Afrihost CAPPED ADSL Feedback (MTN)

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Anyone else get the latest email from Gian?

Apparently the devices that they use to manage the network traffic are having issues and are not working as they meant to.

Unfortunately since the updates, for reasons we are not completely sure of at this time, these appliances have not been working as expected. They are not classifying all types of traffic correctly.

This means that we cannot properly shape some key traffic, such as certain types of peer-to-peer torrent downloads, because the devices are not always picking these protocols up accurately.

This in turn means we cannot manage the network usage as effectively as we need to, which leads to the network performing sub-optimally when it is filled to capacity.

When our network is stretched to capacity our ADSL clients contend and fight with each other for bandwidth and thus sometimes get poor and inconsistent speeds. It also means that there are times that their latency and pings are high.

So what are we doing about it?

All of our top guys, the top network guys from MTN and the engineers from the device manufacturer are all working around the clock on sorting this out as soon as possible. We have a whole team that is working from Afrihost. An engineer from the overseas company flew in and is working with the top engineers from Afrihost and MTN. We are also in constant and direct contact with all the engineers based overseas and everybody is working around the clock to solve this as soon as possible.

When will this be sorted out?

The honest truth is I am not sure. I am hopeful that we will all have sorted out the problem very, very soon. As mentioned we have top tech guys of Afrihost, MTN and the device manufacturer working on it but the problem is proving to be challenging to fix. I honestly cannot give you an exact time to resolution with certainty.

What else have we done to try and alleviate the problem?

We have upgraded our overall ADSL IPC capacity by 3 Gbps over the past few weeks.

To put this in perspective, when we moved our entire ADSL client base over to MTN two years ago, we initially had 4.5 Gbps In TOTAL for all our clients.
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From this i take it to mean that capped accounts are on these devices when i was under the impression that capped accounts should not be shaped at all? So why would the capped accounts need to be attached to these devices?

Also interesting to see some numbers as to how much capacity you are running. 7.5Gbps

Anyone want to take a guess as to how many clients they have and then work out the contention ratios? :P

While I do accept Gian's apology for all this. It would have been nice if Afrihost was upfront about these issues in month one. Given the customers a short explanation like the above and give an ETA on a Fix. Keep the customer in the loop so to speak.

I have already dropped my account to a 1GB capped account because i could not be patient anymore with the network issues. So for me this email arrived just a little too late. Also since there is still no ETA for a fix it seems i changed at just the right moment also.
 
DeathStrike said:
Anyone else get the latest email from Gian?

Apparently the devices that they use to manage the network traffic are having issues and are not working as they meant to.



From this i take it to mean that capped accounts are on these devices when i was under the impression that capped accounts should not be shaped at all? So why would the capped accounts need to be attached to these devices?

Also interesting to see some numbers as to how much capacity you are running. 7.5Gbps

Anyone want to take a guess as to how many clients they have and then work out the contention ratios? :P

While I do accept Gian's apology for all this. It would have been nice if Afrihost was upfront about these issues in month one. Given the customers a short explanation like the above and give an ETA on a Fix. Keep the customer in the loop so to speak.

I have already dropped my account to a 1GB capped account because i could not be patient anymore with the network issues. So for me this email arrived just a little too late. Also since there is still no ETA for a fix it seems i changed at just the right moment also.
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Although our Capped accounts are not shaped at all, they still run through the network management software, as this allows us to monitor all of our accounts. All of our Accounts run through the network management devices, which then apply the appropriate resource profile to the account.
 
Have to agree with Deathstrike. I am disappointed that it's taken Gian this long to first of all email us at all and second to explain what the hell is going on.

I personally don't think now is a good time to launch AH+ but I get the feeling it's going to happen anyway just like the demise of double data. Sigh 400gb pm was perfect for my house guess it's back to 6mb business uncapped :/
 
The launch has been put on hold and may well be canceled.

I suspect that is as a result of the bad timing and I also suspect that we are only hearing from Gain now because he was not fully apprised of the situation, or failed to realise the impact, till the sent out his advertorial and got a **** storm in response.
 
caroper said:
The launch has been put on hold and may well be canceled.

I suspect that is as a result of the bad timing and I also suspect that we are only hearing from Gain now because he was not fully apprised of the situation, or failed to realise the impact, till the sent out his advertorial and got a **** storm in response.
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Yeah. I replied to that mail with "What about just fixing your network first. Rhetorical question."

Sounds like I was far from alone.
 
image132 said:
Have to agree with Deathstrike. I am disappointed that it's taken Gian this long to first of all email us at all and second to explain what the hell is going on.

I personally don't think now is a good time to launch AH+ but I get the feeling it's going to happen anyway just like the demise of double data. Sigh 400gb pm was perfect for my house guess it's back to 6mb business uncapped :/
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Assuming Gian actually writes those emails ... I don't think so.
 
Ho3n3r said:
Why? We have the exact same problems as you guys on capped accounts.
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I know you do. I switched to capped because with capped I could use my line speed for the same price. Our usage is stable enough (around 300gb pm) that with 400gb there was a nice buffer left over should any big/extra downloads need to be done.

When double data ends I'm going to be on 200gb which isn't enough, so it's back to business uncapped and not using my line fully.
 
image132 said:
Have to agree with Deathstrike. I am disappointed that it's taken Gian this long to first of all email us at all and second to explain what the hell is going on.

I personally don't think now is a good time to launch AH+ but I get the feeling it's going to happen anyway just like the demise of double data. Sigh 400gb pm was perfect for my house guess it's back to 6mb business uncapped :/
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Gian has considered the feedback you guys provided very seriously, and the launch of Afrihost Plus+ has been postponed probably until we have been able to make definitive progress with our network management devices.
 
image132 said:
Have to agree with Deathstrike. I am disappointed that it's taken Gian this long to first of all email us at all and second to explain what the hell is going on.

I personally don't think now is a good time to launch AH+ but I get the feeling it's going to happen anyway just like the demise of double data. Sigh 400gb pm was perfect for my house guess it's back to 6mb business uncapped :/
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Yeah, I'm disappointed that it took him this long too. I also feel like I jumped at just the right time. I moved to WA at the beginning of this month, but kept a 20Gb package with AH as a backup. Last night I dropped that down to 1Gb as a result of the Afrihost+ announcement. Sadly, these people still manage my line, and I'm not even going to try and move it at this stage. Over the roughly 5 years or so that I've been a customer, I've probably got about 10-20 people to give AH a try. Believe it or not, I used to always tell people that AH was one of the best companies in SA. I'm not entirely sure why I feel so let down by a company lol. Maybe because they used to be so good at what they were doing. Who knows? The straw that broke the camels back was the whole "not-shaping" thing of the last few months. If Gian had sent me (all of us) just one email saying that they were experiencing some issues and they needed to shape my capped account, I like to think I would have been cool about it. The spin here on MyBB really got to me and made me start looking at my other options. Anyway, I won't be commenting on AH threads anymore unless they kill my line lol.
 
Thor187 said:
Assuming Gian actually writes those emails ... I don't think so.
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I hear you. Regardless of whether it's actually him or not the explanations about where the business is going and what it's doing is something that's been sorely missing these last few months.

Hopefully they will start it up again.
 
Thor187 said:
Assuming Gian actually writes those emails ... I don't think so.
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That mail was written personally by Gian, as well as the initial survey about Afrihost Plus+ that was sent out. The feedback that he received directly back from our clients is what directly led to the follow-up mail. Gian has been appraised and up to date on the network issues from the very start, but it is a difficult position to be in, do you send out a mail to all of our clients telling them there is an issue even if only a portion of the clientbase is being affected or affected noticeably?
 
image132 said:
I hear you. Regardless of whether it's actually him or not the explanations about where the business is going and what it's doing is something that's been sorely missing these last few months.

Hopefully they will start it up again.
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Well the AfriGeeks, Genie in particular, have been quite open about it for the past week or so.
In all honesty I only stuck around and keeped my Clients on Business uncapped because he gave me some confidence back.
If it were left up to Gian I would have pulled the plug by now.
 
KillerBOB said:
Yeah, I'm disappointed that it took him this long too. I also feel like I jumped at just the right time. I moved to WA at the beginning of this month, but kept a 20Gb package with AH as a backup. Last night I dropped that down to 1Gb as a result of the Afrihost+ announcement. Sadly, these people still manage my line, and I'm not even going to try and move it at this stage. Over the roughly 5 years or so that I've been a customer, I've probably got about 10-20 people to give AH a try. Believe it or not, I used to always tell people that AH was one of the best companies in SA. I'm not entirely sure why I feel so let down by a company lol. Maybe because they used to be so good at what they were doing. Who knows? The straw that broke the camels back was the whole "not-shaping" thing of the last few months. If Gian had sent me (all of us) just one email saying that they were experiencing some issues and they needed to shape my capped account, I like to think I would have been cool about it. The spin here on MyBB really got to me and made me start looking at my other options. Anyway, I won't be commenting on AH threads anymore unless they kill my line lol.
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And your line has been killed! ;)

Seriously though, you use the word "spin" and it does disappointment a bit that you feel that we were not being fully honest with you at any point in time. We are here to help and assist, to try and get you the best possible experience on your Afrihost connection.

If you have any doubts or misgivings about any information or help that you have received from us, please let me know!
 
AfriGenie said:
That mail was written personally by Gian, as well as the initial survey about Afrihost Plus+ that was sent out. The feedback that he received directly back from our clients is what directly led to the follow-up mail. Gian has been appraised and up to date on the network issues from the very start, but it is a difficult position to be in, do you send out a mail to all of our clients telling them there is an issue even if only a portion of the clientbase is being affected or affected noticeably?
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In my company I do. I build it on transparency.

But I'm not here to tell anyone how to run stuff, I then respect him that he personally wrote that and took the time to personally read all the replies.

All I want is for my line to be VDSL...
 
I had to chuckle when Gian wrote about some of the responses he got about AH+. It made me think straight back to this comment

techead said:
I replied. I hope he reads it. He sure isn't going to like what I had to say.
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I wonder if Gian's paraphrasing came from techead's reply XD
 
image132 said:
I had to chuckle when Gian wrote about some of the responses he got about AH+. It made me think straight back to this comment



I wonder if Gian's paraphrasing came from techead's reply XD
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I wasn't rude... But I gave it to him solid. I don't like being screwed over.

I don't see an email from Gian?

edit : found it, and read it. It's a good email, but too little too late I'm afraid.
 
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