Afrihost Uncapped ADSL Feedback (Pt3)

[AfriMan]

Better than the constant 3000ms ping I get as soon as I leave town -_-


As for the shaping issues: I've been living on 25% Download/ 12.5% P2P for quite a while (at least for the past week as i've been checking fairly often ever since my latency issues started)

That's pretty horrible. Have you worked with our team at all with regard to the latency? Have you got any traceroutes that I can look at?

 

[AfriMan]

Not right now, but it wasn't only me with the issues - and I had the issues on both capped and uncapped, as well as on my FNB Connect capped account (which is also MTN backbone).
Guys on other backbones were fine.
Remember it's not just latency - it's also bandwidth. A 50byte ping packet may get through a lot quicker than a 1300 byte game data packet - and the 1300 byte packet has a much higher chance of being disrupted by a flaky link/router somewhere.

I need to see a lot more to determine that. If you have some test results to show that throughput was diminished on Uncapped and Capped, that would really help

 

[AfriMan]

Really sounds like the whole 'we only shape when the network is overtaxed' spiel is nonsense. Either that or the network is permanently fscked.

21:18PM at night and I still can't get more than 450kbps on a 10mb line.

That is definitely how the system works, we haven't made any changes there at all. Remember that, especially when demand is constantly high, shaping changes may only occur around or after midnight.

 

[Sinbad]

I need to see a lot more to determine that. If you have some test results to show that throughput was diminished on Uncapped and Capped, that would really help

If it happens again tonight (and I get time) I'll see what I can throw together.

 

[AfriMan]

Still waiting for an explanation of this!!!!

Had to switch to my Web Africa account which I might keep now and cancel Afrihost!!!!!

I suggest you report these new symptoms to the Critical Care team who have been helping you all along so that can review and analyse with you

 

[shreez]

Will do....
Funny thing is that on Sunday I had the best streaming experience I can remember on Afrihost.
Streams went between 720p, 1080i and 1080p.

Now this

 

[hayted]

Hi there Afriman

I sent you a PM. Thanks for all the help lately Appreciate it.

 

[AfriMan]

Hi there Afriman

I sent you a PM. Thanks for all the help lately Appreciate it.

Just dropped you a reply

 

[NightowlZA]

That's pretty horrible. Have you worked with our team at all with regard to the latency? Have you got any traceroutes that I can look at?

Ive had a ticket open for a week with no solution (see my post a page or 2 ago) i pm'd my ticket ID to afriguy yesterday as requested.

Every test under the sun that support has asked for results are in the ticket. All showing everything is fine...

From what i can tell in D3 as soon as the game starts transferring data my ping hits 3000ms, using turbocharging fixes this. So my conclusion is the port d3 uses (1119) is tossed in with p2p...

 

[drukkie]

I think I'm moving to the 120+120 webafrica deal...
I only do 200GB a month so no biggie....

I cannot deal with this shaping to death...i can understand torrents since it's international....
but the afrihost news server? surely that is on your local backbone?

I need my GOT fix on a monday night...not on a tuesday night!

 

[AfriGuy]

Ive had a ticket open for a week with no solution (see my post a page or 2 ago) i pm'd my ticket ID to afriguy yesterday as requested.

Every test under the sun that support has asked for results are in the ticket. All showing everything is fine...

From what i can tell in D3 as soon as the game starts transferring data my ping hits 3000ms, using turbocharging fixes this. So my conclusion is the port d3 uses (1119) is tossed in with p2p...

I'll follow up on the PM as soon as I can. Got through as many as I could yesterday, I'm sure you could see it went a bit bananas around these parts though. Will follow up with you soon.

 

[Sinbad]

Ive had a ticket open for a week with no solution (see my post a page or 2 ago) i pm'd my ticket ID to afriguy yesterday as requested.

Every test under the sun that support has asked for results are in the ticket. All showing everything is fine...

From what i can tell in D3 as soon as the game starts transferring data my ping hits 3000ms, using turbocharging fixes this. So my conclusion is the port d3 uses (1119) is tossed in with p2p...

This scenario makes sense, given that I can't even start a D3 game when I have an nntp download running and shaped down to 3% line speed.

 

[NightowlZA]

This scenario makes sense, given that I can't even start a D3 game when I have an nntp download running and shaped down to 3% line speed.

Yep, for a brief period on sunday my p2p was at 25% and D3 latency was kind of normal (280-300ms)

20mins after that it was back at 12.5% and everything went to complete #$^# again -_-

I'd think its safe to say D3 is falling under their p2p shaping and bottlenecking the crap outta the games data transfer. Resource monitor shows D3 transferring @ 15-20kB/s on my capped and WA accounts, so yeh definitely p2p shaping causing this (12.5% of 1mb account != 20kB/s)

 

[AfriMan]

This scenario makes sense, given that I can't even start a D3 game when I have an nntp download running and shaped down to 3% line speed.

Unless the traffic has P2P components in the packet signature, we wouldn't shape it. Also we should be aware of official Blizzard servers to make sure they are classified as real time. Could it be the QoS on Uncapped is trying to manage shaped traffic and unshaped traffic on your connection when you're running NNTP?

 

[AfriMan]

Yep, for a brief period on sunday my p2p was at 25% and D3 latency was kind of normal (280-300ms)

20mins after that it was back at 12.5% and everything went to complete #$^# again -_-

I'd think its safe to say D3 is falling under their p2p shaping and bottlenecking the crap outta the games data transfer. Resource monitor shows D3 transferring @ 15-20kB/s on my capped and WA accounts, so yeh definitely p2p shaping causing this (12.5% of 1mb account != 20kB/s)

That definitely shouldn;t be the case. Remember that if you're on the maximum shaping policy, it could be when demand is at peak, so it may be to do with throughput rather than latency. We'd need to test further. You could run BitMeter OS and see if you're throughput is limited at times when this happens. Shouldn't affect latency for your game at all.

 

[NightowlZA]

Unless the traffic has P2P components in the packet signature, we wouldn't shape it. Also we should be aware of official Blizzard servers to make sure they are classified as real time.

Going off my experience, and my testing using turbocharge, it seems that its not currently working that way

If it was unaffected by shaping and classified as real time turbocharge would not help my latency and my capped account would also be sitting at 3000ms

 

[Sinbad]

Unless the traffic has P2P components in the packet signature, we wouldn't shape it. Also we should be aware of official Blizzard servers to make sure they are classified as real time. Could it be the QoS on Uncapped is trying to manage shaped traffic and unshaped traffic on your connection when you're running NNTP?

Well the qos can throttle the crap out of nntp downloads if it likes but fact is it seems d3 shares the same bucket which isn't right.

 

[Sinbad]

from OMB:

AH latency a disaster so far this afternoon, just switched to my Connection account to see if that's better

 

[NightowlZA]

That definitely shouldn;t be the case. Remember that if you're on the maximum shaping policy, it could be when demand is at peak, so it may be to do with throughput rather than latency. We'd need to test further. You could run BitMeter OS and see if you're throughput is limited at times when this happens. Shouldn't affect latency for your game at all.

So I just tested ( using netlimiter)

Capped 1gb: during gameplay it goes along at around 16-18kB/s DL, jumping to 25kB/s when there's a lot going on.

Uncapped 1mb: Never went over 7kB/s regardless of what was going on in the game.


and yes, my latency was jumping over 2500ms on my uncapped. No issues on the capped.

 

[AfriMan]

Well the qos can throttle the crap out of nntp downloads if it likes but fact is it seems d3 shares the same bucket which isn't right.

If you're running a clean system (i.e. no contention) that would prove if gaming is shaped if you can see you're not bursting above a certain amount (the percentage mentioned in ClientZone shaping) on BitMeter OS.