Afrihost Uncapped ADSL Feedback

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HapticSimian said:
Nice to see some innovation from Afrihost - I doubt I'll use it regularly, but it's pretty cool to know it's there. Just one observation on your announcement linked to above: "protocals" ain't a word. ;)
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Sometimes we have to invent words cos our products are beyond awesome!!

I think they've fixed it now :)
 
Just came across the turbo feature on Google+ page, I'll give AH a +1 there, it is a great innovation for those of us who don't want to pay more for a "Business" account to do Home internetting.

Now to figure out when to use the free sessions..

AfriMan said:
Sometimes we have to invent words cos our products are beyond awesome!!
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Fnurkle ... another new word, problem solved :)
 
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Very neat innovative idea there - nice one AfriMan and team!
 
Bryn26 said:
I got a response from Afrihost in my Clientzone. They said VPN's are perfectly fine. I'm on a business account. Normal uncapped wouldn't be okay, as they specifically said that they don't prioritise any part of my connection anyway.
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I use VPN a lot but to connect to my company network. That's on normal uncapped. That said I don't exactly use it to download torrents and such - I'm sure the company wouldn't approve :)
 
AfriMan said:
Hey Guys

We're launching two big things today. 1 is about our new turbo charge feature (which is just awesome)

http://www.afrihost.com/site/newsroom/view/afrihost_turbo_charges_uncapped_adsl
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Hmmm... I'm in two minds about this.

While this is certainly a very innovative idea, I would like to think that my uncapped account should normally work well enough that I wouldn't have to resort to paying extra money just to achieve acceptable performance.

I am concerned that this takes the incentive away from AH to do anything about poor performance and the stock answer will become "buy a turbo charge". In fact, won't this just encourage AH to implement increasingly severe shaping policies as they will result in more sales of "turbo charges"?

I'd also still like some understanding of the shaping on downloads - why were some people seemingly randomly shaped to 5% usage last month on a 4mb account, when others seemingly were not - i.e. some shaped at 80GB usage, while others not shaped at over 100GB usage??? And why does my Apple TV viewing seemingly fall under the shaping policy (very slow and continuous buffering) but not YouTube (even HD is smooth these days) - why is one "real time" and not the other since they are both being streamed???
 
Hmm, the TurboCharge sure is innovative, but I'm not quite sure I agree with it. If your network has the spare capacity to allow clients to turbocharge their accounts, shouldn't that capacity rather be spread evenly across all clients, for free, to ensure everyone has an optimal experience?
 
Zewp said:
Hmm, the TurboCharge sure is innovative, but I'm not quite sure I agree with it. If your network has the spare capacity to allow clients to turbocharge their accounts, shouldn't that capacity rather be spread evenly across all clients, for free, to ensure everyone has an optimal experience?
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Because the difference in speed would be negligible, whereas boosting provides a significant speed increase when needed.
 
garp said:
Hmmm... I'm in two minds about this.

While this is certainly a very innovative idea, I would like to think that my uncapped account should normally work well enough that I wouldn't have to resort to paying extra money just to achieve acceptable performance.

I am concerned that this takes the incentive away from AH to do anything about poor performance and the stock answer will become "buy a turbo charge". In fact, won't this just encourage AH to implement increasingly severe shaping policies as they will result in more sales of "turbo charges"?

I'd also still like some understanding of the shaping on downloads - why were some people seemingly randomly shaped to 5% usage last month on a 4mb account, when others seemingly were not - i.e. some shaped at 80GB usage, while others not shaped at over 100GB usage??? And why does my Apple TV viewing seemingly fall under the shaping policy (very slow and continuous buffering) but not YouTube (even HD is smooth these days) - why is one "real time" and not the other since they are both being streamed???
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I think you're not seeing the actual intention behind this. Uncapped is a shaped product, and I think we're different from other ISPs in that we don't blanket shape clients or throttle them, we're always giving maximum bandwidth to Uncapped clients. However, we can shape at any time, and we think this is a great tool for guys who are busy with priority downloads that they really don't want to be shaped for that hour (or more). I basically closes the gap between consumer and business uncapped in a way the gives the client complete freedom of choice. Since we give every client 5 hours of unshaped bandwidth every month, it's clearly not about the money. But if we didn't have a cost to it, everyone would just run Turbocharged 24/7, and they should just as well be on Business.

Remember that this is not going to have any effect on real times services or line sync. It's mainly for those who need to use torrents or file sharing, or whatever services are affected by shaping.
 
AfriMan said:
I think you're not seeing the actual intention behind this. Uncapped is a shaped product, and I think we're different from other ISPs in that we don't blanket shape clients or throttle them, we're always giving maximum bandwidth to Uncapped clients. However, we can shape at any time...
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Thanks for the explanation, Afriman. My understanding was that uncapped users would be shaped on downloads progressively based on usage. As you've clarified, this can also be quite arbitrary.

AfriMan said:
Since we give every client 5 hours of unshaped bandwidth every month, it's clearly not about the money.
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I guess we'll just have to trust you on that, since more shaping will necessarily mean more "turbocharge" sales.

AfriMan said:
But if we didn't have a cost to it, everyone would just run Turbocharged 24/7, and they should just as well be on Business.
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And on this point, the difference in hourly cost between 4mbps Business uncapped and normal 4mbps uncapped calculated for 31 day month is about 40 cents per hour, not R29. Just saying.
 
Excuse n00bish question: so how do I activate my free 300 mins of turboawesomenessy pure internet joy?

Might come in handy for GoT and other media stuffz ... and when wifey wants her brandspanking new Ubuntu 13.04.
 
Ok credit when due, I spoke to a young lady at about 16.50 who was very helpful, patient and competent. She checked my line and all was in order, she did something and the speeds are now what it should be :D.

I unfortunately didn't get her name, Afriman can you please thank this lady ever so much - kudos to Afrihost :) :) :)
 
cryptic1 said:
Ok credit when due, I spoke to a young lady at about 16.50 who was very helpful, patient and competent. She checked my line and all was in order, she did something and the speeds are now what it should be :D.

I unfortunately didn't get her name, Afriman can you please thank this lady ever so much - kudos to Afrihost :) :) :)
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You can find the team here, even see how most of them look :)
http://www.afrihost.com/site/page/meet_the_team?src=nav
 
AfriMan said:
Remember that this is not going to have any effect on real times services or line sync. It's mainly for those who need to use torrents or file sharing, or whatever services are affected by shaping.
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Basically if you're jonesing for that Game.of.Thrones.S03E02.rip.lol.wtf.wemadethis.avi and its that time of day when everyone else is using the internets too and your torrents are being shaped to 5% and that episode will only reach your screen in "infinite to 5 years"
 
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