Best ISP for capped 4Mb/s Bandwidth?

Thanks, I'm getting an earth-shattering 23.5 kB/s after about five minutes.. I can't stop the download on the other machine, but we're on a wireless connection to a 300Mb/s capable modem/router.

So the finger points squarely at Telkom..

Watch this space. Thanks to TRL Tech and Web Africa for making bandwidth available for testing. When my line issues have been sorted and I can see what (if any) difference in real-world speed I find, I'll summarise my results.

@Mick - Now I'm getting 250kB/s sustained.
 
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On Friday I was called and told that they were transferring the issue to the network guys, who would put me on a different port at the exchange. Holding thumbs!
 
Them calling you is a sign that escalation has worked and the pros are now involved.

Hope it's not congestion and they can resolve your problem.
 
MickZA said:
Them calling you is a sign that escalation has worked and the pros are now involved.

Hope it's not congestion and they can resolve your problem.
Click to expand...

Good to know! More news - another call from Telkom today - they will transfer me to another DSLAM by the end of tomorrow morning. The DSL and Internet lights on my modem have gone out, so I hope that means they are busy on this right now.

Looking at the 8ta 10Gigs promotion as an alternative, but with luck I won't need it.
 
My DSL light went off on the modem yesterday afternoon, so I thought something was happening. Today I was called by someone else asking about the issue I logged. He said he was going to have a look at the port change work, and shortly afterwards the DSL and Internet lights came back on.

I've checked quickly and the speedtest.net results have gone right up to around 3Mb/s, although downloading from overseas is around 150kB/s. Touch wood the international speeds will go up even further when Seacom is sorted out. The strange thing is that upload speeds on speedtest.net have dropped from 0.5Mbps to 0.2Mbps.

Will check speeds again tonight.


Edit: Went to ftp.is.co.za just now and a download runs at around 300kB/s - sweet!
 
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Looks like it's something to do with the Seacom hassles, just tested with speedtest.net and the MyBB version with similar results. Download speed is normal but upload is about 60% of normal.

It seems they might have finally fixed your problem :)
 
Local download speeds are 200kB/s in the day, to 350kB/s in late afternoon. Speedtest.net results have improved a lot too, although they are more erratic. Looking forward to Seacom being fixed and then international downloads should fly too :)

So thanks to Telkom support for a good job!
 
Another call from Telkom earlier this afternoon and I mentioned my upload sync speed is now 256kB/s. Looked at the router stats just now and my upload sync speed is now 512kB/s, but pings have increased dramatically and local downloads are back down to the 40kB/s mark.

I'll settle for 256kB/s upload to get my faster down speeds back.
 
Results are up and down today, but generally better than before the port was changed. I talked to the last technician who called me, but he couldn't say what had been done to improve the upstream sync speed and degrade downloads. Apparently the people who make changes on the exchange are in a completely different section, and don't talk much to the technicians.

Moral of the story: don't mess with what ain't (badly) broken!
 
OK, summary of results promised for different ISPs is inconclusive. Testing is affected by time of day rather than ISP. All are much better before 8am and after 5pm, downloads between 2.5 and 3.5Mb/s. Daytime download speeds vary between .4Mb/s to 2.5Mb/s. The averages and variances look pretty much the same before and after the port reset, but I've done more sampling during work time after the reset. Will do a more detailed analysis after Seacom comes back up.
 
Anyone who has problems with Telkom ADSL, use the escalation process on the web site and be persistent. My line quality has improved since I complained so that I now get 2.5-3.5MB/s during the day instead of the < .5MB/s that I had before. Speedtest.net results are still erratic, but my downloads run much faster. I can live with the hiccups that still come along.

As for congested exchanges, how about mybroadband setting up a wiki so we can name them and log progress (or the lack of it)? We already have a thread with plenty of content..
 
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