Afrihost CAPPED ADSL Feedback (MTN)

[AfriMan]

Except you know the issue where we are kept in the dark with no one being open or honest. You also haven't been given all the run arounds as mentioned above and it certainly hasn't cost you any money to try resolve through pointless support requests.

Can you please assist with getting my line sync back to 10Mbps as I'm still trying to get this right.

I promise that everyone on the forums knows as much as I do about what is going and on what is still outstanding. If there are any new issues, you will know as soon as this is conveyed to me and I'm committed to chasing around the technical people and getting info from them, even stuff I don't fully understand on a technical level.

Telkom are reluctant to change sync profiles as this is pretty much what they feel the DSMS is there to do in terms of managing profiles. Remember that if you stats improve or go back within range, the system is meant to automatically raise your profile again.

 

[AfriMan]

This is was afrihost is think about openes and honest
You are only marketing driven Company not support driven

Definitely not. We have various platforms like MyBB and social media so that we can reach as many clients with information that meets those audiences. This is factored into what is posted on Facebook, our website or mailed/SMS'ed to clients when it comes to these types of issues. Our management are happy for us to share info here on MyBB, but they feel other types of messages may do more harm than good, and they have their reasons for deciding this which I completely trust. I will always ask the question though, because I do favour being open about challenges, but I do accept the answer when I receive it (as a member of the team).

 

[kohlhtor]

Definitely not. We have various platforms like MyBB and social media so that we can reach as many clients with information that meets those audiences. This is factored into what is posted on Facebook, our website or mailed/SMS'ed to clients when it comes to these types of issues. Our management are happy for us to share info here on MyBB, but they feel other types of messages may do more harm than good, and they have their reasons for deciding this which I completely trust. I will always ask the question though, because I do favour being open about challenges, but I do accept the answer when I receive it (as a member of the team).

I still get no answer to my Ticket was promised from you Yesterday no dissent answer from 1 of April

 

[electrofreeze]

I promise that everyone on the forums knows as much as I do about what is going and on what is still outstanding. If there are any new issues, you will know as soon as this is conveyed to me and I'm committed to chasing around the technical people and getting info from them, even stuff I don't fully understand on a technical level.

Telkom are reluctant to change sync profiles as this is pretty much what they feel the DSMS is there to do in terms of managing profiles. Remember that if you stats improve or go back within range, the system is meant to automatically raise your profile again.

are you telling us if you are paying for a 10 meg line and telkoms system downgrades you to 5 meg because of line problems you must still pay for a 10meg line
in other words they have now found an easy way of downgrading your link and you must still pay and they don't have to fix it they can just keep on downgrading your profile but you have to carry on paying for 10 meg
this sounds like bullsh!!!t

 

[Henri18]

We've tested Teamspeak extensively and we believe that it should be operating normally. However we have noticed a difference in performance with public and private servers, especially if the server is not using the standard port (which I think is 9987).

Hello,

Apparently this is the port 9460 my TeamSpeak using.

Regards.

 

[caroper]

Our management are happy for us to share info here on MyBB, but they feel other types of messages may do more harm than good, and they have their reasons for deciding this which I completely trust.

Yep.

In the days when Afrihost was privately owned, the "Network Status Page" was my first point of call for Information and a call to help desk, even at 1am, used to be answered and an honest status given.

Since MTN took over, the Status Page is now a Marketing tool of no value when you have issues and a Call to Help Desk, if answered at all, is a pointless excise.

I don't use Facebook or Twitter so MyBB is the only avenue left to get any reasonable information on network status, a resource that is available or known by probably less than 1% of the client base, the rest are fed BS via Help desk and the Network Status.

That is what MTN call transparency and is best for the Client Base.............

 

[AfriMan]

are you telling us if you are paying for a 10 meg line and telkoms system downgrades you to 5 meg because of line problems you must still pay for a 10meg line
in other words they have now found an easy way of downgrading your link and you must still pay and they don't have to fix it they can just keep on downgrading your profile but you have to carry on paying for 10 meg
this sounds like bullsh!!!t

It's always been the case that you pay for the product on paper, not the actual sync profile you can achieve. However the reality is that many clients insisted on being on the highest sync, which sometimes killed their line or caused a terrible intermittent experience and then logged multiple faults to get the line working on higher speeds (which in many cases was impossible or only achievable for a short period). The DSMS is designed to manage this dynamically so that clients get the best sync their line can handle and it also takes this out of the technician's hands.

In terms of payment, it's up to the client whether you want to stick with an intermediate speed on higher profile (like 6Mbps on a 10Mbps product) or rather keep their line on a lower profile at full speed. But the idea is that whatever happens, lines will be more stable. Once this is in place, the DSMS can more actively manage processes like automatically logging faults, etc.

 

[AfriMan]

Hello,

Apparently this is the port 9460 my TeamSpeak using.

Regards.

Maybe try switching to a more widely used Teamspeak port and see whether this improves performance.

 

[Unhappy1]

It's obviously not our intention to get our clients to jump ship, that wouldn't make any sense. We do believe that our loyal clients (many of whom are represented here on MyBB) will give us the opportunity to deliver a better experience as we always have in the past.

Since i've been with you guys for +- 6 years and have stuck through a lot of bad times because there have been more good times in the past, i think i could classify myself as a loyal client. Quite frankly though the bad times are becoming far more frequent than the good times. When you moved over to the MTN network i noticed a slight degrading of performance but it wasn't anything major, however over the last 9 - 12 months its gone downhill in a huge way. Everyone involved at Afrihost seems unable or unwilling to admit this fact, its like you all have your heads stuck in the sand over there. Although im sure some of you realise this but you just cant speak openly about it.

Your belief that the "loyal clients" will just continue giving you opportunities is naive, especially when you're so vague about timelines. You couldnt tell us two weeks ago when things would be sorted and you still cant tell us now. Speaking honestly im about a week away from cancelling if things don't improve.

 

[AfriMan]

I still get no answer to my Ticket was promised from you Yesterday no disend aswer from 1 of April

I'm not sure you sent your ticket to me, but you can PM me the reference to follow up.

 

[AfriMan]

Yep.

In the days when Afrihost was privately owned, the "Network Status Page" was my first point of call for Information and a call to help desk, even at 1am, used to be answered and an honest status given.

Since MTN took over, the Status Page is now a Marketing tool of no value when you have issues and a Call to Help Desk, if answered at all, is a pointless excise.

I don't use Facebook or Twitter so MyBB is the only avenue left to get any reasonable information on network status, a resource that is available or known by probably less than 1% of the client base, the rest are fed BS via Help desk and the Network Status.

That is what MTN call transparency and is best for the Client Base.............

I don't believe that anything has changed, it's still the same people running those pages and alerts so I don't think anything MTN related has any bearing. We definitely don't use the network status to market, it was actually designed with support in mind and the team insisted on making it more specific and informative so that we could communicate better with our clients.

 

[slvR]

Maybe try switching to a more widely used Teamspeak port and see whether this improves performance.

You can't realistically expect this. Many providers use multiple servers on a single IP, with different ports being used to connect to the server you want.

 

[AfriMan]

Since i've been with you guys for +- 6 years and have stuck through a lot of bad times because there have been more good times in the past, i think i could classify myself as a loyal client. Quite frankly though the bad times are becoming far more frequent than the good times. When you moved over to the MTN network i noticed a slight degrading of performance but it wasn't anything major, however over the last 9 - 12 months its gone downhill in a huge way. Everyone involved at Afrihost seems unable or unwilling to admit this fact, its like you all have your heads stuck in the sand over there. Although im sure some of you realise this but you just cant speak openly about it.

Your belief that the "loyal clients" will just continue giving you opportunities is naive, especially when you're so vague about timelines. You couldnt tell us two weeks ago when things would be sorted and you still cant tell us now. Speaking honestly im about a week away from cancelling if things don't improve.

I don't think putting our faith in our clients in naive at all, we trust our clients as much as we hope they will trust us.

I also had many reservations about joining MTN, this was a major change from our previous setup (not just from a network perspective and in terms of company, culture, etc). After all, we read so much stuff about them in the press, I think many people think that MTN execs have horns and pitchforks (just yellow ones). The reality is everyone I've met and worked with is super supportive, really gets what Afrihost is about and what we're trying to achieve, and as a company they've gone above and beyond for us many times (even when financial this put them under pressure, something you never expect a global corporate to do). I've met some of their execs, and even they have been very friendly, they know about MyBB (even know who Afriman is) and they are really excited about the future and making Afrihost the best it can be.

We've faced some challenges, it's true. And MTN are probably also the first to admit that they had never run a network on this scale for DSL and there is a learning curve. But we're getting better, we're getting faster and I really believe that when our network is great nobody can touch us. Our aim is to make the periods when we're awesome longer and make the one's where we're not awesome as short as possible (and eventually non-existent).

 

[Aquiva]

It's obviously not our intention to get our clients to jump ship, that wouldn't make any sense. We do believe that our loyal clients (many of whom are represented here on MyBB) will give us the opportunity to deliver a better experience as we always have in the past.

Remember a few days ago you justified testing your new software on a your production environment...... Do you still feel that way? Look at the hordes of complaints of the past few days! If you do still feel this way, then it just proves that Afrihost's client centric policy and their clients expectations are not aligned and never will be!

Unless we take the network down for several days, I don't see how this is possible. There is no test that can mimic a live environment and we do as much offline testing as possible in controlled, replicated environments, but ultimately we have to deploy and monitor and either roll back changes or make additional fixes as we do that. It's always a tough decision whether to roll back or push forward, and it's always done with the client's experience in mind. Roll back to a known issue (and start from scratch and risk repeating that) or build on what works and monitor and test for what doesn't to be fixed in the next roll out.

 

[AfriMan]

Remember a few days ago you justified testing your new software on a your production environment...... Do you still feel that way? Look at the hordes of complaints of the past few days! If you do still feel this way, then it just proves that Afrihost's client centric policy and their clients expectations are not aligned and never will be!

I'm not sure how these are related?

The issues being posted about here are symptoms that our software rollouts are meant to address, not the cause of the issues.

 

[kohlhtor]

ONLY FOR YOUR MEMORY REFRESH
I think i poste this number 6 Times
Including this morning
to manny diverent support persons anwer ticket but not put the responce in the ticket
the next person ask the same question

Thanks, I've asked our team to follow this up and get in touch with you tomorrow.

 

[Aquiva]

I'm not sure how these are related?

The issues being posted about here are symptoms that our software rollouts are meant to address, not the cause of the issues.

Dude wake up! Your software (or management thereof) is not addressing the issues correctly (confirmed by Afrihost), and is causing the problems!!! *See Below*

As I've mentioned several times on this and other threads, we are seeing an increase in P2P traffic which is not being caught by our shaping policies on Uncapped accounts. We are working on new updates to try to address this and better manage demand, which is resulting in higher contention.

So this does not mean we're out of capacity. It means we're not using our available capacity effectively and that is our focus for the moment.

 

[AfriGuy]

Dude wake up! Your software (or management thereof) is not addressing the issues correctly (confirmed by Afrihost), and is causing the problems!!! *See Below*

The tweaks that are being rolled out are performing well, I'm afraid there's no set way to have this done - so the tweaks need to be made gradually.

 

[Aquiva]

The tweaks that are being rolled out are performing well, I'm afraid there's no set way to have this done - so the tweaks need to be made gradually.

Unfortunately many would disagree, but with Telkom also messing up (I mean managing) the network at the same time is almost impossible to completely fix the issue. What would set many people's minds at ease, is if Afrihost can post some kind of Dashboard showing network load, utilization per protocol etc. (post optimization of course). I'm sure this will also minimise all these rants and negative posts everyday.

What do you say??

 

[AfriGuy]

Unfortunately many would disagree, but with Telkom also messing up (I mean managing) the network at the same time is almost impossible to completely fix the issue. What would set many people's minds at ease, is if Afrihost can post some kind of Dashboard showing network load, utilization per protocol etc. (post optimization of course). I'm sure this will also minimise all these rants and negative posts everyday.

What do you say??

I'm not sure there's a way to display this info without disclosing internal info though. While I think it's interesting, I'm not sure how viable something like this would be, I'm not aware of any ISP worldwide that does this. We're all for transparency, but I think publishing network metrics/ KPIs are a little risky