Afrihost New Network Feedback - Part 2

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Here is my view (like anyone is interested);

I've had a go at the service levels offered and the irritation of doing tracert and speedtests until it comes out of my ears. I've complained that we are doing what the engineers should be doing, but the simple fact is the Afripeeps here cannot help without those items being available. They cannot go to the engineers and tell them Iceman has a problem - fix it because they will ask for a tracert in order to pinpoint the issue.

If this avenue of troubleshooting or whatever you want to call it is now closed it will be a sad day indeed. These guys are here everyday listening to everyone bitch and moan over the poor state of affairs of their internet. Sometimes it is AH's fault, other times it isn't. They listen and give guidance and assistance where they can. Some people on here make a conscious decision to antagonize and bait these guys into saying something like "well in that case I can't help you". Then all hell breaks loose.

I wouldn't blame them if they don't assist here anymore. Luckily some of us have built up an online friendship with these guys and I know for a fact they will help if we ask them. Flame away, IDC.

/rant

My congestion seems to have been fixed - I am getting full line speed and decent pings for the first time in what feels like forever.

THANK YOU Afripeeps and Critical Care for your efforts.
 
AdriaanZA said:
Once again, just after 7pm at night this is what happens:

Popular videos load excellent, as you can see:

But Live videos and lesser popular videos just don't want to load up at all:

I'm on an Afrihost Capped account in Cape Town with an excellent 20mb vdsl connection. To me it seems that videos that are sourced from locally cached servers are working great, but as soon as it needs to get it from an international source (as one would expect with Live videos and videos with low view counts) it just dies out.

Around 11pm it's fine again.
Click to expand...

Can't agree with you more. If its popular/locally cached it seems to work flawlessly, if its not it just doesn't work. I don't know if you've had it where the video simply does not load at all. You just sit there with a black screen at 0:00 watching a buffer wheel for eternity.
 
Slaught3r said:
I've had a go at the service levels offered and the irritation of doing tracert and speedtests until it comes out of my ears. I've complained that we are doing what the engineers should be doing, but the simple fact is the Afripeeps here cannot help without those items being available. They cannot go to the engineers and tell them Iceman has a problem - fix it because they will ask for a tracert in order to pinpoint the issue.
Click to expand...

And that's fine and understandable, but then you have to do it the next day and the day and the day after that and so it goes and no solution is ever forthcoming.

I'm a final year student doing 7 modules this semester because I need to finish up so I can graduate and move out of town. To say my schedule is hectic is an understatement. I'll probably have another 12 hour study day tomorrow because I spent too much time arguing on MyBB today. My SO works full time, driving in from Stellenbosch to CPT almost daily, so you can imagine he's pretty tired when he comes home in the evenings. When we're together in the evenings we usually want to mellow out and stream some series or movies. We don't want to spend every night troubleshooting our ADSL account while wondering why the hell we're looking at moving blocks on Netflix or why YouTube keeps buffering. When this goes on for weeks with no acknowledgement or fix from AfriHost then naturally you start getting angry. When that account then randomly drops for no reason (reported by other people at the same times), including the morning of the one day my SO gets to work from home, cutting him off from services he needs to do his job, it's just the cherry on top of an already awful cake. He had to go buy prepaid data from WebAfrica at R70/gb because our uncapped account is only 2mb and not fast enough for his work purposes. This while we're paying for unshaped, capped service from AfriHost.

So understand that as much you want us to see the human side of the AfriHost reps, the other side of the coin is a human element too. It's a bit hard to remain cool and collected when you're dealing with the same problem day after day and AfriHost is completely unhelpful. We're also only human. My SO was so angry the morning the internet went down that he actually demanded AfriHost refund him for the last two months when he sent in his cancellation (they refused, ofc). I understand that the forum reps are only doing their jobs and can only work with what the engineers ask of them, but I also don't think it's unfair of customers to expect AfriHost to own up and take responsibility for a problem when it's clearly a widespread issue on their network. I know I would have reacted a lot better had that been the case.

I've now said my piece and I don't think there is anything left to say past this, so I'll stop posting in this thread as per RPM's request. Cheers and good luck.
 
image132 said:
Can't agree with you more. If its popular/locally cached it seems to work flawlessly, if its not it just doesn't work. I don't know if you've had it where the video simply does not load at all. You just sit there with a black screen at 0:00 watching a buffer wheel for eternity.
Click to expand...

Yes that's exactly what happens with the second screenshot I posted.

What's disconcerting is that it always starts happening around the same time (just after 7pm [for Western Cape users]). This behavior remains until around 11pm. It's not like it's intermittent. Then it just goes away.

Perhaps its some sort of controlled shaping in order to avoid network overload from all those R1 accounts hammering their network – given that this started at the same time they launched that.


I suspect once that promotion falls away and the load on their network drops, this problem will go away (at least, I hope) – thus allowing Afrihost to return to the forum relatively soon thereafter.



It's really kind of frustrating that given all the evidence these last few nights from Cape Town users Afrihost fails to admit something is wrong. I'm sorry but the excuse for going quiet is just too convenient. I work in feedback for a large corporation and negative personal attacks (although I didn't really see to be honest) will always be there.

Afrihost could have just simply ignored it and at least responded to all the posts reporting the same issue (at the very least, say they're busy investigating). Instead they chose to go dead silent after mounting evidence.
 
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kohlhtor said:
This was I find on the net he must watch what he post
https://www.facebook.com/Afrihost/posts/1211979242156549
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Seriously? No really seriously? You took the time to find that, and post it here? Honestly, you seriously need to lighten up around here. If you dont know what a joke is, or what humour is, then im not sure. I really tried to be polite and respectful towards you, but you are seriously testing my patience now.

You throw around a serious allegation, by claiming Afrihost is paying me, and you find a joke i made, and tell me to be careful what i say on the internet?
 
I have Uncapped Premium with Afrihost do they shape torrents? with CrystalWeb i get full speed with Afrihost around 20%...
 
Did Afrihost's DNS just die? Locals and internationals not loading.

Switched to Google DNS, still EXTREMELY slow but at least I can browse some websites?

Anybody else having issues?
 
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The network died at about 7am this morning for a minute or so, then worked again. I'm using OpenDNS, not AH or Google DNS.
 
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