Afrihost Uncapped ADSL Feedback (Pt3)

[AfriMan]

Blacklists.
Each month, pull a report of sites generating the most HTTP traffic, check them out, and if they're filesharing type things, then add them to the shaping.
Yes, it's more work, but you'll avoid a lot of the anger out there caused by draconian http shaping.

I can suggest that. Let's see what the feedback is on that. I would imagine off the top of my head that the biggest barrier could be that we manage shaping jointly with MTN and some outside experts, so having an ongoing blacklist will be quite difficult to implement without a dedicated team.

 

[Sinbad]

I can suggest that. Let's see what the feedback is on that. I would imagine off the top of my head that the biggest barrier could be that we manage shaping jointly with MTN and some outside experts, so having an ongoing blacklist will be quite difficult to implement without a dedicated team.

Yes, you'll need a team, and I'm sure you'll find it worthwhile. You may even find there is already some kind of open-source project out there for identifying them - similar to RBL DNS things.
Personally, I jumped ship because of legitimate HTTP downloads being slow when I wanted them, and I'm sure I'm not the only one in that situation. HTTP is the driver behind the internet, and shaping it down to fractions of line speed for files of any significant size really detracts from the usefulness and the user experience.

 

[saa044]

I can suggest that. Let's see what the feedback is on that. I would imagine off the top of my head that the biggest barrier could be that we manage shaping jointly with MTN and some outside experts, so having an ongoing blacklist will be quite difficult to implement without a dedicated team.

Rather do that instead of losing half your client base. Even myself, I am moving to a different ISP, only reason is every stream besides YouTube, Netflix and Hulu buffers constantly.

 

[AthenianOwl]

That's seems a little long. If you Turbocharge and bypass shaping, does your experience change?

Activate Turbocharge
You Have 0 Turbo Minutes Available

You will need to purchase additional turbo minutes before you can activate Turbocharge

I was told by Afriguy that I was supposed to get free 300 turbo minutes after signing up for AH Home Uncapped account

 

[AfriMan]

Yes, you'll need a team, and I'm sure you'll find it worthwhile. You may even find there is already some kind of open-source project out there for identifying them - similar to RBL DNS things.
Personally, I jumped ship because of legitimate HTTP downloads being slow when I wanted them, and I'm sure I'm not the only one in that situation. HTTP is the driver behind the internet, and shaping it down to fractions of line speed for files of any significant size really detracts from the usefulness and the user experience.

We didn't invent that part, this was part of the overall network management system that is being used by other ISPs overseas, which we modified to our own systems. I can understand the concerns with this kind of shaping in place, and we'll definitely look at whether we can make changes here.

 

[AfriMan]

I was told by Afriguy that I was supposed to get free 300 turbo minutes

You get 300 Free minutes for every full month you are with us (on an Uncapped product). If you signed up during the month, we don't allocate pro-rata minutes. Drop me a PM and let's check if this is the case

 

[AfriMan]

Rather do that instead of losing half your client base. Even myself, I am moving to a different ISP, only reason is every stream besides YouTube, Netflix and Hulu buffers constantly.

We definitely want to do whatever we can not to lose clients, but we must also come up with solutions that are viable. At the end of the day our resources are limited, and we also don't want to implement a system that will drive our costs up which will then be passed on to clients in one way or another. I think there is an ideal balance somewhere, and we'll keep working at it until we find it.

 

[AthenianOwl]

Yes, you'll need a team, and I'm sure you'll find it worthwhile. You may even find there is already some kind of open-source project out there for identifying them - similar to RBL DNS things.
Personally, I jumped ship because of legitimate HTTP downloads being slow when I wanted them, and I'm sure I'm not the only one in that situation. HTTP is the driver behind the internet, and shaping it down to fractions of line speed for files of any significant size really detracts from the usefulness and the user experience.

THIS!

 

[Beer]

Have been with Afrihost for quite some time. The speed of everything has dropped. I work for a major search engine on a part time basis evaluating site quality and I am finding it hard to complete my tasks within the allowed time due to slow load times etc - something I never struggled with in the past on home uncapped.

I even have my 8 year old son asking me whats up with the internet.

I understand the shaping on p2p/nntp etc in the day but I think you guys are going to have to look at the performance for normal http traffic or I might be moving on.

I know it is not my line as capped accounts work properly (which I now have to use for work).

Question - I have read the thread and I know you are now shaping everything to death from 7.30 to 10 so how come normal HTTP traffic/page load times and streaming is even slower than it was? In my mind it should be quicker without all the downloads maxing out your network?

 

[AthenianOwl]

You get 300 Free minutes for every full month you are with us (on an Uncapped product). If you signed up during the month, we don't allocate pro-rata minutes. Drop me a PM and let's check if this is the case

Thank you!!!!

 

[saa044]

Have been with Afrihost for quite some time. The speed of everything has dropped. I work for a major search engine on a part time basis evaluating site quality and I am finding it hard to complete my tasks within the allowed time due to slow load times etc - something I never struggled with in the past on home uncapped.

I even have my 8 year old son asking me whats up with the internet.

I understand the shaping on p2p/nntp etc in the day but I think you guys are going to have to look at the performance for normal http traffic or I might be moving on.

I know it is not my line as capped accounts work properly (which I now have to use for work).

Question - I have read the thread and I know you are now shaping everything to death from 7.30 to 10 so how come normal HTTP traffic/page load times and streaming is even slower than it was? In my mind it should be quicker without all the downloads maxing out your network?

Got that from my 9 year old daughter as well. But instead of asking, I got the "Pa alles buffer, YouTube buffer, Netflix Buffer, Xbmc Buffer, maak dit reg" every hour on a Saturday lol.

 

[AfriMan]

Have been with Afrihost for quite some time. The speed of everything has dropped. I work for a major search engine on a part time basis evaluating site quality and I am finding it hard to complete my tasks within the allowed time due to slow load times etc - something I never struggled with in the past on home uncapped.

I even have my 8 year old son asking me whats up with the internet.

I understand the shaping on p2p/nntp etc in the day but I think you guys are going to have to look at the performance for normal http traffic or I might be moving on.

I know it is not my line as capped accounts work properly (which I now have to use for work).

Question - I have read the thread and I know you are now shaping everything to death from 7.30 to 10 so how come normal HTTP traffic/page load times and streaming is even slower than it was? In my mind it should be quicker without all the downloads maxing out your network?

HTTP browsing traffic should not be shaped, except for anything which is classified as a download. If your overall experience is poor, we'll need to run some tests and see what exactly is not performing as it should

 

[AfriMan]

Got that from my 9 year old daughter as well. But instead of asking, I got the "Pa alles buffer, YouTube buffer, Netflix Buffer, Xbmc Buffer, maak dit reg" every hour on a Saturday lol.

Yeah, that's no good. The idea behind the shaping is that Uncapped should provide a good (excellent) real time experience. If that's the case, we need to keep testing and monitoring to see why this is not happening. I'll also run tests tonight to see if I get the same poor experience. My tests up to now have been pretty good for streaming and general browsing

 

[saa044]

AfriMan, on my Mikrotik router I have Q trees. I have my saa044 Profile, under that I have HTTP minimum set to 2mbps (reason for this is because I must give the wife and daughter HTTP traffic as well) I have NNTP on a minimum of 256k and torrent on a minimum of 128k, all of them have 4mbps set to max. Now lets say my NNTP for instance is flying at a steady pace of 4mbps and my wife open's up Gmail, I will see the NNTP go down to 3.5mbps for instance. Now lets say my daughter play's a YouTube vid at 3mbps, I will have the remainder of the 1mbps on NNTP. So what ever bandwidth is available, NNTP will use it, but it is last on the priority list. Now my question is, can't you guys do something like this? If there is available bandwidth then yes NNTP / Torrents will be able to use it, and if not, then yes it will be able to use what is available? And yes regarding HTTP downloads, mine works like this. It will give max speed up till 30Mb, after that it gets slowed down to 1500k. Now why I am saying all of this, my reason is if a pleb like myself can do it this way and it works, why are there things like shapers?

 

[Timber_MG]

AfriMan, on my Mikrotik router I have Q trees. I have my saa044 Profile, under that I have HTTP minimum set to 2mbps (reason for this is because I must give the wife and daughter HTTP traffic as well) I have NNTP on a minimum of 256k and torrent on a minimum of 128k, all of them have 4mbps set to max. Now lets say my NNTP for instance is flying at a steady pace of 4mbps and my wife open's up Gmail, I will see the NNTP go down to 3.5mbps for instance. Now lets say my daughter play's a YouTube vid at 3mbps, I will have the remainder of the 1mbps on NNTP. So what ever bandwidth is available, NNTP will use it, but it is last on the priority list. Now my question is, can't you guys do something like this? If there is available bandwidth then yes NNTP / Torrents will be able to use it, and if not, then yes it will be able to use what is available? And yes regarding HTTP downloads, mine works like this. It will give max speed up till 30Mb, after that it gets slowed down to 1500k. Now why I am saying all of this, my reason is if a pleb like myself can do it this way and it works, why are there things like shapers?

I used to use such a setup when Afrihost was with IS, but then everything changed since moving to MTN. The Queue trees work well if you have fairly consistent throughput. They fail horribly when throughput is what you get from Afrihost.

Afrihost should just release a tiered product a la Mweb and be done with it. In stead low users are subsidising high users on the uncapped products and everybody suffers as a result. Net neutrality is rearing its head.

Normal daytime things like a driver download and even browsing don't have good user experinece on uncapped. Capped is better, but still falls short on international for the last time now.

 

[saa044]

I used to use such a setup when Afrihost was with IS, but then everything changed since moving to MTN. The Queue trees work well if you have fairly consistent throughput. They fail horribly when throughput is what you get from Afrihost.

Afrihost should just release a tiered product a la Mweb and be done with it. In stead low users are subsidising high users on the uncapped products and everybody suffers as a result. Net neutrality is rearing its head.

Normal daytime things like a driver download and even browsing don't have good user experinece on uncapped. Capped is better, but still falls short on international for the last time now.

I could not help thinking to myself what would happen if all the AH users at the same time tried to stream a YouTube video. I see the network in this state, to many clients, to little bandwidth. regarding HTTP, it will work great if AH could allocate 1GB of http downloads per day to clients, not part of browsing, but actual downloads. I can't see any driver being larger than 1GB, then after that it becomes part of the current shaping.

 

[AfriMan]

AfriMan, on my Mikrotik router I have Q trees. I have my saa044 Profile, under that I have HTTP minimum set to 2mbps (reason for this is because I must give the wife and daughter HTTP traffic as well) I have NNTP on a minimum of 256k and torrent on a minimum of 128k, all of them have 4mbps set to max. Now lets say my NNTP for instance is flying at a steady pace of 4mbps and my wife open's up Gmail, I will see the NNTP go down to 3.5mbps for instance. Now lets say my daughter play's a YouTube vid at 3mbps, I will have the remainder of the 1mbps on NNTP. So what ever bandwidth is available, NNTP will use it, but it is last on the priority list. Now my question is, can't you guys do something like this? If there is available bandwidth then yes NNTP / Torrents will be able to use it, and if not, then yes it will be able to use what is available? And yes regarding HTTP downloads, mine works like this. It will give max speed up till 30Mb, after that it gets slowed down to 1500k. Now why I am saying all of this, my reason is if a pleb like myself can do it this way and it works, why are there things like shapers?

It definitely makes sense in theory, but I couldn't answer from an entire network perspective whether that is possible or practical. I'd have to ask the question. I think the response time would probably be too slow in terms of response to effectively keep bandwidth management in check. If usage is suddenly spiking all the time, this will cause inconsistent latency and a generally poor realtime experience. That would be my initial thought.

 

[saa044]

It definitely makes sense in theory, but I couldn't answer from an entire network perspective whether that is possible or practical. I'd have to ask the question. I think the response time would probably be too slow in terms of response to effectively keep bandwidth management in check. If usage is suddenly spiking all the time, this will cause inconsistent latency and a generally poor realtime experience. That would be my initial thought.

Ahh yes true enough.

 

[Timber_MG]

Latency intensive apps would be put in a different queue. I've suggested in the past that a burst be allowed as normal activity. If the guy doing http downloads from a seed box is termed to be abusing and the guy streaming youtube not, then there is a neutrality argument at play here. Best and fairest would be a straight burst, though you can burst on different queues when making a distinction real-time vs downloading.

If you oversell provisioned bandwidth too far, then you have other problems however and no matter what queues, shaping algorithms you run, you have to shape/throttle certain or all traffic types. Allocating too little to a congested queue is the same as throttling, it just looks different from the user side. Suppose it sounds better to sell an "unshaped" account than to call a spade a spade and list contention and shaping policies.

 

[AfriMan]

Latency intensive apps would be put in a different queue. I've suggested in the past that a burst be allowed as normal activity. If the guy doing http downloads from a seed box is termed to be abusing and the guy streaming youtube not, then there is a neutrality argument at play here. Best and fairest would be a straight burst, though you can burst on different queues when making a distinction real-time vs downloading.

If you oversell provisioned bandwidth too far, then you have other problems however and no matter what queues, shaping algorithms you run, you have to shape/throttle certain or all traffic types. Allocating too little to a congested queue is the same as throttling, it just looks different from the user side. Suppose it sounds better to sell an "unshaped" account than to call a spade a spade and list contention and shaping policies.

Running seedboxes and net neutrality seem to be totally different issues to me. Disguising protocols or traffic to bypass shaping goes against the AUP, which is essentially the trust between the ISP and the end user. Net neutrality is about penalising users for going outside of your network or discriminating against certain types of content. We are clearly saying that we shape certain types of data and that is the nature of the product. I don't think one can have it both ways, by violating an AUP (to the detriment of the experience of other users) and then call for net neutrality when that is termed abuse. I think it's a very valid argument in that situation to say that a person should opt for a unshaped account and get whatever content they want when they want it. If our network indiscriminately penalised any user (shaped or unshaped) for downloading a certain type of traffic or from a network we didn't like, then it's a different story.