Afrihost Uncapped ADSL Feedback

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SiliconKid said:
I think the bottom line here is very simple. Their migration hasn't gone quite as planned and the network is not currently coping with the load.

We can all post speed test results and latency reports until the cows come home. It isn't going to change anything.

I suspect that, depending on where you are physically located right now, results may vary too. So I might only be experiencing targeted throttling with avg latencies while somebody else has horrific latency and someone else has general speed / throttling issues for everything and not just downloads.

The point is, all of those things are symptoms of ONE underlying issue. The network is NOT coping right now.

Obviously AH don't want to admit that after all the fanfare about how awesome the MTN partnership would make everything and how all the old problems would vanish and everything would be utopia, so instead they are desperately trying to deal with the situation as fast as possible.

Given that we have pretty much confirmed that our problems are NOT due to some new draconian threshold system or abuse policy and not because someone at Afrihost sold us the biggest scam in history and intentionally lied to us, we now basically have 2 very simple choices:

1. Accept that there is a network issue that IS being dealt with and that this happens in IT, a lot, and it SHOULD be resolved by January, and decide that you can live with that.

2. Consider this whole debacle the last straw. Kick something, hard. Utter a few decent obscenties directed at AH to make yourself feel better. Then cancel your account and move on.

No amount of further complaining, jumping up and down, throwing tantrums like children or any other form of desperate nerd outrage is going to make AH fix the problem any faster.
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so we should all be satisfied paying full price for 2 months of sub 384kbps standard internet?
 
while I agree with you SiliconKid, I just wanted AH to admit this themselves and provide us with a proper official response, so that we know the problem is what you say. As now, its just hear-say and I would not want to cancel today, only to find out tomorrow all is fine, but waiting for Jan seems a bit too much for me and I would probably jump ship if AH do not provide some relief in terms of refunds for semi-service :)
 
lucifir said:
while I agree with you SiliconKid, I just wanted AH to admit this themselves and provide us with a proper official response, so that we know the problem is what you say. As now, its just hear-say and I would not want to cancel today, only to find out tomorrow all is fine, but waiting for Jan seems a bit too much for me and I would probably jump ship if AH do not provide some relief in terms of refunds for semi-service :)
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I'd still post my 1x or 2x a day ping, speed and path tests :whistle:
 
lucifir said:
while I agree with you SiliconKid, I just wanted AH to admit this themselves and provide us with a proper official response, so that we know the problem is what you say. As now, its just hear-say and I would not want to cancel today, only to find out tomorrow all is fine, but waiting for Jan seems a bit too much for me and I would probably jump ship if AH do not provide some relief in terms of refunds for semi-service :)
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today is the last day to cancel otherwise u will be billed for next month
 
SiliconKid said:
Just spoke to someone from Afrihost who gave me a decent explanation for all this.

From what I can gather, the situation is as follows:

a. The speed issues ARE due to general network issues and NOT targeting of specific users based on any kind of usage / abuse / etc. criteria. So there is no new monitoring or threshold system in place etc. etc. It is purely a network issue.

b. The network issue is fundamentally a problem with coping with the load. It's simply not coping right now. And the reason for that is primarily because the migration from IS to MTN was supposed to be a phased migration whereby the uncapped accounts would be moved across in batches to mitigate exactly these kinds of problems by spreading the migration over a period of time while additional network infrastructure was still being rolled out on the MTN side. This hasn't happened and evidently Afrihost were forced to move ALL of the uncapped accounts across already, prematurely.

c. The throttling being experienced is protocol specific. In other words it applies specifically to large downloads from servers that are being connected to on specific ports (563 SSL etc.). We all know what that means :)

The throttling should NOT be affecting normal browsing, video streaming from YouTube, etc.

d. Additional infrastructure IS being rolled out right now to sort this out and the throttling that is being enforced is an emergency measure to keep the network as a whole functional and responsive. That's why late at night your speed suddenly jumps back to max again and holds there for around six hours straight (check your usage logs and you will see the pattern clearly).

Realistic estimates for return to complete normalcy are early January apparently.

To be honest, that all sounds like a reasonable explanation to me. I'm not thrilled about it but it's not a train smash either.

In practical terms, that means:

1. You can still pull down around 20GB per day at least.

2. You can still browse, stream video and do other normal (you know what I mean ;) ) things at full speed

3. This is temporary.

4. It's still 200 bucks a month cheaper than MWeb.


For me personally, now that I've been given a reasonable explanation that actually makes some kind of sense and doesn't sound like a fabricated excuse or sidestep, I'm happy to keep rolling with my Afrihost account and just ride it out provided that things don't get any worse and assuming that they will actually improve.

I do, however, agree with many comments on this forum that communication with us could be a lot more pro-active from Afrihost. They need to acknowledge these kinds of core issues sooner and more openly.
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I hope that this is the case. Can a afrihost employee comment/confirm?
 
any1 know which of the openweb accounts match the previous AH account??
Need to find another option if I may cancel with AH
 
justin-watokal said:
but still they handle my line rental and their 24hour support is ignoring me
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Just be careful they don't cancel your ADSL line as well, the did it to one person I know.

He instructed them to transfer his line back to telkom, and to cancel his bandwidth package. They cancelled both the line and the package, and have since ignored him.

And it sounds stoner in this thread had teh same issue (them cancelling his line)

http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthr...le-with-Afrihost-and-move-line-back-to-Telkom
 
Please Note that currently its only P2P on Uncapped that we are managing during business hours. Real time services such as VOIP and http are prioritized on uncapped to give the best experience with youtube telephone calls etc. Capped accounts are unmanaged and unshaped
 
SpecialOps-Afrihost said:
Please Note that currently its only P2P on Uncapped that we are managing during business hours. Real time services such as VOIP and http are prioritized on uncapped to give the best experience with youtube telephone calls etc. Capped accounts are unmanaged and unshaped
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What exactly are business hours??
Cause it seems that business hours last up to 1am.
Also, does nntp fall into p2p?? cause that is being shaped/managed as well
 
I asked the same as a Business Uncapped account holder and were told it is 8am to 5pm - weekdays only.

lucifir said:
What exactly are business hours??
Cause it seems that business hours last up to 1am.
Also, does nntp fall into p2p?? cause that is being shaped/managed as well
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lucifir said:
What exactly are business hours??
Cause it seems that business hours last up to 1am.
Also, does nntp fall into p2p?? cause that is being shaped/managed as well
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Yes this!! It seems businesses run till about after midnight :confused: before that it's all seriously heavy shaped for me.
But then I turn my pc off and go to sleep :cry:
 
SpecialOps-Afrihost said:
Please Note that currently its only P2P on Uncapped that we are managing during business hours. Real time services such as VOIP and http are prioritized on uncapped to give the best experience with youtube telephone calls etc. Capped accounts are unmanaged and unshaped
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Cool, thanks. I've got no problems with that. For all I care you can pull the plug on my P2P during office hours.
 
Test conducted on 14 November 2012 14:59
Download Speed: 2733 kbps (341.6 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 389 kbps (48.6 KB/sec transfer rate)
Latency: 262 ms

Wow the best speed I've had in weeks pity the latency has shot up, please try get me back to 210ms atleast for now
 
ClintonExsteen said:
Test conducted on 14 November 2012 14:59
Download Speed: 2733 kbps (341.6 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 389 kbps (48.6 KB/sec transfer rate)
Latency: 262 ms

Wow the best speed I've had in weeks pity the latency has shot up, please try get me back to 210ms atleast for now
Click to expand...

like my late pappie used to say,,, up and down faster than a wh*res undiedrawers

Test conducted on 14 November 2012 15:03
Download Speed: 610 kbps (76.3 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 295 kbps (36.9 KB/sec transfer rate)
Latency: 255 ms
 
SiliconKid said:
b.the migration from IS to MTN was supposed to be a phased migration whereby the uncapped accounts would be moved across in batches to mitigate exactly these kinds of problems by spreading the migration over a period of time while additional network infrastructure was still being rolled out on the MTN side. This hasn't happened and evidently Afrihost were forced to move ALL of the uncapped accounts across already, prematurely.
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something to keep in mind; adsl connectivity is based on realm authentication.

in other words, saix require all internet service providers to set up a realm on saix's proxy servers. these proxy servers then points to authorization servers usually on the isp's side. when you connect with your user@dsl-realm saix looks up the realm and then proxy the authentication down to whichever server configured for authorization;

authorization takes place, an access-accept packet would be sent back to saix, containing certain attributes. based on those attributes saix would assign for instance dns servers, acl, etc and also which IP you should be assigned and route you within a specific vrf over your ipc links.

each ISP (such as MWEB, MTN, RSAWeb, IS etc) have their own set of pools configured across all the esrs out there.

if all your uncapped accounts are using the same realm, it is not possible to do a phased approach cut-over, unless you give your users a new realm to configure on their devices. that is the only way you can move batches of users over from one network to another without using the same realm.

saix can not (or rather will not) do user based authentication (ie batches); which is understandable given the amount of dsl users out there and additional resources required on their aaa servers.

if you however have different realms for your uncapped users, then its ultimately a whole different issue, but from what i have seen most isps like to divide it up between realms for capped and uncapped services.


as an example, would saix allow a webafrica realm to send back pool attributes (per user) in order to connect that user with an ip out of mweb's pool and onto the mweb ipc instead of webafrica ipc. the next user would connect as per normal via webafrica ipc.

my guess is no, but that could be an interesting experiment ;-)

j.

... all comments/voices-in-my-head are my own and are not those of my employer ...

#include <std-disclaimer.h>
 
Test conducted on 14 November 2012 16:54
Download Speed: 2555 kbps (319.4 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 406 kbps (50.8 KB/sec transfer rate)
Latency: 226 ms

Feeling almost 100% - keep it up guys we are getting there (keep it there too)
 
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