Afrihost CAPPED ADSL Feedback (MTN)

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Dan C said:
Did the same a couple of days ago, but now I don't call my Telkom account a backup anymore, it really performs well. And decided to cancel Afrihost for now. Maybe the new year will bring better tides.
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Sorry to hear that you've decided to cancel. I do believe that when our network is back to the performance we expect, we'll be hard to beat. I'm assured by our technical team that we'll continue to improve as they make changes on the fly and for the immediate future.
 
techead said:
Afrihost, what is going on with my connection?

I used to get constant HD on my Netflix and now I'm damn lucky if I even get 480sd

What is going on?

I'm in Cape Town, Sea Point, on 20mb line. Capped account so I should be able to stream what I want, when I want coz it's a capped offering otherwise why am I paying a premium for a capped account?
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You should definitely be able to easily stream at that line speed. We'd need to look at what throughput you are getting on your line and also what latency you are getting on international (for netflix). Do you have any tests?

I know that we've had some poor international performance and we've been working hard with MTN and our overseas partners to improve performance (particularly to US based services). When I last tested we were getting decent throughput, but please let me know what you're seeing on your side :(
 
@Afriman So after raising my issue here with Destiny - PS3 constantly disconnecting on my capped service.
I decided to register myself with another service provider and test their account,
on this test account of Webafrica I managed to game Destiny for hours straight without a single disconnect.

Afrihost you have some explaining to do because this is unacceptable and a fair reason for one cancel and move after all you are not cheap I pay a fortune for your capped service compared to the other ISP.
I should actually get a refund for poor service for the Month due to this?
 
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Kayoss said:
Speedtests put me at a whopping 4-5mb/s... I'm on a 40mb line!

My time on AH is very limited. I went onto capped purely because I was sick of getting shaped. I'm not entirely sure what made me think that Afrihost's capped accounts were unshaped. It was probably the bit on their website where they advertise it as "premium unshaped bandwidth that performs at your line’s maximum capacity"...

I feel so foolish for misunderstanding the concept of "unshaped". I didn't realize that they were referring to actual shapes. Is my internet in the shape of a square? Nope. What about a rectangle? Nope. Triangle? Still not...

Slow? Yes, but that isn't a shape. Prioritised? Yup, but once again, that still isn't a shape.. Optimised? If you're Helen Keller, then yes.. Otherwise, No.

So fair enough.. My capped account is indeed "unshaped"
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Capped is not shaped by protocol or service. Your speedtest do show very poor performance, and we'll need to see why that is through troubleshooting. At the moment we've minimised contention by improving our shaping of Uncapped accounts (not on Capped and Business) but also our overall traffic management on the network. We'll continue to implement changes where we see opportunities to do so, and our technical director and his team are reviewing long term changes as well.
 
Kido said:
@Afriman So after raising my issue here with Destiny - PS3 constantly disconnecting on my capped service.
I decided to register myself with another service provider and test their account,
on this test account of Webafrica I managed to game Destiny for hours straight without a single disconnect.

Afrihost you have some explaining to do because this is unacceptable and a fair reason for one cancel and move after all you are not cheap I pay a fortune for you capped service compared to the other ISP.
I should actually get a refund for poor service for the Month due to this?
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Gaming is not shaped on any accounts, and particularly not shaped on unshaped capped service. We'll need to log a ticket with our upstream providers to investigate why we're experiencing an issue specifically with that gaming service. We'll just need a little more information to troubleshoot and test.
 
AfriMan said:
Gaming is not shaped on any accounts, and particularly not shaped on unshaped capped service. We'll need to log a ticket with our upstream providers to investigate why we're experiencing an issue specifically with that gaming service. We'll just need a little more information to troubleshoot and test.
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PM me on what information you require and I will provide it
 
AfriMan said:
Gaming is not shaped on any accounts, and particularly not shaped on unshaped capped service. We'll need to log a ticket with our upstream providers to investigate why we're experiencing an issue specifically with that gaming service. We'll just need a little more information to troubleshoot and test.
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Destiny's netcode is very unforgiving of host disconnections.

I have been toying around with my networking all day, and have realized that my ISP is dropping all my packets for about 5 seconds every now and again. When this happens, all my network traffic outbound is shut down, but internal network connectivity is just fine. I understand the reason is not on Bungie's end for the disconnections, however the issue lies in the fact that I believe Destiny's netcode is dropping you if you cannot reach its servers within a couple of seconds (maybe 2-3). This is kinda a small window, as many games I play allow for time outs of up to 20 seconds. Furthermore, I believe that Destiny has no real "error-recovery", which prevents the host from re-syncing after a connection loss. If my hypothesis is correct, Bungie just needs to allow the disconnection timer to be a bit longer to prevent a lot of the connection drops that I have been experiencing. The connection drops I've monitored can be seen as all my ICMP traffic to MS server (134.170.179.80) will drop for about 7 ICMP counts, then resume as normal.

I have not been able to complete a strike mission because of all these drops, and I feel that the multiplayer netcode is being a lot more forgiving than the single-player netcode right now. The multi-player disconnection timer runs at about 5-6 seconds before a drop, while the single-player/coop timer runs at the above mentioned 2-3 seconds.

I understand why the single-player timer needs to be so short, as there is a lot more data synchronization occurring during AI instances than in PvP instances. Making the disconnection timer longer may cause hosts to have to periodically freeze and have everyone catch up and get on the same page. I have noticed that Destiny syncs a lot of data during game sessions, somewhere around 80MB for less than an hour of play.

Hopefully this helps some of you find out what's going on.

TL;DR the reason for all the disconnects is that Destiny is dropping your connection entirely if it cannot reach host servers within a 2-3 second window, which is really short.
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http://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheG...possible_explanation_and_source_of_all_those/

This is your problem right here.

So, when are you fixing it?
 
AfriMan said:
You should definitely be able to easily stream at that line speed. We'd need to look at what throughput you are getting on your line and also what latency you are getting on international (for netflix). Do you have any tests?

I know that we've had some poor international performance and we've been working hard with MTN and our overseas partners to improve performance (particularly to US based services). When I last tested we were getting decent throughput, but please let me know what you're seeing on your side :(
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Afriman, I've done a number of tests but I did not save the info.

If you would like, I can take some screenshots.

What exactly do you want? Let me know please.
 
techead said:
Afriman, I've done a number of tests but I did not save the info.

If you would like, I can take some screenshots.

What exactly do you want? Let me know please.
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Anything you can send me will help. Traceroutes and IP addresses will be great. Please also send me the username that you are testing from.

Please rather email to [email protected] cos the forum PM may not allow screenshots, etc.
 
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AfriMan said:
I'm getting reports that Destiny is working much better now. Can you test on your side again?
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I deleted the game and tossed a mic out of frustration, so no, not just yet. I'll re-download it again tonight.

I'll also monitor the sagamer thread (so not looking good for Afrihost...) and the threads here to see whether there's an actual permanent fix and not a temporary illusion of one.
 
AfriMan said:
Anything you can send me will help. Traceroutes and IP addresses will be great. Please also send me the username that you are testing from.

Please rather email to [email protected] cos the forum PM may not allow screenshots, etc.
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What IP do you want me to use? I dont want anyone turning around and telling me that I'm not using the "right IP". I've had that situation before.
 
Rayne said:
I deleted the game and tossed a mic out of frustration, so no, not just yet. I'll re-download it again tonight.

I'll also monitor the sagamer thread (so not looking good for Afrihost...) and the threads here to see whether there's an actual permanent fix and not a temporary illusion of one.
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Please do test, we're definitely doing whatever we can on our side to address each specific issue with regard to gaming.
 
techead said:
What IP do you want me to use? I dont want anyone turning around and telling me that I'm not using the "right IP". I've had that situation before.
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We'll need to get the IP of the gaming server if possible. You might need to do a little digging to find it, but the publishers usually have it somewhere based on region.
 
AfriMan said:
We'll need to get the IP of the gaming server if possible. You might need to do a little digging to find it, but the publishers usually have it somewhere based on region.
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gaming server? :confused: I think you have me confused with someone else

My issue is the poor throughput in the evenings, to a point where I cannot even stream SD on Netflix, on my 20mb line. Capped account=no shaping, no congestion, no other network activity.

edit : Look, we can do the dance of screenshots and tests, but I know that congestion isnt my issue here. I also know that during the day my line is peaking at 1700K/sec ( I just tested remotely) and while that is more than enough for me, and somewhat acceptable, it isnt near what the line is physically capable of... but that is another story. It just all points towards lack of throughput in the evening when everyone is home and goes bandwidth crazy...

Surely, you folk at Afrihost can see this, and are not dependent on folks like me to come tell you that you have a major network throughput problem?

The the question is this.

1. You accept there is a throughput issue in the evenings?
2. What do AH plan on doing about it?

Or do you require me to send screenshots of pings and tracerts to you? /no sarcasm
 
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This is the thing with Afrihost lately.

Yesterday I could watch YouTube at 720p. This morning I couldn't. An hour ago I could. Now again I can't. Won't even buffer past 240p. No other network activity either.

My patience is also wearing thin, and I've been with you for years.
 
techead said:
gaming server? :confused: I think you have me confused with someone else

My issue is the poor throughput in the evenings, to a point where I cannot even stream SD on Netflix, on my 20mb line. Capped account=no shaping, no congestion, no other network activity.

edit : Look, we can do the dance of screenshots and tests, but I know that congestion isnt my issue here. I also know that during the day my line is peaking at 1700K/sec ( I just tested remotely) and while that is more than enough for me, and somewhat acceptable, it isnt near what the line is physically capable of... but that is another story. It just all points towards lack of throughput in the evening when everyone is home and goes bandwidth crazy...

Surely, you folk at Afrihost can see this, and are not dependent on folks like me to come tell you that you have a major network throughput problem?

The the question is this.

1. You accept there is a throughput issue in the evenings?
2. What do AH plan on doing about it?

Or do you require me to send screenshots of pings and tracerts to you? /no sarcasm
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Sorry we mis-read your post, we're ordering in some strong coffee :)
There is an increase in demand, which could degrade downloads - this shouldn't be affecting overall throughput/ latency though.

Drop me a PM with your DSL username and I'll see if I can spot anything out of the ordinary.
 
AfriGuy said:
Sorry we mis-read your post, we're ordering in some strong coffee :)
There is an increase in demand, which could degrade downloads - this shouldn't be affecting overall throughput/ latency though.

Drop me a PM with your DSL username and I'll see if I can spot anything out of the ordinary.
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hmmm...

PM incoming
 
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