Afrihost Uncapped ADSL Feedback (Pt3)

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Can we put things into perspective?

AH will always shape us into the ground otherwise there will be no point for them to sell the Business Accounts.
 
Sinbad said:
Dude, nothing has been mentioned apart from some vague, nebulous "improvements".
When I want to improve my car's performance, I have certain ideas and benchmarks in mind. Certain things that I can measure and improve.
When I want to improve my PC's graphics performance, again I have benchmarks that I can run, and if I reach a certain value then I am satisfied with the improvements.
I don't just go and fiddle with bios settings without an aim in mind.

Sorry if you think I'm being difficult here - but this is how I feel. Tell us what you're aiming towards. Because based on where I was 3 months ago (happy), there wasn't much room for improvement.
If you don't tell me, then I am going to extrapolate what is going on from past experience with ISPs in SA, because I'm human. And most ISPs' past performance isn't what you want me to extrapolate from.

Afrihost has been super transparent in the past, but my feeling is that is no more. Coincidental with the MTN buyout? Who knows. But these are the kinds of thoughts that go through my head.
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You're not the only one.
I know my issue will be resolved at the end of this month.

This is how you do it! cancellation.PNG
 
Sinbad said:
Dude, nothing has been mentioned apart from some vague, nebulous "improvements".
When I want to improve my car's performance, I have certain ideas and benchmarks in mind. Certain things that I can measure and improve.
When I want to improve my PC's graphics performance, again I have benchmarks that I can run, and if I reach a certain value then I am satisfied with the improvements.
I don't just go and fiddle with bios settings without an aim in mind.

Sorry if you think I'm being difficult here - but this is how I feel. Tell us what you're aiming towards. Because based on where I was 3 months ago (happy), there wasn't much room for improvement.
If you don't tell me, then I am going to extrapolate what is going on from past experience with ISPs in SA, because I'm human. And most ISPs' past performance isn't what you want me to extrapolate from.

Afrihost has been super transparent in the past, but my feeling is that is no more. Coincidental with the MTN buyout? Who knows. But these are the kinds of thoughts that go through my head.
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If I had the numbers in front of me I'd post them here.
I cannot give you "x will improve by y" as I don't have that info available, nor do I think this info is available for public consumption.

And again, all of this is available in AfriMan's post I quoted here.
 
AfriGuy said:
If I had the numbers in front of me I'd post them here.
I cannot give you "x will improve by y" as I don't have that info available, nor do I think this info is available for public consumption.

And again, all of this is available in AfriMan's post I quoted here.
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You can't give it to me but it's available in AfriMan's post?

All I know is it used to be awesome, it became ****, for a reason that cannot be explained further than "hey we're testing something which might result in some unspecified improvement..." which made me feel like a guinea pig.

If I choose to suffer, I suffer towards a goal. Not because I like pain.
 
Orihalcon said:
That I take issue with. One of the selling points of your home uncapped product is the fact that shaping is determined dynamically - which is not currently happening for 15 hours out of the day. Your product advertising is therefor false on your website.

View attachment 130439

This is tantamount to fraud. I would expect either an info mail to be sent to uncapped clients to inform them of the tests OR that your product information is updated on your main site.

Just doing it and not communicating why is not a sign of a transparent ISP.
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I also don't understand. Even if it is not 'official', it is just common decency for Afrihost to send a message to all their Home Uncapped users, and tell them that they are indeed testing the home uncapped accounts with aggressive shaping for 15 - 18 hours a day. If they apologise about situation and let everyone know that it may not be a permanent solution, people would be much more understanding and less angry.

I don't get why they have to do this secretly. Its like they thought we wouldn't notice?

I wouldn't be surprised if current shaping debacle will become permanent. I'm sure the new majority shareholder of Afrihost are looking for good returns, and reducing everyone's usage is a good place to start.
 
AfriGuy said:
If I had the numbers in front of me I'd post them here.
I cannot give you "x will improve by y" as I don't have that info available, nor do I think this info is available for public consumption.

And again, all of this is available in AfriMan's post I quoted here.
Click to expand...

I think what Sinbad and all of your other users that have noticed the significant decline in your network performance and resolution life cycle since we signed up with your ISP, is that you need to specify what you are actually trying to achieve, other than a better user experience. You don't need to provide specifics necessarily, but your responses are too vague to satisfy anyone.
 
ainsin said:
I also don't understand. Even if it is not 'official', it is just common decency for Afrihost to send a message to all their Home Uncapped users, and tell them that they are indeed testing the home uncapped accounts with aggressive shaping for 15 - 18 hours a day. If they apologise about situation and let everyone know that it may not be a permanent solution, people would be much more understanding and less angry.

I don't get why they have to do this secretly. Its like they thought we wouldn't notice?

I wouldn't be surprised if current shaping debacle will become permanent. I'm sure the new majority shareholder of Afrihost are looking for good returns, and reducing everyone's usage is a good place to start.
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Looks like they're also looking to reduce their customer base too.
By the looks of it, they're doing quite well on that front.
 
Sinbad said:
You can't give it to me but it's available in AfriMan's post?

All I know is it used to be awesome, it became ****, for a reason that cannot be explained further than "hey we're testing something which might result in some unspecified improvement..." which made me feel like a guinea pig.

If I choose to suffer, I suffer towards a goal. Not because I like pain.
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Dude, I quoted it ages ago.
http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthr...back-(Pt3)?p=13016475&viewfull=1#post13016475

#4743
 
AfriGuy said:
Dude, I quoted it ages ago.
http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthr...back-(Pt3)?p=13016475&viewfull=1#post13016475

#4743
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And you failed to read my response apparently.
3 months ago,
ensuring excellent realtime service and maintaing throughput and latency for those services to perform at peak. So far, our testing shows that realtime is performing well, and this also means that clients using turbocharge can get an excellent unshaped experience when they need it.
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THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I HAD.
So, again, what are you aiming for? Or has something on your network changed so dramatically that you were unable to continue offering the same level of service with the same policies/configuration as you had before?
 
ainsin said:
I also don't understand. Even if it is not 'official', it is just common decency for Afrihost to send a message to all their Home Uncapped users, and tell them that they are indeed testing the home uncapped accounts with aggressive shaping for 15 - 18 hours a day. If they apologise about situation and let everyone know that it may not be a permanent solution, people would be much more understanding and less angry.

I don't get why they have to do this secretly. Its like they thought we wouldn't notice?

I wouldn't be surprised if current shaping debacle will become permanent. I'm sure the new majority shareholder of Afrihost are looking for good returns, and reducing everyone's usage is a good place to start.
Click to expand...

You need to remember that constant tweaks and changes go into the network, I honestly don't think anyone would be interested if we started mailing clients on every network change. It's simply not feasible.
 
AfriGuy said:
Our shaping is in line with international standards, if we wouldn't shape downloads/ P2P we wouldn't be able to allow realtime services like VoIP, streaming etc etc to run at the levels they do. A far better approach than applying blanket shaping over xGB of usage.
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AfriGuy/Man, instead of just making claims with little substance, have one of your guys lay out your shaping mechanisms and your network provisioning. Anything else is just vague PR noise.

I used to shape my own internet back in the good old IS days with LBR and multi-tiered Queues with L7 tagging. Worked an absolute charm. Internet without shaping is what we had in the early days of MTN I believe with silly packet loss. Any ISP who claims not to shape at all is being very sparse with the truth. At the very least you filter, queue and prioritize else packet loss gets out of hand.
 
AfriGuy said:
You need to remember that constant tweaks and changes go into the network, I honestly don't think anyone would be interested if we started mailing clients on every network change. It's simply not feasible.
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I think classifying sudden, hard shaping to absolute minimum throughput 15 hours a day in order to test something is of a different magnitude to "every network change".
 
aybbleek said:
I think what Sinbad and all of your other users that have noticed the significant decline in your network performance and resolution life cycle since we signed up with your ISP, is that you need to specify what you are actually trying to achieve, other than a better user experience. You don't need to provide specifics necessarily, but your responses are too vague to satisfy anyone.
Click to expand...

Again, I can't provide you with specifics. We're testing the shaping to see how it goes. Nothing more, nothing less.
If it's something that we look at implementing permanently we'll notify everyone accordingly.
 
Afriman named BitMeter OS, so I downloaded it. This is me trying to watching 720p, Does this look right? No. But you guys aren't shaping you say.

More proof for you guys.

network.jpg
 
The fact that implementing this draconian shaping permanently is even under consideration... even MENTIONED... wow.
 
Timber_MG said:
AfriGuy/Man, instead of just making claims with little substance, have one of your guys lay out your shaping mechanisms and your network provisioning. Anything else is just vague PR noise.

I used to shape my own internet back in the good old IS days with LBR and multi-tiered Queues with L7 tagging. Worked an absolute charm. Internet without shaping is what we had in the early days of MTN I believe with silly packet loss. Any ISP who claims not to shape at all is being very sparse with the truth. At the very least you filter, queue and prioritize else packet loss gets out of hand.
Click to expand...

Our shaping is described in the AUP to be readable, I honestly don't think anyone is going to take the time and a few years of studying networking, IPC etc etc to understand it.
 
AfriMan said:
You would be able to download pretty much anything either overnight or off-peak at closer to full line speed. And downloading updates at 1Mbps during peak is still OK for a shaped product, considering you can still get full speed on realtime at all times (as opposed to being throttled to 1Mbps on all services)
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So 10% of what I'm paying for, during the time I need it (Which is NOT business hours) isn't draconian? OK then.

I can see that Pure Internet Joy is a thing of the past.
 
Sinbad said:
So 10% of what I'm paying for, during the time I need it (Which is NOT business hours) isn't draconian? OK then.

I can see that Pure Internet Joy is a thing of the past.
Click to expand...

If you're looking to download something during peak times you can run a turbocharge.
 
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