Afrihost Uncapped ADSL Feedback

[gregmcc]

Really consistent and good speeds I'm getting at the moment on 4Mb uncapped. Keep it up AH.

Me too! Been getting 30Kbps all day long! (on 4Mbps)

 

[Muks]

4Mbs

Local:

Test conducted on 14/2/2013 08:30:14

Download Speed: 3443 kbps (430.4 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 25 kbps (3.1 KB/sec transfer rate)
Latency: 10044 ms

International:

Test conducted on 14/2/2013 08:35:26

Download Speed: 1048 kbps (131 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 12 kbps (1.5 KB/sec transfer rate)
Latency: 10232 ms

Latency is really bad according to the speedtest. Pings to some websites are not as bad:


C:\>ping www.news24.com

Pinging www.news24.com [41.86.110.200] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 41.86.110.200: bytes=32 time=34ms TTL=113
Reply from 41.86.110.200: bytes=32 time=34ms TTL=113
Reply from 41.86.110.200: bytes=32 time=34ms TTL=113
Reply from 41.86.110.200: bytes=32 time=35ms TTL=113

Ping statistics for 41.86.110.200:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 34ms, Maximum = 35ms, Average = 34ms

C:\>ping www.wsj.com

Pinging uslb.wsj.akadns.net [205.203.140.65] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 205.203.140.65: bytes=32 time=279ms TTL=236
Reply from 205.203.140.65: bytes=32 time=279ms TTL=236
Reply from 205.203.140.65: bytes=32 time=278ms TTL=236
Reply from 205.203.140.65: bytes=32 time=382ms TTL=236

Ping statistics for 205.203.140.65:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 278ms, Maximum = 382ms, Average = 304ms


Any ideas why?

 

[OMB]

I switched from capped to uncapped at the end of Jan (4Mb line) my capped account was great and I've stuck with AH through some of the switch over problems. The last few days I find my speeds have been erratic dropping below 1Mbps at times on speedtest.net

yesterday I logged a support request to investigate at 08:20 yesterday morning, I got a response at 16:56! I then had to run speedtests, pingtests and traceroute and submit screen shots. When I switched over to the Telkom guest account the speedtest flew.

This morning I get this response

You are currently on an uncapped account which runs on a shaping system The manner in which Afrihost manages its accounts has changed slightly since the move to the MTN Backbone.

Previously,the shaping of lines was based on usage patterns over a number of days.

Now however, we are able to dynamically monitor our current bandwidth available, and the demand for this bandwidth.
We then prioritise real-time services - which include browsing, emailing, streaming, and YouTubing - to ensure that all
of our clients receive the very best possible quality of service.

This does however mean that downloads making use of P2P protocols and some direct connect protocols will receive a
much lower priority - and thus slower speeds - during office hours and peak times. In most cases download speeds will
start increasing from about 18h00 in the evening till about 08h00 in the morning. This is only a rough guide however,
as network traffic and usage can vary greatly.

This is the reason that your line is testing slower.

I run this account for a small home office, we don't run P2P protocols only browsing, email and occasionally skype during the day, and I occasionally download from Steam in the evenings or weekends

This morning I could hardly stream an news clip on EWN it was so bloody slow and constant buffering

 

[Hellbilly Deluxe]

I feel for you ol' mean bastid , they say they have changed slightly , i say they changed a hell of a lot.
Torrents are terrible , youtube is a mess ( i have to run 240 on a 1 meg line , Realllly ???? ) browsing is ok and i cant complain about latency in my games , but i think the MTN move was a terrible idea

Got a Openweb account yesterday ( the standard account thats on special ) im saving quite a bit and my torrents etc is running much better

Sorry Afihost i will be downgrading my account today to a 1 gig package as a backup only

 

[AfriMan]

Hi Guys!

Sorry if I haven't replied to a few posts from yesterday. I'll be going through the posts and replying through the course of the day. Just please always remember you can PM me or email [email protected] if you've got an urgent issue.

I hope you guys have also check out our awesome Valentine's special today. R14 for either 14GB TopUp or 1Mbps Uncapped. Pretty neat.

http://www.afrihost.com/site/page/valentines_promotion_2013?src=socmed

 

[AfriMan]

I am also starting to lose faith with Afrihost. There must be some underlying issue with the shaping rules (ie not enough capacity etc). I am now being told to provide traceroutes. I dont see how this can help when the line apparently checks out fine, and yet it is incredibly slow. 10 meg on a business line, is actually around 4 meg (international). At random times it goes lower than that. I find it hard to imagine that this is due to some line issue, but more likely a capacity issue. Why else would it fluctuate so much. Local traffic seems to always be fast at around 7-8meg but I dont have a large interest in local traffic. Moreover why would local be fine, but international be so affected unless there is not enough capacity to go international? Sometimes I am getting 2meg international, but 6 or 7 meg local. Its quite a large difference.

We've been very open about the fact that since changing networks we've been battling to satisfy the demand for bandwidth. Even though we had provisioned a significantly increased amount of capacity on the new network than we have ever used on the old one, we found that usage patterns had changed, or the shaping and throttling applied was more severe on our previous network than we were aware of. Either way, we immediately placed the order for more IPC, which should be live before the end of the month. Along with local capacity, we are also provisioning more international capacity, which hopefully addresses your query. We assure you that everything that can be done will be done. In the meantime, we need to prioritise the services that are critical for our clients, and then give back as much as we can to downloads.

 

[OMB]

We've been very open about the fact that since changing networks we've been battling to satisfy the demand for bandwidth. Even though we had provisioned a significantly increased amount of capacity on the new network than we have ever used on the old one, we found that usage patterns had changed, or the shaping and throttling applied was more severe on our previous network than we were aware of. Either way, we immediately placed the order for more IPC, which should be live before the end of the month. Along with local capacity, we are also provisioning more international capacity, which hopefully addresses your query. We assure you that everything that can be done will be done. In the meantime, we need to prioritise the services that are critical for our clients, and then give back as much as we can to downloads.

So please tell your support desk to stop sending bullsjit emails if they don't understand the clients usage patterns such as I have highlighted in my earlier post. Downloads are not a priority for me or my business. Emails and browsing ability for research purposes are. Sending generic emails about AH's circumstances don't help a friggen thing when I know that my experience has degraded within this week!

 

[AfriMan]

This is getting ridiculous , i understand the shaping on p2p during office hours ( btw since when is Saterday and Sunday 08:00 to 20:00 office hours ) but its fine , leave pc on at night and from midnight to 8 it can download fine . Well Screw That because of late during the early morning hours now my account just disconnects ! Tested with my one of my old Sainet accounts and lo and behold it does not disconnect randomly at night or day even when on idle .

The only solution is shutting down the modem and restarting it , as the synch light is showing all is well , but i get the yellow triangle of death by network connections ,which is not a Telkom fault but a service provider fault .

Its a brand new modem , and all settings are to standard .

Afrihost really ? Your service and quality has always been above way above par , and you have a hell of a marketing team ( except for the top down loaders fiasco ) but since you guys moved to the MTN network ( which i loath more than telkom if that can be believed ) everything has gone pear shaped

FIX THIS !

Sorry to hear that you are having so much pain with your ADSL connection. It does sound like there is something odd going on, very weird. If it was a network issue, one would expect multiple (in this case thousands of) clients would experience a network drop at the same time. We'll have to do some investigating and troubleshooting to see what could be causing this, like checking the error messages we receive when your line disconnects.

Please drop me a PM and I'll get our guys on this urgently

 

[AfriMan]

So please tell your support desk to stop sending bullsjit emails if they don't understand the clients usage patterns such as I have highlighted in my earlier post. Downloads are not a priority for me or my business. Emails and browsing ability for research purposes are. Sending generic emails about AH's circumstances don't help a friggen thing when I know that my experience has degraded within this week!

We are retraining our support staff to better understand the new network shaping and what information should be highlighted to best inform clients. We also expect that once our new IPC goes live, this will bring down the demand for support, and we can focus more intensely on internal training and mentoring with our guys - to be better than ever. We do recognise that we need to continually empower our people.

 

[AfriMan]

I switched from capped to uncapped at the end of Jan (4Mb line) my capped account was great and I've stuck with AH through some of the switch over problems. The last few days I find my speeds have been erratic dropping below 1Mbps at times on speedtest.net

yesterday I logged a support request to investigate at 08:20 yesterday morning, I got a response at 16:56! I then had to run speedtests, pingtests and traceroute and submit screen shots. When I switched over to the Telkom guest account the speedtest flew.

This morning I get this response



I run this account for a small home office, we don't run P2P protocols only browsing, email and occasionally skype during the day, and I occasionally download from Steam in the evenings or weekends

This morning I could hardly stream an news clip on EWN it was so bloody slow and constant buffering

It definitely sounds like the agent did not thoroughly understand your query and delivered a very generic reply rather than understanding your needs. We'll need to look further into this, as there is clearly an issue if another ISP account performs differently. Will you drop me a PM?

 

[AfriMan]

EDIT: Never mind. Just received call that telkom tekkie is on his way to check. Who would have thought that it helps to fight with telkom..... :wtf:

Sorry for posting this on here but I have no other recourse.

On the 4th of Feb I logged a fault AH20130204-44515 with afrihost because of the modem dropping connection. We later (2 days) found out that the voice line also goes down and started to notice that it is after the wind has blown a bit. Sometimes after a big gust the line comes back but then it gusts again and everything is down.
We logged the fault with telkom as well. (BIG MISTAKE) after 3 escalations the status from Telkom side is that the line is fine (even though no technician was on the premises). Does not matter how many times I explain to them that the voice line goes down intermittendly when the wind is blowing. As I write this now the line is dead, obviously same with the ADSL side. I escalated again 20 minutes ago, but I am not holding thumbs.

Afriman. Can someone please look at my ticket again and take telkom by the hand and explain to them how to go about fixing it,I am not very fluent in idiot language. I am at my wits end.

Glad this is progressing with Telkom. Did the tech resolve the issue?

 

[AfriMan]

I feel for you ol' mean bastid , they say they have changed slightly , i say they changed a hell of a lot.
Torrents are terrible , youtube is a mess ( i have to run 240 on a 1 meg line , Realllly ???? ) browsing is ok and i cant complain about latency in my games , but i think the MTN move was a terrible idea

Got a Openweb account yesterday ( the standard account thats on special ) im saving quite a bit and my torrents etc is running much better

Sorry Afihost i will be downgrading my account today to a 1 gig package as a backup only

We are continuing to review and revise our service as we grow into our new network. There are many challenges that we are admittedly noobs at, but we feel there is no training like experience - we'll get there. We have good, dedicated people who are working around the clock to ensure that our service reaches the very highest possible standards.

Having the new IPCs go live will be a massive boost to our arsenal, and we think we'll be offering a lot more awesome when this happens. Glad that you are still keeping your account, and hopefully you'll go back to where you were when your experience changes at the end of the month.

 

[al4bb]

Going good this end - lag still needs improving and hoping this will be sorted with the new ipc in a couple of weeks. Downloading steam updates (5GB) at an average download of 900KB/S

 

[ClintonExsteen]

20min dcs again??

 

[blunt]

We are continuing to review and revise our service as we grow into our new network. There are many challenges that we are admittedly noobs at, but we feel there is no training like experience - we'll get there. We have good, dedicated people who are working around the clock to ensure that our service reaches the very highest possible standards.

Having the new IPCs go live will be a massive boost to our arsenal, and we think we'll be offering a lot more awesome when this happens. Glad that you are still keeping your account, and hopefully you'll go back to where you were when your experience changes at the end of the month.

CPT IPC still on track for 25 Feb?

 

[AfriMan]

CPT IPC still on track for 25 Feb?

So far it looks like everything is on track, but we'll get more updates as we get closer to the deadline

 

[OMB]

It definitely sounds like the agent did not thoroughly understand your query and delivered a very generic reply rather than understanding your needs. We'll need to look further into this, as there is clearly an issue if another ISP account performs differently. Will you drop me a PM?

I think that what may help is if just one person dealt with a particular query. I have found quite often that when logging a support ticket, I'll get a response from person x, when I reply to that I can get a response from person y, and sometimes after responding to that I get a reply from person z. In response to my query yesterday I had 2 different support people involved in the process.

Anyway, I've been out of the office all day today and have only been back for the since just after 15:00, so far everything looks like it's back to normal. Should this change I will send you a PM.

 

[AfriMan]

I think that what may help is if just one person dealt with a particular query. I have found quite often that when logging a support ticket, I'll get a response from person x, when I reply to that I can get a response from person y, and sometimes after responding to that I get a reply from person z. In response to my query yesterday I had 2 different support people involved in the process.

Anyway, I've been out of the office all day today and have only been back for the since just after 15:00, so far everything looks like it's back to normal. Should this change I will send you a PM.

The idea behind this is that instead of you waiting for a particular agent to come back on shift (either overnight, or a weekend or even leave) any agent should be able to deal with your query. The ticket itself should contain the full history of the steps covered, and the agents are trained to make detailed notes within the system of any information not captured with this email correspondence.

Glad things are looking better now, but drop me a PM if anything looks wonky

 

[jdavel]

I'm another unhappy client. Since the move to MTN networks the shaping policy is appalling. The generic answers from the support desk is frustrating the living daylights out of me. Gian the CEO does not take a minute to respond to an e-mail sent to him. The suggestions fall on deaf ears. I am even willing to pay little bit more for unshaped adsl. Why not give us full speed to 150GB or whatever the case and then start shaping. Now, after hours I battle to download anything I want to watch...
What is Afrihost going to do to retain their clients?
I'm seriously considering moving to another ISP.

 

[Slashfunc]

I'm another unhappy client. Since the move to MTN networks the shaping policy is appalling. The generic answers from the support desk is frustrating the living daylights out of me. Gian the CEO does not take a minute to respond to an e-mail sent to him. The suggestions fall on deaf ears. I am even willing to pay little bit more for unshaped adsl. Why not give us full speed to 150GB or whatever the case and then start shaping. Now, after hours I battle to download anything I want to watch...
What is Afrihost going to do to retain their clients?
I'm seriously considering moving to another ISP.

Sad thing this... having the same problem with Mweb and wanted to move over to Afrihost. Guess that won't be happening now.