Afrihost Business Uncapped Feedback

[Bryn]

I hear what you're saying...

Hear what I'm saying:

In my experience with various ISP's, there is no need to contact "support" because things should just "work". If/When they don't work, it's a sign that the said ISP has not worked out said bandwidth requirement.

Or they have....... but can't afford it because of Telkom's crazy IPC rates!!!!!!

At the end of the day is that users should post problems here about their ISP, and should create another thread about their problems with their telkom line issues!

I'm so tired in hearing about peoples high 2nd hop latencies!

I'm sorry for you but really!, there's nothing an ISP can do for you, so if you don't come right almost immediately, please don't flood these threads with your crappy experience!

After all, this forum is for uncapped feedback!, not for telkom exchange/line problems! There are other threads for that!

EDIT:

I just read back what I wrote and I can see I was pretty peeved when I wrote that so my tone was pretty harsh!

I just want to place it on record that being aggressive wasn't my intention, and I was genuinely trying to help and offer advice but at the end of the day it still grates me when people complain about their telkom infrastructure problems on the ISP feedback threads (I'm not only referring to this thread but all in general!) Maybe I should copy and paste this into the others in order to keep things all being equal?

With all due respect, these should be on the "congested ADSL exchange/high SNR ratio" thread, if there is such a thing

The problem with a separate thread for Telkom problems is that many AH customers don't know what their problem is. That's why they come here.

I see you haven't been following this thread for very long. There have been many cases where AH have blamed the Telkom, while the issue is with AH themselves. Most of the time changing to another ISP fixes the "Telkom issues" AH likes to complain about.

Also people have been complaining about streaming performance for months yet the situation isn't any better.

That's unfortunate. I can only speak from my own AH experience, and that's been almost entirely positive.

I agree with what you're saying but in the context of this situation where the MTN infrastructure is clearly over contended (which has been the case with AH since the IS -> MTN move (which is when I noticed the degradation, and due to my experience of SP's, I knew from experience that if they had issues, there would be no quick fix and no amount of complaining would change that, so the best thing is to move on).

Here we are over two years later and we're still talking about the same crap, well, other people are, not me, only because I chose right and am experiencing internet they I know it should be without some sales rep telling me otherwise.

Cut a long story short!:

Moral of the story is:

Try out ISP's for yourself!

Depending on your geographical location, certain ISP's perform better for some folks than others, this is what I have experienced in my travels!

So, it's a waste of time really asking other peoples opinions of said ISP's, and your time would be better served just finding out yourself.

I have no reason to leave Afrihost though. My 8Mbit Business account gets good speeds, good latency, full speed P2P and is unshaped 24/7 or near enough that any shaping is negligible. I don't think any other ISP offers such performance at such speeds for such a price, for uncapped.

It seems illogical that Afrihost can offer a great experience in PE, hundreds of km from CT where we connect, but not be able offer at least the same quality of service to most people in Cape Town and Joburg?

 

[wingnut771]

The problem with a separate thread for Telkom problems is that many AH customers don't know what their problem is. That's why they come here.



That's unfortunate. I can only speak from my own AH experience, and that's been almost entirely positive.



I have no reason to leave Afrihost though. My 8Mbit Business account gets good speeds, good latency, full speed P2P and is unshaped 24/7 or near enough that any shaping is negligible. I don't think any other ISP offers such performance at such speeds for such a price, for uncapped.

It seems illogical that Afrihost can offer a great experience in PE, hundreds of km from CT where we connect, but not be able offer at least the same quality of service to most people in Cape Town and Joburg?

Like I always say: different strokes for different folks!

Clearly you don't stream Netflix, Supersport or Twitch?

 

[frobbertze2]

Just my 2 cents on all the streaming issues some people are currently having on afrihost. As far as I can tell most traffic people are having trouble with is coming from the US. After testing with both afrihost free account and and web africa business account, I saw that most traffic on the afrihost network routes over level3(1st tier ISP US) in the US. Web Africa routes over Cogent(another 1st tier ISP US). A lot of youtube videos are cached in SA, but new stuff takes time to actually reach the caching server in SA.

I know there was an issue earlier this year in America where the 1st tier ISP's wanted more money for peering, especially for video streaming. I know netflix uses Cogent. That might be why some people are having trouble with international streaming, while local remains fine.

 

[Bryn]

Like I always say: different strokes for different folks!

Clearly you don't stream Netflix, Supersport or Twitch?

I had a month of Netflix earlier this year and it performed fine. I cancelled because the selection of content was crap though. I don't stream Twitch and I'd like to stream Supersport but it's pretty useless. I have friends using other ISP's and none can stream Supersport well though, and sports streams are very easy to find elsewhere, so it's not a big deal to me.

 

[wingnut771]

I had a month of Netflix earlier this year and it performed fine. I cancelled because the selection of content was crap though. I don't stream Twitch and I'd like to stream Supersport but it's pretty useless. I have friends using other ISP's and none can stream Supersport well though, and sports streams are very easy to find elsewhere, so it's not a big deal to me.

Thanks, you had the same problem with NF as me... making me discontinue after a year...

I'm not a gamer and I also have DSTV so supersport is a non-issue for me aswell

Cheers

 

[Bryn]

Thanks, you had the same problem with NF as me... making me discontinue after a year...

I'm not a gamer and I also have DSTV so supersport is a non-issue for me aswell

Cheers

If you're streaming and are only paying for DSTV for the sport, check out Star Sports. It's an Indian service that is covered by Unotelly, and they have the EPL, cricket, F1 and other sports.

 

[killerbyte]

My 2 meg line is beautiful today.

Steaming youtube 1080P, and when I am not my download of World of Tanks is flying.

 

[Bursty-dude]

My 2 meg line is beautiful today.

Steaming youtube 1080P, and when I am not my download of World of Tanks is flying.

You are lucky.

My 6MB line can only do the usual 480p without buffering issues. 720p or 1080p settings are the usual buffering issues....

 

[cortexenslaver]

getting high latency... unstable connection with only 6MB speed to Cape Town server, 5MB to JHB with twicw the latency of normal. International speed is in the toilet at 3MB with spikes, and sometimes no throughput at all. Only AH Business account is suffering, all other ISP accounts function as normal

AH 1GB FREE account latency is normal... speeds a bit slower, but almost at max., even though it too is bouncing up and down

 

[sybertiger]

8mb

 

[wingnut771]

If you're streaming and are only paying for DSTV for the sport, check out Star Sports. It's an Indian service that is covered by Unotelly, and they have the EPL, cricket, F1 and other sports.

This is the reason why I have DSTV, well done Ricciardo!

Thanks but I'm over faffing with streams that work sometimes and sometimes not because someone is downloading or something, and much prefer HD PVR that "just works". I'll pay for that

 

[AfriMan]

Seems to be working again, Strange....
However I have noticed packet loss to the IS network?

There has been an ongoing issue with packet loss to IS. This seems to be related to links down at JINX or CINX. We are waiting for confirmation that this will be resolved, though I believe there is a failover in place at the moment.

 

[AfriMan]

Internet speeds extremely slow on afrihost tonight - only on international. Getting less than 1m speeds on 10m line. Yet WA is running full speed...

Tested now with an account from critical care and getting the exact same poor result of 1m.

Which services are you getting slow speeds on?

I'm not aware of general international issues, but if you can point me to what's not working we can log a ticket for this

 

[AfriMan]

Its been a while since I've done any sort of upgrade... but can anyone tell me; if I do an upgrade to my bundle will they hold off on the billing till next month (ie. the billing run on 25 Aug which debits of your account on 1 Sept)? Or will they go and debit my account sooner?

If you upgrade your bundle (line + data) the data upgrade will take effect within 24 hours, while the line should be upgraded within 48 hours or so. One exception seems to be VDSL upgrades which take a little longer, assuming that Telkom have not yet automated all the processes on their side.

If you only want the upgrade in the new month, I would do it on the last day of the month or the first day of the new month.

 

[AfriMan]

I came here to write a 'why is the internet so slow' post when I suddenly realized that my girlfriend was hogging all the bandwidth.

She's done now and everything is full speed ahead

This should be covered in any pre-nuptual agreement. My advice

 

[AfriMan]

I know my exchange is congested, but how the hell do I get 100 ping at 22:00?

I'll need to see the whole trace to see how that comes about. In general, it all depends on the usage patterns in your area. Congestion really differs from place to place, whether you have business running in your area, or people running business on overseas time, etc. It's really hard to predict, but you should usually be able to pick up the pattern within a few days of testing

 

[AfriMan]

Just switched to my WA account and everything is fine... What's the problem?

I'll definitely need to see more details to be able to comment. If I can see where the one trace seems to be poorer than the other, this will reveal a lot

 

[AfriMan]

It might help if you tell me how to do that xD. Sorry I am a noob with all these things

You can just download and run our Network Test App. It does all the hard work (and even emails us for you)

 

[Rickster]

/snip

The PM I sent you, did you see it?

 

[AfriMan]

I agree, I see these tests as a mere delay tactic to get past the "high contention" phase/period on the local IPC.

No amount of complaining is going to change anything (from my experience with isp's) when you're having throughput problems because of over contended IPC's or local exchange (luckily I haven't experienced local exchange congestion yet ), because that's what it is and there is nothing they can do about it other than string you along with endless tests until "demand subsides and you report better experience, then you thank them, but, at the end of the day, they did **** all, and yet take the credit!

If you're unlucky (lucky=change isp=solves problem), you have telkom issues, in which case, you're better off dealing with telkom directly, moral of the story? Only have your line with an ISP if it's working normally. When there are issues, having a middleman doesn't help one iota, but just delays everything. If you're confident that your line is solid, then you can bundle it, but don't get angry when you have telkom problems and blame it on the isp when they have your line because they have the same influence over telkom as your do!

I respect your right to have your own opinion, but ultimately many people are here because they see value in them.

You are totally welcome to form your own theories around how IT support works, but we actually help people and make their experiences better everyday. That's actually a great feeling for me and the awesome people I work with. I know sometimes we fall short, but even on our worst day we help thousands of people with their problems. I think that deserves a little better than the response posted above. That's my opinion.