Afrihost Uncapped ADSL Feedback (Pt3)

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rakabos3 said:
I hear you, but still, if you need to resort to shaping after 10pm then something is wrong
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It's just a way of saying that we let the network "naturally' determine the rate as which we unshape, so that we don't flood the network at 10:01pm. The idea is to give back the maximum amount of bandwidth back, while controlling contention and latency.
 
Qrox said:
And it seems turbocharge is doing nothing.
Before Turbocharge: 7 kB/s
After Turbocharge: 9 kB/s

I said I was going to give Afrihost a month, and I gave them 2. Now I'll give them 1 week to fix their network, or I'm leaving as well. I'm not getting the product that I'm paying for and I'm very disappointed in the past 3 months' performance.

Afrihost keeps talking about all their great network upgrades that are coming and that have been implemented, but since they came along the network has been shaped to such slow speeds that I'd be getting faster speeds if I moved down from 4mbs to 1mbs on just about any other ISP.

And using the excuse that you are testing the network is unacceptable. It takes a week to test that, AT MOST. Its been a month now, that we keep hearing excuses about how the network is being tested, but meanwhile your customers are being thrown aside.

Get your act together Afrihost.

EDIT: Well after 20 minutes the turbocharge finally started working, but I'm still only getting 50% of my line speed, so I'm still not happy. Websites loading slowly as well.
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Turbocharge can take up to 5-10 minutes to take effect, because it has to reclassify your account at network level. We add on that extra 15 minutes to your session, so you get your full hour.
 
I am still waiting for a press release to state that testing is happening.

I feel it is unfair toward clients and prospective clients that you;

1) market your home uncapped product without stating that it is subject to shaping from 7am tot 10pm, and

2) leave it to the client themselves to seek out sites and threads like this one to learn the reasoning behind the constant shaping.

This leaves a sour taste in a customers' mouth.

I would also like to understand the reasoning as to WHY this was not done when testing started. Given that this "testing" has been going on or 3 weeks and counting...it is a bit worrying with no end or resolution i.t.o policy in site.
 
Napalm said:
I feel a company like Afrihost must come to the table and make their clients get what they pay for.

There must always be 2 or 3 different types of Uncapped. One that is true uncapped , no limits, no shaping. That is what you pay for and that is what you expect.. no throttling and not certain times of the day shaping.

2nd Uncapped account could be like a semi shaped account for those that need to download during night and maybe game during the day with the odd download here and there.

3rd account maybe for those who need unmetered downloading, but don't care if its shaped. as long as they can surf , check their mails and play a little here and there.


AH please be transparent... don't advertise something and then water it down. If you give your clients a certain service... and then go and change the "speeds" or "shaping", off course your clients will moan. Because they are now getting less than what they have been used to in the beginning
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I think we are aiming for the same place, though we just think we can offer your option 2 and 3 in the same product, because the different is pretty marginal. We already have Business that is an unshaped uncapped option, and offers very good value for the extra price.

Our aim is to be transparent, which is why there is a conversation happening here. I can promise that the feedback is reaching management and being factored into their decision-making.
 
Orihalcon said:
I am still waiting for a press release to state that testing is happening.

I feel it is unfair toward clients and prospective clients that you;

1) market your home uncapped product without stating that it is subject to shaping from 7am tot 10pm, and

2) leave it to the client themselves to seek out sites and threads like this one to learn the reasoning behind the constant shaping.

This leaves a sour taste in a customers' mouth.

I would also like to understand the reasoning as to WHY this was not done when testing started. Given that this "testing" has been going on or 3 weeks and counting...it is a bit worrying with no end or resolution i.t.o policy in site.
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We will definitely update our literature and clients if these changes are made permanent. For the moment, we don't know what changes will be permanently implemented, so it might be more confusing to less tech savvy clients, so we're dealing with enquiries on a case by case basis until we reach a permanent conclusion.
 
StrontiumDog said:
Is it just me or is international screwed? Steam and other software downloads crawling at 56k modem speeds. Youtube seems to not be as bad as that.

Speedtest reads fine, except my ping is a bit high.

View attachment 134007

edit: Connected with my FNB account and things are no better :(
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Ping is definitely high. If you getting this on different networks, could be an exchange issue :(
 
Orihalcon said:
I am still waiting for a press release to state that testing is happening.

I feel it is unfair toward clients and prospective clients that you;

1) market your home uncapped product without stating that it is subject to shaping from 7am tot 10pm, and

2) leave it to the client themselves to seek out sites and threads like this one to learn the reasoning behind the constant shaping.

This leaves a sour taste in a customers' mouth.

I would also like to understand the reasoning as to WHY this was not done when testing started. Given that this "testing" has been going on or 3 weeks and counting...it is a bit worrying with no end or resolution i.t.o policy in site.
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Exactly what I wanted as well! Even logged a ticket with them, to find out why I was being shaped, but all I got were responses asking what I'm experiencing slowness on & then a condescending marketing spiel. Why did they not send out an email to the home uncapped users informing us of this so called "testing"? Transparency my a**
 
calypso said:
Dunno if they being pissy because I cancelled. But NNTP now down to 200kb/s. YouTube videos auto quality selecting to 240p.
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We don't penalise clients for cancelling with us, you get the same service and shaping.

NNTP is shaped, if you are on Uncapped, during 7:30am to 10pm.
 
AfriMan said:
We will definitely update our literature and clients if these changes are made permanent. For the moment, we don't know what changes will be permanently implemented, so it might be more confusing to less tech savvy clients, so we're dealing with enquiries on a case by case basis until we reach a permanent conclusion.
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Then a notice on your homepage stating that testing is occurring would be sufficient. Leaving it up to clients to phone support, google or hear it from friends or family is not a reflection on a company aiming for customer satisfaction and transparency.
 
garp said:
Get the impression everyone is switching to capped or business, so the question is, how long before those offerings become oversubscribed and the "shaping" debacle is inflicted on those accounts?
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Capped or Business is very different, because the additional price allows us to motivate for more capacity on the network as demand increases. We subsidise Uncapped heavily from our marketing budget to keep prices low.
 
AfriMan said:
In recent times contention has given clients a poor experience, on both realtime and non-realtime services
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Thank you. That is much better than the avoidance before.

AfriMan said:
The testing is to see if we can viably offer a different way of using the capacity to ensure that we offer good performance on priority services during peak time, and then offer a significant time off-peak for heavy downloads and where clients can be unshaped to torrent, etc....Once we do, we will notify clients as to what exactly will be changing and how.
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Afrihost's communications strategy must for a company that size have weighed up transparent options like notifying customers via an email or similar of these developments over the silence over official channels. Given that a large portion of uncapped users must be those who don't want to bother topping up and that low use customers subsidize heavy use customers, I can almost understand the difficulty in sending out a notification by email that would attract the ire of consumers outside forums like this.
 
rakabos3 said:
Even after 10pm it now looks like from AH's response here
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Well the shaping is implemented to the maximum level between those hours...after 10pm it becomes dynamic. If the network load is still high then it IS the reality that you may end up being shaped to the maximum level for 24 hours at a time.

I don't have a problem with testing or anything going on...I DO have a problem with it not being properly communicated to current customers. Leaves a lot to be desired from the Afrihost I signed up with 2 years ago.
 
I think that the unintended consequence of this forced moving of download traffic to after 10pm is going to be max shaping after 10pm anyway, as people now have to fit 24 hours' worth of downloading into 6 hours or so. So where things would have been naturally spread out through the day, the high-volume downloading is now compressed into a quarter the time.
 
Over the past few days I've hardly been unshaped at all. Maximum one hour each morning, right before the official shaping window starts again. Any ideas about the cause of this? It's been fine before that, becoming unshaped at around midnight, which I can tolerate.

On a separate note, what happens if a significant number of clients move over to Business Uncapped (which doesn't cost a great deal more than Home Uncapped) so they can be unshaped all the time? The business model of having Home Uncapped users support Business Uncapped by being shaped during the daytime hours would collapse. Would the solution then be to raise the prices of Business Uncapped accounts to either deter some people from sigining up for them or to cover the costs of a network capacity upgrade?
 
Orihalcon said:
Well the shaping is implemented to the maximum level between those hours...after 10pm it becomes dynamic. If the network load is still high then it IS the reality that you may end up being shaped to the maximum level for 24 hours at a time.

I don't have a problem with testing or anything going on...I DO have a problem with it not being properly communicated to current customers. Leaves a lot to be desired from the Afrihost I signed up with 2 years ago.
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Amen to that brother, totally agree
 
Bl1zz4rd said:
Over the past few days I've hardly been unshaped at all. Maximum one hour each morning, right before the official shaping window starts again. Any ideas about the cause of this? It's been fine before that, becoming unshaped at around midnight, which I can tolerate.

On a separate note, what happens if a significant number of clients move over to Business Uncapped (which doesn't cost a great deal more than Home Uncapped) so they can be unshaped all the time? The business model of having Home Uncapped users support Business Uncapped by being shaped during the daytime hours would collapse. Would the solution then be to raise the prices of Business Uncapped accounts to either deter some people from sigining up for them or to cover the costs of a network capacity upgrade?
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He already answered this question a few posts up.
 
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