Afrihost Uncapped ADSL Feedback (Pt2)

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Segg said:
Upgraded my package from 2 to 4 this morning, noticed on the 2 the shaping was set at 25% download when I went to 4 it was at 18.8% so there is a definite limit regarding the shaping, but I leave all but the most urgent downloads till about midnight, besides Afrihost is an honest company and doesn't try hide anything, that's also why I support them :p
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Well there's some issues ... for me, nothing is real time as advertised (even browsing and youtube), downloads say 12.5%, and as NZB is a download not P2P, it should be 12.5%, it's now at 2%. P2P is meant to be 6.25%, so it's not even that. Also, I'm finding the shaping doesn't seem to switch off until like 1 / 2 am.

My system also usually only downloads in the early hours of the morning when it is night time in the US ... but occasionally, I want to watch a movie or stream something of Netflix or something, and that is where the problem lies.
 
eitai2001 said:
At the moment, the shaping is horrendous.
This was me at 10:30PM on a Friday night:
http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthr...back-(Pt2)?p=11562989&viewfull=1#post11562989
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I see what you mean.. I'm now downloading at 9KB/s and it's not on a torrent either.

Just curious to know why am I being shaped at 50%

This is the worst speeds I've seen from AH since I joined in June.

Is this what I can expect on a uncapped account or should I just change back to a capped account again?

EDIT: Speed has now dropped down to 4KB/s.. This is ridiculous.. I can't even change my package back to a capped account until the 1st of December.
 
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MvanHeerden said:
I see what you mean.. I'm now downloading at 9KB/s and it's not on a torrent either.

Just curious to know why am I being shaped at 50%

This is the worst speeds I've seen from AH since I joined in June.

Is this what I can expect on a uncapped account or should I just change back to a capped account again?

EDIT: Speed has now dropped down to 4KB/s.. This is ridiculous.. I can't even change my package back to a capped account until the 1st of December.
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Peaking a 70kbps on a 4meg line streaming. Getting kinda tired of this **** I wont lie.... Stuttering 480p is not acceptable. "no shaping applied" Sure thing...
 
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Rade84 said:
Peaking a 70kbps on a 4meg line streaming. Getting kinda tired of this **** I wont lie.... Stuttering 480p is not acceptable. "no shaping applied" Sure thing...
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Only my browsing seems to be fast. Just tried streaming a 480P trailer from IMDB... No luck!

Downloads still shaped at 50% and P2P now at 25%
 
eitai2001 said:
Well there's some issues ... for me, nothing is real time as advertised (even browsing and youtube), downloads say 12.5%, and as NZB is a download not P2P, it should be 12.5%, it's now at 2%. P2P is meant to be 6.25%, so it's not even that. Also, I'm finding the shaping doesn't seem to switch off until like 1 / 2 am.

My system also usually only downloads in the early hours of the morning when it is night time in the US ... but occasionally, I want to watch a movie or stream something of Netflix or something, and that is where the problem lies.
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That's pretty impressive ... my 10Mbit line is currently NZBing at 19kb/s ... at 10:34pm!!!

Edit: Seems I cut a lucky break ... it's now a 29kb/s :mad:
 
I see OpenWeb has now also switched a bunch of their users to the MTN network, guessing it's related to the ****ty service we're getting tonight.

More users on an already congested network. Well done eMpTyN
 
My download speed has dropped to 6kb/s ... that's 12.5 hours left for a 328mb file ... on a 10Mbit line!!!

Clipboard01.jpg

I wonder if they are not purposefully made their speeds so crap just to make us want to use the "Turbo Charge" service!

And out if interest ... this is equivalent to 0.6% of my line speed ... so the shaping is not as advertised on my dashboard.
 
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I decided to click the turbo charge button ... it did didly squat!!!

This is what my speedtest.net graph does:

Clipboard01.jpg

Note the death of the line halfway through.

Ah, 2 minutes later Turbo Charge kicked into effect. I'm now downloading at 10Mbits.

This is proof that my speeds of 6kb/s - 30kb/s at 11:20PM are due to Shaping ... which is why I can't stream.

Also, my speedtest is working perfectly now ... so it turns out what I thought was issues with my line, my modem, etc (especially since Afriguy's only reply to me when I showed him these graphs was to do more tests), was actually this crappy shaping.

Clipboard02.jpg

No wonder my internet experience has sucked balls for the last 3 weeks. It felt more like extreme throttling and not shaping.

I download on average 100 - 150gb per month ... on a 10Mbit line, I diidn't think that was bad.

And worst part, Afriguy didn't even bother to tell me it was cause my account was shaped.

I will be discussing new options with the folks tomorrow (it affects them more than me, cause I'm heading off to the states for 6 months). I was part of the guinea pig trial from November to Feb, which sucked... but I kept my loyalty (and it was free :p) ... but I can't continue with this crap.

My NZB's after the Turboboost button:
Clipboard01.jpg
 
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grim said:
I see OpenWeb has now also switched a bunch of their users to the MTN network, guessing it's related to the ****ty service we're getting tonight.

More users on an already congested network. Well done eMpTyN
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I'm not sure where this is stated. To our knowledge we are still the only ISP on the MTN network. Will look into this ASAP with our MTN contacts :(
 
eitai2001 said:
I decided to click the turbo charge button ... it did didly squat!!!

This is what my speedtest.net graph does:

View attachment 83289

Note the death of the line halfway through.

Ah, 2 minutes later Turbo Charge kicked into effect. I'm now downloading at 10Mbits.

This is proof that my speeds of 6kb/s - 30kb/s at 11:20PM are due to Shaping ... which is why I can't stream.

Also, my speedtest is working perfectly now ... so it turns out what I thought was issues with my line, my modem, etc (especially since Afriguy's only reply to me when I showed him these graphs was to do more tests), was actually this crappy shaping.

View attachment 83291

No wonder my internet experience has sucked balls for the last 3 weeks. It felt more like extreme throttling and not shaping.

I download on average 100 - 150gb per month ... on a 10Mbit line, I diidn't think that was bad.

And worst part, Afriguy didn't even bother to tell me it was cause my account was shaped.

I will be discussing new options with the folks tomorrow (it affects them more than me, cause I'm heading off to the states for 6 months). I was part of the guinea pig trial from November to Feb, which sucked... but I kept my loyalty (and it was free :p) ... but I can't continue with this crap.

My NZB's after the Turboboost button:
View attachment 83293
Click to expand...

NZB is a shaped service on Uncapped, and it falls under P2P and not HTTP downloads - according to our classification. It's mainly around the amount of data moved and the nature of these types of downloads and how they saturate our network. NNTP is not quite as much data usage as torrents, but it's still significant. It has always been a shaped service though :(
 
AfriMan said:
NZB is a shaped service on Uncapped, and it falls under P2P and not HTTP downloads - according to our classification. It's mainly around the amount of data moved and the nature of these types of downloads and how they saturate our network. NNTP is not quite as much data usage as torrents, but it's still significant. It has always been a shaped service though :(
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Is NNTP shaped to the exact same extend as torrents?
 
AfriMan said:
NZB is a shaped service on Uncapped, and it falls under P2P and not HTTP downloads - according to our classification. It's mainly around the amount of data moved and the nature of these types of downloads and how they saturate our network. NNTP is not quite as much data usage as torrents, but it's still significant. It has always been a shaped service though :(
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I figured as much, but even then ... the level of shaping was ridiculous ... I mean 6kb/s at 11:15PM (On a 10Mbit account) ... really?

View attachment 83285

And what about the general internet experience, browsing, streaming, etc ... what's the point of paying for 10Mbps if we are not allowed to use that speed in totality (forget about NZB / Torrents completely in this regard) ... I'm not even able to achieve 10Mbps on ANY protocol ... so essentially the golden rule here is to pay for the 10Mbps account to get a 1 / 2 Mbps account, and pay for a 2 Mbps account to get a 256 Kbps account ... that is essentially what is happening here (Again, I'm completely ignoring NZB's and Torrents).

You say it has always been shaped ... but before your move the MTN, I never ever noticed the shaping. And after your move (and after the guinea pig period until Feb), again, I never had any issues ... this ridiculous level of shaping only surfaced itself a few weeks ago ... which is when general browsing and streaming took a knock too.
 
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grim said:
Have a look at the last couple of pages of this thread: http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthr...-ADSL-Feedback-Thread?p=11576829#post11576829

OpenWeb has moved some of their users to the MTN network
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From that thread it's not clear whether those clients is using a backup account to test - I see on one he lists an Afrihost prepaid account. Remember anyone can have a Free GB account. Am still checking though :)

Either way - our IPC is our IPC. Even MTN don't have access to our capacity for their business clients so if they were to ever bring on another ISP it would have no impact on us :)

EDIT: Confirmed with MTN that we are still the only ISP running on MTN :)
 
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MvanHeerden said:
Hi,

How is Afrihost's shaping policy? I just changed my package from a 75GIG capped to an uncapped account a few minutes ago and it's already saying - Shaping Policy: 50% Download/ 50% P2P

I'm on a 4meg line with Telkom. I am currently downloading at about 30KB/s - 50KB/s.

I also had terrible download speeds earlier today with my capped account. Hoping that this is something that will be fixed soon, cause so far I'm kinda regretting my decision changing to uncapped.

EDIT: Download speeds increased a little but still not great..

Just wondering about the shaping policy.. Is it normally this high @ 50%
Never been on a uncapped before so not sure if this is high or not..
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50% mean you're on a light shaping policy. When the % goes as low as 12 or 6.25% - those are the harsher shaping policies when the network is under heavy demand.

Even though we did put in a significant upgrade on all 3 of our IPCs, the North is still seeing a lot more demand and we're shaping more than we'd like to at the moment. The South and East are pretty much unshaped most of the time, even peak hours.

Today we're seeing much better performance in the North and latency and throughput are testing well. We think that demand should stabilise pretty soon, and we have an order in with Telkom for a major upgrade which will allow us to shape a lot more leniently. But in general (yesterday seemed a bit rough) we're still seeing improvement in North shaping being slower to shape and quicker to unshape when demand subsides.
 
AfriMan. What counts as what when shaping? Why is normal browsing and things like YouTube shaped?
When are these upgrades you are referring to expected to take place? I want to be loyal, I don't want to jump. My folks are going away till end Dec, so we can wait till then...
 
AfriMan said:
50% mean you're on a light shaping policy. When the % goes as low as 12 or 6.25% - those are the harsher shaping policies when the network is under heavy demand.

Even though we did put in a significant upgrade on all 3 of our IPCs, the North is still seeing a lot more demand and we're shaping more than we'd like to at the moment. The South and East are pretty much unshaped most of the time, even peak hours.

Today we're seeing much better performance in the North and latency and throughput are testing well. We think that demand should stabilise pretty soon, and we have an order in with Telkom for a major upgrade which will allow us to shape a lot more leniently. But in general (yesterday seemed a bit rough) we're still seeing improvement in North shaping being slower to shape and quicker to unshape when demand subsides.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the feedback Afriman, appreciate it.

Shaping seems to be a bit harsher today at 18% for downloads. I would rather move back to a capped account again and avoid any shaping. Not really a use to have a 4meg line that feels like a 1meg.

I see that I can only switch packages again on the 1st of December. Anyway I can move before that?

Thanks.
 
eitai2001 said:
AfriMan. What counts as what when shaping? Why is normal browsing and things like YouTube shaped?
When are these upgrades you are referring to expected to take place? I want to be loyal, I don't want to jump. My folks are going away till end Dec, so we can wait till then...
Click to expand...

Normal browsing and YouTube are not shaped - so there could be other issues at play here. Yesterday was not a great day as we were seeing heavy demand causing some contention. However, today throughput and latency are excellent - even though we are still shaping P2P and downloads more than we'd like on Uncapped.

If you're YouTube and browsing are slow we'll need to do more testing on this :( Please PM me
 
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