Afrihost Business Uncapped Feedback

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Gatecrasher said:
Well, I had month of that, before my line fault. Never saw any shaping or slow down, 24/7. I guess, there could be some exchange congestion, but then you would encounter that whatever package you chose.
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Good to hear.
 
iJasper said:
So I'm thinking of the 10Mb Business account. Latencies are a small thing atm so I'm sacrificing here, but do you guys think that the account will actually perform as well as it's marketed as in terms of data rate 24/7?
My DSL line is 100% stable so that wont ever (hopefully) become a variable here.

TL;DR
Are my expectations of having a good, unshaped experience most of the day too high?
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In my experience so far, the best answer to your question is "sometimes". General experience during the day is good - but you will not be able to achieve full speeds during the day - and barely achieve them after hours. When the network is "unstable" your latency and speeds will seesaw erratically.

I'm talking entirely from personal experience after testing the account for the last few days. Weirdly, others in this thread do not have the same experience, though a lot seem to be on smaller packages than 10mbps, so I wonder if AH just doesn't have enough bandwidth available.

Afriman has completely ignored my posts here and PM's I've sent him, so I guess my last resort will be to email support today for help. I'm 90% sure I'll receive a canned "please have Telkom check your line" response - even though I can switch to Openweb Gold and receive full line speed instantly. I 'm trialing this account for better daytime experience like you, but this is not - in my opinion - a business-level product.
 
Care to post line stats when this occurs for me?
Wanna be sure I don't get trapped into another Cybersmart.
 
These are my line stats:
Code: 
                    Downstream  Upstream
SNR Margin (dB):        13.4    12.8 
Attenuation (dB):       17.0    5.8 
Output Power (dBm):     12.1    0.0 
Attainable Rate (Kbps): 25812   1220 
Rate (Kbps):            10015   1019

As you can see, they're great, as I'm not too far from the exchange, and am in fact eligible for VDSL upgrades. The stats don't change when the problems occur - and as I mentioned to Afriman, traceroutes / pings don't show any evidence of problems. It seems, at least to me, more like shaping / throttling / insufficient bandwidth when it DOES occur. Right now for example, everything is performing as I'd expect from a business account:

2829446914.png


And international via the MyBB speed test:

Test conducted on 7/11/2013 9:24:32 AM

Download Speed: 8202 kbps (1025.3 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 815 kbps (101.9 KB/sec transfer rate)
Latency: 166 ms

If speeds stayed like this all the time, I'd switch over in a heartbeat.
 
local


international


local saix.net


4Mb/s Business Uncapped. 10Mb/s line sync.

:cry:
 
Why does the Critical Care person always phone me at a time when he knows I am not available? And the times when I am available he is impossible to get hold of, nor does he phone at promised times. And the emails he sends never contain any information, understanding or knowledge that convinces me that he has the slightest grasp of what my problem is. All the smiley faces in the emails are insulting. Even the Facebook feedback I got from a Telkom rep elicited zero response, critical though it is. It is like communicating with a brick wall. Needless to say, day 18, and my line fault has only gotten worse.
 
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Kloof (unsure if that actually means anything seems like all areas are crap) as usual, on afrihost business is total rubbish. 1-2 meg international traffic on a 10 meg. 8 meg local. What a fantastic business line. If I can find a comparative business offering will probably change.
 
Must be localized problem in your immediate area, Telkom issue.
Nothing wrong on the Afrihost/MTN side, all working speedily.
 
Gatecrasher said:
Why does the Critical Care person always phone me at a time when he knows I am not available? And the times when I am available he is impossible to get hold of, nor does he phone at promised times. And the emails he sends never contain any information, understanding or knowledge that convinces me that he has the slightest grasp of what my problem is. All the smiley faces in the emails are insulting. Even the Facebook feedback I got from a Telkom rep elicited zero response, critical though it is. It is like communicating with a brick wall. Needless to say, day 18, and my line fault has only gotten worse.
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Thank you for your PM earlier today, AfriMan. However feedback telling me that I can expect feedback and then to not subsequently deliver any feedback.... is not actually feedback. Was Telkom contacted today? What did they report? When will work commence on fixing the fault? When will it be completed?

Day 19.
 
3 weeks now. No change for the better. No feedback. No progress. No hope, I guess.

Severe packet loss means no http downloads above 20kB/s. No streaming media. No online videos. No gaming.

The only thing which still works is browsing, emails, and uploads. P2P and NNTP work too, as long as you can make enough faulty connections. But its not what I do most and its not why I'm paying premium prices.
 
Need some input please - Got Netflix and Hulu Plus running on Xbox using Unotelly - I had a 2mb line and was getting 2 bars on both (quality wise). Upgraded my 2mb to 4mb with Afrihost and I am using a Business Account but the quality has not improved. I have put the DNS address on the router so that I can shut down my PC (thought someone was stealing my bandwidth, perhaps) but cant get any better. I have also changed the quality in Netflix and Hulu to best quality. Anyone also had a problem getting those 3 bars at least?
 
Thinking about moving to Business Uncapped 4MB, looking for some feedback from users in Johannesburg on the account. I am moving from Openweb Gold Uncapped/Unshaped as I am getting tired of needing new users details every few days.
 
I've been looking at doing exactly that the last week or so. My motivation was mainly better daytime performance (Openweb has been pretty lackluster during office hours lately, even on Gold) and what I assumed would be equal performance at night.

However, my experience thus far has been that while AH performance is indeed faster during the day, it is not reliably so - the speed comes and goes inexplicably. I've also found that after hours (after 5pm), Openweb's performance is just leagues ahead of AH - 100% line speed, guaranteed, all the time. As with their daytime performance - AH is hit and miss bandwidth-wise even after hours.

Though the business accounts are sold as completely unshaped, unthrottled accounts, and contrary to assurances to this effect from Afriman and AH's technical support - it doesn't seem like it to me, or they simply do not have enough bandwidth to service their user base effectively for an account of this type.

If you read back though, you'll see many people with nothing but glowing reports on Business ADSL, so your mileage may vary. Just thought I'd give my 2c regarding my experience. I'm cancelling the business account I'm trialing at the moment - I'm not sufficiently impressed to switch.
 
That's exactly what I was worried about. I have heard very different things from a few people. Some are very happy with the Business account and others feel it is not up to scratch at certain times. I am just very frustrated with the way Openweb seem to brush off my problem and tell me nothing is going on.

Where are you going from here? Back to Openweb?
 
Well, I didn't cancel Openweb - just used the 50% off link in another thread (http://go.afrihost.com/afrihost-uncapped-awesomeness) to get 50% off the first month, and with the pro-rata deductions it came to 300 bucks or so - even less now that half the month is gone. If you cancel before the 25th, you will not be billed for next month. (one of the reasons I like AH, and keep TRYING to come back to them, but can't motivate the move, since they switched to MTN)

So yeah, I'll be sticking with Openweb, as I've found them to fit my needs better than the other ISPs to date. But you can use the same link to see what Business ADSL performance is like for yourself at a smaller cost, and then decide.
 
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