Afrihost Uncapped ADSL Feedback (Pt3)

[Hectic]

Is it just me or is international screwed? Steam and other software downloads crawling at 56k modem speeds. Youtube seems to not be as bad as that.

Speedtest reads fine, except my ping is a bit high.

View attachment 134007

edit: Connected with my FNB account and things are no better

I haven't been on a Home uncapped package for a while, but afik Steam and all downloads are shaped from 07:00 - 22:00 and then it is dynamically shipped from then on.

 

[Malooga]

Is it just me or is international screwed? Steam and other software downloads crawling at 56k modem speeds. Youtube seems to not be as bad as that.

Speedtest reads fine, except my ping is a bit high.

View attachment 134007

edit: Connected with my FNB account and things are no better

I think it is.

Downloading on 2mb biz uncapped is crawling along.

 

[RogueTr00per]

I haven't been on a Home uncapped package for a while, but afik Steam and all downloads are shaped from 07:00 - 22:00 and then it is dynamically shipped from then on.

You're confusing being throttled with being shaped. in any event, the norm for me during waking hours is actually full line speed on Steam.

I think it is.

Downloading on 2mb biz uncapped is crawling along.

Yeah, when you can't even download a 5MB file within a couple of minutes then there's a problem. Was telling me 20 minutes so I cancelled it after a while.

 

[Heksmeester]

 

[calypso]

Dunno if they being pissy because I cancelled. But NNTP now down to 200kb/s. YouTube videos auto quality selecting to 240p.

 

[MrGray]

Get the impression everyone is switching to capped or business, so the question is, how long before those offerings become oversubscribed and the "shaping" debacle is inflicted on those accounts?

 

[shreez]

I'm moving over to Web Africa.
I've tested their Uncapped before, and the streaming on Netflix and Hulu is brilliant!
Netflix streams at 1080p, sometimes going to 1080i.

However, they do say that you if you use a lot of data in a short amount of time, they will throttle you.
I'm still not sure whether to go for the uncapped or capped account.

Uncapped bundle is exactly the same as the Afrihost 10Mb price for R900.

 

[Orihalcon]

You're confusing being throttled with being shaped. in any event, the norm for me during waking hours is actually full line speed on Steam.

Afriman has confirmed that Steam downloads are being treated as non-realtime protocols and is subject to shaping under the home uncapped account. Or it's supposed to be. So many people are being shaped into the ground from 7am - 10pm when downloading from Steam unfortunately.

 

[AfriMan]

Hi there Afriman

I have an question that an telkom engineer asked me why does all my account get session time out every 3 days and 52sec?????????

We do drop your session if you don't move any data for a significant amount of time. I'm not sure that that is the exact time period, I think its closer to a week or so.

 

[AfriMan]

"Afriman said that they are running "tests" on Home Uncapped accounts. In other words, they are shaping these accounts EVERY DAY to ensure all Capped/Business accounts perform better and faster 24/7"

So they are doing these tests on my R300 per month - leaving all their uncapped users with a severely crippled service and not batting an eyelid in taking the full fee for this.

The only feedback or correspondence we as users get, are via this thread
It seems the reps on here are now the only spokesperson for the company - and I don't blame them for the occasional meltdown ;-)

Hope this saga gets resolved soon

We do believe that we need to run this testing to deliver a better product to our clients. We unfortunately can't keep adding more capacity to the network indefinitely, unless the growth in the number of clients justifies it. We have already upgraded several times at a huge overall cost, which we've managed not to pass onto clients just yet.

I definitely don't intend to meltdown, I'm always here to provide feedback and to accept feedback from clients. As long as we're communicating respectfully, I do believe that my role here in the forums can create a lot of value to clients I interact with here (and in general). There have been many examples where suggestions here have been taken up, and I would definitely like to continue this.

 

[AfriMan]

So happy I found this thread. I thought I was going crazy. Axxess have changed the shaping policy so usenet maxes out at 300kb/s on a 10mb line. The have literally cut 2/3. This is day night all the time.

Also gonna have to jump ship. If I wanted 300kb/s and buffering I would have bought a slower line.

I can't speak for Axxess's policies, but we're shaping all Uncapped accounts between 7:30am and 10pm for the moment to try to determine if we can improve our clients overall Uncapped experience, with minimal contention to guarantee fast and consistent priority realtime services. So NNTP, as a non-realtime service, would definitely be shaped during this time.

 

[AfriMan]

Man I feel so bad for Afrihost actually, especially Afriman that has to deal with us lot. I am saying this because I really loved the company and it is so disappointing what is happening now.

I appreciate the sentiment and I know this has been a difficult time for all of us. I really do believe that we are moving in the right direction to offer a consistent product. Our intentions are always with our client's satisfaction If we do see that the majority of clients are unhappy with the changes we have in mind, we'll go back to the drawing board until we find something that works for everyone, as much as that is possible

 

[calypso]

I can't speak for Axxess's policies, but we're shaping all Uncapped accounts between 7:30am and 10pm for the moment to try to determine if we can improve our clients overall Uncapped experience, with minimal contention to guarantee fast and consistent priority realtime services. So NNTP, as a non-realtime service, would definitely be shaped during this time.

This is 24/7. Daytime I would understand.

 

[AfriMan]

Don't see why you should feel for AH, I can understand sympathy towards the reps but the company should just come up with a solution to fix the issues.

I have been more than willing to help running diagnostics on my end to help their critical care team, but it just doesn't seem to help.

I really do appreciate that you have been so willing to help, and I'm hoping that we can figure out what is happening in your case.

 

[AfriMan]

This is 24/7. Daytime I would understand.

Remember that after 10pm we revert to dynamic shaping, so it is possible that a user could be shaped for longer if demand does not subside or increases.

 

[Heisenborg]

Remember that after 10pm we revert to dynamic shaping, so it is possible that a user could be shaped for longer if demand does not subside or increases.

If im honest, if AH has to apply dynamic shaping or any shaping for that matter after 10pm, then you do not have enough capacity for your current userbase.

 

[AfriMan]

It's almost as if everything turned to ***** when MTN bought shares in the company. Coincidental? Needless to say, I've already jumped ship. Just waiting for the month to end so to at least get half my money's worth, since Uncapped with AfriHost is basically capped to around 30gb a month as one can never download jack on their network (even http downloads).

Nothing physically changed when MTN proposed the buy-in deal. The deal is still before the Competitions board, so they have not had any input into Afrihost as yet, not so much as a memo.

I'm sorry to hear that you have cancelled with us, I sincerely wish you the best for the future.

 

[AfriMan]

If im honest, if AH has to apply dynamic shaping or any shaping for that matter after 10pm, then you do not have enough capacity for your current userbase.

The idea is to be unshaped, but we still have to account for contention if demand happens to spike. This is to protect latency for realtime services. We could just unshaped everyone and let everyone get the best experience they could, but ultimately that could be disastrous. Shaping dynamically allows us to unshape as much as possible in real-time but still manage the network for best performance.

 

[Heisenborg]

The idea is to be unshaped, but we still have to account for contention if demand happens to spike. This is to protect latency for realtime services. We could just unshaped everyone and let everyone get the best experience they could, but ultimately that could be disastrous. Shaping dynamically allows us to unshape as much as possible in real-time but still manage the network for best performance.

I hear you, but still, if you need to resort to shaping after 10pm then something is wrong

 

[AfriMan]

I haven't had time to run through the thread and try catch up... but it seems everyone is getting fed up of all this shaping. This "testing" is ridiculous.

I'm currently "Shaping Policy: 18.8% Download/ 6.25% P2P" on a Sunday, at 08:55. I noted last night, around 22:00, I was moved to "Shaping Policy: 75% Download/ 75% P2P". I rechecked again, after midnight, it was still there, so I still didn't get full speed, even though we've been told from 07:30 to 22:00 we shaped hardcore. This most certainly sucks.

I'm in their Southern Region, which never really used to see an shaping due to network load.

Please AH, we would love the speeds back, that we were so happy to fork out our money for.

I think the reality is that Uncapped demand was increasing much faster than the rate of new clients, and we needed to find ways to ensure that we have a sustainable product to offer. In recent times contention has given clients a poor experience, on both realtime and non-realtime services, and even though we've pretty much doubled our national IPC capacity since we moved over to MTN, we are still seeing increasing demand as lines are increased and client user trends change towards consuming more. The testing is to see if we can viably offer a different way of using the capacity to ensure that we offer good performance on priority services during peak time, and then offer a significant time off-peak for heavy downloads and where clients can be unshaped to torrent, etc.

So far we are seeing better performance on realtime streaming and gaming, based on reports from social media, our support channels and testimonials. However, we haven not made any permanent AUP changes. Once we do, we will notify clients as to what exactly will be changing and how.