Afrihost Uncapped Subscribers Feedback

[pevans]

The 384k has major shaping for torrents... im downloading at around 6 - 10 KB/s using a 384k account.... I dont think there will be any throttling on this account...

I have a note from Gian saying that 384k & 512k will face a similar throttling system to 4096k. They are busy gathering the usage data. I expect it'll be announced soon. The throttling probably won't be as aggressive since the lines are slow anyway

 

[Wasp_21]

I have a note from Gian saying that 384k & 512k will face a similar throttling system to 4096k. They are busy gathering the usage data. I expect it'll be announced soon. The throttling probably won't be as aggressive since the lines are slow anyway

Hope they release the limits soon.

Edit: Oh, and also be nice to us that have been loyal and not jumped ship.

 

[Gargmel]

I'm still under 30 gig, at 20 now and I've been throttled to less than 1mb/s speed already since 14 gig. I cannot even download a 1 gig torrent file over night. Very unhappy with this account, Digichilli was better. At least I knew they had problems and weren't giving me bad speeds on purpose...

 

[Vonnii]

Just to share with anyone thinking of moving from Afrihost. My speed last night with Afrihost was stuck at:

Having moved to Mweb this morning my speed is now:

Now to see how long it takes Afrihost to refund my subscription.

 

[diabolus]

Just to share with anyone thinking of moving from Afrihost. My speed last night with Afrihost was stuck at:

Having moved to Mweb this morning my speed is now:

Now to see how long it takes Afrihost to refund my subscription.

You will have to disclose what your Afrihost usage was, since here is mine which i did right now [12pm]



I'm on 9GB usage for the month.

 

[Vonnii]

I was just over 40GB.

 

[AnimateX]

All this throttling does not make sense. In fact this whole monthly gradual stepped-down throttling mechanism they have in place looks fairly foreign to other uncapped solutions abroad and nationally.

There has to be something different that prevents a previously well-respected company from adopting the same uncapped models that have been used for many years with fair success. Why would they adopt this crooked model and lose a lot of clients in the process? Why sit with an under-utilised line at the end of the month?

To make some semblance of sense out of all their actions I keep coming down to the same question, do they really have their own line or are they really paying per Gig?

I'm not trying to fan the flames here, rather I would like to hear what people think about how and why this happened.

 

[diabolus]

All this throttling does not make sense. In fact this whole monthly gradual stepped-down throttling mechanism they have in place looks fairly foreign to other uncapped solutions abroad and nationally.

There has to be something different that prevents a previously well-respected company from adopting the same uncapped models that have been used for many years with fair success. Why would they adopt this crooked model and lose a lot of clients in the process? Why sit with an under-utilised line at the end of the month?

To make some semblance of sense out of all their actions I keep coming down to the same question, do they really have their own line or are they really paying per Gig?

I'm not trying to fan the flames here, rather I would like to hear what people think about how and why this happened.

I'd wager they are paying per GB [from IS] and not in fact for a fixed "piece" of the pipe. Based on that, this would make sense.

Now there are however like 4+ other ISPs also reselling IS bandwidth [MyIsp,Axxess,Imagine etc] also with uncapped packages without this system in place. My guess with those ISPs are they don't have enough "hardcore" users signed up with them or have alot of surplus GBs that was going to waste anyway OR they are simply shaping without telling you OR they're just not aware what's happening and will only know when IS sends them a the bill.....

...i'd say a smaller ISP like MyISP will probably also do it for the marketing and worry about the consequences later.

ALSO, if Afrihost were paying for a "fixed piece of the pipe", one would think they would not throttle per GB usage, but rather per PERIOD [to encourage users to spread out their usage and not utilize the line 24-7 ). Almost something like Axxess' rolling cap thing they had [i.e. you get throttled/capped if you use more than x GBs in 10 days, after which the throttle/cap is reset, if you used less than the cap, you get some form of "rollover" for the next 10 days etc etc]

 

[AnimateX]

I'd wager they are paying per GB [from IS] and not in fact for a fixed "piece" of the pipe. Based on that, this would make sense.

Now there are however like 4+ other ISPs also reselling IS bandwidth [MyIsp,Axxess,Imagine etc] also with uncapped packages without this system in place. My guess with those ISPs are they don't have enough "hardcore" users signed up with them or have alot of surplus GBs that was going to waste anyway OR they are simply shaping without telling you OR they're just not aware what's happening and will only know when IS sends them a the bill.....

Do some of these ISPs not simply resell the IS uncapped accounts? I remember a while back Gian actually offered to resell the IS accounts to those who were not happy. That would have put them at a disadvantage though because they would not be able to undercut the other ISPs. I am guessing their initial plan was to undercut MWeb to try to keep their clients but that backfired because Afrihost already had a lot of "hardcore" users as you say. It seems they were way too optimistic about usages and somehow did not factor in the extra load of sign-ups they would get from under-cutting them.

...i'd say a smaller ISP like MyISP will probably also do it for the marketing and worry about the consequences later.

ALSO, if Afrihost were paying for a "fixed piece of the pipe", one would think they would not throttle per GB usage, but rather per PERIOD [to encourage users to spread out their usage and not utilize the line 24-7 ). Almost something like Axxess' rolling cap thing they had [i.e. you get throttled/capped if you use more than x GBs in 10 days, after which the throttle/cap is reset, if you used less than the cap, you get some form of "rollover" for the next 10 days etc etc]

Exactly, that seems to be the norm for international ISPs as well. They will rate-limit for a period or for as long as you keep downloading continuously. There are some exceptions though but even MWeb has gone about shaping through a larger window of the day but do not have thresholds or limits in place (at the moment). It seems that Afrihost is trying to mitigate some of the financial loss if they are in fact paying per-gig.

I also remained on the same IP and network from last month till the third of this month, even though I had upgraded to uncapped on the first. This reinforced my suspicions that all the accounts are running off the same old system.

I sure hope Afrihost has a contingency plan though, they are being awfully quiet.

 

[fewl]

I'm on 384k. I am not naturally a 24/7 downloader. I would usually only download in the evenings and even then, not every night. The stupid thing about Afrihost's throttling is that they've turned me into a 24/7 downloader because I just can't get anything finished. It's freaking annoying. I'm really hoping there's some sort of network problem and that things are going to get better because I'm not going to be around next month otherwise. As it stands this is a pure browsing package and there's no reason to spend 190ish on that.

 

[Wasp_21]

I'm on 384k. I am not naturally a 24/7 downloader. I would usually only download in the evenings and even then, not every night. The stupid thing about Afrihost's throttling is that they've turned me into a 24/7 downloader because I just can't get anything finished. It's freaking annoying. I'm really hoping there's some sort of network problem and that things are going to get better because I'm not going to be around next month otherwise. As it stands this is a pure browsing package and there's no reason to spend 190ish on that.

I'm looking at buying a laptop now to download 24/7. I was getting top speeds on my 384, but today looks terrible. Keep getting connection errors. Downloads still go, but very slow. Can't browse or anything else. Getting nervous now!

 

[fewl]

I'm getting 7k now total. Can barely browse. They can't be serious can they? :wtf:

 

[warchylde]

I'm getting 7k now total. Can barely browse. They can't be serious can they? :wtf:

That's where I was end of March. I got between 3KB/s and 7KB/s and yup that's dial up speed - welcome to the world of the dark ages.

 

[smartpant]

15gb for R197 isnt really a bad deal considering what WA is charging but I just wish they would call it a 15gb account and stop lying to us. Then you would know u have 15gb and you can ration it over the month. These ISPs are such scumbags u just cant trust them

 

[RedhotNeo]

The service is terrible now. Im on the 384k connection and im getting 8KB/s.... why on earth are they throttling the 384K connection???... the maximum we can download would be around 95GB's a month. If this continues, i will be changing ISP's.

 

[DVD007]

Guys,

I've been following the whole not really uncapped discussions on MyBB. I have personally tested 2 accounts (MWEB and Afrihost) and so far I'm happy with both. I would classify my usage as medium to high. I use NZB's, You tube, PSN and normal browsing. When I started using adsl I did about 600GB per month. This has now normalised to about 200GB per month. Now as you know if I just use Afrihost my speeds will drop after 30GB.

Well have you guys read to complaints from the other IS resellers? Those people are experiencing reduced speeds from the getgo. Yes, so far MWEB seems to be the ISP with the least amount of complaints, but I think everybody is going crazy since uncapped was introduced. With time it will improve, so just be patient. A month ago everybody was happy with 10-15GB of usage and got things done with that.

Just give the guys a chance!
Things will improve.

Just to show you that people are going crazy, look at the stats, specifically for March.

http://stats.jinx.net.za/showtotal.php

 

[Iwojima]

Sent Afrihost a short email asking them to explain why my torrents are not throttled, but actually killed during office hours (sitting @ 20gb usage atm) and got some half arsed response which basically repeated what I had said (i.e. that i understand the need for it, but question it's implementation). I wasn't happy with that so I told them I'd be moving to MWEB and got a very polite response, from another Afrihost employee, on how to cancel my account. Clearly they don't give a **** about customer satisfaction, even though the reason I went with them in the first place was out of loyalty for their earlier efforts.

It seems that the Afrihost reps on this forum are now very quiet for some reason. Not even the slightest attempt at damage control. MWEB here I come....

 

[Adrenalin]

Yeah you see if this carries on i will also be moving. Throwing away R200 for a 'test' doesn't 'really' bother me, i was just a bit to excited and burn't my fingers... you live, you learn. Just wish we could become more like the UK, 20 pounds, 2mb uncapped line

having the same throttling issues but it is consistent at around 25kb for torrents...

 

[mvyess]

Is it too much to ask for an ISP that is honest with it's clients from the start?
After the Screecher and DigiChilli disasters, can't they learn.
I would not be peeved if I was told at the beginning that my 384 line would become a 128 after 15gigs of traffic.
In Afrihosts case there wasn't even any fineprint in the advertised "uncapped" which Afrihost could fall back to and at least cover their backs by referring to some miniscule text burried within 50 pages of legal disclaimers.
Just no heads up at all, which would at least allow users to manage thier monthly usage.
Even the bandwidth meter on their client zone shows nothing, thus indicating that there is no cap at all or speed change points. Only when you go into your graph stats can you see how much you have actually used for the month.
If they just said from the start that a client would ge about 15gigs at full speed for R197, after which the account would become only really usefull for web browsing. That would be understandable, not a bad deal anyway, and clients could manage their usage. The type of person who goes for an uncapped account knows why he/she is purchasing it and is planning on using it, not check mail once a day.
They must have known that clients would feel cheated.
Anyway. Another heads up for those planning to move to Mweb midmonth is that if you read the fineprint (Yes they have some too), if you startup with them before the 15th you pay for the full month. After the 15th you pay 1/2 month fee.
This speed reminds me of the old dialup days....Just missing the modem noises.

 

[fewl]

If they just said from the start that a client would ge about 15gigs at full speed for R197, after which the account would become only really usefull for web browsing. That would be understandable, not a bad deal anyway, and clients could manage their usage.

Exactly. If I knew it was a 15 gig account I wouldn't have used it all in 8 days. I thought it was uncapped so that's how I treated it so now, R190ish later, my line is basically dead Obviously honesty is too much to ask for.