Afrihost Uncapped ADSL Feedback

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We ultimately we're delivering more capacity that Cape Town and Southern region clients ever had on our previous network, it's probably more than doubled (if not quadrupled). However, what were seeing is a usage pattern that is heavily using torrents and P2P protocols in the evenings, which is causing us to have to shape to protect the network. And while Capped and Business pay a premium for their unshaped bandwidth, that traffic seems to be mostly on Uncapped profiles.

It's not that JHB users have access to a greater capacity, because geographically speaking the JHB IPC services a much larger area and a lot more clients. But the usage times and patterns and the types of traffic allow for a different experience.

:)

You're probably not at liberty to say how much the AH userbase has grown in Cape Town/Southern region?

Also, so you're saying the Torrent/P2P usage pattern in Cape Town/Southern region is different to that of Jhb?
 
One would imagine that having to shape downloads to 12% and 6% would be reason enough to see that your IPC clearly needs an upgrade.

You say CPT has much more than it used to before but that's not really an argument - as years go by things require more bandwidth so CPT _should_ have much more than it used to.

Anyway, just my 2c, clearly it's up to the number crunchers

Have to agree with this (You know these kids today with their fancy Mp3's players and external flash fish-sticks need data). All jokes aside though. Having to shape to 6% to keep the network going? Wow! Are the number crunchers the ones that ride those fancy automobiles? :D
 
One would imagine that having to shape downloads to 12% and 6% would be reason enough to see that your IPC clearly needs an upgrade.

You say CPT has much more than it used to before but that's not really an argument - as years go by things require more bandwidth so CPT _should_ have much more than it used to.

Anyway, just my 2c, clearly it's up to the number crunchers

Again, it's not just about crunching numbers and profit vs expense. We have to motivate by throughput for additional capacity. Believe me, we'd like nothing more than to have oodles of IPC at our disposal, but we have to have the throughput to justify it. At present, the off-peak window is the biggest barrier to additional capacity, and our team are doing everything possible to move more traffic through that period, and we're going to do more to encourage all our DSL clients to take advantage of it.
 
:)

You're probably not at liberty to say how much the AH userbase has grown in Cape Town/Southern region?

Also, so you're saying the Torrent/P2P usage pattern in Cape Town/Southern region is different to that of Jhb?

Very much so. From what we can see, South has the highest ratio of P2P traffic, with North second, and East almost non-existent (note that East is basically unshaped 24/7 mostly for that reason).

Now we're not saying that nobody should torrent. Far from it. We absolutely want everyone to get as much bandwidth as they possibly can. The more data is moved, the more we can motivate for additional capacity, and the more we can offer more specialised products if we can see niche areas. It's definitely win-win. We're asking that, up until we can get the request through for more capacity, that clients make use of the extra capacity that is there right now, just waiting to be used up. If we can start to see significant usage over a full 24 hour cycle, more capacity will definitely be imminent :)
 
Offpeak Databurgers R10 for 100 gigs :D off-peak

realistically x gigs where X will decrease over time as uptake gets better
 
Just a general comment in response to the calls for more capacity in Cape Town.

This is not a financial decision, as in "What's in it for us?". We want to give all our clients more bandwidth than they would ever know what to do with. It's a question of justifying the upgrade with sufficient throughput over a 24 hour cycle. Congestion over a small window is not necessarily enough.

But as I've said, we are talking about it, we are doing calculations and projections, and trying to find ways that we can provide the best way forward. We definitely take the comments here very seriously, and we don't want ANY client to feel that they are receiving a diminished product, that is totally not our intention.

If we all work together on this, I'm 100% confident that we'll all come out on top of this :)
 
Just a general comment in response to the calls for more capacity in Cape Town.

This is not a financial decision, as in "What's in it for us?". We want to give all our clients more bandwidth than they would ever know what to do with. It's a question of justifying the upgrade with sufficient throughput over a 24 hour cycle. Congestion over a small window is not necessarily enough.

But as I've said, we are talking about it, we are doing calculations and projections, and trying to find ways that we can provide the best way forward. We definitely take the comments here very seriously, and we don't want ANY client to feel that they are receiving a diminished product, that is totally not our intention.

If we all work together on this, I'm 100% confident that we'll all come out on top of this :)
Can you set up a notification option for uncapped users to say when the network starts experiencing congestion and when there is spare capacity to go wild. A nice API for an ISP to implement that can modify scheduling software would be awesomeness.
 
Very much so. From what we can see, South has the highest ratio of P2P traffic, with North second, and East almost non-existent (note that East is basically unshaped 24/7 mostly for that reason).

Now we're not saying that nobody should torrent. Far from it. We absolutely want everyone to get as much bandwidth as they possibly can. The more data is moved, the more we can motivate for additional capacity, and the more we can offer more specialised products if we can see niche areas. It's definitely win-win. We're asking that, up until we can get the request through for more capacity, that clients make use of the extra capacity that is there right now, just waiting to be used up. If we can start to see significant usage over a full 24 hour cycle, more capacity will definitely be imminent :)

That certainly sounds like a challenge. :)

Thanks for the feedback. Highest ratio of P2P traffic doesn't mean the highest P2P traffic if I understand correctly. It could also just mean that other downloads/streaming for South is less than North. So North has a more balanced use with regards to P2P vs other services?
 
Can you set up a notification option for uncapped users to say when the network starts experiencing congestion and when there is spare capacity to go wild. A nice API for an ISP to implement that can modify scheduling software would be awesomeness.

+1000

I was thinking about something similar last night. Would be nice if there was an API for me to access my products, usage, shaping, etc.

AH would be the first ISP to implement something like this as far as I know?
 
Afriman... we need to get people downloading torrents/over http during the night instead of late evening, therefore reducing the load on the network at those times
 
Afriman... we need to get people downloading torrents/over http during the night instead of late evening, therefore reducing the load on the network at those times

Absolutely. And if we can reach something like 24 hour usage cycle, I think we can get more out of the IPC we have. And from there extra capacity will be easy to motivate for :)
 
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