Afrihost CAPPED ADSL Feedback (MTN)

[Next Thing]

Afrihost

Just a word of warning. Stick your head in the ground and hope that the problem will go away. Do that and you will go the same way sentech, iburst and neotel went.

 

[psudan]

The cheek to use the customer base as guinea pigs is just beyond me. Could no-one foresee what is needed?

MTN is a huge company in Africa - you want to tell me that no-one was worried about routing from Cape Town to MTN's server??

Pings of 300mS is enough for me to get out my old rusty razor blade....

+1, if not better by the end of the month, I am out! The keep asking for trace and feedback which I did few times but still waiting for their response.

 

[Settican]

I ended up with latency of over 600ms last night while attempting to game, seems to keep getting worse

 

[eddief1]

Clients phoning me last night complaining their VPN & Remote Desktop are slow. Remote in and find out latency between the two endpoints which are 20KM apart is sitting at 800ms... switched to Webafrica and it was 40ms. Not fun having to work between 8 - 11 every night because of this.

 

[chronkiller]

I ended up with latency of over 600ms last night while attempting to game, seems to keep getting worse

Yeah Dota 2 last night went upto 600ping for me and a friend

 

[Sinbad]

It's apparent that something broke on the IPC last night - seems everyone was affected.

Afriman - any word? Was it capacity? Last day of the month people using up their caps?

 

[AfriMan]

We know there was a sudden and intermittent latency issue from late afternoon yesterday through till early this morning when MTN managed to calm this down. We are still awaiting the final report from MTN, but we have also implemented some new early warning systems to catch this issues quicker. We're also implementing better QoS and shaping to help spread the Pure Internet Joy more evenly, just in case we start getting closer to full capacity.

 

[AfriMan]

It's apparent that something broke on the IPC last night - seems everyone was affected.

Afriman - any word? Was it capacity? Last day of the month people using up their caps?

As you say, that happens every month (with IS as well) where people start going for their cap, while clients hosting business servers are also mailing out invoices and statements, bulk mailers for various promos. Last day of the month, it's a always doozy.

Seems like the network at least didn't fall over, but we're reviewing our shaping and QoS settings to see how to compensate better for all of this.

 

[AfriMan]

Thanks for the honesty Afriman - still learning, will still take a while to get to the point we had at IS. Question: will the fact that you're learning on us, and that you're behind where you were with IS, reflect in our pricing? Because my 60GB capped account is still costing me the same as it was costing me on IS...

We've already started passing on massive savings on Business DSL and we're planning to launch some new price cuts pretty soon. Obviously I can't say more, but our intention is to find our feet, assess what the impact of the move has been on our client base, and then launch our next price assault accordingly.

 

[OMB]

As you say, that happens every month (with IS as well) where people start going for their cap, while clients hosting business servers are also mailing out invoices and statements, bulk mailers for various promos. Last day of the month, it's a always doozy.

Seems like the network at least didn't fall over, but we're reviewing our shaping and QoS settings to see how to compensate better for all of this.

This it's starting to sound a lot like piss poor planning. You guys should have a complete understanding of network load and client behavior especially at month end, and to say something that intimates that the network at least didn't fall over doesn't fill me with a great sense of comfort.

 

[AfriMan]

This it's starting to sound a lot like piss poor planning. You guys should have a complete understanding of network load and client behavior especially at month end, and to say something that intimates that the network at least didn't fall over doesn't fill me with a great sense of comfort.

I think you are taking my remarks out of context. I'm merely saying that we did cope with the additional usage, which always spikes on the last day of the month. The latency issues are still being investigated, but usage on the network since the change peaked last night just before midnight. It was the same with IS, there is a rush to use remaining capped bandwidth.

Bearing in mind that our shaping policies are yet to be implemented fully, i.e. we've let clients have a full go full ball at the network without breaking it, is very re-assuring to us that once we have the right shaping and QoS, capacity and IPC is not going to be an issue for us.

 

[Inertia]

It seems like all my data is being routed through Johannesburg (I am currently in CT) and it is seriously hurting my ping and speeds! What's going on Afrihost? Been on your call centre for almost half an hour now with no answer!

 

[Dan C]

Honestly , things are not looking to badly on this side of the country. I'm getting good speeds, gaming is about on par with what it was with IS. I did however pick up one or two glitches, but nothing too serious thus far.

 

[AfriMan]

Unfortunately we weren't able to implement our QoS policies in time, so some users did experience very high latencies and packet loss after about 6pm. We know it must have been awful, we are truly sorry about this. This is totally our fault, not due to anything on MTN's side.

We should have the shaping and QoS in place by end of day to day, and this should never occur again.

 

[[s]uNq]

I'm actually so flipping annoyed with this move! It's one thing to screw up (Please don't beat around the bush and deny it, CT is stuffed), it's another thing to send out emails which make out like you are the dogs bollocks. Have some flipping courtesy Afrihost!

My line is useless to me. I've gone through so many support calls that I have lost count. To the point that I have been told my latency is within acceptable levels, even though if I switch to my Telkom account it improves by 600% locally and 60% internationally (this during the times when the network isn't broken). This is honestly such a joke! Afrihost, the FIRST thing I did when I was told about the move was email your support and ask whether my latency would still be as good, and I was told it would be. I now sit with a premium account, which can't do anything I want it to.

You've screwed up horrifically, and in essence I've just been told 'Yes, you have been downgraded by 60%, but screw you, that's not so bad'. I am annoyed, angry and feel as though I've been taken for a ride - and you idiots are sending me mails, telling me how wonderful you are. Stuff that. South Africa's 2nd worst ISP in my books.

 

[who.is.michael]

I'm actually so flipping annoyed with this move! It's one thing to screw up (Please don't beat around the bush and deny it, CT is stuffed), it's another thing to send out emails which make out like you are the dogs bollocks. Have some flipping courtesy Afrihost!

My line is useless to me. I've gone through so many support calls that I have lost count. To the point that I have been told my latency is within acceptable levels, even though if I switch to my Telkom account it improves by 600% locally and 60% internationally (this during the times when the network isn't broken). This is honestly such a joke! Afrihost, the FIRST thing I did when I was told about the move was email your support and ask whether my latency would still be as good, and I was told it would be. I now sit with a premium account, which can't do anything I want it to.

You've screwed up horrifically, and in essence I've just been told 'Yes, you have been downgraded by 60%, but screw you, that's not so bad'. I am annoyed, angry and feel as though I've been taken for a ride - and you idiots are sending me mails, telling me how wonderful you are. Stuff that. South Africa's 2nd worst ISP in my books.

Stop venting, vote with your wallet: http://openweb.co.za/vanilla_uncapped.html

 

[[s]uNq]

Stop venting, vote with your wallet: http://openweb.co.za/vanilla_uncapped.html

Note how you are quoting this in the CAPPED thread. Capped and also unshaped. Making Openweb a very expensive option comparatively. I've chosen to be capped, because uncapped sucks unless you're paying through the roof for it. I would move to them in a heartbeat, if they had high cap unshaped accounts. Anyway.

 

[Sazelza]

Unfortunately we weren't able to implement our QoS policies in time, so some users did experience very high latencies and packet loss after about 6pm. We know it must have been awful, we are truly sorry about this. This is totally our fault, not due to anything on MTN's side.

We should have the shaping and QoS in place by end of day to day, and this should never occur again.

So, you are guaranteeing this weekend will be a good weekend in terms of latency and speeds?

I upgraded my account yesterday to a higher speed uncapped, only to have really crappy speeds at home. Speedtest to JHB was 0.4mpbs. Speedtest to London was around the same.

 

[justjuzzy]

No QoS even initially implemented? Wow! It's one thing not optimizing the network to full capacity. It's another thing of just hoping that users will behave and not use torrents.

Anyways.

Too late, I decided to move across to another ISP. Maybe R40 more expensive, but I don't have that much time to monitor Afrihost's network. And this was within the first 60 days of my service... and I had problems BEFORE the MTN migration and problems AFTER.

I'm still waiting for their account department to process the cancellation. I haven't heard anything, so I am only guessing that they are being overwhelmed by account closures.

 

[[s]uNq]

Now Afrihost are deleting my complaints on Facebook. Its actually so bad now, that it is funny.

Busy speaking with some of the different ISPs, and charting what packages Afrihost offers, and what the equivalent is at other ISPs, for everyone in Cape Town who now needs to move. I will post my findings later.