Afrihost Uncapped ADSL Feedback (Pt2)

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This is starting to get a little worrying. The whole iOS 7/GTA thing happened a week ago...I can't imagine that it would still necessitate 12.5% Download/ 6.25% P2P shaping on our line.

One can't help but speculate that AfriHost's network is straining under the pressure of new customers. Which is worrying, being a new customer from the beginning of this month.
 
Type RSA said:
I do understand, but I am currently working from home and this involves downloading a lot of apps that we use in the office. And I am not able to do this. Really frustrating.
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Totally understandable. Again, if you need to know that you're not going to be shaped, there's always Turbocharge. Or a Capped or Business package. We can only offer different options to suit your needs :(
 
So if network demand doesn't go down, or broadband heaven forbid demand increases, then the afrihost experience will be less broadband more dialup? Sho, could one not say that continuous heavy shaping (down to 6%!) is not the equivalent of throttling??
 
I'm quite happy to let Afrihost manage the network that will result in best user experience. I'm happy with my torrents and non realtime traffic being shaped.

I haven't seen any difference in my real time traffic...


No problems from me :)
 
reactor_sa said:
So if network demand doesn't go down, or broadband heaven forbid demand increases, then the afrihost experience will be less broadband more dialup?
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This is what I'm trying to establish.

reactor_sa said:
Sho, could one not say that continuous heavy shaping (down to 6%!) is not the equivalent of throttling??
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One couldn't, really. Browsing still works well, as does streaming. Doing either on a heavily throttled line...
 
Hmmmm, here I was considering moving from Mweb to Afrihost (4mb) yet I see a lot of people are struggling now? Is there a decent ISP option anywhere?

All I need are reasonable torrent speeds (I auto-limit to 90kBs anyway) and solid gaming latency.
 
thomascmyk said:
Yah I've got to say that at those speeds dial up internet is starting to look appealing lol...

Best possible service is NOT 3 hours for a 128 meg file no matter how you look at it.
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Again, we could adopt the throttling approach - which many people are still raging about on other ISPs. But if your entire DSL is throttled down to 256kbps indefinitely, or for 30 days - I don't think anyone would be happy with that.

Fact is, there is a heavy demand, with that being said, I think having decent real time service while we wait for the demand to subside is the best win for everyone :(
 
Beginning to sound like Cybersmart....
Turbocharge this and do this before that and buy night rider etc etc...

getting a test account from openweb now...it's worth paying R100 more...really...

PS even with Turbocharge i'm only managing 90KB/s on a 2meg line...
 
Basjohn said:
Hmmmm, here I was considering moving from Mweb to Afrihost (4mb) yet I see a lot of people are struggling now? Is there a decent ISP option anywhere?

All I need are reasonable torrent speeds (I auto-limit to 90kBs anyway) and solid gaming latency.
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You can get full speed on torrents if you opt for an unshaped product like Capped or Business Uncapped. On Uncapped, we may shape torrents and downloads from time to time in times of peak demand to ensure best latencies on the network for gaming and other real time services. However, at off-peak times generally most users a lightly shaped (or not at all) except for possibly the very heaviest users.
 
AfriMan said:
Again, we could adopt the throttling approach - which many people are still raging about on other ISPs. But if your entire DSL is throttled down to 256kbps indefinitely, or for 30 days - I don't think anyone would be happy with that.

Fact is, there is a heavy demand, with that being said, I think having decent real time service while we wait for the demand to subside is the best win for everyone :(
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I think you missed a post of mine again...

Or maybe you didn't. I don't think anyone's suggesting such a step backwards. I just worry that 'waiting for demand to subside' might lead to an indefinite wait... :(
 
reactor_sa said:
So if network demand doesn't go down, or broadband heaven forbid demand increases, then the afrihost experience will be less broadband more dialup? Sho, could one not say that continuous heavy shaping (down to 6%!) is not the equivalent of throttling??
Click to expand...

Realistically, it's not possible that usage trends will permanently change overnight. Unless we suddenly signup a extra third of our client base, our network is designed to have extra "headroom" to ensure the best possible experience. But we anticipate usage based on trends and peak and off-peak monitoring. If there is a sudden spike, like we saw with iOS7, and Mountain Lion and Windows 8, where suddenly demand peaks, it simply does not make sense to go out and double our capacity. At the end of the day those extra costs just get passed onto the client. And what does one do with the extra capacity when the spike subsides. We also need to be aware that extra capacity is not like ordering a pizza. We need to prepare case studies, usage trends and technical and financial data that has to be sent into Telkom and takes months to review and approve. And getting rid of capacity is an equally expensive and laborious task.

For now we are tracking the trends and identifying areas of concern and working on a POA to give the best value to clients while delivering the best possible service. I honestly don't believe there is a capacity or oversubscription issue, based on my personal experience.
 
Type RSA said:
I just do not understand how the demand can be so much higher this last week....
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Last week was really bad in terms of the Apple updates, along with GTA5. It's still continuing since not everyone grabbed it then, although the demand is slowly getting back to normal.
 
HapticSimian said:
I really, really don't want to keep raging at you and your colleagues, but if you were to read back a couple of (dozen) pages you'll see I was one of the Afrihost clients defending the (logical and obvious) need for traffic management in a previous conversation in this thread. I'm not denying the necessity, nor would I have doubted the fairness of your system until last week. It still feels as if you don't get that my frustration arises from the dramatic difference in service quality we've seen.

If I think back to the few times I saw my connection shaped according to ClientZone in the past months, I can recall seeing P2P being shaped to somewhere in the 60% range every once in a while. Currently it's shaped to 6%. Usage trends, over a subscriber base several thousand strong (I'm sure ;) ), just should not shift fast enough - overnight! - to necessitate a further 90% reduction of already reduced throughput. Again, I'm not huge on torrents, but I do remember the numbers... I also remember 'No shaping applied' proclaimed for HTTP right alongside the P2P figure.

I'm just trying to understand the shift... Is that other ISP to blame, having chased all their monster users to you with their... erm... shift in policy? :p Unlikely, because one would expect THAT influx to coincide with the start of a new month...
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I think everyone agrees that we're talking about less than a two week period here, it's hardly enough to issue a full panic. We'll need a lot more data and more analysis on what type of traffic is causing the demand. We're still desperately encouraging all clients to make us of off-peak hours for their torrents and non-essential downloads. If we can max out the network 24 hours a day, it will be a lot easier to make a strong case for more capacity if that were the case.
 
froot said:
Last week was really bad in terms of the Apple updates, along with GTA5. It's still continuing since not everyone grabbed it then, although the demand is slowly getting back to normal.
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We're definitely seeing a gradual return to normal. Also, it's normal to see slightly elevated demand after long weekend, so we're not overly concerned.

We obviously do want the best experience for our clients so we're monitoring closely and making any improvements where we can.
 
AfriMan said:
We obviously do want the best experience for our clients so we're monitoring closely and making any improvements where we can.
Click to expand...

For sure. I've had a few annoying times over the past week but overall I've been pretty impressed.
Seeing as how my usage isn't that high and for work I can benefit from having unshaped, I will be switching to your capped solution, but I'm really impressed by the mostly lack of shaping on your uncapped accounts.
 
Is this normal ?

Tracing route to www.afrihost.co.za [197.242.144.102]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1
2 1192 ms 1253 ms 1277 ms 105-236-4-1-esr-lo.mtnbusiness.co.za [105.236.4.
1]
3 1294 ms 1316 ms 1020 ms ipc-recieve-rb-3a.za.mtnbusiness.net [41.181.178
.77]
4 1075 ms 1092 ms 1157 ms rb-dca-2.za--rb-cr-1.za-a.mtnns.net [196.44.31.1
20]
5 1245 ms 1223 ms 1295 ms jh-cr-1.za--rb-cr-2.za.mtnns.net [196.44.0.42]
6 1292 ms 1298 ms 1093 ms qux-jh-dca-2.za-b.za.mtnbusiness.net [41.181.165
.115]
7 582 ms 599 ms 644 ms 196.44.31.99
8 847 ms 886 ms 914 ms 196.30.1.53
9 1149 ms 1146 ms 1188 ms tengigabitethernet9-1.gw20.jnb6.za.mtnbusiness.n
et [196.31.220.25]
10 1268 ms 1238 ms 874 ms tengigabitethernet5-1.hr15.jnb6.za.mtnbusiness.n
et [196.31.63.198]
11 577 ms 614 ms 606 ms cms-gm.afrihost.com [197.242.144.102]

Trace complete.
 
froot said:
For sure. I've had a few annoying times over the past week but overall I've been pretty impressed.
Seeing as how my usage isn't that high and for work I can benefit from having unshaped, I will be switching to your capped solution, but I'm really impressed by the mostly lack of shaping on your uncapped accounts.
Click to expand...

Awesome :)
 
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