Afrihost Uncapped ADSL Feedback

[htpc]

Test conducted on 15 November 2012 14:57:07 SAST

Download Speed: 2031 kbps (253.9 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 534 kbps (66.8 KB/sec transfer rate)
Latency: 30 ms

Test conducted on 15 November 2012 18:15:47 SAST

Download Speed: 6527 kbps (815.9 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 509 kbps (63.6 KB/sec transfer rate)
Latency: 30 ms

 

[bauer]

Grim what you dont seem to understand is people in CAPE TOWN are having a terrible time and being throttled to death, so you posting results from your location is pointless and if anything just shows how bad cpt users have it, if you can download at full speed while the rest of us cant get near 800kbs, why shouldnt we moan.

 

[MrGray]

4mbps uncapped (Cape Town). Remind me again how the Afrihost billing cycle works. I have 5 accounts to cancel and I think I've missed the boat for the next billing cut off?

 

[FapCop]

1/4 to 1/3 seems to be the prevailing throttled limit

I've tested and tested and tested and tested. Downloads are throttled to exactly 23.4% of whatever your line speed is. Not talking just P2P.

 

[Necuno]

15 nov 2012 / thursday / product 10mbs uncapped afrihost / location pretoria

6:15pm - 6:37pm
speedtest to JHB [5.18Mb/s]

speedtest to CT


speedtest to UK


speedtest to US


ping test to CT [ping 44ms, jitter 6ms, grade A]


ping test to UK


ping test to USA


testmy 25 meg



speedtest statistics (Sadly there is one mweb of 5Mbs and one vpn of 2Mbs in there as I accidently tested them with grouped AH results)


testmy statistics



path ping to google.com

C:\>pathping www.google.com

Tracing route to www.google.com [74.125.233.82]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
  0  jadexp-b83e17d9 [105.237.22.239]
  1  105-236-3-129-esr-lo.mtnbusiness.co.za [105.236.3.129]
  2  ipc-recieve-jh-1a.za.mtnbusiness.net [41.181.178.5]
  3  qux-jh-dca-2.za-b.za.mtnbusiness.net [41.181.165.115]
  4  jh-dca-2.za--qux-b.za.mtnbusiness.net [41.181.165.114]
  5  196.44.0.74
  6  74.125.49.218
  7  209.85.248.226
  8  216.239.49.242
  9  209.85.253.29
 10  72.14.232.103
 11  64.233.174.57
 12  jnb01s02-in-f18.1e100.net [74.125.233.82]

Computing statistics for 300 seconds...
            Source to Here   This Node/Link
Hop  RTT    Lost/Sent = Pct  Lost/Sent = Pct  Address
  0                                           jadexp-b83e17d9 [105.237.22.239]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  1   15ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  105-236-3-129-esr-lo.mtnbusiness.co.za [105.236.3.129]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  2   17ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  ipc-recieve-jh-1a.za.mtnbusiness.net [41.181.178.5]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  3   19ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  qux-jh-dca-2.za-b.za.mtnbusiness.net [41.181.165.115]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  4   21ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  jh-dca-2.za--qux-b.za.mtnbusiness.net [41.181.165.114]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  5   45ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  196.44.0.74
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  6   47ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  74.125.49.218
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  7  188ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  209.85.248.226
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  8  ---     100/ 100 =100%   100/ 100 =100%  216.239.49.242
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  9  ---     100/ 100 =100%   100/ 100 =100%  209.85.253.29
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
 10  ---     100/ 100 =100%   100/ 100 =100%  72.14.232.103
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
 11  ---     100/ 100 =100%   100/ 100 =100%  64.233.174.57
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
 12  358ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  jnb01s02-in-f18.1e100.net [74.125.233.82]

Trace complete.

C:\>

 

[justin-watokal]

Remember just because it's uncapped doesn't mean you have to download the whole internet.

my plan was to cut and paste the internet

 

[MrGray]

I've tested and tested and tested and tested. Downloads are throttled to exactly 25% of whatever your line speed is.

I agree - so definitely not exactly "shaping" in favour of "real time services", then is it @Afriman?

 

[bumbledore]

I'm in the same boat here, from Cape Town.

Can't get more than 260KB/s on a 10mb/s, and that's on *all* protocols, NNTP (astraweb), torrents (private tracker), FTP and HTTP.
So I'm also being throttled like most everyone else in Cape Town.

This MTN move is going to be the death of AfriHost, I'm afraid. And their website still states "Network Fully Operational."

It should add as a caveat, "... at 25%."

 

[new_in_za2]

I'm going to defend AH on this, I've setup complicated QOS on networks before, it's not the easiest thing in the world to get 100% correct ever.

I have similar experiences and I agree with you - it is not easy to get right. However, that is why I (and other people) pay Afrihost, so they can do it and we, the customers, can get working internet connections. Currently Afrihost are not delivering what we pay for.

I've done 90GB this month so far on my 10Mb account, I, unlike a lot of you, am not trying to download the whole damn internet every month just because I have an uncapped account, that's not the point of uncapped. Yes there have been problems, but they have been trying to assist where they can and they've been very forthcoming with information around the problems, you won't find that with a lot of the other providers.

My NNTP is working just fine:
http://tinypic.com/r/2rykqrl/6

Torrents the same:
http://tinypic.com/r/11kifes/6

I don't download a lot either, however I can't exactly say I am getting great service from Afrihost. International downloads usually go at around 30-40kB/s. I average roughly 30GB per month.

The cost to provide uncapped ADSL in SA is ridiculous:
Telkom IPC: R1200 per Mbit per month
International Bandwidth: Roughly R700 per Mbit per month

I knew that Telkom were greedy, incompetent con artists, but that they were asking R1200 per megabit for what is essentially just peering completely blows my mind. Back in Europe I can get 1 Gbps international connectivity for about R10000 per month...

Have you got a source for those numbers, BTW?

 

[kripstoe]

Grim what you dont seem to understand is people in CAPE TOWN are having a terrible time and being throttled to death, so you posting results from your location is pointless and if anything just shows how bad cpt users have it, if you can download at full speed while the rest of us cant get near 800kbs, why shouldnt we moan.

I'm a Cape Town user. Yes, latency is high and speeds are a little unpredictable, but it's already much more stable than a week or two ago.

I'm currently too busy at work (and lazy) to considering cancelling my account.

Yes, I'm unhappy about the IPC and feel Afrihost did short change a lot of their customers with regards to latency and throughput (compared to what we were used to). Eg. I cannot stream Youtube like I used to. The QoS is something else I'm not ecstatic about. Not sure how exactly it's implemented but it seems like a makes everything very unpredictable.

More customers on upgraded lines should *not* be an excuse for degraded performance. That should have been planned for. If not, everybody will be back on 384kbps packages before long.

At the moment I don't see things getting worse, so I'll wait a little longer. I really hope AH makes it worth the wait. If not, they'll become just another ISP.

 

[iDOL]

I' ve had enough. Lodged my cancellation and money back request.

I've not been able to play any games it just is not acceptable.

 

[wingnut771]

Line Rate - Upstream (Kbps): 512
Line Rate - Downstream (Kbps): 4096
Downstream Upstream
SNR Margin (0.1 dB): 301 270
Attenuation (0.1 dB): 200 100
Output Power (0.1 dBm): 172 121
Attainable Rate (Kbps): 12256 1212

Afrihost 4Mb Uncapped (75.335 GB)
Http Downloads @ 120kB (8ish - 1-2am) & 420kB (1ish-8ish)
International Speedtest
Test conducted on 15 November 2012 06:33:05 PM
Download Speed: 3476 kbps (434.5 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 408 kbps (51 KB/sec transfer rate)
Latency: 221 ms

Other ISP 4Mb Uncapped (80.76 GB)
Http Downloads @ 420kB
International
Test conducted on 15 November 2012 06:13:12 PM
Download Speed: 3461 kbps (432.6 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 407 kbps (50.9 KB/sec transfer rate)
Latency: 218 ms )has crept up since about the weekend - normally around 208

I am always looking for an ISP who will give the best latency consistently. When they get Durban IPC I will check it out, but if there's no consistency like I had with Webafrica (190ms) then I will use somebody else.

So, I'm paid up till the end of the month (they wouldn't just cancel the account on the 5th and refund the month prorata) and am forced to use it, so I let downloads run during the day when normally my line is idle and I am at work, just to get some value for money and run the new one when I get home until the next morning. So unfortunately I have moved on but will keep an eye on this forum after the local IPC's are in and the strain on JHB is gone.

P.S. Afriman should be a politician

 

[DominionZA]

Is there a Dbn IPC or not?
I told my mate in Dbn that their is not (based on what I read in this thread) so he called Afrihost. He was told only CTN does not have and that Dbn does.

What is the real answer?

 

[AfriMan]

I posted a long reply and then it got lost in the matrix!

It's probably for the best cos I see the posts I was trying to address are not even on this page anymore! Anyway, it's definitely QoS and not throttling. Even different users can get different speeds on the same file, then it's can't be a universal throttle. Or am I not thinking this through?

Bottom line is this, last week (and the week before) was horrible. If you read through the complaints, clients couldn't browse, they couldn't game and we were doing our best to make this work. Turns out the traffic management system (which is the same system used by other ISP's including IS) was at fault, hardware had to be replaced and we could finally bring performance into acceptable range. It's not perfect, it needs time and it needs data. We have a little over 4 weeks of data with which to determine usage trends, we simply need a lot more. So this is being done as and when we see capacity available. Our intention is to max out the IPC as much as we can, so that we're always giving available resources to our clients. Since we're paying for it anyway, we might as well pass it straight onto you. There is definitely a helluva lot more bandwidth being moved since we crossed over to IS. I did publish figures a while ago, I'm happy to repost them to give you guys an idea. I also posted that if you compare the usage of the top percentile month on month, it's almost a hundred TB's more.

We are committed to keep working on this, and we are confident, after last week's issues being address through hard work and determination, that this is something that is do-able and we have the right skills to get it right. It's not a PR smokescreen or politician speak. This is the straight up truth

 

[Pete_A]

Hi,

I am going to claim the money back guarantee from afrihost. After 1 month, the service from a business perspective on a business line is not usable in a production environment. I call bull**** on the qos, since I setup qos on several types of firewalls such as pfsense and Microtok. The sad truth is qos only works if you have capacity, and Afrihost clearly don't have capacity for all the users. There is no escaping that fact. What's complete bs is being on the business platinum 10meg and getting around 2meg. What a total joke.

I'll let everyone know how the claim goes, probably not going to be easy.

Pete

 

[bumbledore]

AfriMan

Almost everyone from Cape Town here is complaining of 25% - 33% speeds on their lines. You are throttling us, and you can call it a million other things if you want, but it's still throttling - the intentional slowing of an internet service by an internet service provider. So let's just call a spade and spade and move on.

I have a 10mb/s line.
I have recently reformatted my computer to upgrade to Windows 8.
I want to download my Steam games.
I cannot download them at 10mb/s, I can only download them at between 1-2mb/s due to your "QoS."

So my question is simple.

When do you estimate I will be able to download my Steam games at full line speed in Cape Town? Considering I pay for full line speed?

 

[FreddyB]

Bottom line is this, last week (and the week before) was horrible. It's not perfect, it needs time and it needs data. We have a little over 4 weeks of data with which to determine usage trends, we simply need a lot more.

And that's a month of horrible internet we had to pay for. And god knows how long to come. It's just not worth hanging around with another month of useless internet. I rather switch and come back in 3 months

 

[Pete_A]

Hi,

I am going to claim the money back guarantee from afrihost. After 1 month, the service from a business perspective on a business line is not usable in a production environment. I call bull**** on the qos, since I setup qos on several types of firewalls such as pfsense and Microtok. The sad truth is qos only works if you have capacity, and Afrihost clearly don't have capacity for all the users. There is no escaping that fact. What's complete bs is being on the business platinum 10meg and getting around 2meg. What a total joke.

I'll let everyone know how the claim goes, probably not going to be easy.

Pete

I forgot to ask, does anyone have any reccomendations for a 10meg line uncapped unshaped with any other network?

Pete

 

[JerryMungo]

Just to fill everyone in - I've just switched to my Afrihost account from Mweb to test and Afrihost is better thought it's not the best. I suspect there are bigger issues at the moment. Mweb was virtually unusable at times.

 

[lupedelupe]

Straight answer is that there are many Cape Town clients getting service that they are happy with. We recognise that there are some clients unhappy with their service, especially gamers, but we feel that while IPC installation will improve this, our recent changes to QoS should have vastly improved this and we are receiving feedback that at the moment this is the case.

Please remember, even though we have had a significant number of complaints here on MyBB and on social media, we have thousands of clients in Cape Town and neighbouring areas or that route via Cape Town, so the context is very different for us.

2362 (and counting), comments just here since your change to MTN.
Admission that you need further infrastructure to support the system ...

Waiving everyone off because grannies in CT can access email is, well, not good business sense. WHile the service is better, it is nowhere NEAR what we are paying for.