Afrihost Uncapped ADSL Feedback (Pt3)

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Shaped 25% Download/ 12.5% P2P and its 12.18 am

This calls for additional Capacity for the East IPC, this is getting ridiculous now. Demand is super high compared to available capacity. Please Afriman, please apply more pressure on Telkom to provide additional Capacity ASAP.

I hear you loud and clear. I promise we're doing what we can on this side, promise.

I've also asked our network engineers to see what an be done to optimise and streamline performance with the resources that we have :(
 
That's exactly my point, I am in the North.

Since the upgrades my Netflix has run flawlessly but when we were experiencing heavy shaping the quality was atrocious.

Surely that points to shaping of some sort?

Afriman, A question used on the kit there: is it split for the different pools of subscribers or shared because of the costs involved?

Shaping kit is expensive and ppl tend to share the kit between the pools, forgetting that it has limited cpu cycles to process all the rules.
This causes unintended results as the cpu spends more time processing the rule sets and hence the rule sets gets priority.
This then negatively impacts on the people having less rule sets as the cpu have to queue them for processing.
 
That's exactly my point, I am in the North.

Since the upgrades my Netflix has run flawlessly but when we were experiencing heavy shaping the quality was atrocious.

Surely that points to shaping of some sort?

Well, what I'm saying is that it's not shaping by design. But there could be some effect, possibly to do with QoS or with latency introduced through contention or overall shaping, that may affect some services. It doesn't appear to be consistent for all users, so it may be the point at which you get onto the network and the capacity available at the time. It's really hard to say :(
 
Afriman, A question used on the kit there: is it split for the different pools of subscribers or shared because of the costs involved?

Shaping kit is expensive and ppl tend to share the kit between the pools, forgetting that it has limited cpu cycles to process all the rules.
This causes unintended results as the cpu spends more time processing the rule sets and hence the rule sets gets priority.
This then negatively impacts on the people having less rule sets as the cpu have to queue them for processing.

No, I don't think it's as specific as that. Uncapped has QoS applied to it, so it has to be separate from capped and business. Also, at the end of the day, we want to make sure that we can manage the network in a way that we preserve unshaped performance and optimise shaped performance so that latency and realtime performance continue to perform at premium levels.

Nothing really to do with costs or processing limitations.
 
Thank you so much for responding.
It is nice to see someone reading and actually responding to matters.

I'll red through everything again in your PM and chat to the guys who were last dealing with this. Let's see if we can get this back on track ASAP :)
 
Ok thanks, but still got this question:

If latency is across the entire network (and therefore both data pools I assume) then why is the Netflix quality worse on uncapped? It should be the same quality on both capped and uncapped if latency is the same for both?

I'm under the impression Realtime should be the same quality across all your products because it's loosely advertised as that in the clientzone and on this forum.

At the end of the day,from someone sitting in front of the TV it does not look like uncapped was a good choice. If I'm on the wrong product then say so. I don't yet see why I need to go back to capped or business uncapped because real-time is supposedly 100% speed and moving won't make any difference anyway, in theory anyway, in practice not so much.

Well, it should in theory, but what I seem to see is that we're in a peak period, Uncapped suffers a little more than Business and Capped, which is why I mentioned the separation in terms of provisioning. It doesn't seem to happen when shaping is not severe, and definitely not when we've upgraded in other areas. The answer may be to shape more severely so that realtime services are preserved with our available capacity, but we'd need to really have a good think about that before we do anything like that :(
 
I know, I understand all the technical contraints they have to work with and that alot of it is out of their direct control, but we moved back to AH from TI to get away from exactly this kind of nonsense. And seeing as we're paying more for AH Uncapped than any other ISP in the country charges, I don't think it's unfair to rant now and then :P
I don't have any intention of moving away from AH again (it still remains my favourite ISP despite of the shaping) but I seriously hope things change for the better soon. Realtime services and browsing is affected too, eventhough it shouldn't be. Netflix reaches HD only occasionally (it never reaches superHD though, and this is a 10mb line...), but browsing isn't doing well.

We'd need to look at what additional latency or reduced throughput could be affecting your performance. Since Netflix is generally not an issue, we're confident that everything is right on the routing side.

We'll definitely do what we can to make sure streaming is as good as it can be. We're seeing a major shift from downloading to streaming for content, so we definitely want to make sure that we get this right :)
 
Well, it should in theory, but what I seem to see is that we're in a peak period, Uncapped suffers a little more than Business and Capped, which is why I mentioned the separation in terms of provisioning. It doesn't seem to happen when shaping is not severe, and definitely not when we've upgraded in other areas. The answer may be to shape more severely so that realtime services are preserved with our available capacity, but we'd need to really have a good think about that before we do anything like that :(

Ok cool thank you, that's what I need to know. I'm on the wrong product then if I'd like consistency. Too bad I had to move first to find out, but at least you guys explain what's going on.
 
Well, what I'm saying is that it's not shaping by design. But there could be some effect, possibly to do with QoS or with latency introduced through contention or overall shaping, that may affect some services. It doesn't appear to be consistent for all users, so it may be the point at which you get onto the network and the capacity available at the time. It's really hard to say :(

Seems to make sense but if this is the case doesn't it contradict Afrihost's statement that realtime services will never be affected? Or is that only relevant to shaping?

Please don't see my comments as having a go at Afrihost, I am in fact a very happy customer (even more so when I hear what other ISP's are putting my friends through) and the customer service from you in particular is top notch. I am merely trying to get to the root of a problem that seems to affect quite a few users.

Anyway, phuza time now, enjoy your weekend gents.
 
Afri*, has anything happened regarding online gaming on a PS4 and Afrihost? I game regularly with other South Africans, and those in the party on Afrihost will have bad lag, whereas those in the party on other ISP's (OpenWeb and Mweb) state the experience is perfect.
 
So whats the deal with P2P speeds lately.Experiencing 10kbps till as late as 9pm ?
 
Thank you once again

Thank you so much for the assistance Afriman, I have received two calls from your company in a space of half an hour.

It us much appreciated.

It is however strange that I got two different versions.
Version 1 - Telkom states no problem, but the tech gave me a test account to try and get to the bottom of the problem as the traceroutes show issues.
Version 2 - Telkom reports there is still a problem.

I won't comment over Telkom.

I really appreciate that someone is looking at the problem.

Once again - THANK YOU.
I believe my lightning fast internet is on it's way to recovery now.
 
Afri*, has anything happened regarding online gaming on a PS4 and Afrihost? I game regularly with other South Africans, and those in the party on Afrihost will have bad lag, whereas those in the party on other ISP's (OpenWeb and Mweb) state the experience is perfect.

I've seen this brought up before, from what I know we can't seem to replicate the issues on our end.
Do you maybe have an open ticket I can follow up on for you?
 
I've seen this brought up before, from what I know we can't seem to replicate the issues on our end.
Do you maybe have an open ticket I can follow up on for you?

I've brought up a DC issue and Afriman apparently forwarded it to MTN? So either he hasn't or the one hand does not know what the other is doing?
 
I've brought up a DC issue and Afriman apparently forwarded it to MTN? So either he hasn't or the one hand does not know what the other is doing?

If AfriMan says he'll do something it's already been done :)
I'll follow up with him for any updates.
 
Seems to make sense but if this is the case doesn't it contradict Afrihost's statement that realtime services will never be affected? Or is that only relevant to shaping?

Please don't see my comments as having a go at Afrihost, I am in fact a very happy customer (even more so when I hear what other ISP's are putting my friends through) and the customer service from you in particular is top notch. I am merely trying to get to the root of a problem that seems to affect quite a few users.

Anyway, phuza time now, enjoy your weekend gents.

Remember - netflix technically is "illegal" and therefore unsupported :/ I guess if netflix came to SA, Afrihost could do more to make sure it doesnt get affected by shaping - but at the moment, due to the nature of needing a VPN/DNS, its hard for AH to make sure every workaround is unshaped.
 
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18.8% Download/ 6.25% P2P ,what does this mean?

It means that HTTP Downloads are shaped to 18.8% of your line speed. (100KBps = 18.8KBps Max), and P2P is shaped at 6.25% of your line (100KBps = 6.25KBps)
 
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