Afrihost Query?

[The_Unbeliever]

Tell me about it.

I much prefer having a slight overrun of my cap, that is then either deducted from my next allotment of bandwidth, or from topup bandwidth purchased, than not been capped at all, and receiving a nice R8,000 3G account.... but, yeah, maybe that's just me.

B

QFT

 

[BroadSide]

Answered. 1st post by someone taking a "broadside"... Learn to read the posts before yours...

I did read the posts - to which Gian's reply attests. You should have read my post more carefully before jumping in with such a terse, inconsequential post. Does the fact that it was my 1st post somehow make my reading or commenting inferior to those of someone who made thousands? I fully comprehend what is happening. It is also important for Gian/Afrihost to tidy up their loose ends quickly, otherwise their longterm viability is going to be under threat once the initial euphoria about the cheaper bandwidth has wilted.

To be clear: Afrihost did not cap my account once the monthly limit was reached. They should have done so according to their T&C. Their oversight caused a huge bandwidth overrun of almost 70% into my 5 GB allocation for the following month. This is not acceptable at all, and all the spin in the world, however well intended, is not going to change that. To make matters worse, Gian/Afrihost now simply wants to change their T&C to make the problem disappear.

 

[4cer]

i went a few gigs over... didnt know utorrent was active :/

and ya used my whole of next months data.. so i don't know how long it takes you guys to cap !

 

[MrG]

I did read the posts - to which Gian's reply attests. You should have read my post more carefully before jumping in with such a terse, inconsequential post. Does the fact that it was my 1st post somehow make my reading or commenting inferior to those of someone who made thousands? I fully comprehend what is happening. It is also important for Gian/Afrihost to tidy up their loose ends quickly, otherwise their longterm viability is going to be under threat once the initial euphoria about the cheaper bandwidth has wilted.

To be clear: Afrihost did not cap my account once the monthly limit was reached. They should have done so according to their T&C. Their oversight caused a huge bandwidth overrun of almost 70% into my 5 GB allocation for the following month. This is not acceptable at all, and all the spin in the world, however well intended, is not going to change that. To make matters worse, Gian/Afrihost now simply wants to change their T&C to make the problem disappear.

+1 in support.

 

[RichTrend]

Hi Gian, I sent you the PM as you mentioned I could. I had no response from the PM, so decided to get directly in contact with your support. I have now spent pretty much my entire saturday trying to sort it out with them. They did respond eventually confirming that the accounts have been reset however they haven't.

Wondering what has happened with your support??

@RichTrend We do hard cap when your cap is up (as per posts 18 & 30 of this thread) However, please PM me your username so I can have a look into this as this looks like one of the accounts that our radius server (see post 30) did not hard cap after reaching your limit and hence it looks like you used double your alloted bandwidth. We have now fixed this problem so it will not happen again. As mentioned please PM me and I will ask one of the support guys to investigate and give you a shout so that they can give you that extra bandwidth you used back if this is due to our non-capping error.

@rurapente I'm sorry to hear about the poor international speeds you experienced. I have asked IS to investigate as to whether there were problems. In our testing we have generally found that the international speeds are comparable and slightly faster than than SAIX and I am sorry that you did not experience this.

WRT your cancellation: We have a 1 calendar months notice period. This means a cancelled account is still active for the month after cancellation and we continue to provide you with your service and allotted bandwidth for this time. One of the main reasons we do this is to prevent what happened to you last night and today. We need to send our debit order batch through to our bank a few days before the strike date in order for them to debit the accounts at the right time. So in this case when you cancelled your debit order had already been sent and processed by the bank and hence you were debited this morning.

Having said all this please PM me your username and I will organise that your account is deactivated now before your 30 day period is over and that you are refunded your full monthly payment.

Regarding the 158MB - Please refer to my posts #18 and #30 in this thread for a full explanation as to how our systems work and what happened.

Thanks and once again sorry that your experience with us disappointed you. I wish you all the very best with Axxess

 

[Fiekus]

Just read this thread and haven't used my Afrihost account yet as I started off on my Telkom Do 2 package and then the WA trial kicked off. So after having read through this thread I just checked my AH account and looks like I've overrun by 876 MB
I have a 384k line so how long does it take to get capped? I won't be affected this month because of the WA trial account, but just asking???

Usuage graph:

http://mybroadband.co.za/photos/showphoto.php/photo/12731

 

[d7e7r7]

Hi Gian,
I am using Afrihost and did a speed test to a joburg server and got 55.6 kb/s download speed on a 384kb/s line, is this a fault on Afrihosts side or Telkoms?

 

[ichigo]

definitely not telkom my telkom account is working at right speed for 4 meg line so should work same for 384k line.

Looks like its a Afrihost problem cause even my other accounts which use IS run at top speed.

 

[d7e7r7]

hmmm... pm'd Gian, gonna see if he replies when he's on...

 

[Fiekus]

Hi Gian,
I am using Afrihost and did a speed test to a joburg server and got 55.6 kb/s download speed on a 384kb/s line, is this a fault on Afrihosts side or Telkoms?

excuse the question but what download speed are you expecting on a 384kbps line?
I'm on the Webafrica trial and your speeds are better than mine.
55.6Kb/s is quite impressive for such a line

 

[ichigo]

should be 384kb+- if i get 3500kb using my 4 meg line

speed test does not equal download speed when you download files

 

[d7e7r7]

excuse the question but what download speed are you expecting on a 384kbps line?
I'm on the Webafrica trial and your speeds are better than mine.
55.6Kb/s is quite impressive for such a line

I was under the assumption that having a 384kb/s line meant getting 384kb/s speeds, or even 50kb/s slower... but 55kb/s???

 

[Fiekus]

I was under the assumption that having a 384kb/s line meant getting 384kb/s speeds, or even 50kb/s slower... but 55kb/s???

Found this link:
http://au.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071109145102AAks1jE

kbps and kb/s are different. Most likely, your internet provider advertises their speeds in kbps to make the numbers look more impressive. That is called the advertised speed. When you download something, most likely the speed you see is in kb/s (example: 350 kb/s)

I have Verizon and my subscription plan includes speeds of up to 3000 kbps. Of course, when I download I don't see 3000 kpbs, I see up to 350 kb/s maximum. (3000 kbps = approx. 350 kb/s) .

Converting kbps to KB/s:
Take kbps and divide by 8.192 (or multiply by .1221)
Example
1000kbps = 122KB/s

So in your case, 384 kbps would be around 45 kb/s actual download speed, which seems to be pretty much what you're getting.

You realize there is a Difference between kb and KB, right?

kb = Kilobits. 8 bits = 1 Byte.
KB = Kilobyte.

So. If your connection is rated for:
512kbps (Kilobits per Second)

That comes out to about
64 KBps (Kilobytes per second)

so around 60K/sec for a 512kbps connection is about
what you get.

 

[d7e7r7]

Found this link:
http://au.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071109145102AAks1jE

find this confusing... went to google and searched "46.9 kb/s in kbps" and the answer is

46.9 (kilobits / second) = 46.9 kbps

went to wolframalpha and entered "46.9 kb/s in kbps" and the result was

Input interpretation:
convert 46.9 kb/s (kilobits per second) to kilobits per second
Result:
46.9 kb/s (kilobits per second)

p.s. got the 49.6kb/s from here

 

[d7e7r7]

p.s. went to that link and read through it again and it makes sense now... sorry for confusion... either our ISP's are trying to look good or they just use different figures than speedtest.net

 

[Fiekus]

find this confusing... went to google and searched "46.9 kb/s in kbps" and the answer is

went to wolframalpha and entered "46.9 kb/s in kbps" and the result was

p.s. got the 49.6kb/s from here

LOL ok your answer is even more confusing.
Basically, your line is not a 384kb/s (kilo bytes per second) line as you state, it's a 384kbps (kilo bits per second). However, the speedtest results are in kilo Bytes per second. So you have to convert 384 kilo BITS per second to the equivalent kilo BYTES per second to get an idea of whether your download speeds is reasonable for your line speed.
Hence:
384 kilo bits per second / 8.192 = 46.875 kB/s or your 46.9kB/s above.
So you see that your 55.6 kilobytes / second is BETTER than the 46.9 which should be the norm?
So the PM to Gian is actually not needed me think? You agree?

 

[Fiekus]

p.s. went to that link and read through it again and it makes sense now... sorry for confusion... either our ISP's are trying to look good or they just use different figures than speedtest.net

sorry, was still typing my reply when you posted.

 

[d7e7r7]

LOL ok your answer is even more confusing.
Basically, your line is not a 384kb/s (kilo bytes per second) line as you state, it's a 384kbps (kilo bits per second). However, the speedtest results are in kilo Bytes per second. So you have to convert 384 kilo BITS per second to the equivalent kilo BYTES per second to get an idea of whether your download speeds is reasonable for your line speed.
Hence:
384 kilo bits per second / 8.192 = 46.875 kB/s or your 46.9kB/s above.
So you see that your 55.6 kilobytes / second is BETTER than the 46.9 which should be the norm?
So the PM to Gian is actually not needed me think? You agree?

Agreed, was confused....

 

[Lightscribe]

I did read the posts - to which Gian's reply attests. You should have read my post more carefully before jumping in with such a terse, inconsequential post. Does the fact that it was my 1st post somehow make my reading or commenting inferior to those of someone who made thousands? I fully comprehend what is happening. It is also important for Gian/Afrihost to tidy up their loose ends quickly, otherwise their longterm viability is going to be under threat once the initial euphoria about the cheaper bandwidth has wilted.

To be clear: Afrihost did not cap my account once the monthly limit was reached. They should have done so according to their T&C. Their oversight caused a huge bandwidth overrun of almost 70% into my 5 GB allocation for the following month. This is not acceptable at all, and all the spin in the world, however well intended, is not going to change that. To make matters worse, Gian/Afrihost now simply wants to change their T&C to make the problem disappear.

You are correct, in that I may have been quick to judge you, since you chose a nick that suggests "A speech of violent denunciation"...

It being your first post, also further entrenched in my mind, the idea that you were simply an alt, created specifically to be able to troll or flame.

My humblest apologies if I was wrong in my assumption.

Let's revise...

@Gian:

In your response, you are sending the proverbial straw man up in flames. We all like - very much so - what you have done shaking down the ADSL prices the way you did, but your explanation as to why you charge for run-on bandwidth usage instead of hard-capping it, is contrary even to your own terms of service - from which I quote verbatim but for the original usage figures:

[...] "We calculated that you have a total of 1 GB bandwidth (including all of your additional TopUp Bundles purchased) available for this period and have used a total of 1 GB so far.

What does this mean for you?

Once you have reached 100% your account will become unusable until the 1st of next month. To avoid having your account suspended, please login to your Client Zone and purchase a TopUp Bundle." [...]

It looks as if you are quite willing to introduce such changes on the fly - all of which are not necessarily good or welcome. Changing tack this easy does bode ill for the future. Personally, I prefer to be hard-capped once my monthly bandwidth allocation has been reached.

You wrote the above, mentioning the T&C, but Gian did mention, a few posts before yours, that IS does not send radius server stats to them every minute. You say you are aware of what's going on, but then do not give them time to get the details into their paperwork.

They are constantly, as Gian has said, editing their info, in order to make you, the client, happy.

I felt you were simply trying to be troublesome, over an issue that was already explained.

Hey Everyone

Thanks for detailing your concerns regarding your caps and bandwidth usage.

I will try and explain how the bandwidth system works and why depending on your previous months usage there may be less of your cap available to you this month.

As you know we supply our bandwidth through IS. They send the bandwidth usage stats from their radius server to us at various intervals throughout the day. They cannot unfortunately send us this report every minute though. This means that our bandwidth reporting in the client zone is not instant - we receive the information and then process it and apply it to our clients.

This means that in effect you will probably only be capped after you have moved some data OVER your cap due to the time delay in which they report to us.

As you know we charge R29/GB of traffic you move. All the traffic you move is added to your account - Thus if you have moved extra data over and above your cap this month that amount will be carried over to the following month which will mean that you have slightly less of your cap this month because you used it last month.

Here is an example:

Let's assume that you have a 10GB account with us at R290 per month.

You are nearing your cap and you reach 9,97 GB as we process the latest data we receive from IS. You are still under your cap so obviously or system allows you to keep going.

In between the time we receive the reports from IS you move another 0,2 GB. When we receive the next traffic report our system picks up that you have now moved 10,17 GB so far for the month which is 0,17 GB over your 10GB limit. Our system now caps you for the month.

Thus when the next month starts you will have already used 0,17 GB's over and above your allowed cap from the previous month and this will be added to the current month's usage. Thus your remaining cap for the new month will be 9,83 GB in this example (10 less 0,17).

This same rationale applies to top ups. i.e. if you used the 10,17 GB's, was capped and then bought a 1 GB top up, the extra 0,17GB you had already made use of would be included as traffic already moved and subtracted from your 1 GB top-up.

If you are worried about going over your cap and having this carry over to the next month my suggestion is to watch out for the email and SMS notification we send you letting you know when you are reaching the end of your cap and then monitor your traffic in Client Zone.

I promise you that we are in no way sharing accounts nor will you ever pay for traffic that you don't move.

I hope this helps?

Thanks

At least you are now again aware, as will be anyone else, that we were all informed in post number 18, that we need to keep an eye on our usage, by means of sms and email notifications.

At R29/GB, that's not much to ask.

The amount of data that that you go over your cap, is irrelevant, since one can easily go gigs over the limit, if on a 4Mbps line.

 

[MyWorld]

Without the math, an easy rule of thumb or guide to keep handy:
384 ADSL line = +/- 46 kB/s
512 ADSL line = +/- 52 kB/s
4 Meg ADSL line = +/- 422 kB/s