Alternatives to OpenWeb Gold?

[portcullis]

It hurts me to start this thread.

I've had four clients running on OpenWeb's Gold accounts for some time now. In the beginning they were MWEB accounts and everything just worked. Then come 1 September 2010, that all changed and Vodacom and BCS / DigiChilli joined the party.

Six weeks down the line and I'm getting phone calls from my clients' lawyers...

If one line's up, another one's down. I feel like a ringmaster in a circus with four misbehaving horses running around me. When I'm watching the one in front of me, the one behind me is bucking, rearing or snorting. As soon as I turn around and crack the whip at it, it behaves, but the next one starts misbehaving.

My accountant has just brought to my attention that as of 10:00am today I have spent 84 hours messing around with these semi working Gold ADSL connections, that's more than two 9-5 work weeks. 84 hours that she can't bill to anyone. At R300 an hour, that's a considerable amount of money down the tubes.

These are my clients' requirements.

1. An ISP that has it's own infrastructure.
2. Uncapped, relatively unshaped 4Mb ADSL circuits that can do both VoIP and STEAM and have decent latency to the SAIX games servers
3. Set it and forget it reliability

Who can offer me this?

One last thing, the odd static public IP address would be nice.

None of these guys can afford the MWEB solution that's supplied with it's own Cisco router. They also all want something better than what MWEB's home offering can provide them.

 

[KillerB]

goodluck been with them all...

 

[Chevron]

Just switch to a different GOLD backbone. I'm sure koema can recommend a stable one.

 

[HavocXphere]

Right now theres nothing out there that meets those requirements. You'll have to either pay more or lower the expectations.

 

[MrBEEP]

Hello partcullis

Please email me the 4 x usernames and I will take a look for you.

Kind regards
MrBEEP

It hurts me to start this thread.

I've had four clients running on OpenWeb's Gold accounts for some time now. In the beginning they were MWEB accounts and everything just worked. Then come 1 September 2010, that all changed and Vodacom and BCS / DigiChilli joined the party.

Six weeks down the line and I'm getting phone calls from my clients' lawyers...

If one line's up, another one's down. I feel like a ringmaster in a circus with four misbehaving horses running around me. When I'm watching the one in front of me, the one behind me is bucking, rearing or snorting. As soon as I turn around and crack the whip at it, it behaves, but the next one starts misbehaving.

My accountant has just brought to my attention that as of 10:00am today I have spent 84 hours messing around with these semi working Gold ADSL connections, that's more than two 9-5 work weeks. 84 hours that she can't bill to anyone. At R300 an hour, that's a considerable amount of money down the tubes.

These are my clients' requirements.

1. An ISP that has it's own infrastructure.
2. Uncapped, relatively unshaped 4Mb ADSL circuits that can do both VoIP and STEAM and have decent latency to the SAIX games servers
3. Set it and forget it reliability

Who can offer me this?

One last thing, the odd static public IP address would be nice.

None of these guys can afford the MWEB solution that's supplied with it's own Cisco router. They also all want something better than what MWEB's home offering can provide them.

 

[portcullis]

MrBEEP,

We've been emailing each other since very early this morning

I've now got my bosses on my case.

 

[portcullis]

Let me bring this into perspective.

On one ADSL circuit this morning, I have used a Vodacom user name and password, a BCS Group user name and password now an IS user name and password.

The client has a router that's in bridge mode with PPP sessions being established via a MikroTik router. The MikroTik router is connected to our wireless backbone as some of the client's staff work from home and access servers and the internet wirelessly.

I have tested the line with the good old guest@telkomadsl account and know that it's working properly.

However this is the kind of connection that I get when I disable the office LAN and end up being the only person on the network.

http://www.speedtest.net/result/985909816.png

MrBEEP and I are the two pigs in the middle here. The client moans at me. I moan at MrBEEP and he then moans at IS, Vodacom and BCS Group, comes back with a solution and I then apply the solution.

Unfortunately we've reached the point where it's no longer the clients moaning at me, it's their lawyers sending nasty emails to my bosses, who now also moan at me.

So Qwikslver, please understand that investigating other options really is a last resort. I like OpenWeb and I think that for 99% of cases, the services that they find for people will work perfectly.

HavocXphere, what "pay more" options are out there? None of these guys have 10Mb lines at this point in the game. Their 4Mb lines rarely go over 3Mb, with constant 1 - 1.5Mb of traffic, but when they need the net, they need the net. They don't want to first have to faf and fiddle for two hours on a Monday morning to get to their hosted email service to download emails. When something goes wrong on the VB or IS network, or BCS shapes their traffic so bad that their voip or exchange servers can't connect properly, then it's not the networks that get it in the neck, it's me. It's 11:40am and I have yet to get on with the business of the day as I've been going 'round the houses since 7:30am with the same old problems.