Afrihost Uncapped ADSL Feedback

[AfriMan]

Afriguy screwed up! Downloads get to run at 12,5 % p2p at 6.5% of speed. See, you not allowed to download during the day when the network is under pressure. If you do, the download speed will be slow as hell. Please use after midnight and before the office staff wake up at 10 Am.

Sorry, just to clear up, the percentage shown is the max line speed (for downloads or P2P) you will get while shaped on that policy. Two things to remember though. One, we still allow bursts through, depending on the nature of the data usage, but in general, the percentage will be fairly consistent while you are shaped. Two, real time services will always run at 100% of your line performance capability.

Now, one should also remember that the shaper is reactive, and not necessarily pro-active. When we reach our "soft" ceiling, it starts to apply shaping to the least amount of users it calculates will normalise usage, which can take a few minutes, and the policy is always intended not to be harsh or sudden. Sometimes, other factors come into play, more users increase their demand, or the bandwidth recovered doesn't satisfy the requirement to normalise performance. So there may be several consecutive actions until the balance is achieved. Sometimes the shaper takes away too much, and realises that we can relax shaping to give more capacity back to users on the network.

 

[Supreme Element]

Is there anyone else experiencing slow sync speeds and line drops in the Western Cape South Surburbs?

 

[pgs]

When we reach our "soft" ceiling, it starts to apply shaping to the least amount of users it calculates will normalise usage, which can take a few minutes, and the policy is always intended not to be harsh or sudden. Sometimes, other factors come into play, more users increase their demand, or the bandwidth recovered doesn't satisfy the requirement to normalise performance. So there may be several consecutive actions until the balance is achieved. Sometimes the shaper takes away too much, and realises that we can relax shaping to give more capacity back to users on the network.

So, it has a table with highest GB's used down and chops as many users as needed from the top. I am shaped permanently till midnight from (I don't know, midday maybe earlier?) at quote " Shaping Policy: 25% Download/ 6.5% P2P".

So,,,,,,,, I am very sceptical about this dynamic thingy ma bob! I have never seen it, it is either on or off.

 

[pgs]

Is there anyone else experiencing slow sync speeds and line drops in the Western Cape South Surburbs?

Milnerton doesn't count I seem fine!

 

[AfriGuy]

Is there anyone else experiencing slow sync speeds and line drops in the Western Cape South Surburbs?

Nothing reported on this side.
Drop me a PM with your details and I can take a further look at things for you.

 

[AfriMan]

Is there anyone else experiencing slow sync speeds and line drops in the Western Cape South Surburbs?

Got your PM, please check my reply

 

[AfriMan]

So, it has a table with highest GB's used down and chops as many users as needed from the top. I am shaped permanently till midnight from (I don't know, midday maybe earlier?) at quote " Shaping Policy: 25% Download/ 6.5% P2P".

So,,,,,,,, I am very sceptical about this dynamic thingy ma bob! I have never seen it, it is either on or off.

Drop me a PM with your username, I don't mind pulling your logs to show that you get shaped at different levels. Since usage is generally consistent, you might end up in the same shaping group if demand is at the same level it was 24 hours ago, which makes sense. But chances are you might move through a couple of policies, perhaps during a short period of time, until the system determines it's found the right balance of shaping vs demand for optimal performance.

Remember, our aim is NOT to save bandwidth. We run the IPCs as "hot" as we can at all times to give maximum bandwidth without sacrificing throughput and latency (esp on realtime services). That's why North and Eastern regions are hardly shaped ever, in fact I think we've only done so during outages. We want the same for our clients in the south, that's why we're encouraging everyone to get the best use out of the capacity as possible. Once we can start to see usage over a 24 hour period, we can justify additional capacity.

 

[pgs]

Drop me a PM with your username, I don't mind pulling your logs to show that you get shaped at different levels. Since usage is generally consistent, you might end up in the same shaping group if demand is at the same level it was 24 hours ago, which makes sense. But chances are you might move through a couple of policies, perhaps during a short period of time, until the system determines it's found the right balance of shaping vs demand for optimal performance.

Remember, our aim is NOT to save bandwidth. We run the IPCs as "hot" as we can at all times to give maximum bandwidth without sacrificing throughput and latency (esp on realtime services). That's why North and Eastern regions are hardly shaped ever, in fact I think we've only done so during outages. We want the same for our clients in the south, that's why we're encouraging everyone to get the best use out of the capacity as possible. Once we can start to see usage over a 24 hour period, we can justify additional capacity.

My BB is a bit flaky!

I did RE PM! IF MyBB is working right. It is 00:25 when I looked and saw that I am still being shaped to max!

 

[NarcoticJ]

So, it has a table with highest GB's used down and chops as many users as needed from the top. I am shaped permanently till midnight from (I don't know, midday maybe earlier?) at quote " Shaping Policy: 25% Download/ 6.5% P2P".

So,,,,,,,, I am very sceptical about this dynamic thingy ma bob! I have never seen it, it is either on or off.

I've tested Afrihost and Mweb for the past month and it's clear that Afrihost shapes heavily during the day from 8:00 to 23:45 nothing dynamic about it. 25% Download/ 6.5% P2P it is either on or off. But for a extra R100-00 your IPC load will go bye-bye and your new "Business" line will have no shaping "24/7 now i think." Or should I say your IPC load shaping becomes some other Afrihosts smucks problem.

 

[AfriMan]

I've tested Afrihost and Mweb for the past month and it's clear that Afrihost shapes heavily during the day from 8:00 to 23:45 nothing dynamic about it. 25% Download/ 6.5% P2P it is either on or off. But for a extra R100-00 your IPC load will go bye-bye and your new "Business" line will have no shaping "24/7 now i think." Or should I say your IPC load shaping becomes some other Afrihosts smucks problem.

The shaping changes are subtle, and probably adjust over a short period of time before an ideal balance is found. But think about it this way. If usage is consistent, in terms of patterns, doesn't it make sense that shaping will follow the same patterns? If everyone gets home at 5, switches on their torrents until midnight, then it makes sense that shaping will follow a similar pattern. What we see is that there are also huge periods of downtime, where if some users would just change their usage pattern, could be better utilised.

To use someone's analogy posted not so log ago ... would you rather sit in traffic and be upset that the highways are congested, or leave work a little later when there's no-one on the road? We can't justify an upgrade to the network when there are 5-6 hours of high demand vs 8-9 hours of minimal usage overnight. We really want to encourage all our users to think about using that downtime as much as possible (especially for torrents and file sharing) so that THEY can actually benefit by getting more bandwidth at the end of the day.

 

[NarcoticJ]

The shaping changes are subtle, and probably adjust over a short period of time before an ideal balance is found. But think about it this way. If usage is consistent, in terms of patterns, doesn't it make sense that shaping will follow the same patterns? If everyone gets home at 5, switches on their torrents until midnight, then it makes sense that shaping will follow a similar pattern. What we see is that there are also huge periods of downtime, where if some users would just change their usage pattern, could be better utilised.

To use someone's analogy posted not so log ago ... would you rather sit in traffic and be upset that the highways are congested, or leave work a little later when there's no-one on the road? We can't justify an upgrade to the network when there are 5-6 hours of high demand vs 8-9 hours of minimal usage overnight. We really want to encourage all our users to think about using that downtime as much as possible (especially for torrents and file sharing) so that THEY can actually benefit by getting more bandwidth at the end of the day.

Don't get me wrong I understand the idea behind it, it makes sense and I agree that if I'm "to use your analogy" going to drive home during peak times for an extra R100-00p/m I can get in the fast lane and have no congested traffic. But it's only logical to think that the more "business" lines there are on my IPC the faster normal account line will me shaped right? I mean you won't shape business lines but it's a fair assessment that we are heavy users. And I agree that if I'm going to drive a Ferrari I'm going to pay more for petrol than driving a Tazz but I'll go faster (Ferrari being the heavy user business line in this analogy)

Moral of the story cough up R100p/m and get yourself into a Ferrari

 

[Spaj]

Is the Durban IPC intended to improve local network performance?
Pings to the local server seem to suggest otherwise.

 

[AfriMan]

Is the Durban IPC intended to improve local network performance?
Pings to the local server seem to suggest otherwise.

It depends on your line's capability. If this is on a 4Mbps line, I don't think performance can improve much more than that, it's pretty much max speed.

Drop me a PM with more deets and let's see what's up

 

[wingnut771]

@ Afriman

He is referring to the latency.

 

[AfriMan]

Don't get me wrong I understand the idea behind it, it makes sense and I agree that if I'm "to use your analogy" going to drive home during peak times for an extra R100-00p/m I can get in the fast lane and have no congested traffic. But it's only logical to think that the more "business" lines there are on my IPC the faster normal account line will me shaped right? I mean you won't shape business lines but it's a fair assessment that we are heavy users. And I agree that if I'm going to drive a Ferrari I'm going to pay more for petrol than driving a Tazz but I'll go faster (Ferrari being the heavy user business line in this analogy)

Moral of the story cough up R100p/m and get yourself into a Ferrari

We do a very thorough analysis of usage trends. We've actually found (which the leaderboard confirms) that Business DSL users use less bandwidth than normal Uncapped DSL users. It less about how much you can get and more about how we use the internet today. Even on a 4Mbps line, you can pretty much download anything you want. The net is moving towards a streaming model, rather than file-sharing and torrents. Why have 10 seasons of a series that you'll only watch once?

We still believe that whether you're on Business or Capped, we'll always make sure that there is enough bandwidth to go around

 

[jeanres]

@Afriman, what will happen is, you could pull some stats uncapped a year ago VS uncapped now, people are using less and less.

 

[AfriMan]

@Afriman, what will happen is, you could pull some stats uncapped a year ago VS uncapped now, people are using less and less.

It's actually totally the opposite. We're moving more data in a day than we did in a week a year ago. We had (we think) less than half the IPC capacity on our previous network. We're moving more data every day, even month on month there is a steady increase in usage, across all our DSL products.

 

[Grubscrew]

It's actually totally the opposite. We're moving more data in a day than we did in a week a year ago. We had (we think) less than half the IPC capacity on our previous network. We're moving more data every day, even month on month there is a steady increase in usage, across all our DSL products.

So I am assuming that next line of IPC upgrades are on it's way.

 

[AfriMan]

So I am assuming that next line of IPC upgrades are on it's way.

Problem is usage is still in a concentrated period, and we still have almost a 1/3 of the 24 hour day which mostly under-utilised. Once we start bringing that period down, so that there is almost constant 24 hour usage, then we can start to look at more capacity

 

[Paul Hjul]

surely part of the reason why the nightowl problem is still running is because the norm is to benchmark uncapped accounts to line speed - so everybody on a 1 meg account is running on a 1 meg account so your maths is built around that - whereas if Telkom benched the 4 meg line as the norm and ISPs had clients in the 1,2,4 uncapped products you could simply bring out afterhours bolt-on products to escalate on the ratchet to the higher line speed.