Afrihost Uncapped ADSL Feedback (Pt3)

[Rayzo]

Hmm reading all this i use to use afrihost capped and my friend use to use afrihost for years so he told me he switched to webafrica cause afrihost's uncapped got total **** since mtn bought them especially for gaming said it was so bad could't even open facebook not sure what time that was.

I followed suite and joined with web africa iv used 70gigs now and i'm sitting with a 2 star rating half my line speed total **** what am i paying for then??? so i thought arihost should be better seeing as the bandwith leaders can downlaod so much in such short time but reading all this makes me think nope i have to pay even more money to get what i pay for total bull**** all isps i swear!

 

[Johnatan56]

There is something wrong with your shaping policy, switched to capped, so this morning where I had "no shaping applied", my line struggled doing hd YouTube and LoL at the same time (4mbps). Now that I've swapped to capped, I am able to play HD, while on two other pcs I'm playing lol with a ping of 172ms. Great prioritysation on your part.

 

[omnom]

Afriguy, how are 'real time' services defined? I have an uncapped 4mbps account, which is often shaped but that's fine because that's the deal. However, connecting to my place of work via Citrix is responsive at the start and end of the work day, but around lunch time there's quite a lot of lag. How can I establish if this is the network or the shaping? I've tried using the Turbocharge option but sometimes it seems to make a difference, sometimes not. Is there a more definite way to get an answer?

 

[Chevron]

Afriguy, how are 'real time' services defined? I have an uncapped 4mbps account, which is often shaped but that's fine because that's the deal. However, connecting to my place of work via Citrix is responsive at the start and end of the work day, but around lunch time there's quite a lot of lag. How can I establish if this is the network or the shaping? I've tried using the Turbocharge option but sometimes it seems to make a difference, sometimes not. Is there a more definite way to get an answer?

Switch to a capped account.

 

[Thor]

Switch to a capped account.

+1

 

[Wackyza]

I would suggest you sign up for a free Webafrica 2gb capped account and dial that at lunch to test your Citrix connection. I would also suggest u test it 2 or more days so you can establish a pattern if any.

Afriguy, how are 'real time' services defined? I have an uncapped 4mbps account, which is often shaped but that's fine because that's the deal. However, connecting to my place of work via Citrix is responsive at the start and end of the work day, but around lunch time there's quite a lot of lag. How can I establish if this is the network or the shaping? I've tried using the Turbocharge option but sometimes it seems to make a difference, sometimes not. Is there a more definite way to get an answer?

 

[AfriMan]

I don't have a shaping profile its capped isn't it suppose to be unshaped. Speeds have always been fine I was downloading on http 15mb and it was going at 100

Capped should definitely not be shaped. I think AfriGuy assumed you were talking Uncapped since you posted in this thread.

Have you run any other general connectivity tests, like our Network Test App?

 

[AfriMan]

Hmm reading all this i use to use afrihost capped and my friend use to use afrihost for years so he told me he switched to webafrica cause afrihost's uncapped got total **** since mtn bought them especially for gaming said it was so bad could't even open facebook not sure what time that was.

I followed suite and joined with web africa iv used 70gigs now and i'm sitting with a 2 star rating half my line speed total **** what am i paying for then??? so i thought arihost should be better seeing as the bandwith leaders can downlaod so much in such short time but reading all this makes me think nope i have to pay even more money to get what i pay for total bull**** all isps i swear!

Each ISP uses their own system to define their products and Uncapped especially is handled very differently. We used the star rating when we were on our previous network and we were never too thrilled about it. Mostly because all services are throttled on the system, where we prefer to always have realtime services running at peak, and shape other services according to demand. We also have the unique ability to bypass shaping when you want with a Turbocharge (which you get 300 free minutes of per month) to get the best possible experience and value for money.

 

[AfriMan]

There is something wrong with your shaping policy, switched to capped, so this morning where I had "no shaping applied", my line struggled doing hd YouTube and LoL at the same time (4mbps). Now that I've swapped to capped, I am able to play HD, while on two other pcs I'm playing lol with a ping of 172ms. Great prioritysation on your part.

Capped accounts and Uncapped accounts are drawn from different bandwidth allocations, so the performance may not always be the same. Uncapped also features built-in QoS to provide the best experience, so it may prioritise gaming over streaming - I would need to check on this though.

Do you achieve the same effect if you turbocharge while running these services?

 

[AfriMan]

Afriguy, how are 'real time' services defined? I have an uncapped 4mbps account, which is often shaped but that's fine because that's the deal. However, connecting to my place of work via Citrix is responsive at the start and end of the work day, but around lunch time there's quite a lot of lag. How can I establish if this is the network or the shaping? I've tried using the Turbocharge option but sometimes it seems to make a difference, sometimes not. Is there a more definite way to get an answer?

It's probably not likely to be shaping because it sounds like the shaping profile would be consistent at the times you are testing. What could be changing is either contention on the network (which at the moment is very minimal) or congestion on your local exchange.

We'd need to do some more troubleshooting on this to determine the cause. Could you please PM me?

 

[The Abyss]

Honestly have to Admit, been a few weeks now of on and off now of **** connectivity on Afrihost unapped 4Mb, as really nice before with streaming from youtube with 2 or more pc's on the network. Now its competetion for who gets to watch. I switched to another providers capped account and wow what a difference, felt like i had internet again. Seems going capped is a better idea. Possibly some intention behind Afrihost and Mtn to push users to capped accounts for more control of their network. Would not surprise me, marketing strategies. All big data providers want a piece now, shaping is their way gaining control it seems. Sad we have such low bandwidth standards in SA and they still trying to squeeze more out of us. CAP FTW!!

 

[paulbloggs]

So... how many weeks of "testing" has it been now?

So after complaining last weekend that downloading of Avast virus software was at the blindingly slow 2kB/s (dialup was about 8kB/s?) This weekend I thought I would help my child who has a project on transportation and bicycles in particular. He has no idea what a penny farthing is - so off to youtube. That is realtime - right? Man - it felt like 5 seconds of video and 30 seconds of buffering. For a complete 3 minute clip. And any other videos we tried after that. Sunday afternoon 2:50pm.

Sure - we only have a 1Mb line but youtube always played back continuously after a few second pause at the beginning.

Oh and I forgot - the wife spends her days on the SARS website filing tax returns etc - she complains that it kicks her off because of delays and timeouts.

I don't think you have improved our experience.
I would prefer the old Afrihost.

 

[AfriMan]

Honestly have to Admit, been a few weeks now of on and off now of **** connectivity on Afrihost unapped 4Mb, as really nice before with streaming from youtube with 2 or more pc's on the network. Now its competetion for who gets to watch. I switched to another providers capped account and wow what a difference, felt like i had internet again. Seems going capped is a better idea. Possibly some intention behind Afrihost and Mtn to push users to capped accounts for more control of their network. Would not surprise me, marketing strategies. All big data providers want a piece now, shaping is their way gaining control it seems. Sad we have such low bandwidth standards in SA and they still trying to squeeze more out of us. CAP FTW!!

We're definitely not doing anything to push clients towards a particular product, we're just trying to create a sustainable product in terms of Uncapped, in line with our upstream costs and the cost of network capacity. We believe that our Uncapped product, with realtime priority, is unique and a great option, especially with the ability to Turbocharge whenever you like, rather than a time based bolt-on. We also are tweaking our settings to offer a significant less shaped or unshaped window for downloading after hours.

We'll continue to troubleshoot issues that arise, as we always have, to improve the product where we can and give our clients the best possible experience with the resources we have.

 

[AfriMan]

So after complaining last weekend that downloading of Avast virus software was at the blindingly slow 2kB/s (dialup was about 8kB/s?) This weekend I thought I would help my child who has a project on transportation and bicycles in particular. He has no idea what a penny farthing is - so off to youtube. That is realtime - right? Man - it felt like 5 seconds of video and 30 seconds of buffering. For a complete 3 minute clip. And any other videos we tried after that. Sunday afternoon 2:50pm.

Sure - we only have a 1Mb line but youtube always played back continuously after a few second pause at the beginning.

Oh and I forgot - the wife spends her days on the SARS website filing tax returns etc - she complains that it kicks her off because of delays and timeouts.

I don't think you have improved our experience.
I would prefer the old Afrihost.

I'm sorry to hear that you're getting such poor performance out of your account. That definitely should not be the case, unless you are comparing the performance of a 1Mbps Uncapped account to a Capped account. I'm assuming your line is 2Mbps because Telkom don't offer 1Mbps lines anymore.

 

[tco21]

I'm on a 4mb uncapped account with afrihost. It's utter crap. The weekends are fine, but the week days, when I actually need internet to do work, are unusable. The frustration is not worth it. The feedback I was given in an online chat was to look for an alternative product (i.e. capped). In what world is that a solution? Sorry Afrihost, I've supported you guys for a long time but if you cannot plan for demand, don't market so aggressively.

 

[AfriGuy]

I'm on a 4mb uncapped account with afrihost. It's utter crap. The weekends are fine, but the week days, when I actually need internet to do work, are unusable. The frustration is not worth it. The feedback I was given in an online chat was to look for an alternative product (i.e. capped). In what world is that a solution? Sorry Afrihost, I've supported you guys for a long time but if you cannot plan for demand, don't market so aggressively.

Really sorry to hear about this
Have any tests been done on the account to determine where any issues are cropping in?

 

[feesbees]

Hi Afriguy,

I am on 2Mbps home uncapped, with my line bundled into the deal. If I want to switch to a bundled capped account, how do I go about it? Apologies if this has been asked elsewhere.

Thanks.

 

[Vorastra]

It's not a capacity issue. In case you weren't following the thread, we are shaping all Uncapped users between 7:30am and 10:00pm in the North and East (slightly later in the South) to ensure that we can deliver low-contention and consistent performance, especially on realtime services, for Uncapped users. So at the moment, during that peak window, we should see excellent throughput on realtime services.

After the peak window, we use dynamic shaping - based on demand in each individual region to determine shaping or unshaping.

Nice to see a real answer. None of this "testing" BS that you guys were spouting. So this horsesh*t shaping is now the norm? Time to start testing other ISP's.

What a useless ISP Afrihost has become. Oh yeah and it's been a month and a half and your "critical care" has neither fixed my YouTube issue nor are they responding to any of my emails about progression updates.

Fool me once, Afrihost.

 

[AfriGuy]

Hi Afriguy,

I am on 2Mbps home uncapped, with my line bundled into the deal. If I want to switch to a bundled capped account, how do I go about it? Apologies if this has been asked elsewhere.

Thanks.

Greetings

You can change your package in your ClientZone, under Connectivity and Edit package.

 

[Napalm]

Shaping is fine for the standard Uncapped accounts (they don't pay premium price, average to medium shaping is fine during office hours). Even with shaping on during daytime, the speeds shouldn't be too bad, with the After hours and weekends the "pipes" must be opened up to give some leeway.


Obviously the premium users must get full speed all the time. {getting their full Package speed at least 85% of the time, if their line is nice and clean}.