Afrihost vs OpenWeb

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I like P2P, and mine flies. Business accounts are allowed VPN's too. I've seen enough feedback in the Afrihost thread to believe that the difference between the business and regular uncapped accounts is more than just P2P performance.

Well I can say I've never had my web browsing traffic shaped, or at least it's never felt like it.

Guys the HD problem with Netflix is not ISP related, its more app/device related. My Xbox Netflix app struggles to stream HD no matter which ISP I use (on a 10mb line). Hulu always streams 720p just fine for me.

I found the answer: don't use the Xbox (or PC) to stream Netflix if you want HD. Get yourself a WD Live TV Streaming Media Player for R1,000. You won't believe the difference in quality you'll get. For some reason, it outperforms the Xbox app, the PS3 app, Chrome, Apple TV.. pretty much every other device you will try.

I struggled with ISPs, WiFi settings, DNS / proxy settings etc for months until I stumbled across this solution for HD Netflix.

(Tested with 10mb Openweb Gamer King account, Mweb 10mb premium uncapped account & Afrihost unshaped prepaid account - using UnoDNS)

I'm looking at getting myself a roku. It just seems stupid that the site isn't using my whole line.

 

[balky]

I am currently considering Afrihost, due to extremely slow speeds on the network. As such Youtube does not even load properly on a 4MB uncapped account!

I have a 2 Mb capped account and I find youtube to be very erratic. Switch from one video to another and the download speed changes drastically.
Perhaps the videos are on different servers. So, is bad download speed the line or the server?

 

[DrJohnZoidberg]

I can vouch for YouTube performance on my OpenWeb Standard account - it is always fast and responsive even if other protocols are shaped.

 

[Robin Hood]

I'm using 50gb capped accounts for streaming TV (afrihost/Mweb).
It's the only way to guarantee full service speed, Mweb uncapped just didn't cut it.

I totally agree...I'm going for a capped account myself....these "throttling-business" is just not my scene...When i need speed, i need speed...

 

[Chevron]

I totally agree...I'm going for a capped account myself....these "throttling-business" is just not my scene...When i need speed, i need speed...

Openweb GOLD doesn't throttle.

 

[Zewp]

Correction, OPENWEB doesn't throttle. They don't have usage thresholds or throttling on any of their uncapped accounts.

The shaping and contention ratio just gets a bit harsher the cheaper you go.

 

[AfriMan]

Openweb GOLD doesn't throttle.

We also don't throttle ANY of our Uncapped DSL products, and we only occassionally shape P2P and downloads ONLY (never realtime services like gaming, streaming or browsing) on our normal Uncapped product (when there is excessive demand for bandwidth). Business DSL is totally unshaped 24/7

 

[akescpt]

We also don't throttle ANY of our Uncapped DSL products, and we only occassionally shape P2P and downloads ONLY (never realtime services like gaming, streaming or browsing) on our normal Uncapped product (when there is excessive demand for bandwidth). Business DSL is totally unshaped 24/7

was reviewing afrihost and axxess after i saw that usage table with the big boys. with the fair usage policies you have how do these guys achieve that? that policy seems very restrictive. wiht my current usage i cant use either one of these isp's

 

[AfriMan]

was reviewing afrihost and axxess after i saw that usage table with the big boys. with the fair usage policies you have how do these guys achieve that? that policy seems very restrictive. wiht my current usage i cant use either one of these isp's

Well, we've only ever seen one guy admit to making it onto the table, so I'm sure they are playing their cards very close to their chest. We can confirm that there were no special policies or allowances made, they were subject to the same shaping and conditions as everyone else. What I imagine is they were probably managing their downloads and using scheduled or cronjobs to make sure they download around the clock.

I would also love to know

 

[Zewp]

From the AH faq.

Why do some people not get shaped as heavily as others?

We analyse usage patterns of the individual user, which in turn groups them into batches of users who are given different levels of priority. Users can be changed from group to group in a short space of time, which is dynamically managed by the system, but users on the extreme end of the spectrum will have differing experiences, i.e. heavy users will consistently get slower downloads during peak times, while light users may not experience this to the same degree.

Your heavy users do get disadvantaged by being given lower priority, whether you wish to call it throttling or not.

OpenWeb does not do anything close to that. Not at any time during the day. Your speeds are not at all affected by how much data you use and the shaping is very lenient throughout the day. Nobody is disadvantaged by bandwidth hogs and nobody is disadvantaged by being bandwidth hogs. In other words, Big Brother is not watching what you're doing all day long.

Openweb is the closest to true uncapped you can get in this country.

 

[AfriMan]

From the AH faq.



Your heavy users do get disadvantaged by being given lower priority, whether you wish to call it throttling or not.

OpenWeb does not do anything close to that. Not at any time during the day. Your speeds are not at all affected by how much data you use and the shaping is very lenient throughout the day. Nobody is disadvantaged by bandwidth hogs and nobody is disadvantaged by being bandwidth hogs. In other words, Big Brother is not watching what you're doing all day long.

Openweb is the closest to true uncapped you can get in this country.

We disagree. We believe that the internet is something that everyone needs, and it's a resource that we all draw on. We don't want to throttle people during the day, so we can unthrottle at night - we'd rather give everyone every available piece of our capacity 24/7. Most Uncapped packages promise unthrottling at hours like midnight to 8am, and we're pretty much always unshaped then anyway in all regions. However, when there is available capacity, many clients are unshaped during the day and night, regardless of the time or how little they have used. We think this is more like the direction uncapped should go in. At present the biggest barrier to getting closer to completely unshaped uncapped for everyone are Telkom's IPC costs. If those were to drop significantly, not ISPs would get away with throttling, which is why we've gotten rid of it entirely.

Shaping and throttling are very different things. With us, you always have your full line speed potential on your real time services, no matter how your P2P is shaped. That means you can still watch Full HD youtube videos or game with minimal latency. Throttling take your 4Mbps line and makes it a 512kbps or 1Mbps line - on all services. That is definitely not in line with how Uncapped works in other countries and not a direction we are keen to move in.

 

[akescpt]

i just get nervous when i hear isp's are 'managing' individual users. guess im just spoilt by my isp

 

[Zewp]

I'm not quite sure what you disagree with? You think that what you're doing is not throttling simply because you don't reduce speeds across the board?

In my eyes, throttling is any case where your usage affects your speeds, and by placing high-bandwidth users into stricter shaping pools you are throttling them to an extent. It doesn't matter if it only affects downloads or if it only happens during short peak times when the network is busy, their speeds are influenced by how much they've used. Big brother is watching how much bandwidth you use.

Regardless, I'm not really interested in arguing semantics. I'm just saying that Openweb takes what you do, and simply does it much better. Their network never degrades because they have more than enough capacity to support their users and they don't place you into certain shaping pools based on your usage. In fact, I am currently downloading a torrent at 90kb/s (1mb line), which is amazing for the middle of a business day on a shaped account. You can ask me again tomorrow, and the speed will probably be just as good. Their shaping is incredibly lenient.

 

[Zewp]

To put it another way, if Openweb were to shut its doors tomorrow, I would go into a flat spin, because not a single other ISP in this country would be able to give me the same level of service or the same value for money as I receive from Openweb. Not AH, not WA, not Mweb, not Axxess, not anybody.

 

[AfriMan]

I'm not quite sure what you disagree with? You think that what you're doing is not throttling simply because you don't reduce speeds across the board?

In my eyes, throttling is any case where your usage affects your speeds, and by placing high-bandwidth users into stricter shaping pools you are throttling them to an extent. It doesn't matter if it only affects downloads or if it only happens during short peak times when the network is busy, their speeds are influenced by how much they've used. Big brother is watching how much bandwidth you use.

Regardless, I'm not really interested in arguing semantics. I'm just saying that Openweb takes what you do, and simply does it much better. Their network never degrades because they have more than enough capacity to support their users and they don't place you into certain shaping pools based on your usage. In fact, I am currently downloading a torrent at 90kb/s (1mb line), which is amazing for the middle of a business day on a shaped account. You can ask me again tomorrow, and the speed will probably be just as good. Their shaping is incredibly lenient.

I agree that every ISP adds their own flavour to how they do things, and we wouldn't all be in business if one ISPs style didn't appeal to different clients within the market. But it's also not fair to use words like throttling lightly based on your own definition, rather than the generally accepted usage within the industry. It makes it hard to compare apples with apples. Within the broadband industry, throttling is a complete rate limit on all throughput - on all protocols. Shaping is managing traffic by signature and priority. This is not a small difference, it's actually like chalk and cheese.

We also don't manage accounts according to usage, that is something we did over a year ago when we were with IS, and since our change to MTN, we shape as little as possible at all times, if at all, and try to affect the smallest number of users. We haven't employed thresholds for nearly a year now.

Like you said, semantics are a waste of time, but as long as we are all talking the same language, we can make proper comparisons

 

[Syphonx]

From the AH faq.



Your heavy users do get disadvantaged by being given lower priority, whether you wish to call it throttling or not.

OpenWeb does not do anything close to that. Not at any time during the day. Your speeds are not at all affected by how much data you use and the shaping is very lenient throughout the day. Nobody is disadvantaged by bandwidth hogs and nobody is disadvantaged by being bandwidth hogs. In other words, Big Brother is not watching what you're doing all day long.

Openweb is the closest to true uncapped you can get in this country.

Daytime speeds on openweb are definitely affected by how much you download, afterhours not so much but if I pushed my usage the browsing during business hours was awful, basically unusable....on a gold account as well.

 

[Orihalcon]

@Zewp...

I'm dl'ing a torrent now at 190Kb/s on a 2mb line...middle of the day and I'm with Afrihost.

What's the point you are trying to make?

And there are quite a few OW users that have complained about poor day time speeds on these forums. OW shapes people just like any other ISP when the NEED to do so arises.

 

[hammell]

I'm with Openweb but keep having issues: aggressive shaping even on weekends, youtube playing only at 360p with no buffering, rather slow browsing, slow VPN access etc. That said, last time I was with Afrihost I was throttled when I hit about 30Gb - my speed was halved, then halved again etc. until I was on an almost dial up speed. Is this still the case? I change ISPs about every 6 months so maybe it's time to change again...

 

[Zewp]

Daytime speeds on openweb are definitely affected by how much you download, afterhours not so much but if I pushed my usage the browsing during business hours was awful, basically unusable....on a gold account as well.

Your usage definitely does not affect your experience. MrBeep has confirmed this multiple times and I can attest from experience. If you were having issues during daytime I'd say it was more likely to be a line fault or congested exchange. Here's my usage for the past few months.

That's across two concurrent connections as too. I would definitely be considered a heavy user on a 1mb account. My download speeds are always great, my browsing is never anything but perfect and my overall experience is wonderful.

I would be very hard-pressed to find another ISP that can offer me this experience with this kind of usage. Not in the borders of this country, at least.

 

[MrBEEP]

Sounds like you are experiencing a fault not related to the account.

This past weekend the network was completely unshaped from Friday at 19:00 until Monday at 08am.

Kindly email support@openweb.co.za so that we can investigate

I'm with Openweb but keep having issues: aggressive shaping even on weekends, youtube playing only at 360p with no buffering, rather slow browsing, slow VPN access etc. That said, last time I was with Afrihost I was throttled when I hit about 30Gb - my speed was halved, then halved again etc. until I was on an almost dial up speed. Is this still the case? I change ISPs about every 6 months so maybe it's time to change again...