Afrihost - Pure Fibre Feedback Thread

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wingnut771 said:
how do you download it with 0kb speed?
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Windscribe has an excellent CDN that makes their site accessible from pretty much anywhere. I downloaded their setup file in an instant whilst having almost no international connectivity.

But if people really need a local link:
1drv.ms

Windscribe.zip

Compressed (zipped) Folder
1drv.ms
 
Hey guys, just posting this update here:

Our upstream providers report that adverse weather in the Western Cape has delayed the departure of the ship to effect repairs to international undersea cables. We currently do not have an ETR for final repairs to be completed.

To recap, both primary and secondary cables failed within a day of each other. We are currently using an alternate transit route, which does not have sufficient capacity to accommodate all the traffic which has been rerouted to it.

In the interim, our network management team have worked tirelessly to provide clients with the best experience possible. Services like twitter and online gaming have been optimised for best performance under the circumstances.

We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience this has caused, and we are grateful for our client’s patience and understanding.
 
AfriMan said:
Hey guys, just posting this update here:

Our upstream providers report that adverse weather in the Western Cape has delayed the departure of the ship to effect repairs to international undersea cables. We currently do not have an ETR for final repairs to be completed.

To recap, both primary and secondary cables failed within a day of each other. We are currently using an alternate transit route, which does not have sufficient capacity to accommodate all the traffic which has been rerouted to it.

In the interim, our network management team have worked tirelessly to provide clients with the best experience possible. Services like twitter and online gaming have been optimised for best performance under the circumstances.

We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience this has caused, and we are grateful for our client’s patience and understanding.
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Lol, so this ship that can't leave Cape Town is responsible for fixing the cable breaks off the coast of Angola and the UK?
 
Bryn said:
Lol, so this ship that can't leave Cape Town is responsible for fixing the cable breaks off the coast of Angola and the UK?
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Yes, the ship is carrying spare parts and cable. Believe me, those cables are massive and weigh tons. Also carry all sorts of undersea vehicles and diving equipment etc. It's a massive operation.
 
Bryn said:
Guys, just spend $2 with Windscribe and end your internet issues right now. Really, R30 once-off to wait out the storm whilst the cables are repaired and for Afrihost to keep your monthly bill as low as possible in perpetuity.

Speed test to London using Windscribe:
8960013610.png
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I've purchased a $2 package to test from the Cape. You have to choose two nodes so I chose SA and the UK.

It's download is about the same as Nord for me at 7 Mbps. It's upload is substantially worse at 0.5 Mbps vs 10+ Mbps.

It's not uncapped, the build your own is 30 GB/month.

Btw, do you know how many devices it supports concurrently?

Edit: Nord performs the same from this location, so very much the same thing. Just need to know about concurrent connections before switching..
 
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Bryn said:
This could be a while then... It usually takes a cargo ship over 20 days to get from South Africa to the UK, for a rough reference.
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It's definitely not going to be overnight, but we are hoping that it will only be a matter of days and everything will be back to normal. Also, if either one of the cables comes back up, we should be able to restore normal services, so we do have a pretty good odds on our side.
 
AfriMan said:
We have been posting updates as we receive them. Also, if you are using our app, every update will create a push notification to you phone. It's really wotrthwhile downloading the app and enabling those notifications.
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I've had the app installed since signing up 5 months ago, notifications are on, and I have yet to receive a single update / notification on this issue.
 
biometrics said:
I've purchased a $2 package to test from the Cape. You have to choose two nodes so I chose SA and the UK.

It's download is about the same as Nord for me at 7 Mbps. It's upload is substantially worse at 0.5 Mbps vs 10+ Mbps.

It's not uncapped, the build your own is 30 GB/month.

Btw, do you know how many devices it supports concurrently?

Edit: Nord performs the same from this location, so very much the same thing. Just need to know about concurrent connections before switching..
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You don't have to choose two nodes. I only selected South Africa. And there is an option to add unlimited data for $1. I guess the minimum is any two selections, and you opted for an additional node rather than unlimited data.

There are three servers in SA. Make sure you choose "Johannesburg - District". I'm getting 80-100Mbps international download with it and 6-12Mbps upload.

No clue as to concurrent devices.
 
Bryn said:
You don't have to choose two nodes. I only selected South Africa. And there is an option to add unlimited data for $1. I guess the minimum is any two selections, and you opted for an additional node rather than unlimited data.

There are three servers in SA. Make sure you choose "Johannesburg - District". I'm getting 80-100Mbps international download with it and 6-12Mbps upload.

No clue as to concurrent devices.
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Ah thanks, that wasn't obvious.

Edit: they allow you to change it once or twice a month.
 
Seeyou said:
I've had the app installed since signing up 5 months ago, notifications are on, and I have yet to receive a single update / notification on this issue.
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I'll need to report that, because the app is definitely meant to give push notifications as soon as a network outage is posted :(
 
Which VPN do you guys recommend if I still want to use P2P (preferably at close to my connection speed)? I see windscribe doesn't allow P2P in South Africa.

I'm thinking of getting NordVPN or ExpressVPN (I'm not limited to these, I just want good performance) as they seem to perform well. I'm in Cape Town so a server close by would be a plus. I can't see Cape Town servers specifically for either Nord or Express :(
 
Ghost02 said:
Which VPN do you guys recommend if I still want to use P2P (preferably at close to my connection speed)? I see windscribe doesn't allow P2P in South Africa.

I'm thinking of getting NordVPN or ExpressVPN (I'm not limited to these, I just want good performance) as they seem to perform well. I'm in Cape Town so a server close by would be a plus. I can't see Cape Town servers specifically for either Nord or Express :(
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A few people have had a good experience with ExpressVPN and we've tested at the office. I believe they also have a free trial, which helps a lot.
 
Ghost02 said:
Which VPN do you guys recommend if I still want to use P2P (preferably at close to my connection speed)? I see windscribe doesn't allow P2P in South Africa.

I'm thinking of getting NordVPN or ExpressVPN (I'm not limited to these, I just want good performance) as they seem to perform well. I'm in Cape Town so a server close by would be a plus. I can't see Cape Town servers specifically for either Nord or Express :(
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You won't find a VPN with servers in Cape Town. I've tried.

NordVPN seems to be superior for me compared to ExpressVPN when it comes to NZB, but I haven't tried P2P. Express is better for gaming by far though.
 
bratwurst said:
Can you point me to the SLA you signed with AH that stipulates a 100% uptime guarantee?
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Can you point to any of my posts where I said I expected a 100% uptime guarantee?

Let me reiterate what I'm saying:

1. Communication about what is happening and what AH is doing to mitigate THEIR network issues. Yes they posted old news on their network status updates, but really... is that it?
2. Make a plan of sorts (as mentioned Cloudflare Warp, a deal with a VPN provider for trial accounts, etc
3. Some sort of financial relief as a token of appreciation for customers who stick around and accept this. What we don't want from AH is complacency.

Basically, don't be a douche big corporate and sit in your castle all smug. Help the customers who built that castle.
 
AfriMan said:
It's definitely not going to be overnight, but we are hoping that it will only be a matter of days and everything will be back to normal. Also, if either one of the cables comes back up, we should be able to restore normal services, so we do have a pretty good odds on our side.
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@AfriMan, do you just make this stuff up?
 
AfriMan said:
I get where you are coming from, and in a perfect world this would definitely be what we'd love to do for our clients. But you have to also look at it from a business perspective. To have an absolute redundancy under any circumstances, we'd have to carry a lot more cost for that redundnacy, or pay a premium to attain emergency bandwidth short term. All of these carry costs which ultimately will be transferred to the client in terms of price increases.

We could certainly create a package like this, that has redundancy on every available route - but it would insanely expensive.

In terms of creating a VPN of our own, that is technically possible. But I'm a firm believer in sticking to what you do best. In theory, we could set something up, but we don't have the years of experience that Cloudflare or Nord have in running these services. Chances are that there could be loads of teething problems, and this could cause additional frustration. By the time we worked out all the kinks, the need for this fix may well be over. Our experience in managing the network in a way that clients have the best possible experience given the resources available, and I believe that's where we can add the most value.

I definitely agree that we can always look for ways to improve our communication and keep our clients at ease through difficult periods. We'll definitely debrief and find out what we could have done better,.
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Thanks for responding.

I do appreciate it. Just to clarify a few things though:

Totally get what you're saying about network redundancy, I don't know what the costs are, I'm sure it's beyond my budget. But given this reality, is this what we can expect from AH every time there is a cable failure on WACS? An unusable internet service which (for me) is not cheap. Is it fair to say whatever network redundancy you do have in place is woefully inadequate?

On the VPN thing, again totally don't expect AH to make its own VPN, but in this scenario, there are alternative solutions that AH could have taken the initiative on and supported customers needing support to get it to work. The exact opposite scenario is playing out, your support team (phone / WhatsApp / email) is non-existent.

But we do have you on here on a Sunday afternoon, which I guess we're fortunate to have.

Thank you.
 
JFT96 said:
Can you point to any of my posts where I said I expected a 100% uptime guarantee?

Let me reiterate what I'm saying:

1. Communication about what is happening and what AH is doing to mitigate THEIR network issues. Yes they posted old news on their network status updates, but really... is that it?
2. Make a plan of sorts (as mentioned Cloudflare Warp, a deal with a VPN provider for trial accounts, etc
3. Some sort of financial relief as a token of appreciation for customers who stick around and accept this. What we don't want from AH is complacency.

Basically, don't be a douche big corporate and sit in your castle all smug. Help the customers who built that castle.
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I agree with you fully. At this point, Afrihost is running little more than a scam!
 
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