za--qux-c.za.mtnbusiness.net [41.181.19
8.188]
5 13 ms 23 ms 9 ms unc-cpt-1.mtnns.net [196.44.18.8]
6 11 ms 11 ms 10 ms 196.44.31.106
7 156 ms 153 ms 153 ms am-cr-1.am--lt-cr-1.uk-a.mtnns.net [196.44.31.22
1]
8 193 ms 158 ms 154 ms ls-pr-1.uk--ls-cr-1.uk-a.mtn.net [209.212.111.83
]
9 153 ms 152 ms 152 ms 195.66.224.125
10 153 ms 153 ms 154 ms 209.85.245.110
11 158 ms 154 ms 153 ms 209.85.253.196
12 168 ms 161 ms 159 ms 66.249.95.173
13 178 ms 169 ms 160 ms 209.85.250.161
14 * * * Request timed out.
15 160 ms 159 ms 158 ms wj-in-f113.1e100.net [74.125.195.113]

Trace complete.

C:\Users\Francois>tracert speedtest.net

Tracing route to speedtest.net [216.146.46.11]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 7 ms 3 ms 1 ms Billion.400G [10.0.0.2]
2 10 ms 7 ms 7 ms 105-236-234-65-esr-lo.mtnbusiness.co.za [105.236
.234.65]
3 10 ms 18 ms 9 ms 41.181.221.254
4 10 ms 10 ms 11 ms tb-dca-2.za--qux-a.za.mtnbusiness.net [41.181.18
4.28]
5 13 ms 10 ms 10 ms unc-cpt-1.mtnns.net [196.44.18.8]
6 12 ms 10 ms 15 ms 196.44.31.106
7 153 ms 153 ms 164 ms am-cr-1.am--lt-cr-1.uk-a.mtnns.net [196.44.31.22
1]
8 171 ms 162 ms 181 ms ls-pr-2.uk--ls-cr-1.uk-a.mtn.net [209.212.111.20
3]
9 154 ms 152 ms 152 ms 195.50.122.181
10 228 ms 222 ms 222 ms vl-3607-ve-231.csw2.London1.Level3.net [4.69.166
.26]
11 221 ms 236 ms 225 ms ae-59-224.ebr2.London1.Level3.net [4.69.153.141]

12 249 ms 236 ms 254 ms ae-43-43.ebr1.NewYork1.Level3.net [4.69.137.74]

13 235 ms 235 ms 221 ms ae-91-91.csw4.NewYork1.Level3.net [4.69.134.78]

14 221 ms 222 ms 221 ms ae-43-90.car3.NewYork1.Level3.net [4.69.155.197]

15 226 ms 222 ms 222 ms DYNAMIC-NET.car3.NewYork1.Level3.net [4.53.90.15
0]
16 222 ms 222 ms 222 ms redirector2.dynect.net [216.146.46.11]

Trace complete.

C:\Users\Francois>
Click to expand...

Your first hop to your router is pretty intense. Unless you're using some kind of special setup, that should always be sub 1ms. Anything unusual happening on your local network?
 
Catal said:
+1 Fdaniels

2MB Uncapped Business just pathetic today, can't even stream 144p YT:

Click to expand...

As far as we know business should be working well, definitely shouldn't be an issue in the North cos we've just upgraded.

Can you send us the results of the NetWork Test App?
 
Bryn26 said:
My account is working okay. I was unable to connect at all though around midnight and was mightily annoyed at having to forgo my usual nighttime downloading.
Click to expand...

Hmm, wonder why we seeing these reports all around the same time. Seems to be isolated, maybe you guys are in a similar area that was experiencing a Telkom issue? (longshot disclaimer)
 
Zertop said:
That looks like exchange congestion - due to the high ping - and is therefore out of Afrihosts Control. Please would you run the new Afrihost support tool so that we may see where the fault lies :)
Click to expand...

Ping issues don't always mean congestion, it depends on where the latency is. Latency on the first hop (to router) is definitely a local network issue (or downloads in the background, etc)
 
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