Afrihost Business Uncapped Feedback

[i.got~issues]

Eish, I feel for you... I am experiencing just the opposite at the moment, well, at least since yesterday.

Full speed on my line.



Everything is just flying.

So, 5 - 20kB/s on a well-seeded torrent (last night's f1 GP quali) on a 4mb business account, at 11am on a Sunday... That's acceptable, right?

Nothing else running on the network, protocol prioritisation switched off in ClientZone, local QOS disabled, getting 250kB/s or so on single-thread speed tests, and 400+ on multi-thread. Ping to 2nd hop is <10ms. So...

P2P been killed on business too now, I assume... Oh, how you've fallen Afrihost.

 

[HapticSimian]

Eish, I feel for you...

Where are you located, for interest's sake? Can't see on my phone...

 

[i.got~issues]

Where are you located, for interest's sake? Can't see on my phone...

In Wynberg, Cape Town southern suburbs.

 

[Phinix]

Hey Hey

Yup... no problems on high and even on source :wtf:... world 1st for this AH account of mine methinks.

Here... a quick vid-screencap of the Twitch test tonight... no sound to save size and sorry about the channel choice... I just clicked on that what was there...

http://www.wayjen.za.net/robinkza/twitchjune072014.mp4

Tonight this AH account is just blazing!!

Thanks for that.
You didn't need to go to that much trouble.

 

[i.got~issues]

Thanks for that.
You didn't need to go to that much trouble.

No trouble at all.

This account of mine must just stay like this. This is just awesome for a change!

 

[killerbyte]

Where are you located, for interest's sake? Can't see on my phone...

Where are you located? I am in Pretoria.

 

[HapticSimian]

Where are you located? I am in Pretoria.

Near Northcliff, in Jo'burg.

 

[Pho3nix]

Near Northcliff, in Jo'burg.

Which exchange you connected too? Torrents were also a little crap last night for me.

 

[killerbyte]

could it be something thats affecting all AH clients in Gauteng?

 

[CrazYmonkeY159]

It's been a week of hell but everything is better again. This weekend has been decent. I am almost certain it was IPC issues but I did not see Afrihost admit to any fault here

 

[Redtooth]

OMG, gaming fail on 2mb uncapped business account...

Diablo III EU server ~1000 - ~3569 MS since, since, oh wait since I got Afrihost... :'(

Here's a breakdown:
Standing in town 250 MS (woot)
Running around town 600+ MS (?_?)
Attacking some mobs ~1000 - ~3500 MS ( :'< )

...so frustrating...

 

[AfriMan]

So, 5 - 20kB/s on a well-seeded torrent (last night's f1 GP quali) on a 4mb business account, at 11am on a Sunday... That's acceptable, right?

Nothing else running on the network, protocol prioritisation switched off in ClientZone, local QOS disabled, getting 250kB/s or so on single-thread speed tests, and 400+ on multi-thread. Ping to 2nd hop is <10ms. So...

P2P been killed on business too now, I assume... Oh, how you've fallen Afrihost.

We're definitely not touching P2P on business - and we haven't made any changes in this regard for a pretty long time. I've never put much stock in torrents because a torrent may be well-seeded, but it all depends on the seeder you get paired with - if he's limiting his uploads, or on a slow line. Also if his line is saturated pulling downloads, his upload is going to be affected.

 

[AfriMan]

could it be something thats affecting all AH clients in Gauteng?

I don't think there was a general torrent problem in the North. I did some tests yesterday and Saturday, all seemed pretty normal

 

[HapticSimian]

We're definitely not touching P2P on business - and we haven't made any changes in this regard for a pretty long time. I've never put much stock in torrents because a torrent may be well-seeded, but it all depends on the seeder you get paired with - if he's limiting his uploads, or on a slow line. Also if his line is saturated pulling downloads, his upload is going to be affected.

That's a flippant and inaccurate oversimplification.

I picked that file specifically because it was seeded to the tune of a few hundred, with exponentially more seeds than leechers. In such a scenario you aren't 'paired' with any one source, but rather simultaneously drawing bits of the file from multiple sources. Given that, there is absolutely bloody NOTHING I can do on my side to limit throughput to 20kB/s apart from setting such limits in the BitTorrent client. I made pretty damn sure those limits were not enabled.

As I have stated previously I don't make use of torrents at all often, but I do catch a bit of live sport now and then on systems using P2P for distribution. Fact is this: your business account, that I am paying however much more for than a home account, is performing worse with these applications than that self-same home account did a year ago.

 

[AfriMan]

OMG, gaming fail on 2mb uncapped business account...

Diablo III EU server ~1000 - ~3569 MS since, since, oh wait since I got Afrihost... :'(

Here's a breakdown:
Standing in town 250 MS (woot)
Running around town 600+ MS (?_?)
Attacking some mobs ~1000 - ~3500 MS ( :'< )

...so frustrating...

Are you having problems with your general latency, or just on Diablo?

 

[AfriMan]

That's a flippant and inaccurate oversimplification.

I picked that file specifically because it was seeded to the tune of a few hundred, with exponentially more seeds than leechers. In such a scenario you aren't 'paired' with any one source, but rather simultaneously drawing bits of the file from multiple sources. Given that, there is absolutely bloody NOTHING I can do on my side to limit throughput to 20kB/s apart from setting such limits in the BitTorrent client. I made pretty damn sure those limits were not enabled.

As I have stated previously I don't make use of torrents at all often, but I do catch a bit of live sport now and then on systems using P2P for distribution. Fact is this: your business account, that I am paying however much more for than a home account, is performing worse with these applications than that self-same home account did a year ago.

I've spent a lot of time testing torrents extensively, especially when I first starting looking at MyBB. It doesn't matter what ISP you use, even if you test a file with thousands of seeds and leechers, you can't guarantee throughput on a single download. I've tested with every major ISP network to satisfy myself that torrents are a lucky packet, you simply cannot benchmark anything on them. Have said this many times, and haven't seen any evidence to lead me to believe otherwise.

 

[HapticSimian]

I've spent a lot of time testing torrents extensively, especially when I first starting looking at MyBB. It doesn't matter what ISP you use, even if you test a file with thousands of seeds and leechers, you can't guarantee throughput on a single download. I've tested with every major ISP network to satisfy myself that torrents are a lucky packet, you simply cannot benchmark anything on them. Have said this many times, and haven't seen any evidence to lead me to believe otherwise.

Who's asking for guarantees?! I'm asking why, in multiple scenarios, anything resembling P2P seems to perform abysmally on your network. I tested with a normal torrent only after two streaming platforms across multiple feeds - both using P2P-type distribution - again proved utterly unusable. All 3, with no possible influence from my side, chugged along at roughly 5% of theoretical line capacity. The SAME software on the SAME hardware would easily sustain the 40 - 70% needed a year ago, and that was on a home uncapped account.

 

[AfriMan]

Who's asking for guarantees?! I'm asking why, in multiple scenarios, anything resembling P2P seems to perform abysmally on your network. I tested with a normal torrent only after two streaming platforms across multiple feeds - both using P2P-type distribution - again proved utterly unusable. All 3, with no possible influence from my side, chugged along at roughly 5% of theoretical line capacity. The SAME software on the SAME hardware would easily sustain the 40 - 70% needed a year ago, and that was on a home uncapped account.

Doesn't make sense to repeat the same test, under the same conditions, and then draw a conclusion. Problem is that if you switch networks, you re-establish connection and could be paired with other seeders, so it still doesn't really confirm anything. Hence, using torrents as an indication of anything is essentially flawed, there are way too many variables that are not under your control. So I think then further jumping to the conclusion that torrents are throttled is making a huge leap, that can't really be substantiated.

 

[HapticSimian]

Doesn't make sense to repeat the same test, under the same conditions, and then draw a conclusion. Problem is that if you switch networks, you re-establish connection and could be paired with other seeders, so it still doesn't really confirm anything. Hence, using torrents as an indication of anything is essentially flawed, there are way too many variables that are not under your control. So I think then further jumping to the conclusion that torrents are throttled is making a huge leap, that can't really be substantiated.

There you go 'pairing' seeders again... not unless you have a seeder count of 1.

Firstly, when I said that 'P2P [has] been killed' on business I intended it not as an accusation of anything underhanded regarding shaping or throttling, but as an observation on it being unusable. Secondly, I'm hardly drawing conclusions from a single instance; rather the test merely quantifies what has been a sub-par experience over a period of, not weeks, but months. Here's my basis for asserting that something isn't right: last year I watched every race of the 19-event F1 season with all but one race streaming near-flawlessly. This year, each of the 7 races so far has been an exercise in frustration. So, 26 instances of 'testing' across a period of 18 months or so...

I don't profess to know the whys, but the simple truth remains that Afrihost of 2014 performs appreciably worse than Afrihost of 2013. I don't think it coincidental that the decline gathered pace with the switch to MTN - somewhere, some things changed substantially. Whether it's all still related to IPC capacity, or simply to something like overall prioritisation on the network at large I don't know. The nett effect, though, is that your red and MTN's yellow is making my end-user experience a rather sickly shade of orange.

 

[AfriMan]

There you go 'pairing' seeders again... not unless you have a seeder count of 1.

Firstly, when I said that 'P2P [has] been killed' on business I intended it not as an accusation of anything underhanded regarding shaping or throttling, but as an observation on it being unusable. Secondly, I'm hardly drawing conclusions from a single instance; rather the test merely quantifies what has been a sub-par experience over a period of, not weeks, but months. Here's my basis for asserting that something isn't right: last year I watched every race of the 19-event F1 season with all but one race streaming near-flawlessly. This year, each of the 7 races so far has been an exercise in frustration. So, 26 instances of 'testing' across a period of 18 months or so...

I don't profess to know the whys, but the simple truth remains that Afrihost of 2014 performs appreciably worse than Afrihost of 2013. I don't think it coincidental that the decline gathered pace with the switch to MTN - somewhere, some things changed substantially. Whether it's all still related to IPC capacity, or simply to something like overall prioritisation on the network at large I don't know. The nett effect, though, is that your red and MTN's yellow is making my end-user experience a rather sickly shade of orange.

So what you're saying is that you are having a poor experience. I can totally understand that and that gives us a basis to start troubleshooting. I'm happy to test the files you're struggling with (since we're both on the North network)