Afrihost Uncapped ADSL Feedback (Pt2)

[AfriMan]

@ afrihost, is it cheaper for afrihost if I download my stuff locally through newshost or does it not make a difference?

Just a random question that popped into my head.

Overseas links work totally differently to IPC. On IPC ISPS have to pay Telkom for the IPC capacity as well as per GB of traffic moved.

Most international cables you pay for a "pipe" of capacity and you either use it or don't use it

Either way, we really don't mind how much data you use!

 

[saa044]

Afriman, can I get a normal 4mbps uncapped account from you for my business and request 10% p2p and 10% download from 8AM to 5PM?

 

[TomasW]

Well I am SHAPED @ 12.5% Download/ 6.25% P2P.

I love Afrihost but my user experience has gone to S**t and at the end of the day we want the service for our money and that is why I am/Was with Afrihost.

If this is not sorted out very soon I will move my account and line somewhere else.

How can you in two weeks go from great to this rubbish. Please explain!!!!

 

[AfriMan]

Can someone please help me understand what the F*** is going on...
Yesterday this time around i was syncing at 6+mbps with around 7-8db SNR... things were going well until last night when I went down to 13kB/s and everything just died out. couldn't do anything at all.
This morning it went down to about 1.2kB/s with no shaping?!
Restart everything again and now all of a sudden I'm syncing at 3.5mbps down, 0.47mbps up with below 5db SNR

When I try the "Test My Line" feature on the clientzone, under the DSLAM results it says
Max Sync Rate 640kbps
Current Downstream Sync 480kbps

Under Router Results
Max Sync Rate 7008kbps
Current Downstream Sync 3520kbps



Same traceroute results to pretty much all sites.
I have a feeling it's Telkom related

Not sure what is happening here but seems more directly related to the line than anything else. What I do see is that sometimes addresses congestion on an exchange by dropping everyone's sync rate. Might be the case.

Drop me a PM so I can check your line for you

 

[BaronZA]

Logged a support ticket last night, when it was bad, it got better around midnight.
Then I get a mail, for the ticket I logged at about 2am, they reset the line, ports, etc.
Line reset, waited for sync, then it got bad again. So yeah fixed my line that sorta got better by making it worse...

Please tell me with all the fuss on the forums how you can honestly say "network fully operational" on the Afrihost site. Kind of a blatant lie according to the data reflected here.

ALSO NOTE: To play games I have to tether my cellphone. Afrihost ping last night was 380-450ms. My cellphone on 3G was 200ms, so don't tell me it's on the game's server side.

 

[AfriMan]

Guys,

Just a general comment. We are shaping a lot more that we've had to in the past week or so, particularly over the weekend and the public holiday,

We are seeing a lot more usage that we're used to and we're trying to identify where this usage originates and if there is a way to manage the demand without affecting the overall user experience on the network.

We to many it seems that we're shaping 24/7, but it's not the case. As I've often mentioned, pretty much between midnight to about 7am, virtually everyone is unshaped again because the high demand seems to decrease.

We're trying a few things to see how we can best manage this for the best overall experience. We're still seeing a high volume of torrents and OS updates. At present just about everyone is being shaped on Uncapped to manage the latency and ensure good real-time throughput while we sort this out.

 

[AfriMan]

Logged a support ticket last night, when it was bad, it got better around midnight.
Then I get a mail, for the ticket I logged at about 2am, they reset the line, ports, etc.
Line reset, waited for sync, then it got bad again. So yeah fixed my line that sorta got better by making it worse...

Please tell me with all the fuss on the forums how you can honestly say "network fully operational" on the Afrihost site. Kind of a blatant lie according to the data reflected here.

The network is doing what it's supposed to do. It shapes downloads and torrents to manage demand. Demand is still higher than what we'd like to see, so we'll continue to shape until the demand decreases.

 

[thomascmyk]

What is the point of being unshaped between 12 and 7 am? Yes for torrents but anything else no...

 

[AfriGuy]

I tend to agree here.

This being a holiday and a lot of people using the net etc is a definite contributor, but it is becoming clear that the need for more capacity is there during the waking hours.

I would not be surprised if we receive some form of official communication to this effect.

As it stands though currently Afri would need to;
1) upgrade capacity which would mean a product cost increase,
2) change AUP perhaps to say that p2p will by default by shaped in business hours?,
3) use magic

I personally am in favour of 3...

Awaiting some form of official comms.

The network is doing what it's supposed to though - and that's shape non-essential traffic to allow realtime services to be unaffected.
This definitely isn't an IPC issue in general, or an IPC capacity issue

While the demand on our network is definitely higher than what we'd like it to be - we'll continue to shape until the demand drops off.

 

[AfriGuy]

Even if shaped, streaming is supposed to go at 100% - right?

Youtube was fine this morning, but now it's completely borked.

Streaming and other realtime services shouldn't be affected by this. If you're still having issues please drop me a PM

 

[AfriGuy]

OK, Officially tired of this shaping.

@AfriMan - Could you please organize my account to be moved to 6Mbps Business Uncapped Immediately? Not sure why I have to wait till 01-Oct-2013 for the account to be active.

Have you managed to upgrade your account yet?
If not, it's a pretty easy upgrade Just login to your ClientZone and you can edit your package there.

Shout if you get stuck!

 

[AfriGuy]

hahahaha wow, ive never waited so long for a 12mb file to be downloaded.

http://testmy.net/db/gkErUTy

also 10meg line.

But if i download from youtube, i get perfect download speeds.
View attachment 72431

Are you still seeing slow HTTP downloads? Are you shaped at all?
I think YouTube vids may download a bit quicker as it'll probably download from the source - and may be cached too.

 

[AfriGuy]

Well finally. Seems my dslam is now clear enough and I can switch to high quality twitch streaming. Problem solved...telkom tech...

That's good news, glad it wasn't anything more serious

 

[AfriGuy]

This is so much fun, I can't do anything besides stream.
I can't play games the ping is 500-2000ms spiking all the time, instead of a stable 200ms.
For the last week now, I'm doing an online install of a game, at 50kb/s and while this runs, I can't browse I can't do anything.
This is on a 4meg line...
Seriously fix this ****.

Seeing 2000ms latency seems like there's definitely something wrong here
I've still got your PM's you've sent me - I'll dig through them and get your info. In the mean time, could you PM me another traceroute so we can get our guys to check this out?

 

[BaronZA]

The network is doing what it's supposed to do. It shapes downloads and torrents to manage demand. Demand is still higher than what we'd like to see, so we'll continue to shape until the demand decreases.

The generic answer to my gaming issue is so reassuring :/ Shape torrents sure, but my games are effected. Did a Steam game install at 50kb/s and that absolutely crushed my line to do anything else (Including browsing and streaming).

 

[AfriGuy]

Yeah it's pretty bad, I've been good since about a month after they did the MTN switch, but then they were openly honest about having issues. At the moment on their site "network fully operational" is a bunch of bs.

Our network is most certainly running fine though. It's doing what it's supposed to be doing - and shaping needs to happen to handle the demand. While shaping takes place, it protects the rest of our network to run realtime services on an unshaped level. The network needs to be managed (as we've always been doing) to ensure it gives the best overall experience.

 

[BaronZA]

Seeing 2000ms latency seems like there's definitely something wrong here
I've still got your PM's you've sent me - I'll dig through them and get your info. In the mean time, could you PM me another traceroute so we can get our guys to check this out?

I'll do it when I get home. I've been having issues with my games all week and last weekend. My cellphone is the only saving grace here, because that works perfectly.
But the line fluctuates, my download speeds only really. My gaming ping has remained high, sometimes stably high, others spiky high, but always higher than my 3G connection by at least 150ms

 

[AfriGuy]

Afriman I tried your tweak my line thing in clientzone, my ADSL is dead now and wont connect. How can that be? Did a power cycle also, still the same.

Strange indeed.
If you're still having issues drop me a PM with your info and I'll check it out

 

[AfriGuy]

Whenever I've logged into my clientzone and checked on my account prior to this month, I've been unshaped. This month somehow, I seem to be shaped more often than not. My usage hasn't changed, in fact, it's now lower on average than previous months.


I wonder what is happening over there at Afrihost. They must not be able to handle their growth that well.

Remember that shaping takes place according to our overall network usage at the time. It isn't linked to your usage/ bandwidth in any way.
You can download 1GB or 1TB - if we see a higher demand on the network at 1GB we'll shape our Home Uncapped accounts to manage the load. Maybe it'll be a really quiet month and we won't shape at all

 

[BaronZA]

Can you tell us why the shaping is effecting people so bad all of a sudden?
I've had a good 9 months till now, similar usage every month. Previously my torrents got knocked down a bit, but never got effected with other things.