Afrihost support not understanding

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Nic_s

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Hi

I need some advice from the community on how to communicate my issue to Afrihost support agents.

First off:
1. I have a 4mb uncapped account with Afrihost.
2. There is nothing wrong with my line or connection. Everything is working as intended.
3. In general, I don't care that my account is being shaped. I knew what I was getting when I signed up.

The problem:
Shaping is effecting some games, but I was told that shaping would not do this and for 99% of the time it isn't. Right now I'm being shaped to death and CSGO, Red Orchestra, War Thunder, ect... all working perfectly fine. No issues.

However, I've recently found this game, Heroes and Generals. I really like it, but it's VERY hard to get to work because of shaping. Late at night when shaping is lifted... no problem... game runs 100% fine, but during the day and early evenings the game can only manage to pull about 13kb/s on average which is the exact same as, for example, torrents. I spent hours testing this... it is definitely tied to shaping.


So I do some reading and find a list of ports the game needs to run properly on the official site. I type up a nice message explaining the issue and ask if Afrihost can check this for me and also included the ports list with a link to the official site.

All I want from Afrihost is to know if anything can be done about this or not.


I thought the request was quite simple... but no... apparently it isn't.

The first thing I tried was to activate Turbocharge on my account... that was a nice waste of 60min since it made no difference. However, the first response I got from Afrihost was that they could see I used turbocharge and they assumed my problem was fixed and told me to have a nice day. Note... I send the support ticket almost an hour after I activated turbocharge. So I send an email back explaining that turbocharge did not fix the issue ect.

Then I get an email from a different person... you know that email, that nice generic email explaining how and what speedtests to run so they can see if there is anything wrong with my connection. I did not once mention that there is anything wrong with my connection. It was all working fine, except for shaping having an effect on this particular game. Send all the port info again.

This time I get an email from another different person explaining how Afrihost can't unblocked the ports since they do not block them. Again, nowhere did I ever mention anything about blocked ports. So again I send an email back explaining that I know the ports are not blocked and that was not what I was asking.

Then nothing for a day. Got an email late last night from ANOTHER different person. In short, I should get a capped account if I don't like the shaping.



Now, I'm a software developer and I've been doing this for years now, but I don't know exactly how the back end of ISP's work. So some info here would be nice so I have a better understanding of what goes on. I'm here to learn.

I'm hoping someone here might know how I can get this fixed since this is not he first game to be effected by shaping. If I can't then that's OK too, but so far Afrihost doesn't seem to get it and as such I have no real answers. Afrihost did say that gaming would not be effected by shaping, so I want to at least try. So far... no progress has been made at all because not a single person at Afrihost seems to have read my emails properly... which happens EVERY time I contact support (of any ISP) about something.
 
Last edited:
If turbocharge didn't sort your issue, it's not a shaping problem.
 
Nic_s said:
Hi

I need some advice from the community on how to communicate my issue to Afrihost support agents.

First off:
1. I have a 4mb uncapped account with Afrihost.
2. There is nothing wrong with my line or connection. Everything is working as intended.
3. In general, I don't care that my account is being shaped. I knew what I was getting when I signed up.

The problem:
Shaping is effecting some games, but I was told that shaping would not do this and for 99% of the time it isn't. Right now I'm being shaped to death and CSGO, Red Orchestra, War Thunder, ect... all working perfectly fine. No issues.

However, I've recently found this game, Heroes and Generals. I really like it, but it's VERY hard to get to work because of shaping. Late at night when shaping is lifted... no problem... game runs 100% fine, but during the day and early evenings the game can only manage to pull about 13kb/s on average which is the exact same as, for example, torrents. I spent hours testing this... it is definitely tied to shaping.


So I do some reading and find a list of ports the game needs to run properly on the official site. I type up a nice message explaining the issue and ask if Afrihost can check this for me and also included the ports list with a link to the official site.

All I want from Afrihost is to know if anything can be done about this or not.


I thought the request was quite simple... but no... apparently it isn't.

The first thing I tried was to activate Turbocharge on my account... that was a nice waste of 60min since it made no difference. However, the first response I got from Afrihost was that they could see I used turbocharge and they assumed my problem was fixed and told me to have a nice day. Note... I send the support ticket almost an hour after I activated turbocharge. So I send an email back explaining that turbocharge did not fix the issue ect.

Then I get an email from a different person... you know that email, that nice generic email explaining how and what speedtests to run so they can see if there is anything wrong with my connection. I did not once mention that there is anything wrong with my connection. It was all working fine, except for shaping having an effect on this particular game. Send all the port info again.

This time I get an email from another different person explaining how Afrihost can't unblocked the ports since they do not block them. Again, nowhere did I ever mention anything about blocked ports. So again I send an email back explaining that I know the ports are not blocked and that was not what I was asking.

Then nothing for a day. Got an email late last night from ANOTHER different person. In short, I should get a capped account if I don't like the shaping.



Now, I'm a software developer and I've been doing this for years now, but I don't know exactly how the back end of ISP's work. So some info here would be nice so I have a better understanding of what goes on. I'm here to learn.

I'm hoping someone here might know how I can get this fixed since this is not he first game to be effected by shaping. If I can't then that's OK too, but so far Afrihost doesn't seem to get it and as such I have no real answers. Afrihost did say that gaming would not be effected by shaping, so I want to at least try. So far... no progress has been made at all because not a single person at Afrihost seems to have read my emails properly... which happens EVERY time I contact support (of any ISP) about something.
Click to expand...

Sorry that you're having this confusing experience. I am always here to help, so you are definitely welcome to PM me so we can work through this.

As someone posted here, if you ran turbocharge and this did not change performance, then shaping may not be the issue. We'd need to look at the exact time when you feel that the experience lifts or improves and how that relates to any changes in your account and on our network. We should also run further tests to determine whether you get a different experience testing at the same time of the day with a shaped and unshaped account.

Please PM me and let's get those tests started so we can pin point exactly what is happening.
 
Traceroute to the server perhaps.

Get a WA 2GB free account and set up your router to half bridge mode if you can. Run a PPPoE connection from your windows networking panel and use that connection for gaming. AH has intl issues with gaming intermittently for the last months, try a better backbone (lower pings too). All you have to do then is activate the connection and close it after you're done.

The other options which i've found to add about 25ms of latency (but extremely stable) is to use a VPN to a SA provider.
 
Well, for all I know turbocharge only lifts certain restrictions/shaping. I don't know how it's setup to work. Turbocharge makes torrents go faster which is all fine and well, but the game might be different and thus not effected by turbocharge.

The first time I got this issue I wanted to submit a ticket, but since I didn't really understand how all this works I figured it wouldn't be worth the effort and just stopped playing the game.

I write boring end user software for a living. I never work or deal with network setups ect. and as such don't know how throttling is implemented exactly. Tried some googling, but I keep ending up on articles on how to setup throttling on some high end router or switch which doesn't tell me anything about how ISP's might be doing it or how I can tell if certain ports are effected or not.

Ultimately, all I wanted was for Afrihost to check if shaping is effecting the ports the game needs to run smoothly and if anything can or can not be done about it. But since I could not get them to do this I now want to try and learn more about throttling and how it works, specifically how ISP's do it, so in the future I might be able to explain such issues better and hopefully get somewhere when I submit a support ticket.


Somewhat off topic, and has nothing to to with Afrihost, but I moved from WebAfrica to Afrihost because the support agents at WebAfrica just did not understand that the shaping was so bad that I could not even get onto the support website during the day. They insisted that the problem was Telkom and Telkom kept insisting that it was WebAfrica. I would sit and look at my trafiic meter jump from 5kb/s to 200kb/s (2mb line at the time) at 12AM exactly and then I could access any site with no issues, but still WebAfrica said that it wasn't their throttling. Use another account and had no issues, but still WebAfrica insisted that it wasn't the shaping that was causing the issues on my account. I spent countless hours jumping through hoops for them doing all kinds of speed tests that took up to 5min just to complete the download test while the upload test run within seconds and ping was perfect. I even made videos and loaded onto youtube so they could see how the speedtests struggled.

This is just an example where if I knew more I might have been able to get through to the agents at WebAfrica... who knows.


Like I said, the game and torrents seem to run or not in sync with one another. Meaning that during day when torrents are super slow, which is perfectly fine, then the game also struggles. Late and night when shaping is lifter and torrents fly, the game also works perfectly fine. Obviously I don't run torrents and the game at the same time... I might not know how all this throttling business works, but I'm not stupid either.

Link to the game in question:
http://www.heroesandgenerals.com/

Link to ports used by the game:
http://www.heroesandgenerals.com/community/game/faq#q26

Is there a way for me to test if these ports are effected by shaping or does Afrihost need to check it?? If the ports are effect by shaping and Afrihost can't do anything about it then that's fine and I will just have to live with it or stop playing the game, but I would at the very least have Afrihost give me a proper answer instead of suggesting I should move over to a capped account...
 
Timber_MG said:
Traceroute to the server perhaps.

Get a WA 2GB free account and set up your router to half bridge mode if you can. Run a PPPoE connection from your windows networking panel and use that connection for gaming. AH has intl issues with gaming intermittently for the last months, try a better backbone (lower pings too). All you have to do then is activate the connection and close it after you're done.

The other options which i've found to add about 25ms of latency (but extremely stable) is to use a VPN to a SA provider.
Click to expand...


Really appreciate the info, but I only kinda understand what you said... ;)
Will do some googling when I'm home this evening after work and do a trace route.
 
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Just to check, you're not torrenting whilst gaming? Torrents typically have far too many simultaneous connections going which causes all manner of issues in networking, but you don't want a your gaming session to be one of say 100 connections.
 
Sinbad said:
Turbocharge removes all shaping.
Click to expand...

Yes... that's what they say... but I myself have often told end users something to just get them stop second guessing the software so they would just use it since they don't need to know about how it works in the back end and even if I explained it they would not understand it. However if they run into a issue that should not be happening, I go and check it and make 100% sure and give them a proper answer. Even if it's a hardware issue that I have nothing to do with, I would tell them that it looks like it might be a hardware issue so they at least know where to look for the issue next and thus ruling out the software. That's called process of elimination.
 
Timber_MG said:
Just to check, you're not torrenting whilst gaming? Torrents typically have far too many simultaneous connections going which causes all manner of issues in networking, but you don't want a your gaming session to be one of say 100 connections.
Click to expand...

Nope. I often run torrents while gaming at the same time as I limit the download rate and I don't have issues with it, but with this I have been turning off torrents when I run the game just to be sure.
 
Nic_s said:
Yes... that's what they say... but I myself have often told end users something to just get them stop second guessing the software so they would just use it since they don't need to know about how it works in the back end and even if I explained it they would not understand it. However if they run into a issue that should not be happening, I go and check it and make 100% sure and give them a proper answer. Even if it's a hardware issue that I have nothing to do with, I would tell them that it looks like it might be a hardware issue so they at least know where to look for the issue next and thus ruling out the software. That's called process of elimination.
Click to expand...

Turbocharge removes ALL shaping, as evidenced by your torrents' performance when you turbocharge.
 
Nic_s said:
Nope. I often run torrents while gaming at the same time as I limit the download rate and I don't have issues with it, but with this I have been turning off torrents when I run the game just to be sure.
Click to expand...

Bad idea to have any torrents run alongside real time services unless you have QoS in place.
 
Sinbad said:
Turbocharge removes ALL shaping, as evidenced by your torrents' performance when you turbocharge.
Click to expand...

Yes, it's suppose too, but since I don't know how it works (And probably never will, which is perfectly fine since I don't have to know), I can't be 100% sure. BUT Afrihost can double check it and be 100% sure and give me a proper answer.

ALL I want is for Afrihost to do a proper check. Telling me turbocharge removes ALL shaping without making 100% sure is essentially an assumption and assumptions in any software is what gets you screwed... I know this all to well.
 
Timber_MG said:
Bad idea to have any torrents run alongside real time services unless you have QoS in place.
Click to expand...

Me and my brother can game CSGO while a torrent runs at 200kb/s with no loss in ping. That doesn't mean it's a good idea, but I'm OK with it since I have no negative effects. If I do I switch it off.
 
Just try a free account. You don't need Afrihost to answer, just test with their 1GB free account (same for WA)
 
Afrihost clientzone and the WA one you register (I think you have to add a credit card but it doesn't get charged unless you top up or buy products)
 
Timber_MG said:
Afrihost clientzone and the WA one you register (I think you have to add a credit card but it doesn't get charged unless you top up or buy products)
Click to expand...

Was looking all over and then realized I need to add it like I would any other dsl package. Added it and will test this evening.

Thank you.
 
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