Afrihost CAPPED ADSL Feedback (MTN)

[caroper]

Can you guys see what this stream is like? I've tested this over the last hour or so without a single buffer on High http://www.twitch.tv/streamerhouse

It Runs fine for me, and we even give you an excuse to watch Streams at work
I should ask you to test "Guardians of the Galaxy" for me.

 

[Heckers]

Can you guys see what this stream is like? I've tested this over the last hour or so without a single buffer on High http://www.twitch.tv/streamerhouse

I am at work currently and will only be able to check tonight.

I tried Twitch on both Saturday and Sunday and lots of people in chat were complaining, so I switch streams.

I tried again last night, 20000-30000 viewers and nobody was complaining about lag, yet i would buffer every 5 seconds even on Low.

 

[AfriGuy]

It Runs fine for me, and we even give you an excuse to watch Streams at work
I should ask you to test "Guardians of the Galaxy" for me.

I'm open to test more, PM me interesting streams.
Games, Youtube or anything else will also work.

All in the name of, erm, testing?

 

[AfriGuy]

I am at work currently and will only be able to check tonight.



I tried again last night, 20000-30000 viewers and nobody was complaining about lag, yet i would buffer every 5 seconds even on Low.

Odd.
If you run into issues tonight could you paste the URL of the stream you're battling with and we can get it checked out?

 

[Aquiva]

Exactly my issue when I was still with Afrihost! Tests (Proof) below.

OK so streaming still sucks on Afrihost, although downloads are running at line speed. This time I have traces and stream graphs on both Afrihost (more buffering than actual playing) and Webafrica (zero buffering).

AFRIHOST:

View attachment 167969


WEBAFRICA:

View attachment 167971

Edit: Notice all the RED buffering in the Afrihost stream. This is the same channel done within 5 minutes of each other. No reboot of the router was done. And on 10Mbps line.

 

[AfriGuy]

Exactly my issue when I was still with Afrihost! Tests (Proof) below.

Did you ever have this brought up with our Support team?

 

[Aquiva]

Did you ever have this brought up with our Support team?

So many times and I like many here kept having to do tests etc. but nothing ever improved. To be honest while (for the past year) there where a few times where AH performed well on Twitch, it was not constant or the norm even with my downloads running at line speed. With my new ISP it works well 99.9% of time.

 

[image132]

I don't really know what this does, I'm suspecting it's a proxy server or something like that. We'll have to look into it before we can say anything further, but I can't say we officially recommend you use this service or not.

We'll keep looking into Twitch, as we have been for a while, until we can improve performance. I know that many clients do get a good experience so we'll have to figure out why some do not

Quite honestly I don't care if you recommend it (no offense). It has allowed me to go from only being able to watch on low or medium to high or source. It's a bit annoying to not have chat but I'll take that hit for being able to actually see whats going on. And it's not just me. My friend who has a 2mb uncapped account with you went from only being able to watch on mobile, low to medium and sometimes high (2mb line).

I've been waiting ages for any improvement on twitch and just none have come so I'm going to keep using this.

 

[Heckers]

Odd.
If you run into issues tonight could you paste the URL of the stream you're battling with and we can get it checked out?

This was the stream i tried last night.
http://www.twitch.tv/dotapit
Also tried one or two others with the same issues.
It has only been an issue last night and late sunday night.
Saturday and early sunday all streams were still fine.

But i will check out the above stream you posted and let you know.

 

[AfriGuy]

So many times and I like many here kept having to do tests etc. but nothing ever improved. To be honest while (for the past year) there where a few times where AH performed well on Twitch, it was not constant or the norm even with my downloads running at line speed. With my new ISP it works well 99.9% of time.

I think we have made some improvements, but can't pinpoint a real problem from our end. Queries around Twitch have definitely come down over the last few months.

 

[AfriGuy]

Quite honestly I don't care if you recommend it (no offense). It has allowed me to go from only being able to watch on low or medium to high or source. It's a bit annoying to not have chat but I'll take that hit for being able to actually see whats going on. And it's not just me. My friend who has a 2mb uncapped account with you went from only being able to watch on mobile, low to medium and sometimes high (2mb line).

I've been waiting ages for any improvement on twitch and just none have come so I'm going to keep using this.

From what I've seen on my personal tests, some streams require a stack of bandwidth while others don't. As AfriMan mentions though, we're always monitoring and making improvements wherever possible.

 

[Aquiva]

I think we have made some improvements, but can't pinpoint a real problem from our end. Queries around Twitch have definitely come down over the last few months.

Not to sound nasty, but maybe it is because streamers have left AH (like me), and the rest are just tired of complaining and doing the same tests time after time and nothing is changing.

It is very refreshing not to have any internet related problems since I have moved. This is what is used to be like when I joined Afrihost, and I converted many friends and family to make the same move. Unfortunately they have also been let down lately and had to move away.

On another note:

Remember not all people use the internet purely for recreation, home business are reliant on it, pupils use it for studies families use it to keep in contact when working away from home etc. Imagine you are away from home for weeks and you can't see you daughter's face when she tells you how well her recital went, because her internet is problematic. Imagine you can't pay your staff in time because your ISP is messing with software rules (which you didn't know about), imagine your son wants to see an animation on how the heart pumps blood so he can understand it better when asked to described it in the exam, but can't.....

Now imagine you paying R1000pm for your Internet Service and can't do any of the above!! Did you really think people will just take it on the chin again and again (this thread traces issues back for some time)!

 

[image132]

From what I've seen on my personal tests, some streams require a stack of bandwidth while others don't. As AfriMan mentions though, we're always monitoring and making improvements wherever possible.

I realise I may have come off as a bit arrogant/rude in my last comment. It wasn't my intention. I just don't want you guys to neuter it now. It's the only thing that's made twitch watchable on the AH network. Espcially now with Dreamhack Winter around the corner and SA having a team in the CSGO league.

Yep. That program tells you bit rate of each stream and it's quality and it for sure varies depending on the streamer. I thought your issues might stem from ping (IE where the stream originates from) causing bandwidth issues but I don't think that's the case as other ISP's don't have this issue so the only other thing I can think of is your international provider. But I'm just clutching at straws here.

I've been waiting so long for streaming to get fixed and it just hasn't. I don't know if it's your fault or not but being forced to watch streams on low with a 10mb line and seeing it only ever use ~200 kB/s makes you want to bash your head against a wall. This program is the only thing that's made it work well for me.

 

[AfriGuy]

Not to sound nasty, but maybe it is because streamers have left AH (like me), and the rest are just tired of complaining and doing the same tests time after time and nothing is changing.

It is very refreshing not to have any internet related problems since I have moved. This is what is used to be like when I joined Afrihost, and I converted many friends and family to make the same move. Unfortunately they have also been let down lately and had to move away.

On another note:

Remember not all people use the internet purely for recreation, home business are reliant on it, pupils use it for studies families use it to keep in contact when working away from home etc. Imagine you are away from home for weeks and you can't see you daughter's face when she tells you how well her recital went, because her internet is problematic. Imagine you can't pay your staff in time because your ISP is messing with software rules (which you didn't know about), imagine your son wants to see an animation on how the heart pumps blood so he can understand it better when asked to described it in the exam, but can't.....

Now imagine you paying R1000pm for your Internet Service and can't do any of the above!! Did you really think people will just take it on the chin again and again (this thread traces issues back for some time)!

Nope, we've been running some pretty extensive improvements and upgrades as of late. There hasn't been any mass exodus I think we're taking some really great steps forwards, and getting better with each one.

 

[caroper]

Just out of interest, and not an attempt to start a conspiracy theory but, Netflix and others were experiencing strange issues with streaming to certain customers for a while, it turned out to be Level 3 shaping by Comcast, the sub carrier for many ISP's.
Netflix agreed to pay comcast for priority traffic and things improved by 65% over night.
With all of MTN's posturing over not being dumb pipes I wonder if they could also be tweaking layer 3 and talking to content providers.

 

[dt513]

Good to see all our lines on our end running like they should again.

 

[AfriGuy]

Just out of interest, and not an attempt to start a conspiracy theory but, Netflix and others were experiencing strange issues with streaming to certain customers for a while, it turned out to be Level 3 shaping by Comcast, the sub carrier for many ISP's.
Netflix agreed to pay comcast for priority traffic and things improved by 65% over night.
With all of MTN's posturing over not being dumb pipes I wonder if they could also be tweaking layer 3 and talking to content providers.

It's hard to comment, not entirely sure how the whole neutrality vibe is split up to international peering and IPC links.

 

[AfriGuy]

Good to see all our lines on our end running like they should again.

Really glad to hear things are looking up

 

[Heckers]

Just tried another stream on Twitch now and all seems to be working fine again.

 

[AfriGuy]

Just tried another stream on Twitch now and all seems to be working fine again.

Weird.
Keep us posted though, if you come across a stream that isn't so great paste the link here and we can get it checked out.