Afrihost Uncapped ADSL Feedback (Pt2)

[KinsZA]

So in essences we as customers should give them how long exactly to fix this. I don't know all the technical thing that goes into running an ISP and I don't want to know. All I know is I as the customer pay for a service and EXPECT that service. Its the ISP's problem how they supply that service. All uncapped customers gave them A month worth of payments and got nothing in return. Is this a charity or what.

I'm saying that things move as fast as they can.

Lets say for example that it takes 3 months to get extra IPC capacity (which is what seems to be needed) now remember they don't control this process. If they come to us and say "Ok we've optimised our network as much as we can and have applied for extra capacity" what would you do ?
Would it be their fault for how long it takes for the capacity to get here ? What if they get told 2 weeks by the people providing them and it turns out to 2 months, that because afrihosts fault because they stated times or they will get accused of lying.

They know things are bad and the potential to lose clients is there, they have said they are working on it, if they genuinely dont have times (Which seems the case) are they supposed to make one up and hope it works ?

 

[Leatherman]

Youre paying for uncapped and the ability to be shaped. I do agree that afrihost should give us a timeframe as to when they think the problem will be sorted. I am having no problems actually (in regards to shaping) but i think more IPC is definitely needed in the northern region then.

There is shaping and there is shaping. It seems people are getting shaped to a worthless connection.

 

[AfriMan]

Why is it people cannot understand events that happen, everyone seems to act as if any ISP just has one huge pool of bandwidth that they can take from at will. Nothing about how the IPC's bandwidth assignment may affect them for example.

Should a business really purchase say 25% extra capacity that never gets used just in case they get a subscriber influx ? How do you think Afrihost paying more than they need to would affect subscribers after all they cant run at a loss.

To all you people who are moaning about how much you hate afrihost why not just get off the network so you can complain somewhere else and free it up for the rest of us.

Thanks for this post. Capacity is expensive and is the biggest factor in pricing. Even having "unlit' capacity is extremely expensive. At the end of the day, those costs would have to be passed onto clients to make it viable.

We do track usage very carefully and our management are always making sure that our network performance is maintained at a certain level in terms of available capacity and the amount of traffic we see from clients. Ordering additional capacity is a long term process, and there is no quick fix to get Telkom to throw in more IPC. Also, we have to carefully do our calculations on the ongoing costs of having additional capacity. It takes time, is my point here.

I guess I understand why people are frustrated and feel the need to complain, and it is their right. But I'm glad the some also understand that we are doing everything possible to deliver a good experience under the circumstances and our intentions are really to put our clients first

 

[PearlJam]

Something strange for me. There is a good couple of websites that doesn't open for me on my Afrihost account. I tried various browsers and even the tablet. When I switch to 3G on the tablet then it works perfectly.

 

[AfriMan]

There is shaping and there is shaping. It seems people are getting shaped to a worthless connection.

That cannot be due to shaping, unless they are still trying to run multiple services and torrents while shaped.

We've tested shaping extensively before implementing it and we've proven, as many have experienced, that you get excellent (full speed) real time services even on the most severe shaping policy.

Have you checked for any line issues as well?

 

[wez1007]

ADSL seems to be up again in KZN

 

[AfriMan]

Something strange for me. There is a good couple of websites that doesn't open for me on my Afrihost account. I tried various browsers and even the tablet. When I switch to 3G on the tablet then it works perfectly.

It's hard to diagnose these issues when we're having problems on the network. It may be an issue on our DSL network due to the current errors

 

[Leatherman]

I'm saying that things move as fast as they can.

Lets say for example that it takes 3 months to get extra IPC capacity (which is what seems to be needed) now remember they don't control this process. If they come to us and say "Ok we've optimised our network as much as we can and have applied for extra capacity" what would you do ?
Would it be their fault for how long it takes for the capacity to get here ? What if they get told 2 weeks by the people providing them and it turns out to 2 months, that because afrihosts fault because they stated times or they will get accused of lying.

They know things are bad and the potential to lose clients is there, they have said they are working on it, if they genuinely dont have times (Which seems the case) are they supposed to make one up and hope it works ?

And I maintain this is not a Charity. I do manufacturing and if I don't supply I don't get paid Period. Here you are getting paid before people even use the product. Therein lay the problem (sorry we could not supply you with the product we promised Live with it)

Also If that is in fact the case that the can not fix the problems with their network, they should get into another line of business. If it is users circumventing shaping and raping the network find them and kick them off the network.

 

[Velenoso]

What is happening with Afrihost today? Our mail is not connecting at all. Internet is working intermittently and slow when it is working. Afrihost mobile is not working AT ALL.

Is there a problem with the network? I am at this point seriously considering cancelling my entire account with you, this is costing us money.

 

[grim]

I guess I understand why people are frustrated and feel the need to complain, and it is their right. But I'm glad the some also understand that we are doing everything possible to deliver a good experience under the circumstances and our intentions are really to put our clients first

4 weeks is getting a bit long to be having the same issues day in day out don't you think?

My connection was so badly shaped last night that I couldn't download a 60MB OS update to my phone over my 10Mb ADSL line, I had to switch to my Vodacom 3G router to download it and app updates on my phone have also been failing to download via my ADSL for the past couple of weeks and these tend to be 1-3MB in size.

The shaping last night lasted till after 23:00, while I understand that you need to shape users to give everyone fair access to the network it is ridiculous to shape 10Mb clients so much that their HTTP downloads run at 13kB/s, that's less than 1.5% of line speed.

 

[wez1007]

And I maintain this is not a Charity. I do manufacturing and if I don't supply I don't get paid Period. Here you are getting paid before people even use the product. Therein lay the problem (sorry we could not supply you with the product we promised Live with it)

Also If that is in fact the case that the can not fix the problems with their network, they should get into another line of business. If it is users circumventing shaping and raping the network find them and kick them off the network.

If you aren't happy, take your business elsewhere. you agreed to their AUP and Terms and conditions by signing up with AH.

 

[MrGray]

Something strange for me. There is a good couple of websites that doesn't open for me on my Afrihost account. I tried various browsers and even the tablet. When I switch to 3G on the tablet then it works perfectly.

Same here - most local news sites not working iol, news24, 2oceansvibe, dispatch, etc.

 

[grim]

If you aren't happy, take your business elsewhere. you agreed to their AUP and Terms and conditions by signing up with AH.

So getting less than 1.5% of what you are paying for is acceptable then?

Imagine if you were to go to a restaurant and order and pay for a 300g steak and they give you a 4.5g steak, would you be happy?

 

[AfriMan]

We're seeing traffic pick up substantially in KZN now, and we're confident we've sorted this issue out, but we'll keep monitoring to make sure we're on top of it.

I'm seeing reports on social media of authentication and packet loss on Johannesburg in Pretoria. This seems to be sporadic and not generally the case, but we are still investigating these and troubleshooting to see if this is related or not.

Mobile Data is fully restored now, so there should be no issues connecting.

Thanks for being patient while we worked on this. It's not quite over yet, but I think we're seeing the silver lining behind the cloud finally

 

[PearlJam]

I see the free 1GB capped data at least works properly for browsing for me

 

[Leatherman]

If you aren't happy, take your business elsewhere. you agreed to their AUP and Terms and conditions by signing up with AH.

I for one will. At the moment they are also guilty of selling something they can not supply. And yes this is legal stealing in my eyes as you can hide behind a AUP. DON'T SELL SOMETHING YOU DON'T HAVE TO SELL. I left Mweb for this very same reason.

 

[b1scu1t]

Something strange for me. There is a good couple of websites that doesn't open for me on my Afrihost account. I tried various browsers and even the tablet. When I switch to 3G on the tablet then it works perfectly.

Same here, it seems that I'm unable to open many international websites. Two different Afrihost accounts

 

[any14]

right now AH international bw is almost dead for me (on port 80!)

 

[Reaper1242]

Thanks for this post. Capacity is expensive and is the biggest factor in pricing. Even having "unlit' capacity is extremely expensive. At the end of the day, those costs would have to be passed onto clients to make it viable.

We do track usage very carefully and our management are always making sure that our network performance is maintained at a certain level in terms of available capacity and the amount of traffic we see from clients. Ordering additional capacity is a long term process, and there is no quick fix to get Telkom to throw in more IPC. Also, we have to carefully do our calculations on the ongoing costs of having additional capacity. It takes time, is my point here.

I guess I understand why people are frustrated and feel the need to complain, and it is their right. But I'm glad the some also understand that we are doing everything possible to deliver a good experience under the circumstances and our intentions are really to put our clients first

I think the issue is that you say you're doing everything possible but since we can't see any results it's as good as nothing. The way it looks from the customer point of view is that it has lasted x amount of weeks and it is not improving. Since we have no information on a resolution we're basically in a tunnel with light at the end.
We saw denial that it was a capacity issue and now it seems it is. So yes, we are frustrated.
So of course we'll get frustrated.

 

[KinsZA]

And I maintain this is not a Charity. I do manufacturing and if I don't supply I don't get paid Period. Here you are getting paid before people even use the product.

What happens if your suppliers of the materials needed had a problem factory blew up ship sank whatever, now your customers want their product however you are unable to get what you need to actually provide it.

What do you do ?