Afrihost Uncapped ADSL Feedback

Status
Not open for further replies.
Sinbad said:
My flat out line speed downloads last night say that perhaps your information may be incorrect.
Click to expand...

If they had enough capacity they would not need such aggressive and fancy QOS policies, Afrihost as a whole might have enough bandwidth, but the portion reserved for the uncapped accounts, which in order of priority probably comes after their capped and business uncapped accounts is simply not enough. If it were you would simply shape torrents etc to bring it under control leaving HTTP contended but untouched. In my opinion seeing lines throttled to 1/4 of there speed seems like a desperate measure to keep bandwidth under control.

Or....there QOS policies are simply not performing how they imagined, be it because of a configuration or software problem.

Of course nobody can be sure so it's just my opinion.
 
2324155890.png


4Mb line. One can actually see the throttling kicking in whilst doing the test.

:(
 
I've been following this thread with interest, as I switched to Afrihost 3 months ago for the better pricing (R700pm vs R900 at MWeb for 4Mbps). The first month and a bit was great, since then, eish...

I've cancelled, currently using a trial account from MWeb, and will switch over at month end.

I would actually be quite happy with a 100-150GB capped account. Some months I do 130GB, or 160GB, other months 30GB or 50GB. I have never done more than 190GB on 4Mbps.

The point is, which I think several people are making here, we don't try to or want to max out the line the whole month. But, when I want that 4GB ISO, I want it NOW, which is why I'm on 4Mbps, and not 1Mbps. To see it downloading at 100KBs just makes me want to cry...

And that is why I won't be with Afrihost next month. Sorry..
 
AfriMan said:
If browsing is at full line speed, and so is streaming or gaming, I think it's getting towards a good uncapped experience.
Click to expand...

You do keep mentioning that, but it is not really so in my experience. Gaming is about the only thing that works as it should currently. Streaming from Youtube usually works. Other sites seem throttled as much as everything else. Browsing is often so bad that even my girlfriend complains. Images come down at a snail's pace. I picked a random picture and checked how fast I could get it:

$ wget "http://i.imgur.com/vJFZQ.jpg"
--2012-11-22 11:12:59-- http://i.imgur.com/vJFZQ.jpg
Resolving i.imgur.com... 68.232.34.133
Connecting to i.imgur.com|68.232.34.133|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 599248 (585K) [image/jpeg]
Saving to: `vJFZQ.jpg'

100%[======================================>] 599,248 59.6K/s in 12s

2012-11-22 11:13:11 (50.8 KB/s) - `vJFZQ.jpg' saved [599248/599248]
Click to expand...

50.8kB/s... That's not really optimal on a supposed 2Mbps line/account.

While I couldn't reach line speed on a 1Mbps account back when you were with IS, now with a 2Mbps account I actually get worse speeds than I did with the IS/1Mbps account, so if you consider this a good uncapped experience, I am a bit fearful for my future with Afrihost.
 
new_in_za2 said:
You do keep mentioning that, but it is not really so in my experience. Gaming is about the only thing that works as it should currently. Streaming from Youtube usually works. Other sites seem throttled as much as everything else. Browsing is often so bad that even my girlfriend complains. Images come down at a snail's pace. I picked a random picture and checked how fast I could get it:

50.8kB/s... That's not really optimal on a supposed 2Mbps line/account.
Click to expand...

As a quick experiment I did the same thing (with other random images so that they are not influenced by caching). This is on a capped afrihost account:

$ wget "http://i.imgur.com/vJFZG.jpg" -O /dev/null
--2012-11-22 11:22:43-- http://i.imgur.com/vJFZG.jpg
Resolving i.imgur.com... 68.232.34.133
Connecting to i.imgur.com|68.232.34.133|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 237481 (232K) [image/jpeg]
Saving to: '/dev/null'

100%[==================================================================>] 237,481 65.8KB/s in 3.5s

2012-11-22 11:22:47 (65.8 KB/s) - '/dev/null' saved [237481/237481]
Click to expand...

And on a capped account from another ISP:

$ wget "http://i.imgur.com/vJFZH.jpg" -O /dev/null
--2012-11-22 11:23:51-- http://i.imgur.com/vJFZH.jpg
Resolving i.imgur.com... 68.232.34.133
Connecting to i.imgur.com|68.232.34.133|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 238228 (233K) [image/jpeg]
Saving to: '/dev/null'

100%[=================================================================>] 238,228 282KB/s in 0.8s

2012-11-22 11:23:53 (282 KB/s) - '/dev/null' saved [238228/238228]
Click to expand...

All on a 10Mbps line syncing at about 8Mbps. I realize that this is actually a thread about uncapped, but I think this is relevant as it seems to indicate a congested network or really bad QoS.
 
Resolving i.imgur.com... 68.232.34.133
Connecting to i.imgur.com|68.232.34.133|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 237481 (232K) [image/jpeg]
Saving to: `/dev/null'

100%[======================================>] 237,481 206K/s in 1.1s

2012-11-22 11:41:10 (206 KB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [237481/237481]
Click to expand...

From Telkom 4MB

Resolving i.imgur.com... 68.232.34.133
Connecting to i.imgur.com|68.232.34.133|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 237481 (232K) [image/jpeg]
Saving to: `/dev/null'

100%[=======================================>] 237,481 62.4K/s in 3.7s

2012-11-22 11:38:16 (62.4 KB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [237481/237481]
Click to expand...

From 4MB Uncapped Afrihost
 
elk said:
All on a 10Mbps line syncing at about 8Mbps. I realize that this is actually a thread about uncapped, but I think this is relevant as it seems to indicate a congested network or really bad QoS.
Click to expand...

There are actually two problems with Afrihost: One is the QoS that seems to throttle everything but youtube.com and speedtest.net to 1/4 of the account speed. Another is that since the switch to MTN, there have been problems with download speeds from overseas websites. I had one of the Rage trial accounts, before Afrihost implemented any QoS. When downloading from sites in South Africa, I would get full line speed from a single TCP connection. When downloading from overseas, I would need 3-5 TCP connections to achieve line speed.

It seems that on top of the QoS problem, the old problem with downloading from international hosts seems to still persist. So to properly test if it is the QoS or the international problem that is causing the poor speeds, the test would need to be redone with an image hoster in South Africa. Do you know of any websites in South Africa with a fair amount of large pictures?

Of course in the end, to end-users it doesn't really matter if it is the QoS or poor international connectivity that's causing the poor browsing experience, they just want it to improve.
 
I think basically home users especially are saying that if the current QoS shaping policy prioritizes ONLY http browsing I as a single user might aswell get a 1meg Browsing uncapped afrihost account for web surfing and something else for even downloading HTTP files/windows updates/game updates/what have you. Having pure HTTP browsing being the only thing being able to remotely tug at 4meg speeds is great for surfing,but **** for everything else

If a new patch comes out or I even want to update my tablet i'll be crawling at 1meg purely because it isn't browsing irrespective of my data use. We're not asking for full speed 24/7,we're asking for burst capability when needed ( at the moment I have that burst at 2am so at least I only have to wait a day for any big downloads to finish so I guess I should count my blessings there )
 
new_in_za2 said:
It seems that on top of the QoS problem, the old problem with downloading from international hosts seems to still persist. So to properly test if it is the QoS or the international problem that is causing the poor speeds, the test would need to be redone with an image hoster in South Africa. Do you know of any websites in South Africa with a fair amount of large pictures?
Click to expand...

Seems like you're right. I have a local server and set up a 1MB file with random contents and no caching. I seem to be getting similar speeds on both afrihost and my other ISP account:

Afrihost capped:
$ wget www.acscomputers.co.za/speedtest
--2012-11-22 11:57:47-- http://www.acscomputers.co.za/speedtest
Resolving www.acscomputers.co.za... 197.221.34.4
Connecting to www.acscomputers.co.za|197.221.34.4|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 1048576 (1.0M) [application/octet-stream]
Saving to: 'speedtest.6'

100%[==========================================>] 1,048,576 681KB/s in 1.5s

2012-11-22 11:57:49 (681 KB/s) - 'speedtest.6' saved [1048576/1048576]
Click to expand...

Other ISP capped:
$ wget www.acscomputers.co.za/speedtest
--2012-11-22 11:58:00-- http://www.acscomputers.co.za/speedtest
Resolving www.acscomputers.co.za... 197.221.34.4
Connecting to www.acscomputers.co.za|197.221.34.4|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 1048576 (1.0M) [application/octet-stream]
Saving to: 'speedtest.7'

100%[==========================================>] 1,048,576 620KB/s in 1.7s

2012-11-22 11:58:02 (620 KB/s) - 'speedtest.7' saved [1048576/1048576]
Click to expand...

Feel free to test using the same file.

It looks like there may be a serious shortage of international bandwidth. If this affects a capped account as much as it does for me I don't want to know what it does to uncapped.
 
Oh, trust me, the last thing I want is for you to head towards disaster. I'm with Openweb and when Afrihost launched its Uncapped, the entire IS network degraded. When you guys moved to MTN, it improved tenfold. I want you to keep your customers so that they don't come over and degrade our networks again.

All I'm saying is that from an outsider's perspective, things are not looking good with Afrihost Uncapped. If someone were to ask me, I'd recommend WebAfrica over Afrihost and that's really saying something if you look at my posting history in the WA threads.

Take this as some constructive criticism, not me being negative towards your product, but people do not generally get uncapped accounts to browse the internet and watch videos. You keep hammering on browsing and streaming being fine, but if that's all people were interested in they likely would have gotten 5 or 10gb capped accounts. The majority of people who get uncapped accounts do so because they've got a fair bit of downloading to do each month. Nobody expects to be downloading the internet each month, but in this thread I'm seeing 10mb subscribers claiming they could only pull 10gb over 10 days. I did more than that on my 384 uncapped account from my ISP.

Just take it as some outside constructive criticism, but the feeling I've been getting from following this thread over the last few weeks is that Afrihost couldn't do uncapped in 2010, and they can't do it now.

AfriMan said:
I disagree. We've had less cancellations now than we had with our last month on IS, when IPC ran out and speeds were just awful.

We know there's a problem (and we've been very forthcoming about it), and of course we'd like everyone to stay with us, but in general our ADSL client base is still growing. I understand that some people want to believe that Afrihost is headed fro disaster for whatever reasons, but it just isn't the case.

The majority of our users are not heavy downloaders, they just need to get their email when they need it, browse websites without making a cup of coffee in between pages loading, maybe they make the occasional skype call or have kids who do some gaming. And in general these clients are happy, they get what they want when they need it.

I'm not denying anyone's experience, but if we're speaking generally here ...
Click to expand...
 
elk said:
Seems like you're right. I have a local server and set up a 1MB file with random contents and no caching. I seem to be getting similar speeds on both afrihost and my other ISP account:

Afrihost capped:


Other ISP capped:


Feel free to test using the same file.

It looks like there may be a serious shortage of international bandwidth. If this affects a capped account as much as it does for me I don't want to know what it does to uncapped.
Click to expand...

I think it's more that there's some serious funkiness in the routing inside MTN's network.

traceroute to my.dyndns.org (105.236.110.432), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 ldn-bb1-link.telia.net (80.91.249.131) 0.492 ms 0.364 ms ldn-bb2-link.telia.net (80.91.249.133) 0.427 ms
2 ldn-b5-link.telia.net (80.91.247.90) 0.531 ms 0.541 ms ldn-b5-link.telia.net (80.91.247.92) 0.572 ms
3 level3-ic-153380-ldn-b5.c.telia.net (213.248.91.58) 0.683 ms xe-4-2-2.edge3.london1.level3.net (4.68.111.181) 0.692 ms level3-ic-153380-ldn-b5.c.telia.net (213.248.92.82) 0.680 ms
4 ae-1-51.edge4.London1.Level3.net (4.69.139.74) [AS 3356] 0.680 ms ae-2-52.edge4.London1.Level3.net (4.69.139.106) [AS 3356] 0.710 ms 1.009 ms
5 195.50.122.182 (195.50.122.182) [AS 3356] 0.863 ms 28.469 ms 0.899 ms
6 ls-cr-2.uk--ls-pr-2.uk-a.mtn.net (209.212.111.186) [AS 16637] 0.967 ms 1.001 ms 1.007 ms
MPLS Label=662138 CoS=0 TTL=1 S=1
7 ct-cr-1.za--ct-cr-2.za.mtnns.net (196.44.31.34) [AS 16637] 195.155 ms 194.923 ms 193.934 ms
MPLS Label=726386 CoS=1 TTL=1 S=1
8 tb-cr-2.za--ls-cr-1.uk.mtnns.net (196.44.31.112) [AS 16637] 157.221 ms 157.193 ms 41.181.180.11 (41.181.180.11) [AS 16637] 195.532 ms
MPLS Label=525425 CoS=1 TTL=1 S=1
9 * * *
10 196.44.31.106 (196.44.31.106) [AS 16637] 157.798 ms ipc-send-jh-1a.za.mtnbusiness.net (41.181.178.9) [AS 16637] 192.282 ms jh-cr-2.za--jh-dca-2.za-a.mtnns.net (196.44.0.224) [AS 16637] 195.496 ms
MPLS Label=686336 CoS=1 TTL=1 S=0
MPLS Label=308704 CoS=1 TTL=1 S=0
MPLS Label=509 CoS=1 TTL=1 S=1
11 * rb-cr-1.za--jh-cr-2.za-a.mtnns.net (196.44.31.94) [AS 16637] 193.321 ms 193.189 ms
MPLS Label=308704 CoS=1 TTL=1 S=0
MPLS Label=509 CoS=1 TTL=2 S=1
12 * jh-cr-1.za--rb-cr-2.za.mtnns.net (196.44.0.42) [AS 16637] 180.054 ms *
MPLS Label=726146 CoS=1 TTL=1 S=1
13 41.181.180.11 (41.181.180.11) [AS 16637] 175.212 ms * *



From hop 8 on it looks really really really really messed up.

Compare to another MTNNS client:

traceroute to www.fnb.co.za (196.11.125.149), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 ldn-bb2-link.telia.net (80.91.249.133) 0.511 ms 0.366 ms ldn-bb1-link.telia.net (80.91.249.131) 0.424 ms
2 ldn-b5-link.telia.net (80.91.246.115) 0.523 ms ldn-b5-link.telia.net (80.91.246.145) 11.659 ms 1.422 ms
3 level3-ic-143383-ldn-b5.c.telia.net (213.248.96.38) 0.584 ms level3-ic-153380-ldn-b5.c.telia.net (213.248.92.82) 0.684 ms level3-ic-143383-ldn-b5.c.telia.net (213.248.96.38) 0.551 ms
4 ae-2-52.edge4.London1.Level3.net (4.69.139.106) [AS 3356] 1.077 ms * 0.776 ms
5 195.50.122.182 (195.50.122.182) [AS 3356] 0.847 ms 28.201 ms 0.724 ms
6 ls-cr-2.uk--ls-pr-2.uk-a.mtn.net (209.212.111.186) [AS 16637] 1.017 ms 0.997 ms 1.456 ms
MPLS Label=602029 CoS=0 TTL=1 S=1
7 rb-cr-1.za--ls-cr-1.uk-D.mtnns.net (196.44.31.164) [AS 16637] 199.061 ms rb-cr-1.za--ls-cr-2.uk-c.mtnns.net (196.44.31.84) [AS 16637] 242.318 ms ls-cr-2.uk--rb-cr-2.za-a.mtnns.net (196.44.31.248) [AS 16637] 229.009 ms
MPLS Label=308656 CoS=1 TTL=1 S=1
8 rb-mse-1.za--rb-cr-1.za-a.mtnns.net (196.44.0.181) [AS 16637] 198.592 ms 204.310 ms 199.064 ms
9 196.31.44.186 (196.31.44.186) [AS 16637] 200.232 ms 198.747 ms 200.372 ms
10 * * *
 
AfriMan said:
Guys

We need to move our thinking away from rolling windows and thresholds. It's never going to work like that, or at least not for now.

We assess the capacity, we look at usage trends, averages, projections and all sorts of things, and we try to be fair in how we shape various clients.

Lots of clients being more heavily shaped should now get some relief, and very heavy downloaders should be feeling the pinch more as we move things around for the best overall (and most fair) shaped experience. Rolling window thresholds are not going to apply, but no matter how your downloads are shaped, everything else should be working at basically full speed (if there are no other infrastructure or strange issues). We believe this is a better way, and when we can fine tune it to the point we envision, we think it will be the best ADSL service we've been talking about.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info. I now know that the uncapped accounts are not meant for any sort of heavy downloading. And that the shaping will be a mainstay for the uncapped accounts. I was hoping that this was temporary.

Time to looked at the capped accounts. Its cheaper, and unshaped!
 
Zewp said:
Oh, trust me, the last thing I want is for you to head towards disaster. I'm with Openweb and when Afrihost launched its Uncapped, the entire IS network degraded. When you guys moved to MTN, it improved tenfold. I want you to keep your customers so that they don't come over and degrade our networks again.

All I'm saying is that from an outsider's perspective, things are not looking good with Afrihost Uncapped. If someone were to ask me, I'd recommend WebAfrica over Afrihost and that's really saying something if you look at my posting history in the WA threads.

Take this as some constructive criticism, not me being negative towards your product, but people do not generally get uncapped accounts to browse the internet and watch videos. You keep hammering on browsing and streaming being fine, but if that's all people were interested in they likely would have gotten 5 or 10gb capped accounts. The majority of people who get uncapped accounts do so because they've got a fair bit of downloading to do each month. Nobody expects to be downloading the internet each month, but in this thread I'm seeing 10mb subscribers claiming they could only pull 10gb over 10 days. I did more than that on my 384 uncapped account from my ISP.

Just take it as some outside constructive criticism, but the feeling I've been getting from following this thread over the last few weeks is that Afrihost couldn't do uncapped in 2010, and they can't do it now.
Click to expand...

Appreciate the constructive crit, but also don't think it's fair to speak on behalf of ten of thousands of uncapped users based on solely on reading this forum. Many clients go uncapped because it's convenient and affordable. If that weren't the case, we would not still be in business. Please don't take this as arrogance, but just to give some perspective :)
 
I think the new clientzone was done by the Mafia's creative accountants ;)



120.03 GB DATA USED

Data Statistics
Data Used: 120.03 GB
Average Daily Usage: 5.46 GB
Average Monthly Usage: 4 GB





6% USED

Overall Account Usage
You have used approximately 6% of your overall data allocation on all your accounts. Find out more »

∞

Total Data Remaining
Unlimited Pure Internet Joy. Find out more »
 
i went uncapped as got tired of topping up everytime the kids used the bandwidth for school and college projects... but yes only time we have much downloaded is when new ame patches come out otherwise less than 30gb a month,, still am shaped with those stats
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X