Afrihost Capped ADSL Feedback (MTN) - New beginning

Status
Not open for further replies.
AfriMan said:
It's difficult to say whether that is an issue. Is that a US international test of EU/UK.
Click to expand...
Hi. Test was to the US.

The problems we are having are local, in terms of demand, but to my knowledge our international links are nowhere close to capacity.
Click to expand...
Both local and international should be similarly affected. It's only at hop 6 or 7 (I'm guessing) that the routes would deviate. They should in theory be suffering from the same constraints that are plaguing the network up to that point.
I also read that the international links are underutilized.

We do know that US links traditional perform poorly compared to EU/UK where our WACS and EASSy cables terminate.
Click to expand...
In terms of the US being traditionally poorer performing. I agree in terms of latency. I've not however seen speeds plummet unless there's a general issue. Certainly appeared that way over the weekend. Typical is around 16mbps.
 
steel_dog said:
Hi. Test was to the US.


Both local and international should be similarly affected. It's only at hop 6 or 7 (I'm guessing) that the routes would deviate. They should in theory be suffering from the same constraints that are plaguing the network up to that point.
I also read that the international links are underutilized.


In terms of the US being traditionally poorer performing. I agree in terms of latency. I've not however seen speeds plummet unless there's a general issue. Certainly appeared that way over the weekend. Typical is around 16mbps.
Click to expand...

Anything happening locally is going to be compounded exponentially as you increase distance and induced latency, which it the case travelling to the US. Remember that moving from east to west coast adds a massive amount of latency as well :(
 
Afrihost Capped Client here.

We have been experiencing weird behavior the last couple of months with the inability to even load a webpage while my torrenting software is open (barely even seeding or downloading).
My thought was that this is due to their recent deep packet sniffing upgrade somehow picking up when i open the software, which i feel is an intrusion on my privacy, but decided not to complain because of their excellent service and promotions (like double data ;) i have have received from them as a client for many years.

Normal test:

1.png

Test while seeding 2 torrents (30-50 KiB/s):

2.png

At least i can now have my torrent software open without speedtest giving me the Latency Error and my speeds plummeting.

Please do not deep packet sniff the capped unshaped clients, there is a reason why i decided to pay the premium to be unshaped.

Regards
 
Last edited:
Intell1gence said:
Afrihost Capped Client here.

We have been experiencing weird behavior the last couple of months with the inability to even load a webpage while my torrenting software is open (barely even seeding or downloading).
My thought was that this is due to their recent deep packet sniffing upgrade somehow picking up when i open the software, which i feel is an intrusion on my privacy, but decided not to complain because of their excellent service and promotions (like double data ;) i have have received from them as a client for many years.

Normal test:

View attachment 226846

Test while seeding 2 torrents (30-50 KiB/s):

View attachment 226848

At least i can now have my torrent software open without speedtest giving me the Latency Error and my speeds plummeting.

Please do not deep packet sniff the capped unshaped clients, there is a reason why i decided to pay the premium to be unshaped.

Regards
Click to expand...

We're definitely not shaping capped accounts and if you're client is open then there would be minimal data being sent or received anyway. I think it's more to do with how torrents and torrent clients affect networks that seem to affect overall latency and traffic. My personal recommendation is to torrent when you're not doing anything else, because it generally just affects everything. We've seen it affect gaming and teamspeak just by having the client open with no files loaded for seeding at all :(
 
AfriMan said:
We're definitely not shaping capped accounts and if you're client is open then there would be minimal data being sent or received anyway. I think it's more to do with how torrents and torrent clients affect networks that seem to affect overall latency and traffic. My personal recommendation is to torrent when you're not doing anything else, because it generally just affects everything. We've seen it affect gaming and teamspeak just by having the client open with no files loaded for seeding at all :(
Click to expand...

You are wrong.
A client with no files doesn't make any connections, aside from a few to advertising providers if you use the free edition of the BitTorrent client.
Additionally, I do not suffer from the problem of the torrents disrupting the network. The difference is that I use a decent router, not the cheapest piece of crap that I can find. Cheap routers fall over easily. Youtube running with torrents open and active, we've been having it.
 
Koosi said:
You are wrong.
A client with no files doesn't make any connections, aside from a few to advertising providers if you use the free edition of the BitTorrent client.
Additionally, I do not suffer from the problem of the torrents disrupting the network. The difference is that I use a decent router, not the cheapest piece of crap that I can find. Cheap routers fall over easily. Youtube running with torrents open and active, we've been having it.
Click to expand...

If there is no file transfer happening, then your router may be sending packets to hold the port open, I can't say how that will affect traffic. That won't matter whether you have queued or seeded files, I'm guessing. It's certainly not a ruleset on our side trying to shape traffic on Unshaped products.
 
AfriMan said:
We're definitely not shaping capped accounts and if you're client is open then there would be minimal data being sent or received anyway. I think it's more to do with how torrents and torrent clients affect networks that seem to affect overall latency and traffic. My personal recommendation is to torrent when you're not doing anything else, because it generally just affects everything. We've seen it affect gaming and teamspeak just by having the client open with no files loaded for seeding at all :(
Click to expand...

Understood, but my question is:
Why is this now only happening after the so called deep packet sniffing mnt implemented right after they bought the majority stake in Afrihost?

If, on a capped unshaped account, i cannot load a webpage properly while my torrent software is open, in my books im receiving a product that is being limited from its advertised potential.

You may call it unshaped, but the result is even worse than being shaped when our latency skyrockets like it does.

Why cant you remove the deep packet sniffing from the capped pool all together, or is there something else at play here that im not aware of?
 
I`l help out a bit to free up some bandwidth... cancelling my Afrihost accounts. Surely you have years of data and can do proper predictions regarding the required capacity for expected customer growth. I have been banned twice from competitive gaming servers since friday for disconnects mid game when connection just stopped.
 
Intell1gence said:
Understood, but my question is:
Why is this now only happening after the so called deep packet sniffing mnt implemented right after they bought the majority stake in Afrihost?

If, on a capped unshaped account, i cannot load a webpage properly while my torrent software is open, in my books im receiving a product that is being limited from its advertised potential.

You may call it unshaped, but the result is even worse than being shaped when our latency skyrockets like it does.

Why cant you remove the deep packet sniffing from the capped pool all together, or is there something else at play here that im not aware of?
Click to expand...

We've used Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) on our shaping system since we've implemented this. Article regarding MTN implementing this are totally unrelated to our systems. This is definitely how our systems have worked since we cut over to MTN and implemented our current shaping systems on Uncapped (as opposed to throttling and rate limiting on our previous network).

All traffic has to run through a central system to manage profiles, rate limits (for Business and Uncapped accounts) as well as capping and soft-capping systems. This should not ultimately affect performance in any way, this is standard process as my understand of these devices go, to manage contention and overall bandwidth traffic on the network.
 
BrokenLink said:
I`l help out a bit to free up some bandwidth... cancelling my Afrihost accounts. Surely you have years of data and can do proper predictions regarding the required capacity for expected customer growth. I have been banned twice from competitive gaming servers since friday for disconnects mid game when connection just stopped.
Click to expand...

I'm really sorry that happened, I can totally understand your frustration. This is one of the reasons we've decided to go back to the beginning and look at the network from the ground up so that we can really look at every possible inefficiency, potential flaw and possible improvement so that we can get the most out of our network and give back every bit of value we squeeze out back to clients. IPC is a small part of an efficient network and if there are area where the network is inefficient, then it's in every one's interest that we address that ASAP to offer the best possible value and experience.
 
Intell1gence said:
If, on a capped unshaped account, i cannot load a webpage properly while my torrent software is open, in my books im receiving a product that is being limited from its advertised potential.
Click to expand...


Out of interest - are you seeding? Uploading anything at all?

Z
 
P2P shaping as usual which is affecting games like PoE, Neverwinter and by the looks of it Smite.
 
AfriMan said:
How so? Gaming is always a high priority on the network. However, if you're in the peak window when latency is really horrible, gaming would pretty much be terrible or unplayable :(
Click to expand...
Online gaming is popular when people are there to play it. Inevitably, this is from 7 in the evening and on weekends. At present any gaming online is impossible unless you wait 'till after 11-12 at night when there is nobody left online. It surprises me that your NOCs are not seeing this themselves, since gaming is popular with techies.

I recommend that you place notices on your website warning customers about this.

Also it would be grossly irresponsible to add more people to a network that is highly contended.
 
AfriGuy said:
We've got some improvements coming that should see this sorted out :)
Click to expand...

sOzFZOi.png



These improvements cannot come soon enough. Been like this since Friday. Gaming for me, was and still is, a big no no over the weekend.
 
@Afriman

Still experiencing slow throughput from the US.
1. 7.4mbps from Towerstream (NY) - http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/4450821968
2. 7.9mbps from Optimum Online (NY) - http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/4450826909

UK traffic.
3. 11.2mbps from Vodafone UK - http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/4450852326

Local traffic
4. 17.7mbps from Vodacom - http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/4450855401
5. 16.6mbps from SAIX CPT - Download Speed: 16597 kbps; Upload Speed: 1555 kbps; Latency: 13 ms

Not experiencing packet loss.
Latency is normal.
Local speeds are okay. [When things are running smoothly local is 19mbps and intl around 18mbps]
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X