Afrihost - From Hero to Zero

[ramsbod]

Afrihost are dropping down the list of best ISPs with lightning speed. Once again they have networks problems that they can't get solved in a few hours. So much for their MTN superior network and managing their own traffic. They clearly do not have enough bandwidth to support their business. As soon as it is close to the end of the month and school holidays they start having overload problems. Why don't they plan ahead? They can trend the increase in bandwidth each month and make sure they purchase enough. Giving 1Gb free to every South African is not sustainable if you don't buy enough bandwidth. Afrihost need to seriously change their business model.

 

[longboy]

Afrihost has always treated me with respect from day 1 in 2010 when I signed up. Not going to change ISP's simply because Afrihost is having a few problems, which will soon go away. Sure there are times when speeds are a little slow or streaming is bad, but every ISP at one point or the other had this issue.

 

[AntennaMan]

Afrihost has always treated me with respect from day 1 in 2010 when I signed up. Not going to change ISP's simply because Afrihost is having a few problems, which will soon go away. Sure there are times when speeds are a little slow or streaming is bad, but every ISP at one point or the other had this issue.

I was in exactly the same boat as you, Shaun. One day my internet was a slow. So I said, give them some time to fix it. A day later everything was even worse, so I log a support ticket. A week later still the same, with their support people telling me every time that they have resynced my line andthat I should reboot my router. It failed to work every single time. Finally I come to MyBB and complain. Afriman was quick to help and put me into conytact with their "critical care" department. After multiple calls, resyncs, reboots,etc they finally tell me that it is Telkoms fault and that there is a fault on the line. They even log a ticket for me with Telkom. The Telkom tech support arrives at my house that same evening, no fault detected.

Finally I go ahead and register a free account with one or two other ISP's. Like magic all my problems disappear. I contact the critical care deparment and tell them this. I even email all of my test results to them. They still insist the fault is on Telkom's side. Now I start to ask them why the problem will manifest itself on the Telkom line only when I use the Afrihost credentials on my router. They cannot explain it, but the problem is definitely on Telkoms side and not on theirs.

That was the last straw. After being a happy customer for many years, I canceled all my products (INTERNET, AV and hosting) with them and moved over to another ISP. It has been 4 months now and I have not had a single issue (touch wood!).

I understand that problems happen. But after giving me the run-around for more than a month, they still kept blaming Telkom (even though I proved it is not Telkom's fault). They never admitted the fault was theirs. I will never go back to Afrihost.

 

[Sonic2k]

Blaming Telkom is the standard first line excuse for many a ISP.
More often than not, the problem is with the ISP. Sick of the cloak-and-dagger state-secret business. CrystalWeb are taking steps in the right direction but still not good enough.

 

[LazyLion]

How do you know that it is not Telkom's fault? Especially when all the other ISP's are having similar problems in getting more IPC provisioned?

 

[Sonic2k]

How do you know that it is not Telkom's fault? Especially when all the other ISP's are having similar problems in getting more IPC provisioned?

1) Check Line Stats... and notice if anything has changed
2) Use a test account with another ISP
3) If in doubt ask TelkomZA to pull the DSLAM stats for you
5) Study the tracert to a known site. Since I now have a box on the net I can ping to, I can easily see where the latency lies...

 

[Rickster]

Afrihost has always treated me with respect from day 1 in 2010 when I signed up. Not going to change ISP's simply because Afrihost is having a few problems, which will soon go away. Sure there are times when speeds are a little slow or streaming is bad, but every ISP at one point or the other had this issue.

You win the internet.

 

[AntennaMan]

1) Check Line Stats... and notice if anything has changed
2) Use a test account with another ISP
3) If in doubt ask TelkomZA to pull the DSLAM stats for you
5) Study the tracert to a known site. Since I now have a box on the net I can ping to, I can easily see where the latency lies...

This^^^^.

Tracert always went haywire on the fourth hop (to some MTN server).