Afrihost Uncapped ADSL Feedback (Pt3)

[Mualliq]

As I mentioned, it's not that we're shaping you more or less. The policy is set to shape, but how that performs in real time will always be unpredictable, which is the nature of Peer 2 Peer. The percentage is a guideline to let you know a ballpark of what speeds to expect, but it would never be guaranteed - it would be impossible to do that

I understand what you are saying, but 20 kbps per second is not in the ballpark of 60 kbps - that is like saying a 3 mbps line is in the same ballpark as a 10 mbps line, when clearly they are not as you pay far more for the latter.

 

[Mualliq]

And just to add, in its current form, your product is shaped for fixed periods of the day just like your competitors, except you consider peak hours to be the entire working day plus the entire evening until 2 am at the earliest.

 

[aybbleek]

Remember that many of our competitors entry level Uncapped products are throttled or shaped for fixed times throughout the day, etc. So it's important to compare to a similar performance product, which is shaped by demand.

I know some clients are experiencing shaping more severely than they (or we) would like, and we are working hard to improve their experience. We are still waiting for a full upgrade across the board to ensure that we continually provide the kind of experience that we envision. To be realistic, this will always involve some degree of shaping, so we're currently using the most recent upgrades to find a good balance between satisfying demand and protecting the network. This way we can have a better idea of where to set the shaping levels for the best overall experience and network performance, especially on priority realtime services.

I think our products still offer great value, for the price and overall experience, and I also believe our internet experience gets better and better as we learn more about our clients needs and how to maximise the resources we have.

To be fair, you can only compare products that shape on demand against each other if you know what capacity each company has available in proportion to the amount of users per line speed. In all honesty current perception points towards Afrihost being oversubscribed and unequipped in terms of capacity.

 

[AfriMan]

And just to add, in its current form, your product is shaped for fixed periods of the day just like your competitors, except you consider peak hours to be the entire working day plus the entire evening until 2 am at the earliest.

That is not a function of the product itself, but the increase in demand. Once we receive the planned upgrades from Telkom, the working rules of the products will remain the same, so the experience will be different - as it has been for pretty much most of the time since we moved over to the MTN network.

 

[avr-rulez]

Remember that many of our competitors entry level Uncapped products are throttled or shaped for fixed times throughout the day, etc. So it's important to compare to a similar performance product, which is shaped by demand.

I know some clients are experiencing shaping more severely than they (or we) would like, and we are working hard to improve their experience. We are still waiting for a full upgrade across the board to ensure that we continually provide the kind of experience that we envision. To be realistic, this will always involve some degree of shaping, so we're currently using the most recent upgrades to find a good balance between satisfying demand and protecting the network. This way we can have a better idea of where to set the shaping levels for the best overall experience and network performance, especially on priority realtime services.

I think our products still offer great value, for the price and overall experience, and I also believe our internet experience gets better and better as we learn more about our clients needs and how to maximise the resources we have.

Hi Afriman

I still can't understand why my CAPPED account is negatively affected by your Shaping policy.
e.g. yesterday my 10Meg line could only dl at +-5Meg possibly as a result of "End of the month Rush"
Did not log a fault as yet - will wait til tomorrow.

 

[Zertop]

Hi Afriman

I still can't understand why my CAPPED account is negatively affected by your Shaping policy.
e.g. yesterday my 10Meg line could only dl at +-5Meg possibly as a result of "End of the month Rush"
Did not log a fault as yet - will wait til tomorrow.

Capped shouldn't be affected at all? Is it running fine now?

Z

 

[AfriMan]

To be fair, you can only compare products that shape on demand against each other if you know what capacity each company has available in proportion to the amount of users per line speed. In all honesty current perception points towards Afrihost being oversubscribed and unequipped in terms of capacity.

I think there is a vein forming in this thread of that, but as a whole, we believe that many of our Uncapped clients are receiving a good experience. However, that's not to say that we're not working towards improving everyone's experience by expanding our network. Remember that with the newest upgrades, we have one of the biggest ISP networks in the country outside of Telkom, so we're dealing with scale that other ISP's are not. That is in terms of infrastructure as well as demand. So there is also a learning curve for us, as we adjust our forecasting and planning for the new scale of implementation we're talking about.

 

[aybbleek]

I think there is a vein forming in this thread of that, but as a whole, we believe that many of our Uncapped clients are receiving a good experience. However, that's not to say that we're not working towards improving everyone's experience by expanding our network. Remember that with the newest upgrades, we have one of the biggest ISP networks in the country outside of Telkom, so we're dealing with scale that other ISP's are not. That is in terms of infrastructure as well as demand. So there is also a learning curve for us, as we adjust our forecasting and planning for the new scale of implementation we're talking about.

I think if all responses were that honest from the Afri-Reps there would be less hostility in this thread. Keep up the transparency, your clients appreciate it.

 

[AfriMan]

Hi Afriman

I still can't understand why my CAPPED account is negatively affected by your Shaping policy.
e.g. yesterday my 10Meg line could only dl at +-5Meg possibly as a result of "End of the month Rush"
Did not log a fault as yet - will wait til tomorrow.

We'd need to see exactly what was affected. Was throughput (local or international) lower than it should be, or was there additional latency causing overall performance to be poor. What tests did you run, or are you running?

 

[AfriMan]

Please be aware that there are some authentication issues on the network at the moment. I would advise those affected not to reboot their routers for the next while, until we get a handle on this.

The issues have been present intermittently over the last 24 hours, and seem to fluctuate. At present it does seem to be pretty poor. Please bear with us while our network team work on this. The guys have been working through the night, so we'll keep at it until it gets sorted out

 

[Vrotappel]

Please be aware that there are some authentication issues on the network at the moment. I would advise those affected not to reboot their routers for the next while, until we get a handle on this.

The issues have been present intermittently over the last 24 hours, and seem to fluctuate. At present it does seem to be pretty poor. Please bear with us while our network team work on this. The guys have been working through the night, so we'll keep at it until it gets sorted out

Is this the reason why Afrihost is completely down for me?

 

[AfriMan]

Is this the reason why Afrihost is completely down for me?

We're having authentication issues, so we should have this resolved soon. But new sessions are not coming through to us as they should

 

[aybbleek]

We're having authentication issues, so we should have this resolved soon. But new sessions are not coming through to us as they should

I can only laugh, even with everyone struggling to use their connections i'm still shaped at "Shaping Policy: 18.8% Download/ 6.25%" P2P

 

[AfriMan]

I can only laugh, even with everyone struggling to use their connections i'm still shaped at "Shaping Policy: 18.8% Download/ 6.25%" P2P

Remember that authentication will only affect new sessions from connecting properly. Currently connected clients won't experience any issues unless their connection is broken.

 

[aybbleek]

Remember that authentication will only affect new sessions from connecting properly. Currently connected clients won't experience any issues unless their connection is broken.

I understand that, I'm just saying there should substantially less stress on the network because new sessions cannot be started

 

[AfriMan]

I understand that, I'm just saying there should substantially less stress on the network because new sessions cannot be started

Not really, on the scale that we're talking about, even if several hundred clients are affected, this won't impact connectivity significantly. It would need to be tens of thousands of clients disconnected. So existing sessions are still consuming significant bandwidth.

 

[Mualliq]

Not really, on the scale that we're talking about, even if several hundred clients are affected, this won't impact connectivity significantly. It would need to be tens of thousands of clients disconnected. So existing sessions are still consuming significant bandwidth.

If everyone is being shaped as aggressively as we currently are outside of office hours, then surely you need to increase the capacity by 1500% rather than the 22% that has been quoted to fully relax shaping during those off-peak hours. And if everyone is not being shaped that way, then I would have to ask why we are?

That of course assumes everyone is fully taking advantage of their capacity, but even if only one in ten does, you would still need a capacity increase of well over 100% just to get things back to the level they were a few months ago.

 

[AfriMan]

If everyone is being shaped as aggressively as we currently are outside of office hours, then surely you need to increase the capacity by 1500% rather than the 22% that has been quoted to fully relax shaping during those off-peak hours. And if everyone is not being shaped that way, then I would have to ask why we are?

Adding IPC is a pretty big financial commitment, so no ISP is in a position to simply overcompensate for any eventuality. The order has to be accompanied by reports and case studies to motivate for the additional capacity. Telkom also don't keep IPC cards spare, hence the long turn around time for IPC to be installed. We'd love to have double or triple the capacity than current demand, but those costs have to be absorbed somewhere, and ultimately it will result in unsustainable pricing, or unattractive products. And dropping IPC is probably even harder than getting more

 

[aybbleek]

Not really, on the scale that we're talking about, even if several hundred clients are affected, this won't impact connectivity significantly. It would need to be tens of thousands of clients disconnected. So existing sessions are still consuming significant bandwidth.

I understand, thought there were more users being impacted

 

[aybbleek]

Adding IPC is a pretty big financial commitment, so no ISP is in a position to simply overcompensate for any eventuality. The order has to be accompanied by reports and case studies to motivate for the additional capacity. Telkom also don't keep IPC cards spare, hence the long turn around time for IPC to be installed. We'd love to have double or triple the capacity than current demand, but those costs have to be absorbed somewhere, and ultimately it will result in unsustainable pricing, or unattractive products. And dropping IPC is probably even harder than getting more

Can't you just work on an opex model with Telkom with the IPC cards, like finance it over 2 years with minimal interest? Considering that we are paying more than any other ISP for 4MB uncapped home bundles at the moment, you could absorb the cost for the interest of the finance from us and not drop the price. Everybody wins?