Afrihost Uncapped ADSL Feedback (Pt3)

[jvzweel]

I am sorry but I've had enough.

First it's "we will NEVER shape realtime", then it's "must be something else wrong with your line" then it's "we know about poor performance on realtime"
After that it's "dynamic shaping", then it's "static shaping in peak times" and and...

It's a pity AH are forcing loyal subscribers to abandon ship...

 

[Sinbad]

Gaming is definitely not shaped, unless the traffic signature contains P2P elements. We can determine that by using a turbocharge while gaming.

Remember that shaping also only affects throughput and not latency, so it sounds like there could be another issue here

No.

If your gaming traffic is being shaped, your in-game latency WILL be affected. If it takes 1 second for the game data to come from the server instead of 200ms, because of shaping, your latency in game will be 1 second.

 

[HapticSimian]

If you want to leave the management of traffic up to your personal preference, then an unshaped connection is a better choice. As soon as we start talking about semi-shaped service, it has to be up to the ISP to decide which services will be shaped (and to what extent) based on the available resources and their gauging of what their client's priority is.

Hah. 'Semi-shaped'. Did you actually keep a straight face while typing that? Yeah, whatever, honestly. After so many months you're actually still defending a legitimate, small download taking hours to complete. It's downright laughable.

Of course an unshaped connection would be better... especially for you. You get to smear a product off on me that costs nearly double, only so I can maintain service levels you used to provide on your standard connection. No thanks, not any more. With the frivolously disrespectful attitude you've been cultivating ever since your migration to MTN I'm happy to spend my money elsewhere.

Just know that you can add one more to the list of previously fiercely loyal customers you've managed to alienate, to the point where I'm unlikely to ever make use of, or recommend, an Afrihost product again. At this stage you and MTN deserve each other.

 

[AfriMan]

When they started out, Afrihost was all over the place with new announcements on MYBB
Now - not a peep or explanation from management level

No real answers from the reps - they just repeat the same "delivering a world class service" and more corporate spin

MYBB should do an editorial on this abortion of a service to paid up customers
Get some reaction and real reasons from Afrihost - just look at all the threads of the last couple of weeks

1:15am and still shaped to death - waited the whole day and still cannot update drivers on new laptop - MADDD !!!

We've always been here, and I don't think we've ever been silent when it comes to giving answers and feedback. You may not like the answers, and I'm not always as happy to break the news that we're short on IPC as much as a new promotion or free data, but I'm always here to deliver good or bad news, and to give all our clients full and honest answers with the information I have.

 

[AfriMan]

No.

If your gaming traffic is being shaped, your in-game latency WILL be affected. If it takes 1 second for the game data to come from the server instead of 200ms, because of shaping, your latency in game will be 1 second.

If gaming traffic is not shaped, then you won't have throughput issues creating latency or dropped packets. If you're maxing your throughput on other services creating latency on your traffic in general, that's where you could see this kind of problem.

 

[Heisenborg]

If gaming traffic is not shaped, then you won't have throughput issues creating latency or dropped packets. If you're maxing your throughput on other services creating latency on your traffic in general, that's where you could see this kind of problem.

Other services, you mean downloading whilst playing right. Im pretty fsking sure the guy wasnt talking about that

 

[AfriMan]

Hah. 'Semi-shaped'. Did you actually keep a straight face while typing that? Yeah, whatever, honestly. After so many months you're actually still defending a legitimate, small download taking hours to complete. It's downright laughable.

Of course an unshaped connection would be better... especially for you. You get to smear a product off on me that costs nearly double, only so I can maintain service levels you used to provide on your standard connection. No thanks, not any more. With the frivolously disrespectful attitude you've been cultivating ever since your migration to MTN I'm happy to spend my money elsewhere.

Just know that you can add one more to the list of previously fiercely loyal customers you've managed to alienate, to the point where I'm unlikely to ever make use of, or recommend, an Afrihost product again. At this stage you and MTN deserve each other.

I'm sorry to lose you as a client, I honestly do believe that the decisions we make are for the benefit of our clients. I can understand that on an individual level some decision may affect people differently. It's definitely never been our intention (or policy) to make decisions based on making more money. We've always believed that if we can deliver a good and consistent client experience to our clients, the rest will take care of itself.

If you have made your decision, then all I can do is wish you all the best going forward

 

[Orihalcon]

AS much of a schlep it is...I just dial into my free W/A account when I want to game. Simple as that. Latency has been better than Afrihost's home uncapped time and time again. Even a little better than the free 1gb capped account.

Sad but true. As much people can keep on saying it cannot be replicated etc etc, the nett effect is a customer experience which is sub-par compared to a competitor. That's it.

I'll still keep the uncapped account for youtubing and so on as I've not had ANY problems there from AFrihost unlike others here so I'm really lucky in that. For that I say well done to Afrihost.

It's just a shame that I cannot have both (great gaming and real time) in one product. For now I'll live with the schlep of switching whenever I game.

 

[AfriMan]

Inevitable as everyone moves their downloading to after midnight that the network won't cope. You can't expect to compress 24 hours worth of traffic into 6 hours without overloading things in those 6 hours

We have a lot of available capacity between 10pm and 7am, and our aim is to maximise this "down-time". We've spoken about this for some time, in terms of maximising our resources. I think we have more than enough capacity to move heavy downloads to offpeak with requiring an upgrade.

 

[AfriMan]

AS much of a schlep it is...I just dial into my free W/A account when I want to game. Simple as that. Latency has been better than Afrihost's home uncapped time and time again. Even a little better than the free 1gb capped account.

Sad but true. As much people can keep on saying it cannot be replicated etc etc, the nett effect is a customer experience which is sub-par compared to a competitor. That's it.

I'll still keep the uncapped account for youtubing and so on as I've not had ANY problems there from AFrihost unlike others here so I'm really lucky in that. For that I say well done to Afrihost.

It's just a shame that I cannot have both (great gaming and real time) in one product. For now I'll live with the schlep of switching whenever I game.

We do believe you can have both, and we're definitely investigating any areas where we're not performing at the same level as our competitors in terms of experience. When comes down to how products are tailored, I guess each ISP will know their client base a little better, but we're continually testing and benchmarking ourselves wherever we can.

 

[AfriMan]

Surely this means the IPC is maxing out all the time now which should be enough "evidence" for MTN/AH to upgrade capacity again?

IPC is not maxing out now that we're shaping as we are, this is helping us prevent periods of high contention that were affecting streaming and gaming during peak periods. We have sufficient headroom to provide consistent realtime experience, so traffic can burst to the speeds they need for streaming, and I think that if we can also start unshaping our clients faster after 10pm, if that's possible, we can give a significant window for unshaped downloading and torrents for a good overall Uncapped experience. I've been assured by our Technical Director that looking at giving back as much bandwidth as we can in the off-peak is our top priority at the moment.

 

[Heisenborg]

IPC is not maxing out now that we're shaping as we are, this is helping us prevent periods of high contention that were affecting streaming and gaming during peak periods. We have sufficient headroom to provide consistent realtime experience, so traffic can burst to the speeds they need for streaming, and I think that if we can also start unshaping our clients faster after 10pm, if that's possible, we can give a significant window for unshaped downloading and torrents for a good overall Uncapped experience. I've been assured by our Technical Director that looking at giving back as much bandwidth as we can in the off-peak is our top priority at the moment.

You guys seem honest in your feedback of this issue, but the feedback isnt great. People arent getting what they are paying for

 

[AthenianOwl]

We've always been here, and I don't think we've ever been silent when it comes to giving answers and feedback. You may not like the answers, and I'm not always as happy to break the news that we're short on IPC as much as a new promotion or free data, but I'm always here to deliver good or bad news, and to give all our clients full and honest answers with the information I have.

You never gave us a heads-up when you guys decided to do "tests" on Home Uncapped. You guys have been not very transparent re the shaping policy since you migrated to MTN. We all know very well what MTN is like. MTN always put their own shareholders' interests first before everything else. Very disappointing to see how the mighty have fallen. It's MWEB all over again!

TDLR: We don't like the way you shape Home Uncapped ADSL It's so 2005!

 

[DeathStrike]

Hi Afriman. I sent you pm.

 

[AfriMan]

If I cancel with AH today, when would my last debit be? In advance or arrears?

If you cancel anytime before the 25th, your cancellation takes effect within the month and you should not be debited again

 

[AfriMan]

You never gave us a heads-up when you guys decided to do "tests" on Home Uncapped. You guys have been not very transparent re the shaping policy since you migrated to MTN. We all know very well what MTN is like. MTN always put their own shareholders' interests first before everything else. Very disappointing to see how the mighty have fallen. It's MWEB all over again!

TDLR: We don't like the way you shape Home Uncapped ADSL It's so 2005!

Again, MTN have not yet bought into Afrihost, that deal is still pending competition board approval, so they have literally not set foot in our offices yet. And the plan is that aside from reports, they won't have anything to do with how or what we do, unless we ask for their input or support. As the biggest telecoms operator on the continent (which I believe they are) they can offer a lot of advise and technical support to helping us devise some awesome products and value-adds for our clients.

 

[Orihalcon]

We do believe you can have both, and we're definitely investigating any areas where we're not performing at the same level as our competitors in terms of experience. When comes down to how products are tailored, I guess each ISP will know their client base a little better, but we're continually testing and benchmarking ourselves wherever we can.

That I hope will never change. Also sincerely hope that the problem or difference in service is not inherent to the backbone or MTN network.

I know there are various variables - but from an end user perspective when the only thing being changed within 5 minutes is the ISP account and you are getting a better experience it's not hard to understand why people would think it's the network.

Be that as it may...I will continuously check the performance on my uncapped account in the hope it starts to match - if not the competitions ping - then at least the capped products (which I doubt as some games use a p2p protocol...which means home uncapped will never compete).

 

[AfriMan]

Well I was up at 2am last night finishing another deadline, and I noticed that my home uncapped was still shaped at 18.8% Download/ 6.25% P2P. When I woke up at 7am, the shaping was at 18.8% Download/ 6.25% P2P. So either we only get 4 hours or unshaped, or we don't get unshaped at all.

My experience tells me that Afrihost is oversubscribed. Since they have decided against upgrading their IPCs yet again, I'm sure they expected quite a few people to leave. The 'testing' also probably helped them shed quite a few clients. Anything to protect the bottom margin for MTN.

Unfortunately Afrihost have damaged their reputation. I work for a big company (100 - 120 employees), and the general consensus with Afrihost is that they are now MWEB 2.0, or have become worse than Mweb. Quite a few of my colleagues have cancelled their accounts (capped, business & home uncapped) because their speeds aren't good enough, or streaming was terrible.

They may have protected their profits in the long run, but they have definitely ruined their image. It is going to take a lot of work to get that back.

It definitely concerns us that our image would be tarnished, or that client's would view us differently. Ultimately, our culture as a company that works for our clients is at the centre of everything we do, and I know that this is the case from every meeting I've had with Gian and our other directors. We may have had to make some tough decisions, but I do believe that as long as we don't change our culture and our motivation (our clients experience) we will find a way.

 

[AfriMan]

That I hope will never change. Also sincerely hope that the problem or difference in service is not inherent to the backbone or MTN network.

I know there are various variables - but from an end user perspective when the only thing being changed within 5 minutes is the ISP account and you are getting a better experience it's not hard to understand why people would think it's the network.

Be that as it may...I will continuously check the performance on my uncapped account in the hope it starts to match - if not the competitions ping - then at least the capped products (which I doubt as some games use a p2p protocol...which means home uncapped will never compete).

The more we deal with these issues, the better (and faster) we will get at sorting them out. Ultimately we would like make gaming as awesome an experience possible. With more gaming services looking at P2P to minimise their investment, this is definitely an area we're looking into. We're also updating our policies based on overseas trends, getting information from the shaping device manufacturers based on their work in Europe and the US, so we do believe that we can get better and continually improve our client's experience.

 

[AfriMan]

Jeebuz This is insane! Hope you have already cancelled with AH today. How the mighty have fallen It's very clear that AH is no longer serving their clients' best interests at heart. AH's new goal is to keep MTN happy no matter what. I knew something like this would happen when I heard the news about MTN acquiring controlling stakes in AH a few months ago.

I don't believe that is true at all. I know it's convenient to look to the MTN deal, but the reality is that we've been on their backbone for just on two years already, and nothing has changed. We can't offer MTN anything if we abandon our culture and relationship with our clients, so our primary duty is always to our clients.