Afrihost CAPPED ADSL Feedback (MTN)

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Afri-people, if I want to downgrade my line from 4mbps to 2mbps and cancel my 100gb data, I should do this before the 25th, right? But then will my line speed be downgraded at the end of the month or before then / within 48 hours of the downgrade request?

There's always a delay where you get double charged when one's line gets moved from my experience but it all works out in the end after the credits.
 
I can safely say that live streaming has been sh*t all week from CT pinelands exchange (axxess too).
XBMC just stutters, buffers, sound goes to pot and then stream dies.

I use a certain paid service but funny YouTube is fine WTF?

Can only be IPC capacity again.

I'm so sick of this. I'm cancelling all my MTN related accounts and will switch between VOX and OW since they work perfectly most of the time. Don't care if it costs more.

It definitely can't be IPC if some services work and others don't. From my monitoring, there is definitely enough capacity for the traffic we're seeing in all regions.

Can I see any tests you ran to see where packet loss occurred (like an MTR test)?
 
Trying to communicate with the people using the afrihost ticket system, and its a tedious process. So I'm now here to see if anyone can help me. I have a 2Mb capped ADSL account using a 4-port Planet Router. I live in Glen Marais JHB.

Last night (19th) at around 9:30PM, I had a disconnect, line went dead for about 5 mins and came on. Afterwards, my latency has been unstable, and downloads are up and down. I play MMO's on a European server and my latency quickly climbed past 5000ms up until i got disconnected. Contacted Afrihost using their ticket system and they requested some tracert results. The results to europe are mostly around 220ms which is normal.

Speedtest results are interesting though:
2/20/2015 8:41 PM GMT 105.210.47.106 0.66 Mb/s 0.37 Mb/s 34 ms Johannesburg < 50 mi
2/20/2015 8:44 PM GMT 105.210.47.106 0.18 Mb/s 0.40 Mb/s 244 ms London ~ 5650 mi

Youtube streaming at 480 doesn't work well at all with lots of buffering going on. Funny enough, I get my full 200kb/s when trying to download a 200mb display driver from AMD's website. But as it is, gaming/youtube is currently a no-no.

Just received an email from Babini.N - gave me an account to test, so I'll give that a try. Will report back on what happens.

It could be that something on Telkom's network was affected by power outages. I'm not sure if there is loadshedding in the Cape, I saw an article about a power station being fixed, but I wouldn't get my hopes up :(

Latency seems high for local and international, though international is basically unusable (from your tests). What I've seen from some clients is that internet is very unstable for up to a couple of hours after loadshedding in their area or neighbouring areas.

But I can't say it's definitely loadshedding, but I think a long disconnect before the problems started is a telling symptom :(
 
Update:
The test account that I received behaves exactly the same as my afrihost one. No difference.

Update:
I think my problem is solved. Well Im not really sure. Received an email from Graeme.B suggesting that I test out my line with a different router and cable as it seems theres trouble with the voice line cable.
So I swapped out my Planet router with my back up one - a TP-Link using a different cable as well.
As it turned out, youtube streaming is back to normal and latencies are back to around 220ms (Europe).
The only odd thing is when i do a tracert to 185.60.114.159, everything times out.
A tracert to www.afrihost.co.za also results in everything timing out. Strange.

Update:
Just when I think that all seems fixed, latencies are back up to over a 1000ms. I'm now convinced that the problem doesn't lie on my side as by now, I've tested out another account and different hardware. Yet the problem remains. It's gotta be on Telkom's end.

It could be a sync problem on the line, it may not have been the swopping of routers but restart on the line that temporarily improved performance which then gradually settled back into previous issue.

Just to check, what DNS settings do you use?
 
I doubt that Afrihost is intentionally doing anything like that but, given all of MTN's ranting about OtA providers must pay, I would not be surprised if MTN were doing something at a lower network level.

It could possibly in conjunction with the local VoD providers that are starting to emerge.

We have no net neutrality agreements in RSA, MTN and others lobbied against it, so even if they are prioritising certain VoD providers at the expense of others, ICASA would be power less to do anything about it.

I must say that the recent tests showing that IS or Telkom based ISP are not effected, whilst all MTN based ISP's are, makes me lean in that direction. Conspiracy theory or not.

I'm definitely not aware of MTN doing anything like this, and from a business perspective this would not make sense. MTN are launching services like Front Row, for video, but I don't think it would make sense to de-prioritize services that they know their clients are looking for to try to force them into using their own alternative. It would just turn away clients and work against them. I don't know about ICASA but it's certainly something the IT press would have a field day with and as much as MTN do some odd things at times (like sending me weird SMS competitions), they understand business and they're not going to do anything that doesn't make sound business sense.
 
Afrihost - averaging 39.2 KB/s buffering for ~10 min still not started:
View attachment 193598

webafrica - averaging 278.7 KB/s - no buffering starts instantly
View attachment 193596

In the above image the lead trace is the AH stream, the gap is the Router being reconfigured to WA and the tail is the WA stream.

Same file, same server, same PC, same router, same line, same exchange, less than 5 min separates tests.

All tests are in Chrome Browser (As Chrome was indicated earlier today as a possible problem).
If AH has no IPC issue, is not shaping and it is obviously not the exchange, line, or router then what the hell is going on?

It is like this every evening.

edit:
Format / spelling

We'll need to test with you to see why you are experiencing this. I must admit that I did very little testing or monitoring this weekend, so I can't say for definite that there were no issues, but the little time I did spend on the web didn't really raise any flags for me.
 
Just for the sake of interest I decided to retry the same file, same server, but with a Telkom Shaped account:

View attachment 193606

Telkom Shaped beats Afrihost Unshaped hands down at that speed.
By an order of magnitude in fact (AH 39.2 Telkom 395.0)
It even beats WA by 25% and is peaking at 5.43Mb/s throughput as I type.

I think it is time to reevaluate my ISP use if AH / MTN is not able to handle streaming and I am already paying for the Telkom Account and I don't need all the fluff that PLUS+ adds, I just want Streaming to work.

EDIT:

After watching the Movie I switched to a Live TV Feed of SKY Sport F1 and am getting a better picture than I ever had on AH, I think we are starting to see a role reversal here.

I blame MTN for the degradation, not AfriHost, but Afrihost have to take the blame for switching over and selling out the client base.

I really do believe that in the long run saying we sold out our client base is a little sensationalist. If you weigh up the many benefits passed onto clients like better pricing, better speeds and the benefits of mobile, I think we acted in our client's best interests. It's easy for a business to get into a comfort zone and rely on what works, but that doesn't create new value or opportunities for clients. When we say that we don't just plan to make money but to create for our clients, we are committed to that.
 
Afri-people, if I want to downgrade my line from 4mbps to 2mbps and cancel my 100gb data, I should do this before the 25th, right? But then will my line speed be downgraded at the end of the month or before then / within 48 hours of the downgrade request?

edit: To rephrase, when should I action the above?

For a line downgrade, this will happen within 48 hours regardless, so it's best to do before the 25th (but as close as possible) for billing purposes.

Cancelling data can happen anytime during the month (before the 25th when billing run starts that it is), and will be pending for the end of that month
 
so are all the issues from last year cleared up now ? thinking about making this (my afrihost capped) my main account again.

feedback seems 2fold, are there any restrictions on the capped accounts ? or are they totally unshaped now ?

will also consider the uncapped accounts, will go read the feedback now

@Afriman any specials you guys got running for existing customers looking to increase their cap ?
 
so are all the issues from last year cleared up now ? thinking about making this (my afrihost capped) my main account again.

feedback seems 2fold, are there any restrictions on the capped accounts ? or are they totally unshaped now ?

will also consider the uncapped accounts, will go read the feedback now

@Afriman any specials you guys got running for existing customers looking to increase their cap ?

I can confirm there are definitely no limitations on our Capped accounts, they remain full unshaped at all times. Our IPC capacity at the moment is looking great, with our network running quite well and easily coping with the current bandwidth demands. There do seem to be one or two users with issues with Netflix, and we are troubleshooting on a case by case basis, but it doesn't seem to be related to throughput.

With regards to specials, Double Data on our ADSL Capped accounts has been extended until at least the end of June, and any Top-ups that you purchase will now roll-over for one month.
 
I can confirm there are definitely no limitations on our Capped accounts, they remain full unshaped at all times. Our IPC capacity at the moment is looking great, with our network running quite well and easily coping with the current bandwidth demands. There do seem to be one or two users with issues with Netflix, and we are troubleshooting on a case by case basis, but it doesn't seem to be related to throughput.

With regards to specials, Double Data on our ADSL Capped accounts has been extended until at least the end of June, and any Top-ups that you purchase will now roll-over for one month.

thanks for the feedback
 
I can confirm there are definitely no limitations on our Capped accounts, they remain full unshaped at all times. Our IPC capacity at the moment is looking great, with our network running quite well and easily coping with the current bandwidth demands. There do seem to be one or two users with issues with Netflix, and we are troubleshooting on a case by case basis, but it doesn't seem to be related to throughput.

With regards to specials, Double Data on our ADSL Capped accounts has been extended until at least the end of June, and any Top-ups that you purchase will now roll-over for one month.

By "full" capacity you mean almost full capacity, i have been experiencing horrible latency (on almost all ISP's for the last few weeks) pretty sure its loadshedding related.
I usually play with 200 ms (on MTN backbone)_ and 180 ms (on IS backbone) - but lately only IS is playable and at bad times they drop to 200ms but afrihost is spiking from 300-400ms on eu servers, and unfortunately afrihost uses MTN. I am using a capped 100gb account with afrihost.

My solution for now is using the free 1gm account from certain ISP's that use IS backbone (no names mentioned because i don't want ppl to flood them and make them lag :P)
 
Streaming impossible in cape town again tonight.

Best I can get is 52KB/s and it takes 30 Min to buffer 15Min of video at that rate.

I used up my free gig from webafrica on the last round of tests so, can't compare and post results, but if I have to buy WA bandwidth it will be at the expense of AH, I have 2 days in which to cancel.

For the record it was running fine till just after 7:30PM then dropped like a stone, 2 hours later and it is still not working. Will probably be fine again after 11pm and then Afrihost will want to run tests in the morning whilst there is no problem as usual.

The tests need to be done in peak period or you are just wasting every ones time including your own.
 
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afrihost is spiking from 300-400ms on eu servers

My experience tonight :l On my Mweb account (uncapped, currently throttled but in use by nobody but me at the time) I'm getting random occasions of what appears to be extreme packet loss to the EU Bnet servers which has already wiped one of my hardcore characters today and nearly took a second with it.

On my capped Afrihost account, much smaller packet loss bursts occur with much less frequency, but there are constant spikes to ~400-450ms, again while I'm the only one using the connection and even if I weren't, the Mweb account being throttled wouldn't be able to utilize the line anywhere near fully if it tried.

Somewhat frustrating when I can't determine where the issue lies...
 
For the record it was running fine till just after 7:30PM then dropped like a stone, 2 hours later and it is still not working. Will probably be fine again after 11pm.....

This streaming issue is definitely time related, predictable, repeatable and not Line related.

After my initial post I switched to Telkom Shaped, as I did last night and the night before that, again the stream worked perfectly on telkom. To confirm my theory above I switched back to Afrihost and tried the same stream again at 11:12pm and it ran instantly at greater than 200KBs as opposed to the 50KBps at 9PM.
 
Couldn't game at all on my Afrihost capped account tonight, had to switch to another ISP :/
 
This streaming issue is definitely time related, predictable, repeatable and not Line related.

After my initial post I switched to Telkom Shaped, as I did last night and the night before that, again the stream worked perfectly on telkom. To confirm my theory above I switched back to Afrihost and tried the same stream again at 11:12pm and it ran instantly at greater than 200KBs as opposed to the 50KBps at 9PM.

There is definitely something strange going on, our IPC capacity in the South was well within the expected levels.

I've sent you a PM with my test account details, when you start to experience that issues with streaming, please switch to my account, then test the stream.

Can I also ask that you run a traceroute with both accounts when the issue occurs, it will help me a lot in find out whether this is perhaps something to do with the routing on our network.
 
My experience tonight :l On my Mweb account (uncapped, currently throttled but in use by nobody but me at the time) I'm getting random occasions of what appears to be extreme packet loss to the EU Bnet servers which has already wiped one of my hardcore characters today and nearly took a second with it.

On my capped Afrihost account, much smaller packet loss bursts occur with much less frequency, but there are constant spikes to ~400-450ms, again while I'm the only one using the connection and even if I weren't, the Mweb account being throttled wouldn't be able to utilize the line anywhere near fully if it tried.

Somewhat frustrating when I can't determine where the issue lies...

I was on Battle.net until late last night playing SC2 and Hearthstone, and my latency never broke 200ms.

That being said, it is possible that there could be a routing or congestion issue in your area. The next you experience a spike in your latency, can I ask that you please run a traceroute to Battle.net (It should run the trace to the EU server) and either PM it to me or post it here on the forums, with that I can locate the cause of the issue, and we can proceed from there.
 
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