Afrihost Uncapped ADSL Feedback (Pt3)

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Afrihost need to rename their products.

Home uncapped just doesn't fit their new business model. I think its called "Streamers Paradise" or something along those lines. They also need to change the description. You definitely can't 'download as much as you want' anymore. Not with the shaping for 15 - 18 hours a day (based on your usage). There is no balance in the account anymore, so the branding has to change.

And business uncapped should be changed to 'Truly unshaped' or 'Downloaders Haven'. I think the vast majority of the users of home users, it shouldn't be called a business account.

How much longer is the 'testing' going to be for? I know a few work colleagues and friends that are on home uncapped as well, and they are lessed than pleased with new business strategy. So we all need to know when/if the shaping becomes permanent.
 
ainsin said:
Afrihost need to rename their products.

Home uncapped just doesn't fit their new business model. I think its called "Streamers Paradise" or something along those lines. They also need to change the description. You definitely can't 'download as much as you want' anymore. Not with the shaping for 15 - 18 hours a day (based on your usage). There is no balance in the account anymore, so the branding has to change.

And business uncapped should be changed to 'Truly unshaped' or 'Downloaders Haven'. I think the vast majority of the users of home users, it shouldn't be called a business account.

How much longer is the 'testing' going to be for? I know a few work colleagues and friends that are on home uncapped as well, and they are lessed than pleased with new business strategy. So we all need to know when/if the shaping becomes permanent.
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I see this as a precursor to becoming permanent.
Obviously the point is get as many people as possible off uncapped and onto capped or Business accounts.

If you're not happy, the best way to express your displeasure is to vote with your wallet, and get an uncapped account which isn't "on hold" for more than 15 hours a day.
 
I read these new policies as being designed to "encourage" people to schedule all their downloading after peak hours, in order to balance out load on the IPC - you pay for peak IPC capacity, not usage - so when the IPC is actually idling along at 5% at 3 in the morning you're wasting money. So get people to move their downloads off peak, and you have more peak capacity available for realtime stuff without spending more money.

All in all, my opinion is that this is a reasonably fair objective. My objection to it is that http downloads are ALSO affected. And I know that people are abusing HTTP downloads to retrieve huge files off remote retrieval services - so it's actually a no-win situation.
 
Sinbad said:
I read these new policies as being designed to "encourage" people to schedule all their downloading after peak hours, in order to balance out load on the IPC - you pay for peak IPC capacity, not usage - so when the IPC is actually idling along at 5% at 3 in the morning you're wasting money. So get people to move their downloads off peak, and you have more peak capacity available for realtime stuff without spending more money.

All in all, my opinion is that this is a reasonably fair objective. My objection to it is that http downloads are ALSO affected. And I know that people are abusing HTTP downloads to retrieve huge files off remote retrieval services - so it's actually a no-win situation.
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Agreed. And again, as you have correctly pointed out, realtime services are affected.
Secondly AH have never been able to classify Netflix and Hulu traffic properly, so they are still classed as downloads.
Afrihost reps will say different, however my testing speaks volumes. AH accounts chug along at 384p on Netflix, while Web Africa sails along at 1080p, or 720p at the very least.
 
ainsin said:
Afrihost need to rename their products.

Home uncapped just doesn't fit their new business model. I think its called "Streamers Paradise" or something along those lines. They also need to change the description. You definitely can't 'download as much as you want' anymore. Not with the shaping for 15 - 18 hours a day (based on your usage). There is no balance in the account anymore, so the branding has to change.

And business uncapped should be changed to 'Truly unshaped' or 'Downloaders Haven'. I think the vast majority of the users of home users, it shouldn't be called a business account.

How much longer is the 'testing' going to be for? I know a few work colleagues and friends that are on home uncapped as well, and they are lessed than pleased with new business strategy. So we all need to know when/if the shaping becomes permanent.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, true :( This is exactly how I feel about AH Home Uncapped. Afriman said that the testing's temporary.
 
ainsin said:
Afrihost need to rename their products.

Home uncapped just doesn't fit their new business model. I think its called "Streamers Paradise" or something along those lines. They also need to change the description. You definitely can't 'download as much as you want' anymore. Not with the shaping for 15 - 18 hours a day (based on your usage). There is no balance in the account anymore, so the branding has to change.

And business uncapped should be changed to 'Truly unshaped' or 'Downloaders Haven'. I think the vast majority of the users of home users, it shouldn't be called a business account.

How much longer is the 'testing' going to be for? I know a few work colleagues and friends that are on home uncapped as well, and they are lessed than pleased with new business strategy. So we all need to know when/if the shaping becomes permanent.
Click to expand...

There is still no limit to how much you can download. Remember that this refers to your bandwidth usage, whether streaming or torrenting, etc. There is no limit placed on how much you can use at all.

Business is still primarily aimed at business concerns, whether's a work from home business or a small office. As far as I know, many clients are still drawn from that market, especially with features like Business Optimisation which helps them run a smoother office internet experience.

The tests being run are not necessarily permanent, but I have not ETA on when they may end or be adjusted. It really depends on the feedback we receive from all channels, including social media, support requests and from our network engineers.
 
Sinbad said:
I read these new policies as being designed to "encourage" people to schedule all their downloading after peak hours, in order to balance out load on the IPC - you pay for peak IPC capacity, not usage - so when the IPC is actually idling along at 5% at 3 in the morning you're wasting money. So get people to move their downloads off peak, and you have more peak capacity available for realtime stuff without spending more money.

All in all, my opinion is that this is a reasonably fair objective. My objection to it is that http downloads are ALSO affected. And I know that people are abusing HTTP downloads to retrieve huge files off remote retrieval services - so it's actually a no-win situation.
Click to expand...

Lots of great points here, Sinbad :)

I don't believe it's a no win situation. I think we can work together to make the circumstances work for us. We're definitely not angling for more Business or Capped signups, but we have to figure out a sustainable solution. I think if people who want the Uncapped pricing can make that small change in habit to download more overnight, scheduling whatever they can, this could really work in everyone's favour. If it means that realtime services can be 100% awesome during peak, and you download with less or no shaping during that 9 hour window, it could be a win on all sides.
 
shreez said:
Agreed. And again, as you have correctly pointed out, realtime services are affected.
Secondly AH have never been able to classify Netflix and Hulu traffic properly, so they are still classed as downloads.
Afrihost reps will say different, however my testing speaks volumes. AH accounts chug along at 384p on Netflix, while Web Africa sails along at 1080p, or 720p at the very least.
Click to expand...

I think Orihalcon proved that realtime throughput was not the issue. I don't believe that we're misclassifying Netflix traffic, we have several clients who are getting a good experience, and our tests internally show that this is possible. It depends on which DNS provider you use and which of their regional servers you are ending up on. But I believe that if some clients are getting a good experience, it comes back down to individual connections and we must troubleshoot rather than immediately jump to the assumption that the network is broken.
 
Just switched my 2meg uncapped to a 60 gig capped account :)
 
AfriMan said:
Lots of great points here, Sinbad :)

I don't believe it's a no win situation. I think we can work together to make the circumstances work for us. We're definitely not angling for more Business or Capped signups, but we have to figure out a sustainable solution. I think if people who want the Uncapped pricing can make that small change in habit to download more overnight, scheduling whatever they can, this could really work in everyone's favour. If it means that realtime services can be 100% awesome during peak, and you download with less or no shaping during that 9 hour window, it could be a win on all sides.
Click to expand...

Thanks :)
My point about no-win is that many http downloads are legitimate HTTP downloads - not necessarily media files or things that are being queued up to watch later, but are in fact things that are needed now- a driver update to fix a glitch in a game, or a security fix for an app, for example. The sad fact that these fall into the same category as someone downloading a 35 gigabyte shaky HD cam rip of the latest Twilight movie from FileStream means that either 1) both these actions get "encouraged" towards 1am, or 2) both these actions are given a decent speed at 8pm.
Scenario 1 = lose for the guy trying to get his game to work or patch the gaping hole in Windows 8
Scenario 2 = lose for the ISP.
 
AfriMan said:
I think Orihalcon proved that realtime throughput was not the issue. I don't believe that we're misclassifying Netflix traffic, we have several clients who are getting a good experience, and our tests internally show that this is possible. It depends on which DNS provider you use and which of their regional servers you are ending up on. But I believe that if some clients are getting a good experience, it comes back down to individual connections and we must troubleshoot rather than immediately jump to the assumption that the network is broken.
Click to expand...

I use UnoTelly, same servers (JHB primary, CT secondary) when I tested both connections.
Afrihost was bad, swopped over to Web Africa which was good.

When the only thing which changed was the account using to access these services, it points to the network behind it being the issue.
 
Hey AfriMan, I assumed Steam download (being local) were not being touched by the shaper. Or did I assume wrong? It used to be full speed for months though, Steam speed at the moment is terri-bad.
 
Vorastra said:
Hey AfriMan, I assumed Steam download (being local) were not being touched by the shaper. Or did I assume wrong? It used to be full speed for months though, Steam speed at the moment is terri-bad.
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Shaping is to manage IPC capacity, not international capacity. So yes it will hit local traffic as well.
 
If they can only exclude HTTP downloads from the shaper and identify these retrieval services then there will be much less complaints. Rather find the services that abuses port 80. Also a lot of clients would appreciate it if download times could be from 8pm until 8am. Or at least do what Mweb does, but instead of throttling you rather shape a user on for instance a 4mbps line after 300GB.
 
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