Afrihost - Really had enough....

P

PaulB_

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Hi All.

Posting this, as I am really fed up Afrihost's performance.

I switched to them from Telkom as they were the cheapest for 10mb uncapped , and reviews were usually above average, and I was extremely unhappy with Telkom's uncapped fair use limit.

When I pay for an uncapped product, I want a truly uncapped product.

While I do have internet access, I have had non stop issues, since I stay in student housing, I share my internet connection with a few other house-mates, (5 others), I have had issues such as shaping, pages timing out, and sometimes pages just don't load at all, I have frequent issues with loading Facebook, sometimes it won't at all, or sometimes it loads up extremely slowly, where as other websites load fine, in an effort to improve service I upgraded to the R797 10mb account, on top of my sky high Telkom Line Rental, in a last ditch effort to improve performance, and none of the issues subsided at all, it has gotten to the point where I'm going to see this month through, and move to another ISP.

Does anyone know of any ISPs which are affordable, which offer reliable uncapped 10mb ADSL, with no, or minimal shaping? If Telkom didn't have such a stingy fair use policy, I would never have left them.:cry:
 
Dan C said:
Uncapped.. that's your problem.
Click to expand...

But still, things have never been this bad, I have noticed now that I was unable to download any torrent, until I connected to a VPN, funny enough the same thing happened at work on another machine earlier today, however they are with Cybersmart.

Do Cybersmart, and Afrihost use the SAIX, or IS backbone?
 
All the lower-end (cheaper) home products gets shaped on all the ISPs.

I'm on the business uncapped package and it's fast and unshapped all the time as far as I can tell.

I've never tried the premium one.

Edit: their site explains it:

1 - Bandwidth:
Home Uncapped packages have a monthly threshold after which, your speeds could be subject to throttling if the network is under strain.
Premium and Business Uncapped packages have no usage thresholds.

2 - Shaping:
Home Uncapped packages are subject to throttling should a user have reached their monthly threshold and our network is under strain.
Premium Uncapped packages are not subject to throttling or monthly thresholds, and will enjoy full speed real-time services under all normal circumstances, but may be subject to shaping of downloads should the network be under strain. Business Uncapped packages are not subject to throttling, shaping or monthly thresholds - but do however come with a user controllable feature via ClientZone to prioritise non-p2p traffic on their account to ensure business-critical services always get the highest priority.
 
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PaulB_ said:
Hi All.

Posting this, as I am really fed up Afrihost's performance.

I switched to them from Telkom as they were the cheapest for 10mb uncapped , and reviews were usually above average, and I was extremely unhappy with Telkom's uncapped fair use limit.

When I pay for an uncapped product, I want a truly uncapped product.

While I do have internet access, I have had non stop issues, since I stay in student housing, I share my internet connection with a few other house-mates, (5 others), I have had issues such as shaping, pages timing out, and sometimes pages just don't load at all, I have frequent issues with loading Facebook, sometimes it won't at all, or sometimes it loads up extremely slowly, where as other websites load fine, in an effort to improve service I upgraded to the R797 10mb account, on top of my sky high Telkom Line Rental, in a last ditch effort to improve performance, and none of the issues subsided at all, it has gotten to the point where I'm going to see this month through, and move to another ISP.

Does anyone know of any ISPs which are affordable, which offer reliable uncapped 10mb ADSL, with no, or minimal shaping? If Telkom didn't have such a stingy fair use policy, I would never have left them.:cry:
Click to expand...

Interesting.
 
PaulB_ said:
Hi All.

Posting this, as I am really fed up Afrihost's performance.

I switched to them from Telkom as they were the cheapest for 10mb uncapped , and reviews were usually above average, and I was extremely unhappy with Telkom's uncapped fair use limit.

When I pay for an uncapped product, I want a truly uncapped product.

While I do have internet access, I have had non stop issues, since I stay in student housing, I share my internet connection with a few other house-mates, (5 others), I have had issues such as shaping, pages timing out, and sometimes pages just don't load at all, I have frequent issues with loading Facebook, sometimes it won't at all, or sometimes it loads up extremely slowly, where as other websites load fine, in an effort to improve service I upgraded to the R797 10mb account, on top of my sky high Telkom Line Rental, in a last ditch effort to improve performance, and none of the issues subsided at all, it has gotten to the point where I'm going to see this month through, and move to another ISP.

Does anyone know of any ISPs which are affordable, which offer reliable uncapped 10mb ADSL, with no, or minimal shaping? If Telkom didn't have such a stingy fair use policy, I would never have left them.:cry:
Click to expand...

Hey PaulB

Sorry to hear about the issues :(
From the pricing you're mentioning here can I assume you're on a Premium Uncapped account?

If so, shaping works based on the overall network load and demand. But even with full shaping applied to the account only P2P and downloads will be shaped. Realtime services like browsing, streaming, VoIP etc etc are left untouched.

Having sites timeout isn't related to shaping, seems like something else is going on here.
Drop me a PM with your details and we can run through some tests to see where the issues are coming in :)
 
I heard that Axxis is doing some interesting things in the South African ISP game. I'm considering switching to them after my many, many mishaps with Telkom ADSL.
 
Dan C said:
Uncapped.. that's your problem.
Click to expand...

I agree with this. I am on a capped package with afrihost. 10 meg line and could not be happier. I use to be with Telkom and it was a nightmare.

Also, check what the other 5 people are doing on the internet? My wife can stream a movie and I can still play online game or even watch youtube without being affected on my other pc.
 
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I'm not sure it has anything to do with the ISP.

If you have two friends downloading, one watching Netflix and one watching Youtube there is a very good chance even on a 10 meg line that you are going to battle to load Facebook.

You may have to buy a router that allows you to set a 2mb/s limit for each friend if there is a heavy load on the network (basically shape your friends). I had friends doing exactly what you guys are doing and amazingly when one guy left the house all the problems went away (he was the fat kid in the candy store).

First get a free 1 gig account from any of the ISP's and use it during peak time at the house to see if the problem persists.
 
PaulB_ said:
I switched to them from Telkom as they were the cheapest for 10mb uncapped , and reviews were usually above average, and I was extremely unhappy with Telkom's uncapped fair use limit.

When I pay for an uncapped product, I want a truly uncapped product.
Click to expand...

ISPs pay about R350/Mbps for bandwidth alone, you can't afford a completely uncapped service.

...

Does anyone know of any ISPs which are affordable, which offer reliable uncapped 10mb ADSL, with no, or minimal shaping? If Telkom didn't have such a stingy fair use policy, I would never have left them.:cry:
Click to expand...

The fair usage limit on the Telkom 10Mbps uncapped, while it hasn't changed in over a year, is still relatively high.

Once we actually get the IPC price reductions (I am not sure on the exact conditions this time around; last year it took Openserve 7 months to complete our upgrades from when we ordered), we will probably increase the uncapped fair usage limits. There are also enhancements coming to the way the fair usage policy will be applied, but those are a few months away.

But, what is the nature of your traffic? If a large proportion of it is downloads of some kind that can be sceduled, you may find that the fair usage limits are adequate (traffic between midnight and 07h00 doesn't count).
 
Im on Telkom 2mb uncapped and can stream 720p no problem unless someone is downloading.:D...But when i have reached my fair use limit of 100gb i get throttled down to 0.40 mb downstream:twisted::(:mad:
 
So the automatic assumption is that its the ISP?
What are the rest of the network users doing when you are experiencing the speed problems?
Get one of them downloading torrents and kiss you bandwidth goodbye.
Do you have any form of QoS running?
Also "truly uncapped" does not exist in SA, at least not on something under R1k pm
 
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