Finally managed to get a connection after a few hours of outage.
I had a fibre preorder with Afrihost. With their incompetence I've canceled and ordered with cisp instead.
I still don't know what to do with the CellC issues. Full signal strength, but disconnects exactly an hour after being connected. That's not poor coverage, that bs happening on their side!
From Afrihost, on 30 August 2018:
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From what I can see during your sessions my system tells me that you are disconnecting because of a NAS-ERROR, this error is indicating you are out of range, have poor coverage, congestion in the area or high levels of noise.
This is the cause of both the intermittentcy for when it drops, and also for the speed hikes and drops.
Currently our NOC engineers are still corresponding with CELL C to try and figure out a resolution to this issue.
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With full bars I am not out of range, nor do I have poor coverage. W.r.t. noise and congestion... how exactly does that cause the router to disconnect after EXACTLY 1 hour of connectivity, any time of the day or night. Evidently their NOC "engineers" have been corresponding with Cell C for over a month, and are still unable to figure out a resolution to this issue.
After I bitched and moaned for them to escalate my query to a supervisor, I get this e-mail (supposedly from a supervisor?), on 8 September 2018:
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I am sorry to hear about your connectivity issues.
Please provide us with the following information:
1. How far are your Wi-Fi devices from the router?
2. Run speed tests on http://speedtest.net from a device connected to the router Wi-Fi and another connected by Ethernet cable and take full screenshots.
Please let us know should you need assistance with anything else.
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How the fun (fun is not quite the word I want to use) does the distance between the router and a connected device cause the router to lose connectivity and require a reboot (or 6 reboots) in order to establish connectivity again. Also, I had already sent them a speedtest at this point (showing 25+Mbps download). So, apparently, this exemplary employee was sorry to hear about my connectivity issues, but not sorry enough to actually find out what my symptoms were.
The next bastion of Afrihost support takes over, and on 20 September I get this e-mail:
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I do apologize for the delayed response and the inconvenience you have been experiencing.
My name is -name removed- and I have taken the initiative to assist you with your query. I have
taken a look at your account and I have picked up that you have established a connection
since the last time you received feedback till date. Is everything working fine now?
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(At this point do allow me to coin a new term: Afritard. I think they have gone out of their way to earn it.)
Alright, so, this Afritard actually took the initiative! but like the previous Afritard, didn't bother trying to understand what the symptoms were. In my e-mails to them it was clear that losing connectivity after exactly 1 hour of being connected is the symptom. And then this Afritard comes with: "
I have picked up that you have established a connection since the last time you received feedback till date. Is everything working fine now?"
Now I am not a violent person, but never before did I picture, with such complete clarity, someone being backhanded such that they fly across the room.
After explaining nicely how idiotic his/her question sounded in light of my actual problem, I get an e-mail with some settings for DNS and MTU and for setting dynamic IP.
Non of which worked. I have informed them of such.
And the last communication now reads:
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Thank you for providing me with feedback. I have also done a follow up
in this regard and I do apologies as we experiencing a slight issue with
Cell C on our network. Our Dev team is currently on this to bring us a
more constructive decision.
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That's right folks: having to reboot your router anywhere from 10 to 50 times a day is "a slight issue".
And the biggest irony of all? Every e-mail from them ends with:
Afrihost.com
Pure Internet Joy!
ps: edited for formatting.
