Afrihost CAPPED ADSL Feedback (MTN)

[bhavzsa]

Internet been terrible the whole long weekend. Irrespective of P2P or normal browsing on social media. I pay for a 4mbps capped product and it currently syncing at 512kbps according to AH's web tool. And speedtest is 2.17 mbps.

Yeah i'm tired of trying the useless AH helpdesk and their solution is please re-sync the router. Time for change. These guys are only good at promising everything and delivering nothing. Please free to let me know which ISP's are offering a better more consistent product!

 

[JerryMungo]

Internet been terrible the whole long weekend. Irrespective of P2P or normal browsing on social media. I pay for a 4mbps capped product and it currently syncing at 512kbps according to AH's web tool. And speedtest is 2.17 mbps.

Yeah i'm tired of trying the useless AH helpdesk and their solution is please re-sync the router. Time for change. These guys are only good at promising everything and delivering nothing. Please free to let me know which ISP's are offering a better more consistent product!

Crystalweb are the best imo if you need 90gb or more.

 

[Prof.Merlin]

Yeah i am pretty much giving up with Afrihost. My main issue is the buffering on Netflix. But the attitude I get is usually "we don't pick up any issue, have you tried doing a speedtest". There are no issues with speedtests, its just netflix. I am at the point where I don't care the price I pay, I just want it to work. But it seems all other ISPs also have issues

 

[Prof.Merlin]

Good bye Afrihost, its been a good 5 or 6 years. But now it is over. Had enough of your network issues that last a year at a time.

Moved over to Web africa business capped and can feel the difference. Speed is faster and more consistent, latency is lower and more consistent.

Its double the price, but once afrihost's double data is over, it would probably be close to the same speed anyway.

 

[Type RSA]

Bwahahaha it is just so funny to see the same problems appear again. Every time being told, we have learnt a great deal from this experience and this will not happen again. Lol, fail!! Big fail!

 

[AfriMan]

Anyone alive at Afrihost? Unable to auth since 11am. No support, no calls, what a great start to the long weekend.

Sorry I missed your post, we all had a bit of a break over Easter - hope everyone here did too

There were no general auth issues over the weekend, but Telkom is on a major maintenance drive at the moment, and we expect several areas to experience outages for a couple of hours at a time during the maintenance.

 

[AfriMan]

Hi All,

Anyone else having issues on AH today?? Internet has been terrible / non-existent


AH
PING www.mybroadband.co.za (197.242.89.170): 56 data bytes
Request timeout for icmp_seq 0
Request timeout for icmp_seq 1
Request timeout for icmp_seq 2
Request timeout for icmp_seq 3
Request timeout for icmp_seq 4
Request timeout for icmp_seq 5
Request timeout for icmp_seq 6
Request timeout for icmp_seq 7
Request timeout for icmp_seq 8
64 bytes from 197.242.89.170: icmp_seq=0 ttl=49 time=12601.210 ms
64 bytes from 197.242.89.170: icmp_seq=1 ttl=49 time=11701.010 ms
64 bytes from 197.242.89.170: icmp_seq=2 ttl=49 time=10796.134 ms
64 bytes from 197.242.89.170: icmp_seq=3 ttl=49 time=9845.206 ms
64 bytes from 197.242.89.170: icmp_seq=4 ttl=49 time=8847.623 ms
64 bytes from 197.242.89.170: icmp_seq=5 ttl=49 time=7862.689 ms
64 bytes from 197.242.89.170: icmp_seq=8 ttl=49 time=4910.694 ms
64 bytes from 197.242.89.170: icmp_seq=9 ttl=49 time=3913.163 ms

--- www.mybroadband.co.za ping statistics ---
10 packets transmitted, 8 packets received, 20.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 3913.163/8809.716/12601.210/2911.829 ms



VOX
PING www.mybroadband.co.za (197.242.89.170): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 197.242.89.170: icmp_seq=0 ttl=53 time=45.748 ms
64 bytes from 197.242.89.170: icmp_seq=1 ttl=53 time=53.840 ms
64 bytes from 197.242.89.170: icmp_seq=2 ttl=53 time=56.419 ms
64 bytes from 197.242.89.170: icmp_seq=3 ttl=53 time=53.343 ms
64 bytes from 197.242.89.170: icmp_seq=4 ttl=53 time=49.354 ms
64 bytes from 197.242.89.170: icmp_seq=5 ttl=53 time=45.715 ms
64 bytes from 197.242.89.170: icmp_seq=6 ttl=53 time=42.829 ms
64 bytes from 197.242.89.170: icmp_seq=7 ttl=53 time=55.434 ms
64 bytes from 197.242.89.170: icmp_seq=8 ttl=53 time=45.662 ms
64 bytes from 197.242.89.170: icmp_seq=9 ttl=53 time=45.562 ms

--- www.mybroadband.co.za ping statistics ---
10 packets transmitted, 10 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 42.829/49.391/56.419/4.688 ms

Those pings do look pretty serious, but as far as I can tell from our reports latency was stable since demand was mostly low on the network over the holiday - particularly in the North. It's possible that switching accounts reset your connection. Did you get the same ping again immediately when switching back?

 

[AfriMan]

Your monitoring is not up to scratch. It hasn't been for years.
Sort that out, you should always know of a problem before a user reports it.

And yes, I know what I am talking about as we monitor thousands of servers and applications over the world in our help desk. We know first when anything happens, it is how you get to the top. Fix your systems.

Monitoring servers and a live DSL network are really very different. It's not that we rely on clients to report issues at all, but the reality is that a client will experience certain symptoms before our reporting is aggregated. But we certainly have several systems in place to monitor and also confirm whether symptoms reported by clients are widespread or unique and to cross-refernece with known outages, such as Telkom exchange outages etc.

 

[AfriMan]

I see there sharping the network on capped download on normal download 50 Kb/s I run a vpn and I get 520 Kb/s same download

We definitely don't shape capped downloads or traffic in any way, but when demand is high you could experience contention. Remember that we're busy working on tightening up our policies to limit P2P traffic (on Uncapped accounts) which we are currently seeing inflating demand, so we expect this will be better once we roll out some major and minor updates to address these rogue classifications.

 

[AfriMan]

Hear, hear. Couldn't agree more. AH seem to expect their customers to do the work for them with the constant requests for traceroutes etc.
They should get some technical people in who know what they are doing and get things sorted! Personally I think that it all boils down to trying to run the network with the minimum IPC they can get away with. I am on a capped account and the way the service fluctuates is just crazy. At times streaming (my main use) runs flawlessly and at other times, when demand is obviously high, things just go 'pear-shaped'.
We buy and pay a premium for a certain amount of Gbs per month - ie. they belong to us but have to share them with other accounts and, when their demand is high, we suffer and to add insult to injury we can't even carry over any unused bandwidth that we might not have been able to access due to poor delivery.
There are just no more acceptable excuses.

I'm pretty sure we have some of the most capable people in the business, so I don't think assuming that our people are incompetent or that we have no interest in running a good network is really the way to go. Our aim is to always provide a great experience, after all skimping on service and product delivery is an extremely short-sighted approach and will truly get us nowhere. Our aim to is build life-long client relationships, which is not going to happen if we deliberately short change our clients, and I honestly believe that this has never been the case. There are times when we could have done better, sure, and there are times when we've made mistakes that we hope never to repeat. But I believe we are constantly moving forward and getting closer to that smooth experience of a network that always offers great performance. To be fair, the network has given excellent performance since late last year, and year on year, while we may experience some problems, the bulk of what client's have experiences has been far more good than poor.

 

[AfriMan]

Good bye Afrihost, its been a good 5 or 6 years. But now it is over. Had enough of your network issues that last a year at a time.

Moved over to Web africa business capped and can feel the difference. Speed is faster and more consistent, latency is lower and more consistent.

Its double the price, but once afrihost's double data is over, it would probably be close to the same speed anyway.

I'm sorry to hear that you're leaving us. I know that our performance has been sketchy of late and I am told we are close to resolving that, though we are constantly making whatever changes we can to improve the overall experience.

If you are up to discussing with me on PM, I'd love to see if we can continue to build on the 5-6 year investment you've already made in us

 

[whatwhat]

Monitoring servers and a live DSL network are really very different. It's not that we rely on clients to report issues at all, but the reality is that a client will experience certain symptoms before our reporting is aggregated. But we certainly have several systems in place to monitor and also confirm whether symptoms reported by clients are widespread or unique and to cross-refernece with known outages, such as Telkom exchange outages etc.

I never said we just monitor servers, we also monitor the links and tell Tier 1 ISPs how to change their routing when there is issues. It isn't that hard.

 

[whatwhat]

I'm pretty sure we have some of the most capable people in the business, so I don't think assuming that our people are incompetent or that we have no interest in running a good network is really the way to go.

This reply actually pissed me off. No one here is saying you are incompetent, just that things are not as it should be.

Same as your other replies, you take everything as personal attacks instead of actually using it to make things better. Where can I complain about this, you just showed that you are not capable of being a level headed support person.

With this attitude it's not wonder that you are always asking for trace routes, you really do believe you know better than your clients. Bad form Afriman, very very bad form.

 

[AfriMan]

This reply actually pissed me off. No one here is saying you are incompetent, just that things are not as it should be.

Same as your other replies, you take everything as personal attacks instead of actually using it to make things better. Where can I complain about this, you just showed that you are not capable of being a level headed support person.

With this attitude it's not wonder that you are always asking for trace routes, you really do believe you know better than your clients. Bad form Afriman, very very bad form.

I don't see how you interpreted that as me seeing this a personal attack. If you go back and read your own comment, you imply that our systems and people are "not up to scratch" and I am simply saying that this is not the case. I certainly don't take these statements personally - I would have lost my mind ages ago if I did. I dunno, seems like you are very upset, since you want to complain further, and I'm not sure why that is. Did I say something that you felt was a personal attack to you or something like that? That was never my intention so I do apologise if you received it that way

Tell you what, I would be happy to pass your CV onto our technical director. If really have solutions that we are simply reaching, I'm sure he'll throw money at you to come on board and help us. Drop me a PM with your details

 

[kohlhtor]

You dont answer my queastion
Why is the download 3 times faster on vpn whe you not shape cape accounts
This is not the first time

We definitely don't shape capped downloads or traffic in any way, but when demand is high you could experience contention. Remember that we're busy working on tightening up our policies to limit P2P traffic (on Uncapped accounts) which we are currently seeing inflating demand, so we expect this will be better once we roll out some major and minor updates to address these rogue classifications.

 

[whatwhat]

I don't see how you interpreted that as me seeing this a personal attack. If you go back and read your own comment, you imply that our systems and people are "not up to scratch" and I am simply saying that this is not the case. I certainly don't take these statements personally - I would have lost my mind ages ago if I did. I dunno, seems like you are very upset, since you want to complain further, and I'm not sure why that is. Did I say something that you felt was a personal attack to you or something like that? That was never my intention so I do apologise if you received it that way

Tell you what, I would be happy to pass your CV onto our technical director. If really have solutions that we are simply reaching, I'm sure he'll throw money at you to come on board and help us. Drop me a PM with your details

Again, you don't read. "Same as your other replies, you take everything as personal attacks instead"

No where did I state that it was a personal attack on me, merely that people are offering you advise but you get all defensive about it and suggest we are calling your team incompetent. No one said that.

Go cool off, and come back later. You are not the only ISP in the world, there are thousands of you. What are you failing at doing has been done many many times already.

 

[AfriMan]

Again, you don't read. "Same as your other replies, you take everything as personal attacks instead"

No where did I state that it was a personal attack on me, merely that people are offering you advise but you get all defensive about it and suggest we are calling your team incompetent. No one said that.

Go cool off, and come back later. You are not the only ISP in the world, there are thousands of you. What are you failing at doing has been done many many times already.

Again, you seem to be the one that's angry here and I'm battling to understand why. If you post a general comment saying something is not being done properly, but you don't want to be challenged on that statement, ok, not ideal but I get that.

But I can promise you I am not angry or taking things personally here. I honestly do believe we have good people and systems in place, and we're improving on them all the time. If you think you have a better way of doing, I know we'd like to hear about and I invited you to open a dialogue with us.

Why so much angry?

Maybe we need to take this offline (via PM) so that others can get their say in and get assisted where possible. You are most welcome to PM me and we can chat one on one.

 

[AfriGenie]

You dont answer my queastion
Why is the download 3 times faster on vpn whe you not shape cape accounts
This is not the first time

If this is happening consistently it is definitely something we will need to look into.

Until I've had a look at your account details I won't be able to give you a detailed answer, but it could be that your VPN connection is receiving priority on your connection over regular downloads. To where is the VPN connection running to? That could also be affecting the speed of the download itself.

 

[Henri18]

Hello,

Hope all are well!

I'm just here to ask for a port reset on my line, my downloads are fine, just my latency doesn't seem to be stable, not AfriHost though, because my friend which is with Crystal Web has the same problem, I think it might be the area where I live in causing this problem. My latency spike in-game 250ms-450ms constantly up and down. I believe a good port reset will work!

Regards!

 

[AfriGenie]

Hello,

Hope all are well!

I'm just here to ask for a port reset on my line, my downloads are fine, just my latency doesn't seem to be stable, not AfriHost though, because my friend which is with Crystal Web has the same problem, I think it might be the area where I live in causing this problem. My latency spike in-game 250ms-450ms constantly up and down. I believe a good port reset will work!

Regards!

Morning Henri18!

I can definitely help with the Port Recreate, I just need you to please send me a PM with your ADSL line number and I'll get right on it for you!