Afrihost CAPPED ADSL Feedback (MTN)

[AfriMan]

This is frustrating beyond belief.
Telkom has sorted out their side of my problem, so what now??

I was under the impression that your ISP is one of those things you just forget about, you pay them accordingly and you get the service accordingly, supposed to just work, everyone happy. Instead you find yourself sitting with a service that doesn't work as it should, using your own time to post here and the like and yet you still pay accordingly.

I know that this is frustrating and we know that. We're putting a lot of resources into getting our house in order as quickly as we can and having as little impact on client's experience as possible while we do so (except to improve their experience). I can't tell you when this will be complete, but you are 100% correct that ideally you should not have to think about what's going wrong

 

[AfriMan]

And that contention just happens to stop like someone flicking a switch at 11PM every night to the second.

When demand subsides, which we generally see is a pretty rapid drop off in the evenings, the symptoms you experience will ease up. It doesn't look to be exactly the same time every night but the is a consistent drop off rate. Seems to vary between 10pm and 10:30pm most nights.

 

[AfriMan]

Contention where MTN or Telkom? Demand on the network where MTN or Telkom?

If it was Telkom related then wouldn't everyone be affected? At work ATM i cant youtube, download drivers or even install chrome on a pc, but yet I can download from mega at full speed. (Afrihost uncapped) At home i can sort of youtube donwload drivers but not login to D3 (Afrihost Capped), but now repeating myself again switch over to Webafrica free account & i can haz all the youtube download & D3 logins as I want(until my 1GB free is up) explain to me then as I must be thick for not understanding yet, how does MTN not work but an IS account work?

The demand is on our network due to rogue P2P traffic which we're trying to pin down and shape for Uncapped accounts.

 

[ryu]

Do you guys still do the 2 for 1 top ups ? i dont see it in the client zone as yet.

also are you still doing the rollover thing so whatever data i don't use will roll over to next month ?

 

[AfriMan]

Do you guys still do the 2 for 1 top ups ? i dont see it in the client zone as yet.

also are you still doing the rollover thing so whatever data i don't use will roll over to next month ?

Yes, topups rollover into the following month now

2 for 1 is a seasonal promo, so it doesn't run all the time. However, if you have an Afrihost Plus+ membership you get permanent 2 for 1 topups on DSL or Mobile, depending on which product you assign that benefit to (same goes with Double Data).

 

[NeoNarchy]

The demand is on our network due to rogue P2P traffic which we're trying to pin down and shape for Uncapped accounts.

Well that explains it then, why do traceroots & stuff when the problem is internal demand? i am sure if it was mentioned & perhaps explained people would except it, i sure would. The problem is when AH works it works like a BOSS, but when its k@k its really k@K.
It always feel like you have to go to extreme lengths to get the correct info, i hope you get this nonsense sorted.

 

[AfriMan]

Well that explains it then, why do traceroots & stuff when the problem is internal demand? i am sure if it was mentioned & perhaps explained people would except it, i sure would. The problem is when AH works it works like a BOSS, but when its k@k its really k@K.
It always feel like you have to go to extreme lengths to get the correct info, i hope you get this nonsense sorted.

I know we have some internal work to do, but we also still have to distinguish between general everyday problems like line faults, congested exchanges and account problems, so that we don't have clients having a poor experience that can be resolved or improved now, or make sure that we're looking in the right place to resolve their queries.

 

[Davedes]

When demand subsides, which we generally see is a pretty rapid drop off in the evenings, the symptoms you experience will ease up. It doesn't look to be exactly the same time every night but the is a consistent drop off rate. Seems to vary between 10pm and 10:30pm most nights.

Nope. Mine is at the same time at exactly 11PM every night which is why I believe my capped account is being shaped.

 

[NeoNarchy]

I know we have some internal work to do, but we also still have to distinguish between general everyday problems like line faults, congested exchanges and account problems, so that we don't have clients having a poor experience that can be resolved or improved now, or make sure that we're looking in the right place to resolve their queries.

I agree that you have to eliminate external issues but most people here can do a fair bit of network diagnostics, after all it is a tech forum, its not like the average user here phones you complaining about mails not working, & then you go to him to find the pc not switched on(actually happened with a call we attended). So i am sure by the time we contact you in my case I have 2 routers & 4 isp accounts. If switching any of these don't solve the problem I know its my line. Sometimes you guys should just were not entry level customers some of us actually work in the industry.

 

[AfriMan]

Nope. Mine is at the same time at exactly 11PM every night which is why I believe my capped account is being shaped.

Someone else posted in another thread that it's 10:38 (down to the second) so I think that does prove that it's different according to demand.

 

[AfriMan]

I agree that you have to eliminate external issues but most people here can do a fair bit of network diagnostics, after all it is a tech forum, its not like the average user here phones you complaining about mails not working, & then you go to him to find the pc not switched on(actually happened with a call we attended). So i am sure by the time we contact you in my case I have 2 routers & 4 isp accounts. If switching any of these don't solve the problem I know its my line. Sometimes you guys should just were not entry level customers some of us actually work in the industry.

I dont think it's very easy to know what a client's level of tech proficiency is from a support ticket or even a phone call, so that's maybe something that we can think of for the future (like a client rating system). That may actually help us, but it would be a long term thing. Remember that there are far more clients who don't know what a router is or how to change their passwords, so it's difficult to make any assumptions in terms of support, where the opposite is true here on MyBB, which is why we try to share more technical information here wherever we can.

 

[Aquiva]

It is possible that our current demand (during peak) could be worsening the latency, but from the alternative ISP test you ran there is certainly latency on your line either way.

Remember that it's not our rules affecting capped users, but the overall increase in demand. We're trying to implement rules to shape rogue P2P traffic on Uncapped accounts, but we're not using shaping rules to affect Capped users in any way.

Please define this "rogue P2P" traffic. Has uncapped not always been shaped and specifically P2P traffic? Thus the reason for having business accounts and TurboBoost? Why is this such an issue now?

 

[image132]

Please define this "rogue P2P" traffic. Has uncapped not always been shaped and specifically P2P traffic? Thus the reason for having business accounts and TurboBoost? Why is this such an issue now?

Afriman has mentioned this before. He said there are some normal uncapped users bypassing the shaping being applied to them. So they are essentially getting an unshaped uncapped account without paying for it.

 

[Aquiva]

Afriman has mentioned this before. He said there are some normal uncapped users bypassing the shaping being applied to them. So they are essentially getting an unshaped uncapped account without paying for it.

Like the VPN users have been using? So if say 10% of their clients are doing this, is that enough to kill the network for anyone else? Also if it was me I would let that baby download 24/7 but my problems are at seemingly random times. Even during the day when the majority of the users are not at home.

 

[image132]

Like the VPN users have been using? So if say 10% of their clients are doing this, is that enough to kill the network for anyone else? Also if it was me I would let that baby download 24/7 but my problems are at seemingly random times. Even during the day when the majority of the users are not at home.

I have no idea for me personally p2p/nntp isn't that big a deal as I don't use it much. However in the crystal web thread I've read there are fancier techniques like wrapping your p2p data in http traffic or something like that. Now that I think about it p2p through vpn probably is wrapping p2p in http. My bad XD

What I don't get though is that it has to be pretty damn obvious who's doing this (their usage must be way more than everyone elses) and I'm pretty sure circumventing shaping is against TOS. So why not just kick these users to the curb?

 

[Aquiva]

I have no idea for me personally p2p/nntp isn't that big a deal as I don't use it much. However in the crystal web thread I've read there are fancier techniques like wrapping your p2p data in http traffic or something like that.

What I don't get though is that it has to be pretty damn obvious who's doing this (their usage must be way more than everyone elses) and I'm pretty sure circumventing shaping is against TOS. So why not just kick these users to the curb?

Totally agree with you!! Don't uncapped users have a Fair Usage clause?

 

[Davedes]

Someone else posted in another thread that it's 10:38 (down to the second) so I think that does prove that it's different according to demand.

What other thread uncapped? Difference is this is the capped thread. I shouldn't even have to post this here.

 

[image132]

Totally agree with you!! Don't uncapped users have a Fair Usage clause?

The only other thing that I can think of that this form of bypassing is so common that it's not a few users breaking everything. It's a large chunk of the user base. Which could cause problems since you can't just kick 20% of your users off.

 

[AfriGenie]

Like the VPN users have been using? So if say 10% of their clients are doing this, is that enough to kill the network for anyone else? Also if it was me I would let that baby download 24/7 but my problems are at seemingly random times. Even during the day when the majority of the users are not at home.

The issue isn't so much the VPN traffic, but rather that as image132 pointed out, quite a few Uncapped users have found ways to mask their P2P and NNTP traffic using various tools and applications, this causes us a massive headache as we base our shaping for Uncapped users on our network demand, so as the demand spikes we start to shape the Uncapped users, then if the shaping doesn't work as it should, it starts to impact on our Business Uncapped and Capped users who shouldn't have to compete for bandwidth, especially with P2P and NNTP downloads that should be shaped.

 

[AfriGenie]

I have no idea for me personally p2p/nntp isn't that big a deal as I don't use it much. However in the crystal web thread I've read there are fancier techniques like wrapping your p2p data in http traffic or something like that. Now that I think about it p2p through vpn probably is wrapping p2p in http. My bad XD

What I don't get though is that it has to be pretty damn obvious who's doing this (their usage must be way more than everyone elses) and I'm pretty sure circumventing shaping is against TOS. So why not just kick these users to the curb?

Totally agree with you!! Don't uncapped users have a Fair Usage clause?

The Uncapped accounts definitely have a Fair-usage Policy, but from our side we specifically state that we will only shape P2P-type traffic, and simply tracking usage isn't an accurate way to track offenders, as they can legitimately use their bandwidth for Streaming.

That's why we've given this amount of time to making sure we shape P2P traffic correctly on Uncapped, to keep any miss-use to an absolute minimum.