Afrihost Uncapped ADSL Feedback

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What a relief to hear everything is back to normal. The good folks at MTN have worked another miracle. I'm still waiting for the full report from the network experts, but the main thing is that everything is back to what it should be.

If anyone is still battling, please PM me. The general issue is resolved, so we need to troubleshoot and make sure there are no other issues at play.

Thanks for being so patient guys, it's really appreciated :)
 
Raysmith said:
"since the majority (I hope/think) of users is not affected"
I think that a lot of users are affected but, like me, have just given up posting their problems or contacting support as we see basically the same 'soldiers' fighting the fight for us on this forum and the same excuses and 'blame game' from AH. I really don't understand what is going on but when I switched to you a couple of years ago things worked like clockwork with minimal problems and then you decided to change everything - no doubt to increase profits. It really seems that your network can't handle the extra traffic brought about by all your new clients that you have attracted with your advertising of an 'awesome experience' promises and the gimmicky prizes that you offer from time to time. My humble suggestion is that you get engineers that can can constantly monitor your network and competently fix any problems pronto. Also don't take on any new clients, (can see management passing out at this thought) until your network is sorted out and your current faithful users get the 'awsome experience'!!
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Hear! Hear! As us old timers say!
 
diabolus said:
Well then i guess it's a good as place as any to suggest a new feature on their website. Simply show us (account holders) a little dashboard with indicators of user reports. Maybe even give us all a button to click when things are good/bad/slow/intermittend. It does not actually have to turn into a "support ticket" , just some data aggregation. Sometimes the speeds are slow, but not everyone is going to log a ticket , most people will just grumble and hope for better the next day. So just having some quick buttons to indicate our displeasure would go a long way into creating a trend and making it visible.

And yes, alot of the issues might be a user's own modem,telkom line, cat chewing the cable, whatever (a big reason why alot of users probably don't log tickets initially)....it would still be a good gauge of the % of customers not satisfied with their internet connections.

Afrihost management can then still have their little green/orange/red light thingy which are based on upstream/technical reports from their various service providers.

This is what they call Business Intelligence. You want your customers to interact with you? Well there you go.
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I think there's a lot of value in your idea, but aggregated data also has to be analysed and made into meaningful reports or high-level data which can then be actioned. We don't want to end up with data that is not meaningful or that cannot be converted into action. That kind of data can be very subjective, how you feel about your services can depend on other factors external to technical issues. Also, gauging the severity of an issue can be misleading based on satisfaction. A small jump in latency might infuriate a tech savvy gamer, but may not even be noticeable by the average person who just uses email and occasionally reads News 24. The best way to really get to the heart of a problem is to troubleshoot on an individual level and then screen for commonalities, eliminate coincidences and known factors.

Not to say that we're not interesting in listening to feedback. That is actually VERY important to us. We are currently running a client satisfaction survey, and we're getting more specific about the exact areas where clients experience the most difficulty and what they think would be a better way of handling them. We are totally open to suggestions that are practical and will work to everyone's mutual advantage.

Great idea though, and I'll definitely raise this with the powers that be :)
 
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I'm happy to say my connection has been running hassle free and perfect for (i think) 2 months now. I'm very happy with Afrihost's service. Speeds are fast, real time is great, steam speeds great, downloads run great too.

Others may have their issues, but I'm glad to be a happy customer

Good service standard, thank you AH, AM and AG!
 
AfriMan said:
This is not at all to say that we don't believe that there is an issue, and that we don't take it seriously. However, with regard to changing the network status, we have to weigh up the measured impact and whether it warrants changing. The idea is inform clients of possible issues and impact to them. It is a management decision ultimately.
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So while there clearly is/was a problem, you decide not to admit to it, and to not inform users of it by not updating your network status. What is the point of having a network status indicator when you sweep certain issues under the rug? This is/was clearly not just one or two users having a bit of a slow day.

What makes me angry, is that I now know I cannot trust the networks status indicator, or Afrihost support to solve my issues unless its a global one that affects enough users for you to care.
 
I do acknowledge that the issue was not limited to one or two users, but also we need to also acknowledge that it was not a huge number of complaints, such when we've had authentication issues. Combining all the logged complaints from MyBB, Twitter, FB, etc, there were easily less than 100 clients who felt their service was not what it should be. When you weigh that up against 10's of thousands of clients who are not experiencing issues, it becomes of an issue of whether is a general network issue, or a specific issue affecting a focussed group of clients, and not necessarily general status alert-worthy.

But that is not to, in any way, diminish the impact and value of the complaints we did receive and I can promise you that the level the issue was escalated to and the resources deployed were of the same quality and weight as if it had been an IPC outage or any other issue we've experienced. This was an extremely tricky issue just to document and explain, and I'm still awaiting a technical report on what was fixed, or changed, to restore service to normal.

As soon as I have an official report, I will post as much info as I can. We are committed to being open and transparent, in appropriate forums.
 
AfriMan said:
I do acknowledge that the issue was not limited to one or two users, but also we need to also acknowledge that it was not a huge number of complaints, such when we've had authentication issues. Combining all the logged complaints from MyBB, Twitter, FB, etc, there were easily less than 100 clients who felt their service was not what it should be. When you weigh that up against 10's of thousands of clients who are not experiencing issues, it becomes of an issue of whether is a general network issue, or a specific issue affecting a focussed group of clients, and not necessarily general status alert-worthy.

But that is not to, in any way, diminish the impact and value of the complaints we did receive and I can promise you that the level the issue was escalated to and the resources deployed were of the same quality and weight as if it had been an IPC outage or any other issue we've experienced. This was an extremely tricky issue just to document and explain, and I'm still awaiting a technical report on what was fixed, or changed, to restore service to normal.

As soon as I have an official report, I will post as much info as I can. We are committed to being open and transparent, in appropriate forums.
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I tend to agree with AfriMan - as a client I was VERY impressed with the service I had received. I sent AfriMan a PM about the Youtube issues and a AfriHost technical person phoned me asking for a few tests - and this on a Sunday! It made me feel important as a customer that I could help them troubleshoot the issue :)
 
AfriMan said:
I do acknowledge that the issue was not limited to one or two users, but also we need to also acknowledge that it was not a huge number of complaints, such when we've had authentication issues. Combining all the logged complaints from MyBB, Twitter, FB, etc, there were easily less than 100 clients who felt their service was not what it should be. When you weigh that up against 10's of thousands of clients who are not experiencing issues, it becomes of an issue of whether is a general network issue, or a specific issue affecting a focussed group of clients, and not necessarily general status alert-worthy.
I th
But that is not to, in any way, diminish the impact and value of the complaints we did receive and I can promise you that the level the issue was escalated to and the resources deployed were of the same quality and weight as if it had been an IPC outage or any other issue we've experienced. This was an extremely tricky issue just to document and explain, and I'm still awaiting a technical report on what was fixed, or changed, to restore service to normal.

As soon as I have an official report, I will post as much info as I can. We are committed to being open and transparent, in appropriate forums.
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"Combining all the logged complaints from MyBB, Twitter, FB, etc, there were easily less than 100 clients who felt their service was not what it should be."
I, probably like many other customers, don't bother reporting problems anymore as it just becomes a hassle with all the hoops I am expected to jump through to help pinpoint YOUR problems/faults. Personally, I expect the service for which I am paying!
 
Raysmith said:
"Combining all the logged complaints from MyBB, Twitter, FB, etc, there were easily less than 100 clients who felt their service was not what it should be."
I, probably like many other customers, don't bother reporting problems anymore as it just becomes a hassle with all the hoops I am expected to jump through to help pinpoint YOUR problems/faults. Personally, I expect the service for which I am paying!
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Is that not like asking a Doctor to diagnose your health issues via osmosis? :)

I personally don't mind helping AfriHost because I know they will address the issue quicker and help all of us, even those who don't complain.

It is good to lodge the issue, even if you just PM AfriMan. That way Afrihost can gauge if there are issues on the network.
We are the best real life feedback they have. :)
 
AfriMan said:
I do acknowledge that the issue was not limited to one or two users, but also we need to also acknowledge that it was not a huge number of complaints, such when we've had authentication issues. Combining all the logged complaints from MyBB, Twitter, FB, etc, there were easily less than 100 clients who felt their service was not what it should be. When you weigh that up against 10's of thousands of clients who are not experiencing issues, it becomes of an issue of whether is a general network issue, or a specific issue affecting a focussed group of clients, and not necessarily general status alert-worthy.

But that is not to, in any way, diminish the impact and value of the complaints we did receive and I can promise you that the level the issue was escalated to and the resources deployed were of the same quality and weight as if it had been an IPC outage or any other issue we've experienced. This was an extremely tricky issue just to document and explain, and I'm still awaiting a technical report on what was fixed, or changed, to restore service to normal.

As soon as I have an official report, I will post as much info as I can. We are committed to being open and transparent, in appropriate forums.
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For me, this issue only started at just before midnight, and lasted for about an hour. Most of your customers would have been asleep and wouldn't have even noticed it was down.
 
Noxville said:
For me, this issue only started at just before midnight, and lasted for about an hour. Most of your customers would have been asleep and wouldn't have even noticed it was down.
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Ive already PM'd Afriman regarding the random authentication errors as well as massive throughput issues this morning on the cape town lines. Already noted though, is the random increase in latency for local gaming over the weekend and random buffering issues on youtube. I normally stream fine at 480p with a 2mb line, however been struggling with 144p (even though youtube is not shaped).
 
My connection is dropping every few minutes :( happening to anyone else?
 
Afriman,

Just a thought,

Why does Afrihost not setup their own speedtest servers?

One on each backbone, because you guys still use both Internet Solutions & MTN Business.

Would be nice to have a site to test to at various points on the network, as a example:

JHB - IS
JHB - MTN

DBN - IS
DBN - MTN

CPT - IS
CPT - MTN

Have a look at what SAIX did here http://capetown.spdtst.saix.net/

Something similar.... It will give us a idea of on net & off net speeds as IS & MTN are both used.
 
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