Afrihost Uncapped ADSL Feedback (Pt3)

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ainsin said:
Well I was up at 3am finishing a deadline, and around about the 2:45am mark, my account became unshaped. At 7:30, my account was shaped back down to the standard. So I got about 4 hours of actual unshaped internet. Afrihost hasn't mentioned how their testing is going for the past few days, so I feel like this is 20 hours a day shaping is going to be the new standard for home uncapped.

Are there any plans to get additional IPC? Because it looks like you don't have enough capacity again.
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Can you PM me? Depending on which region you are in, you should have been unshaped before 2am, if my reports are correct. And that will also depend on where your usage profile puts you. I'd definitely like to check this out :(
 
DarkSpectre said:
Will I be okay if I schedule my torrent downloads between 11pm and 6am every day except on weekends where I don't hold back at all. I tend to stream a lot during work hours. Is my typical usage pattern alright with you? :D
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Whenever you download, it won't affect your ability to stream. Remember all realtime services are never shaped, so you always have the full line potential to stream, game, browse or use VoIP.
 
AfriMan said:
Remember that P2P is not blocked, it is only shaped. So downloads will still be possible around the clock. And 9 hours is more than a third of the 24 hour cycle, so it's still pretty significant.
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Well, I can also be clever with words... P2P might be unblocked, but it's pretty much unusable, no one can deny that, just look back a few pages in this very thread! Secondly, Downloads are NOT really possible for pretty much 2 thirds of the day, plus it's a "Potential" 9 hours, might be more, might be less... if it's less than 8 hours it's actually more than 2 thirds of your day... Don't try and bullsh*t us dude, that's not good business practice! :(
 
AfriMan said:
If you want to use downloads and torrents during that time, you might want to rather consider capped or or Business. We have to use shaping on Uncapped (as a semi-shaped product) to deliver the best overall experience to all our users on the network. Realtime services continue to perform at full line speed, so YouTube should generally be performing well. My tests show this, but I'm definitely investigating reports of those who are reporting otherwise.

If you are within 60 days, you can use the Double Money Back Guarantee on our website if you'd still like a refund. As much as we do stand by our product quality, if you're not happy with it - that is our guarantee to you.
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I am using YouTube and Twitch.tv, not P2P/downloads/torrents. Whether I use a premium product or not, I am already limited by Telkom to 3/5ths of the speed of the product by them. Now I am getting ****ty performance from a 10mb option on your side too. As said above, this is a bad business practice(2/3rds of the day earmarked as unusable on popular protocols, that is close to 20 out of 30 days of the month that the service is pretty unusable) and you guys obviously don't give a **** that people are threatening to leave.
 
AfriMan said:
We did get a capacity upgrade, but we've decided to test for a short while to see if we can deliver a better experience. For the moment we'll be shaping all users at maximum from 7:30am to 10pm, and thereafter we'll allow the normal demand shaping to kick. The idea is to deliver absolute premium realtime services, and ensure that clients get the best overall experience from an Uncapped product.
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Ok that explains it, Thanks Afriman.
It would have been nice to have had some formal communication on this so that we know.
 
Actually, don't worry about it, I've mailed support and have moved to a different Service Provider.
 
OK. AfriMan. I read a few days ago about the guys in Diablo 3 having an issue about something. I started playing guild wars 2 again (bear with me on this), so I started it up and there was a massive update which then got me thinking.

During the day we are shaped of course but my guild wars 2 update was going full steam. Now my question is that do you guys have a game list that gets excluded from shaping. Like let's say diablo 3 has an update , do you throttle that or do you have a games exclusion list that let's those games download?

As I said. My guild wars 2 download was going full speed during peak midday usage.
 
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AfriMan
Seeing as there is this possibility of being shaped for P2P/Downloads from 7 - 10 going forward - maybe/possibly
Would there still be a possibility to ease off at least on the Downloads shaping?
Its really frustrating trying to download updates and program files during the day :( - even at night :(
Will it perhaps work on some type of whitelist/blacklist that we can submit?
 
UnholyMunk said:
Well, I can also be clever with words... P2P might be unblocked, but it's pretty much unusable, no one can deny that, just look back a few pages in this very thread! Secondly, Downloads are NOT really possible for pretty much 2 thirds of the day, plus it's a "Potential" 9 hours, might be more, might be less... if it's less than 8 hours it's actually more than 2 thirds of your day... Don't try and bullsh*t us dude, that's not good business practice! :(
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There's no BS, everything I've said is true. If you think I'm presenting this in a positive light you'd be right. Obviously we are wanting to show that any changes we make are for the good of our clients. But I think it's also important to remember that we communicate with ALL of our clients and filter through feedback from support, other social media as well as MyBroadband to determine what we think our clients want in general and what we feel offers the best overall value and experience.

If you're really like to download for two thirds of the day, we have Business and Capped products that will suit you, and they really don't cost all that much more.
 
fluKe said:
I am using YouTube and Twitch.tv, not P2P/downloads/torrents. Whether I use a premium product or not, I am already limited by Telkom to 3/5ths of the speed of the product by them. Now I am getting ****ty performance from a 10mb option on your side too. As said above, this is a bad business practice(2/3rds of the day earmarked as unusable on popular protocols, that is close to 20 out of 30 days of the month that the service is pretty unusable) and you guys obviously don't give a **** that people are threatening to leave.
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We do care that people are talking about leaving, but we also have to keep our available resources in mind and make offers that are viable and sustainable. Could we just open up the network and give everyone the ability to not be shaped? Yes, but that is generally going to make everyone's experience much worse - and that would be across Uncapped, Capped and Business. The network has to be managed and we have to prioritise to ensure that clients get fair value for their spend, but more importantly the best possible experience we can provide with the resources we have at our disposal. To promise more than we are able to deliver is a much worse business practice, so our aim is to always be open and honest and let our clients decide which products work best for them, or if they're not suitable at all. I do believe that we offer fair value on all our products and most clients will find a product that works for their specific needs and budget.
 
shreez said:
Ok that explains it, Thanks Afriman.
It would have been nice to have had some formal communication on this so that we know.
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We have only just started testing and at this stage we're not sure exactly how long we'll test and what the final outcome could be. We may or may not make adjustments, it really depends on the feedback and reports we receive and how the network performs.
 
Vorastra said:
OK. AfriMan. I read a few days ago about the guys in Diablo 3 having an issue about something. I started playing guild wars 2 again (bear with me on this), so I started it up and there was a massive update which then got me thinking.

During the day we are shaped of course but my guild wars 2 update was going full steam. Now my question is that do you guys have a game list that gets excluded from shaping. Like let's say diablo 3 has an update , do you throttle that or do you have a games exclusion list that let's those games download?

As I said. My guild wars 2 download was going full speed during peak midday usage.
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I know we exclude certain downloads like OS updates and service packs for known software like Windows, etc. It could be that Game updates are excluded. I would have to check specifically. If that is the case, I would imagine that known publishers like Blizzard, etc would be listed.
 
AfriMan said:
I know we exclude certain downloads like OS updates and service packs for known software like Windows, etc. It could be that Game updates are excluded. I would have to check specifically. If that is the case, I would imagine that known publishers like Blizzard, etc would be listed.
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Could you find out if you do indeed. I have a game you guys could hopefully add :D

Also that PM about the YouTube issue I sent yesterday. Just a reminder.
 
psynapt1k said:
AfriMan
Seeing as there is this possibility of being shaped for P2P/Downloads from 7 - 10 going forward - maybe/possibly
Would there still be a possibility to ease off at least on the Downloads shaping?
Its really frustrating trying to download updates and program files during the day :( - even at night :(
Will it perhaps work on some type of whitelist/blacklist that we can submit?
Click to expand...

That will really depend on how the testing goes. If we see a significant drop off, we might consider that. The real problem is that people are using different techniques to disguise P2P as HTTP and HTTPS, so it's really hard for us to keep under control. Initially we didn't want to shape HTTP traffic at all, but it was clear that this was being misused.

I can't make any commitments at this stage, it will all really depend on what comes out of this testing phase.
 
Vorastra said:
Could you find out if you do indeed. I have a game you guys could hopefully add :D

Also that PM about the YouTube issue I sent yesterday. Just a reminder.
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Some blizzard games have a option to do p2p downloads don't know if its hidden but that's just a little tip
 
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