Can't settle on a good ISP... Help!

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Voxratio

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For the past two months, I've been trying to find a good ISP to suit my needs as a gamer who likes to download a large file every now and then. I used to be on an MWEB 1mb uncapped account, but cancelled that account after they throttled me @ 100gb in a 31 day rolling window.

As of now, I've tried two other ISP's: Openweb and Webafrica. I went with a 2mb GamerKing account from Openweb, and a 4mb Home Uncapped from Webafrica. Both accounts didn't perform as advertised, and thus what I thought suited me in the end did not. EDIT: I think I should rather say, both had very fine print in their advertisements (not literally).

I typed out my reasoning as to why those two ISP's accounts didn't perform, but decided to delete it since it started sounding like a rant... I'll post it if someone wants to read it, but I'm not going to put it in the main post. Anyways, if you like to play games online and download a large file every now and then, I would recommend looking at other ISPs. Which leads me to my question:


I've looked around the internet trying to decide between the last two notable ISPs, Afrihost and Mweb (I'm forgiving them for throttling me). Below is a summary of what I've read/researched from reading forum feedback, so please take it with a grain of salt:

Afrihost Home Uncapped
This accounts gets throttled to the ground during business hours.
*I've read nothing about throttling due to downloading too much.
*I've read nothing about latency issues.

Afrihost Business Uncapped
Lots of people saying full speeds 24/7.
Literally no limits on how much you download.
*I've read nothing about latency issues.


Mweb Premium Home Uncapped
Good speeds 24/7, even during the day.
Rolling window, with an unreasonably small download threshold.
Extreme throttling after the threshold is exceeded.
*I've read nothing about latency issues.

Mweb Business Uncapped
Nothing.

Please let me know if my points far from accurate



So as of now, I can't decide between the Afrihost Business Uncapped or Mweb Premium Home Uncapped. I'm looking at the 2mb (possibly 4mb) speeds for those accounts. I'm leaning towards Afrihost Business Uncapped because I've heard good feedback about them from people I know. However, I've personally always had good service from Mweb, besides the recent throttling shenanigans.

Does someone have suggestions/recommendations?
 
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How much are you looking to download? Maybe just get a capped account if you want an unthrottled experience.
 
I tried Openweb. I had the Gamer King account which was basically a special of their Gold accounts. The 'shaping'/throttling during business hours meant that nothing could be done on the web. Even Google would time out more often than not. The next step would be their Platinum accounts, but the price of that gets a bit steep. Might as well opt for Mweb or Afrihost.


DrJohnZoidberg said:
How much are you looking to download? Maybe just get a capped account if you want an unthrottled experience.
Click to expand...

I used about 100gb on a 1mb account, and IIRC, I was downloading over night a couple of times. So on a 2mb, I would be looking at no more than 200Gb per month. Even 100Gb on a capped account can get quite expensive.
 
Voxratio said:
I tried Openweb. I had the Gamer King account which was basically a special of their Gold accounts. The 'shaping'/throttling during business hours meant that nothing could be done on the web. Even Google would time out more often than not. The next step would be their Platinum accounts, but the price of that gets a bit steep. Might as well opt for Mweb or Afrihost.




I used about 100gb on a 1mb account, and IIRC, I was downloading over night a couple of times. So on a 2mb, I would be looking at no more than 200Gb per month. Even 100Gb on a capped account can get quite expensive.
Click to expand...

100GB from Openweb for R400. http://openweb.co.za/freedom-capped.html

100GB on 1Mbit is pretty high usage for the line speed, I would rather get a 4Meg line then it doesn't matter if you get shaped a bit because your internet still works.
 
100GB does seem like a lot, but its much less than half of what a 1mb line could potentially do (+250gb).


DrJohnZoidberg said:
100GB from Openweb for R400. http://openweb.co.za/freedom-capped.html
Click to expand...

That's a very interesting option, but I'm not a fan of capped internet. It feels very restricting and forces me to question every download I make, just in case I need to download something else in the near future, but could possibly run out of cap.

I'd rather have set speeds (which in essence is already determined by my line rental) and have the freedom to download as much as I need.
 
Voxratio said:
100GB does seem like a lot, but its much less than half of what a 1mb line could potentially do (+250gb).




That's a very interesting option, but I'm not a fan of capped internet. It feels very restricting and forces me to question every download I make, just in case I need to download something else in the near future, but could possibly run out of cap.

I'd rather have set speeds (which in essence is already determined by my line rental) and have the freedom to download as much as I need.
Click to expand...

It sounds like you want an uncapped unshaped connection, you can get these but be prepared to pay for it. We have an Openweb Platinum uncapped account at the office, that thing is a beast.
 
The Afrihost Uncapped package only gets shaped, not throttled, so browsing and streaming aren't affected. You can't go wrong with Afrihost Business though.
 
Yeah, Afrihost Business is unshaped and unthrottled during business hours only. But even after hours, there isn't as much usage to warrant shaping. So essentially the business accounts are unshaped almost 24/7.

Thanks for the help, everyone :)

If anyone still wants to add something, I'll be glad to hear your opinions. I'll probably be getting either Mweb or (more likely) Afrihost in the next few days. There's always the good and bad on both sides. But recently it seems Mweb is falling away as the go-to ISP.
 
Voxratio said:
Yeah, Afrihost Business is unshaped and unthrottled during business hours only. But even after hours, there isn't as much usage to warrant shaping. So essentially the business accounts are unshaped almost 24/7.

Thanks for the help, everyone :)

If anyone still wants to add something, I'll be glad to hear your opinions. I'll probably be getting either Mweb or (more likely) Afrihost in the next few days. There's always the good and bad on both sides. But recently it seems Mweb is falling away as the go-to ISP.
Click to expand...

Pretty sure Afrihost changed their policy to unshaped 24/7. Regardless, I've never noticed shaping on my business account.
 
Openweb GOLD. They have a couple GOLD accounts on special now actually.
 
Hi guys I would just like to add my 2 cents worth to this topic ...... When it comes to false advertisement or misleading the client Openweb are the best at it so all the fan boys waving and flying the Openweb flag high I honestly have to ask how are you guys getting decent speeds .....I'm on a gold account paying around R590 (excluding line rental) and I can't even get speeds over 150kbs and this is a 4mb account also bear in mind all my downloads are done from a straight http site no torrents what's so ever .....

Anyways what I'm saying is as a consumer don't believe everything you read and stay the hell away from openweb
..... Ps I'm not the only one experiencing this problem I have friends on openweb who also have the same issues we game and download and the account says its suited for gamers and prioritized after hours .....bull****

I hate to say this but maybe give telkom a try I'm actually moving my account back to them as a friend of mine has only had good experiences with them I just hope they have changed from the time I utilized them for data ...

Cheers and best of luck
 
Scorpion101 said:
Hi guys I would just like to add my 2 cents worth to this topic ...... When it comes to false advertisement or misleading the client Openweb are the best at it so all the fan boys waving and flying the Openweb flag high I honestly have to ask how are you guys getting decent speeds .....I'm on a gold account paying around R590 (excluding line rental) and I can't even get speeds over 150kbs and this is a 4mb account also bear in mind all my downloads are done from a straight http site no torrents what's so ever .....

Anyways what I'm saying is as a consumer don't believe everything you read and stay the hell away from openweb
..... Ps I'm not the only one experiencing this problem I have friends on openweb who also have the same issues we game and download and the account says its suited for gamers and prioritized after hours .....bull****

I hate to say this but maybe give telkom a try I'm actually moving my account back to them as a friend of mine has only had good experiences with them I just hope they have changed from the time I utilized them for data ...

Cheers and best of luck
Click to expand...

You can replace "Openweb" here with any other ISP. I've found that it depends a lot on your location and probably many other factors. I've tried a bunch of different ISPs and for me OpenWeb has always provided the best experience. I tried Afrihost and their business accounts and it was erratic, even a Telkom capped account I tried out was up and down.

So I suggest you give every ISP a try and see which one suits your needs.

As you can see my OW account is just great:

3206027020.png
 
DrJohnZoidberg said:
So I suggest you give every ISP a try and see which one suits your needs.
Click to expand...

Currently exactly what I'm doing. Forum feedback isn't enough to determine if an ISP suits you. You should rather try out each ISP -- I'm currently sitting with 3 accounts from different ISPs, although some of the accounts are ending this month. But as of now, Openweb and Webafrica were disappointing for me.

I've seen as many "Openweb is amazing" as I have seen "Openweb sucks".
 
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Voxratio said:
Yeah, Afrihost Business is unshaped and unthrottled during business hours only. But even after hours, there isn't as much usage to warrant shaping. So essentially the business accounts are unshaped almost 24/7.

Thanks for the help, everyone :)

If anyone still wants to add something, I'll be glad to hear your opinions. I'll probably be getting either Mweb or (more likely) Afrihost in the next few days. There's always the good and bad on both sides. But recently it seems Mweb is falling away as the go-to ISP.
Click to expand...

Afrihost Business is unshaped 24/7. There is no shaping or throttling after hours.
 
Voxratio said:
For the past two months, I've been trying to find a good ISP to suit my needs as a gamer who likes to download a large file every now and then. I used to be on an MWEB 1mb uncapped account, but cancelled that account after they throttled me @ 100gb in a 31 day rolling window.

As of now, I've tried two other ISP's: Openweb and Webafrica. I went with a 2mb GamerKing account from Openweb, and a 4mb Home Uncapped from Webafrica. Both accounts didn't perform as advertised, and thus what I thought suited me in the end did not. EDIT: I think I should rather say, both had very fine print in their advertisements (not literally).

I typed out my reasoning as to why those two ISP's accounts didn't perform, but decided to delete it since it started sounding like a rant... I'll post it if someone wants to read it, but I'm not going to put it in the main post. Anyways, if you like to play games online and download a large file every now and then, I would recommend looking at other ISPs. Which leads me to my question:


I've looked around the internet trying to decide between the last two notable ISPs, Afrihost and Mweb (I'm forgiving them for throttling me). Below is a summary of what I've read/researched from reading forum feedback, so please take it with a grain of salt:

Afrihost Home Uncapped
This accounts gets throttled to the ground during business hours.
*I've read nothing about throttling due to downloading too much.
*I've read nothing about latency issues.

Afrihost Business Uncapped
Lots of people saying full speeds 24/7.
Literally no limits on how much you download.
*I've read nothing about latency issues.


Mweb Premium Home Uncapped
Good speeds 24/7, even during the day.
Rolling window, with an unreasonably small download threshold.
Extreme throttling after the threshold is exceeded.
*I've read nothing about latency issues.

Mweb Business Uncapped
Nothing.

Please let me know if my points far from accurate



So as of now, I can't decide between the Afrihost Business Uncapped or Mweb Premium Home Uncapped. I'm looking at the 2mb (possibly 4mb) speeds for those accounts. I'm leaning towards Afrihost Business Uncapped because I've heard good feedback about them from people I know. However, I've personally always had good service from Mweb, besides the recent throttling shenanigans.

Does someone have suggestions/recommendations?
Click to expand...

Morning,

The thresholds on the 2MB and 4MB premium accounts are approximately 200GB and 400GB respectively.

We do not have any thresholds on our unshaped accounts ;)

Let me know if you would like to return to MWEB :)
 
Voxratio said:
For the past two months, I've been trying to find a good ISP to suit my needs as a gamer who likes to download a large file every now and then. I used to be on an MWEB 1mb uncapped account, but cancelled that account after they throttled me @ 100gb in a 31 day rolling window.

As of now, I've tried two other ISP's: Openweb and Webafrica. I went with a 2mb GamerKing account from Openweb, and a 4mb Home Uncapped from Webafrica. Both accounts didn't perform as advertised, and thus what I thought suited me in the end did not. EDIT: I think I should rather say, both had very fine print in their advertisements (not literally).

I typed out my reasoning as to why those two ISP's accounts didn't perform, but decided to delete it since it started sounding like a rant... I'll post it if someone wants to read it, but I'm not going to put it in the main post. Anyways, if you like to play games online and download a large file every now and then, I would recommend looking at other ISPs. Which leads me to my question:


I've looked around the internet trying to decide between the last two notable ISPs, Afrihost and Mweb (I'm forgiving them for throttling me). Below is a summary of what I've read/researched from reading forum feedback, so please take it with a grain of salt:

Afrihost Home Uncapped
This accounts gets throttled to the ground during business hours.
*I've read nothing about throttling due to downloading too much.
*I've read nothing about latency issues.

Afrihost Business Uncapped
Lots of people saying full speeds 24/7.
Literally no limits on how much you download.
*I've read nothing about latency issues.


Mweb Premium Home Uncapped
Good speeds 24/7, even during the day.
Rolling window, with an unreasonably small download threshold.
Extreme throttling after the threshold is exceeded.
*I've read nothing about latency issues.

Mweb Business Uncapped
Nothing.

Please let me know if my points far from accurate



So as of now, I can't decide between the Afrihost Business Uncapped or Mweb Premium Home Uncapped. I'm looking at the 2mb (possibly 4mb) speeds for those accounts. I'm leaning towards Afrihost Business Uncapped because I've heard good feedback about them from people I know. However, I've personally always had good service from Mweb, besides the recent throttling shenanigans.

Does someone have suggestions/recommendations?
Click to expand...

DEFINITELY Afrihost Business :D Best ADSL service in the country (In my opinion). Why dont you try Afrihost home uncapped first - its so easy to upgrade to business from Clientzone and you'll pay pro-rata for the business account if you choose to upgrade. The home uncapped is perfect for me, I hardly ever get shaped (due to the fact I am down in the cape)

EDIT: Forgot to add - I get the best gaming latency on my Afrihost Account. Why don't you sign up for a free 1GB account and test out the network. You won't regret it :D
 
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MWEB Guy said:
Morning,

The thresholds on the 2MB and 4MB premium accounts are approximately 200GB and 400GB respectively.

We do not have any thresholds on our unshaped accounts ;)

Let me know if you would like to return to MWEB :)
Click to expand...

I will let you know. However, since I was with Mweb before, I'm going to go ahead and give Afrihost a try ;)



Zertop said:
DEFINITELY Afrihost Business :D Best ADSL service in the country (In my opinion). Why dont you try Afrihost home uncapped first - its so easy to upgrade to business from Clientzone and you'll pay pro-rata for the business account if you choose to upgrade. The home uncapped is perfect for me, I hardly ever get shaped (due to the fact I am down in the cape)

EDIT: Forgot to add - I get the best gaming latency on my Afrihost Account. Why don't you sign up for a free 1GB account and test out the network. You won't regret it :D
Click to expand...

Does the home uncapped get shaped during the day? I see no mention of it, but people say that it does. Also, does Afrihost also make use of a rolling-window over x-days? Or how do they monitor over-usage of the networks?
I see the top user for the 4mb Home Uncapped has downloaded just over 1TB, which means they must have been unthrottled and unshaped 24/7 the entire month.

Trial accounts don't really reflect the long-term performance of many ISPs. All ISPs trial accounts perform perfectly.
 
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