Afrihost Uncapped ADSL Feedback (Pt3)

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ainsin said:
Totally agree with you. They shape us into the ground so that real-time services should work at optimal performance, yet I struggle to stream a 240p video off youtube without it buffering for several minutes. I log onto my Webafrica uncapped account, and youtube magically sorts itself out.

The shaping does seem to be getting worse. I don't think anyone was unshaped for the last 24 hours.

Afrihost are now as bad as Telkom with their uncapped product. At least Telkom has the decency to tell their clients that they will throttle people. On Afrihost we are on a 4 month 'testing period' where we get throttled.. sorry I meant shaped into the ground.
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As per previous post, there were many users that werent unshaped as they should have been, and we're looking into why this happened. We'll monitor this through the night to ensure that everything is working again as it should be. So far shaping seems to have resumed as normal.

We do test YouTube extensively as probably the most widely used streaming service. But we'll continue to do so to ensure our clients are getting a good experience. The more feedback we can also get from clients will help us improve your experience as much as possible. My own tests for YouTube have been good on a shaped 4Mbps account, but I'll also test over the weekend to see if I'm still getting the same results and performance.
 
I think by now we all know that the shaping on uncapped accounts is not a test phase but a measure to prevent people of using p2p.

All good and well, but in my opinion the fact that http downloads are shaped as well to the point that I need 2 days to update a windows installation is silly.
In essence this means that you can only use these accounts for streaming and browsing.

At least make sure that the turbo charge allows for downloads in full speed when needed.
 
Throttling is becoming worse by the day, really sad that I need to suffer through this till the end of the month.
 
Please unshape/unthrottle soundcloud FFS. 20kbps on a 4mb line christ. Oh one more thing:

14th of July - "We will follow up on this fault and give you the feedback " not a ****ign word since.
 
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Smokey_sa said:
I think by now we all know that the shaping on uncapped accounts is not a test phase but a measure to prevent people of using p2p.

All good and well, but in my opinion the fact that http downloads are shaped as well to the point that I need 2 days to update a windows installation is silly.
In essence this means that you can only use these accounts for streaming and browsing.

At least make sure that the turbo charge allows for downloads in full speed when needed.
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We don't really want to tell clients which services to use, but the reality is that P2P saturates the network in specific way that puts a lot of strain on the network. When it gets to the extent that it affects other users, we have to start putting measures in place. When we do that, we see more and more increases of the same nature across HTTP and HTTPS traffic, so we then have to start looking at policies to address these as well.

Turbocharge should unshape you completely. If that's no happening, please PM me and let me know so we can look into this.
 
Vrotappel said:
Throttling is becoming worse by the day, really sad that I need to suffer through this till the end of the month.
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We're definitely don't throttle, so I'm not sure if what you're experiencing shaping or if there is another problem affecting you which feels like a throttled line.

If you're still wanting to address this for now, whether you are still deciding to move away at the end of the month or not, please PM me so we can look into it :(
 
BossertGF said:
anyone here using the 10mb account?

Is it worth the upgrade?
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It depends on whether you can get reliable 10Mbps services where you are, generally that is not much of an issue.

If you keen to give it a try, drop me a PM and let's see what we can do :)
 
lilggg said:
Please unshape/unthrottle soundcloud FFS. 20kbps on a 4mb line christ. Oh one more thing:

14th of July - "We will follow up on this fault and give you the feedback " not a ****ign word since.
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Sound cloud should not be shaped as a streaming service. Do you find that turbocharging or switching to capped improved your experience.
 
AfriMan said:
We don't really want to tell clients which services to use, but the reality is that P2P saturates the network in specific way that puts a lot of strain on the network. When it gets to the extent that it affects other users, we have to start putting measures in place. When we do that, we see more and more increases of the same nature across HTTP and HTTPS traffic, so we then have to start looking at policies to address these as well.

Turbocharge should unshape you completely. If that's no happening, please PM me and let me know so we can look into this.
Click to expand...

The problem with that outlook is, that eventually all your services are shaped (pronounced throttled) to such an extent that you might as well tell all your customers to downgrade to 384kbs accounts and unshaped them.

At present all types of downloads that I have tried are shaped to below 20kb/s on a 4mb account for more than 80% of the day. I was able to download faster than that on my 384kbs account a couple of years ago.

You can't expect customers to be happy when the accounts that they got to use for quick downloading, can't be used for anything other than browsing anymore.
 
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AfriMan said:
We don't really want to tell clients which services to use, but the reality is that P2P saturates the network in specific way that puts a lot of strain on the network. When it gets to the extent that it affects other users, we have to start putting measures in place. When we do that, we see more and more increases of the same nature across HTTP and HTTPS traffic, so we then have to start looking at policies to address these as well.

Turbocharge should unshape you completely. If that's no happening, please PM me and let me know so we can look into this.
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Just my 2c. I not on uncapped at the moment and last I used it it was still ok.

Why not heavily shape just the abusers rather than shape everyone? Surely there are users that are genuinely not trying to download the intawebs. But maybe just the occasional linux distro or something. Check their profile useage. If it is above certain level then apply shaping during the day. And when network is quite then open flood gates.

Again just my 2c.
 
DeathStrike said:
Just my 2c. I not on uncapped at the moment and last I used it it was still ok.

Why not heavily shape just the abusers rather than shape everyone? Surely there are users that are genuinely not trying to download the intawebs. But maybe just the occasional linux distro or something. Check their profile useage. If it is above certain level then apply shaping during the day. And when network is quite then open flood gates.

Again just my 2c.
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We don't want to move towards a punitive throttling system.We had something similar before we moved networks and we were never very happy about it. We'd also get complaints who would move a certain amount of bandwidth who would be throttled to the extent that their connection was not really useable for them. Our aim is to always have a useable connection and get priority services all the time. This way we don't "jail" our clients and ask them to not use the internet for 30 days before they can use the internet again. We've always wanted a system where people can get as much bandwidth as we can possibly give them safely without impacting the network or other users negatively.
 
Currently the only thing that @$#%@ me off is that image loading is being shaped. Forget about browsing wallpaper or art gallery sites. Holy hell...

Nah. I'm done I think. Testing other ISPs now and finding a better experience and pings elsewhere.

My account problem has been solved however - I've been given another uncapped account which runs as it should. So I am happy for that :)
 
Qrox said:
The problem with that outlook is, that eventually all your services are shaped (pronounced throttled) to such an extent that you might as well tell all your customers to downgrade to 384kbs accounts and unshaped them.

At present all types of downloads that I have tried are shaped to below 20kb/s on a 4mb account for more than 80% of the day. I was able to download faster than that on my 384kbs account a couple of years ago.

You can't expect customers to be happy when the accounts that they got to use for quick downloading, can't be used for anything other than browsing anymore.
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I don't think that should be the case. Most Uncapped users are unshaped between 10pm and 12am, and then only shaped again at 7:30, which is at least 7.5 hours of unshaped service, which is a lot more than 20% of the 24 hour cycle (it's over 30%, and possibly more depending on when you are unshaped). As a semi-shaped product, the concept is that priority realtime services are prioritised over non-realtime downloads so it's maybe not the ideal product if the intended use is mainly for downloads and torrents, though you can still pull down those services, slowly during the day, but for 7-8 hours overnight as unshaped.
 
Orihalcon said:
Currently the only thing that @$#%@ me off is that image loading is being shaped. Forget about browsing wallpaper or art gallery sites. Holy hell...

Nah. I'm done I think. Testing other ISPs now and finding a better experience and pings elsewhere.

My account problem has been solved however - I've been given another uncapped account which runs as it should. So I am happy for that :)
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Glad that we were able to solve this issue you had. As far as I know there is no way to distinguish downloads on HTTP to be shaped and non-shaped by the traffic signature, but we'll continually work with our team to improve the overall experience clients have.
 
AfriMan said:
Glad that we were able to solve this issue you had. As far as I know there is no way to distinguish downloads on HTTP to be shaped and non-shaped by the traffic signature, but we'll continually work with our team to improve the overall experience clients have.
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I know ;( It's just how your system works. While it has served me well for a long time, my browsing habits and needs have admittedly changed over the last couple months. I'll see how it goes.
 
My realtime speeds seem to be bugging out. On average if I stream a video from a server (other than YouTube) it averages at about 20kB - 40kB a second, with the occasional spike to near full line speed (2 Megabit line). Regarding YouTube, if I am lucky, I could get speeds that bounce around from 80 - 120 kBps. But the moment I change the quality of a video manually to 360p, the download speed slows down to about 20 - 50 kBps. In other cases, YT videos start rather fast (80 - 120 kBps) then after about 8 - 10 seconds go back down to 20 - 50 kBps. According to my account, I have used 36.34 GB so far this month. Is it possible my video streaming is being shaped?
 
AfriMan said:
I don't think that should be the case. Most Uncapped users are unshaped between 10pm and 12am, and then only shaped again at 7:30, which is at least 7.5 hours of unshaped service, which is a lot more than 20% of the 24 hour cycle (it's over 30%, and possibly more depending on when you are unshaped). As a semi-shaped product, the concept is that priority realtime services are prioritised over non-realtime downloads so it's maybe not the ideal product if the intended use is mainly for downloads and torrents, though you can still pull down those services, slowly during the day, but for 7-8 hours overnight as unshaped.
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Hi Afriman,

You state that uncapped accounts are shaped between 07H30 and 22H00 and the DSL product page on your website do state "semi-shaped" for uncapped accounts. While searching through the forum this morning I found this article from last year March (http://mybroadband.co.za/news/adsl/71908-afrihost-uncapped-adsl-now-unshaped.html) stating "Afrihost said that its upgraded network is performing at excellent levels, which gave them the confidence to “completely unshape all uncapped ADSL traffic”."

What happened to that plan?
 
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