Afrihost - to much too soon?

[guest2013-1]

lol, this thread is funny. How about you guys go outside, find your telkom line, and use a pair of pliers to just cut your line and disconnect yourselves from the internet. I told you, it doesn't matter which ISP you're going with, they WILL shape or throttle the uncapped accounts when there isn't enough capacity.

Now go cry softly into a pillow and stop bitching about it. Either you pay for unshaped or unthrottled CAPPED lines, or you have an uncapped line you can download as much as you'd like, but with a shaping and throttling rule that dictates how fast you can do it in

 

[whatwhat]

lol, this thread is funny. How about you guys go outside, find your telkom line, and use a pair of pliers to just cut your line and disconnect yourselves from the internet. I told you, it doesn't matter which ISP you're going with, they WILL shape or throttle the uncapped accounts when there isn't enough capacity.

Now go cry softly into a pillow and stop bitching about it. Either you pay for unshaped or unthrottled CAPPED lines, or you have an uncapped line you can download as much as you'd like, but with a shaping and throttling rule that dictates how fast you can do it in

Or you just pay for an uncapped unshaped Business account. Good, decent internet in South Africa isn't for poor people - if you want that move to a first world country.

 

[AfriGuy]

I was having some Youtube issues the other day as well. Was struggling to stream 720p when I can normally stream 1080p. Was also getting ridiculously high latency to the local speed test servers, something like 300ms :/ Need to actually retest when I get home to see if it's improved.

Concerning to see that YouTube streaming isn't up to scratch For the guys having issues, please send me through a PM with your info and I'll get this looked into ASAP.

 

[milomak]

the business uncapped account is....the business

 

[xera]

Sad thing is, plain uncapped also used to be "the business", till about a month ago.

 

[Pixual]

having had capped and uncapped I have to disagree, especially as my usage is pretty variable on a month to month basis, some months I wouldn't use my entire cap (and so lose the data I'd paid for) other months I'd have to top up a couple of times. Uncapped is less hassles and no need to worry about suddenly having to top up

If I had uncapped on my 6140/644 line I would have to pay R797 a month to make full use of my line speed. On my new package I can get full unshaped speed and 30GB's a month for R129. If I don't use it, so what? It costs less than what I spend on coffee in a month.

 

[Segg]

Concerning to see that YouTube streaming isn't up to scratch For the guys having issues, please send me through a PM with your info and I'll get this looked into ASAP.

I was having massive YouTube problems for the past 2 weeks regarding the buffering, but lately it's been flying again, guess I was so use to mweb I didn't take anything of it

 

[The Thug]

I've used 45Gb so far this month and I'm currently 75% shaped.

 

[AfriMan]

I've used 45Gb so far this month and I'm currently 75% shaped.

We're sorry that we've had to shape as much as we have recently. We're pushing the network beyond our comfort zone, to try and give the best experience and deliver the max capacity that we can to Uncapped users.

Remember that shaping is not about total usage, we analyse usage patterns to project how many users need to be shaped, and we try to shape the least number of users to the least extent to bring demand in line with capacity. If that demand is very excessive, then the number of users is higher than we like to see. When the demand decreases, we give back more capacity (by relaxing shaping) so that we always give our clients the full benefit of the network's capacity.

 

[AfriMan]

I was having massive YouTube problems for the past 2 weeks regarding the buffering, but lately it's been flying again, guess I was so use to mweb I didn't take anything of it

We have pushed the network hard to deliver a better experience under the circumstances. We believe that flawless real time services, with shaping, is much better than throttling or firing clients for being excessive users.

 

[BluntMalunt]

You know what... After reading through all the forum posts... It seems that all of the uncapped ISP's seem to be struggling. Yes we can all logically point to the fact that a lot of upset MWEB customers left and joined other ISP's but the reality of the matter is that - More and more people are moving over to uncapped services in South Africa because of streaming demands, smart phone demands etc.. With this in light the only way ISP's could still deliver the same uncapped experience in terms of the amount downloaded etc would be if Telkom reduced the price of IPC accordingly (price per Gb that the ISP's pay) - Which they have not done - In that its only logical the ISP's are going to have to use smarter bandwidth management processes and unfortunatley shape and throttle to secure that everyone on their network gets a fair share of the pie. Or... As I noticed with AH and MWEB.. People upgrade their packages and pay more ;P bwehehe - Through it all - The common enemy here is Telkom. We need to start a thread where all the users here on the MyBB community take on Telkom to reduce IPC prices and to introduce Naked ADSL and stop bitching about this company throttling and that company shaping because at the end of the day Shaping and Throttling is going to stay unless IPC pricing comes down.

 

[Paul Hjul]

You know what... After reading through all the forum posts... It seems that all of the uncapped ISP's seem to be struggling. Yes we can all logically point to the fact that a lot of upset MWEB customers left and joined other ISP's but the reality of the matter is that - More and more people are moving over to uncapped services in South Africa because of streaming demands, smart phone demands etc.. With this in light the only way ISP's could still deliver the same uncapped experience in terms of the amount downloaded etc would be if Telkom reduced the price of IPC accordingly (price per Gb that the ISP's pay) - Which they have not done - In that its only logical the ISP's are going to have to use smarter bandwidth management processes and unfortunatley shape and throttle to secure that everyone on their network gets a fair share of the pie. Or... As I noticed with AH and MWEB.. People upgrade their packages and pay more ;P bwehehe - Through it all - The common enemy here is Telkom. We need to start a thread where all the users here on the MyBB community take on Telkom to reduce IPC prices and to introduce Naked ADSL and stop bitching about this company throttling and that company shaping because at the end of the day Shaping and Throttling is going to stay unless IPC pricing comes down.

Nope on so many levels:

Telkom's IPC costing is too high but it is constantly coming down and it isn't charged in "price per Gb that the ISP's pay" it is priced in capacity. The ISPs need to manage their networks properly - Afrihost generally do a good job, at the moment their is some strain but all and all they are a responsive service provider. The bandwidth resale model doesn't make "capping" all that good an idea and measures to manage demand are always required on a contended service which DSL inherently is.

Naked DSL is nothing more and nothing less than a situation where copper can be rented for DSL purposes only without a voice component. Naked DSL should be possible and I am sure that all of the larger ISPs - especially Telkom Internet - would actually like Naked DSL as the requirement to be a voice line subscriber is a barrier to entry.

Even if IPC cost nothing there would be network management and shaping would be used to manage international connectivity.

 

[stevenv]

Why, when you offer 50GB capped for R199 which is the same price as 1mbps uncapped, do you throttle me to 75% on the latter when I've only used 10GB and my projected usage is 34GB? Feels like you're harshly punishing your uncapped users just because they're uncapped. Do you actually take usage into account and compare it to your other packages? Or are you trying to get out of the uncapped business?

 

[Paul Hjul]

they don't throttle you. They apply heavier shaping on your non-realtime traffic - which unfortunately is seeming to have very deleterious implications for youtube - in order to manage a contended product.


If you look at the numbers published here a while back about IPC costs Afrihost isn't making money on their higher capped products and it isn't a market where they are able to make money. I strongly suspect that the balancing act that they are really having problems with is a small pool of clients who are circumventing network management measures - and once it is established that they are circumventing network management you can claim abuse, as opposed to simply on the quantum downloaded - which have swam over with the crowd leaving MWEB. I suspect that all and all Afrihost have been a net winner of MWEBs nonsense but there are a few network challenges which MWEB couldn't address (finding actual abuse) and which they need to accomplish to get things going.

 

[stevenv]

they don't throttle you. They apply heavier shaping on your non-realtime traffic - which unfortunately is seeming to have very deleterious implications for youtube - in order to manage a contended product.

Shaping or throttling, technicalities to me. What I'm annoyed about is that they're selling an uncapped package that will be 25% shaped after using just 20% of what you can get on an equivalently priced capped package. Unless the capped packages aren't really "unshaped" as they advertise.