Crystal Web ADSL performance feedback thread Part 3...

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DJ... said:
This is one where really it does help to get my support staff on the case first and foremost and to escalate to me afterwards if they can't solve the issue for you. Seems to be a possible line or router related issue here, but to test requires ruling things out one by one. To do this via the forum would take ages; to do so via phone would be equally tedious; but via live chat the guys can ascertain exactly what's going on and provide you with some feedback, and you can PM me some details in the interim and I can see when I have a chance if there are any provisioning issues on our side...
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Hi DJ

Okay, will get in touch with support. My apologies for only responding to you know after so long.
 
Not sure who exactly "Vader" is, but he is a god ... ... Thanks for the great support CW and for getting my YouTube issues sorted (for now @ any rate)


Finally getting 8-9Mbps throughput :)
 
new_in_za2 said:
Hi guys, and in particular DJ,

[Scroll down to the last two paragraphs if you want to skip to the actual questions]

I'm in the process of looking for a new ISP, but I'm having problems finding a decent ADSL ISP in South Africa, but so far Crystal Web seems like the most competent one.

I've previously used two different ADSL ISPs. One was a complete disaster, the other one is overall OK, but there are various issues that annoy me.

One thing that has annoyed me with both ISPs, to one degree or another, is that their "shaping" (I use the term losely, because in South African consumer minds, this word doesn't mean what it actually means) targets random things.

The first ISP basically considered pretty much everything except the most popular games as downloads. The result was that all web browsing for example got throttled to 1/16th of the speed I paid for. Browsing the internet today at 128 kilobits per second isn't very fun.

My current ISP goes further than just limit my bandwidth, and they consider my SSH connections "downloads". This means that when I'm working remotely on some server, they will either start dropping all, or nearly all, packets in the associated TCP connection, or they wil run a man-in-the-middle attack on my TCP connection and insert packets with the FIN or RST flags set, causing my TCP connections to be forcefully closed. This is EXTREMELY annoying, and there's no way to get them to stop. Otherwise my annoyances with this ISP are minor.

What I'm ideally looking for is a network neutral ISP. Network neutral means that they treat all traffic equally, and doesn't apply different rules to different packets. I doubt such a thing exists on the South African ADSL market, though. Actually I don't even mind a bit of throttling, as long as the throttling is network neutral, and doesn't punish me because my traffic pattern is not just Facebook and Youtube all day long.

And now for the actual questions: I see that Crystal Web's Business Premium Capped claims to be network neutral, albeit with different words. Is this correctly understood? Is it also correctly understood that the absolute most expensive product, unlike the cheaper ones, does not have free midnight till 6 data?

Next question: I see that Business Standard Capped claims that "P2P and NNTP may be affected by network contention". DJ, you seem both honest and technically minded. How do you classify such traffic? Do you do like other ISPs and consider everything except Facebook and Youtube "P2P"? Will my SSH connections be affected? Will my VPN connections be affected? Will my games' TCP connections be affected?
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To answer your questions honestly and succinctly:

1) Business Premium Capped treats every single packet the same way. That way is it gives it the highest possible priority on the network. Every packet you send and receive is treated equally, and with the highest overall network priority. It's the Ferrari of DSL and nobody else in this market offers this at the low price we do. Most charge anywhere from R10 to R90 per GB depending on which company you deal with. This is why it truly is a premium business product.

2) Shaping and priorities are two different things, which is why I mention them separately above. On lower priced products, no specific shaping may be applied, but there are proprietary priorities, and in order to mitigate the impact of this during times of contention (every network contends else we'd charge you raw bandwidth costs which most consumers couldn't afford), we apply set priority rules on the network and various products. So while no set shaping is applied (this is how other ISPs have previously gotten away with nonsense marketing), it will never translate into pure, unadulterated access, which would imply zero network contention. It's why I always argue that shaping is a nonsense marketing metric and is why we apply dynamic policies on the network.

Hope that helps...
 
I see there are some more graphs on an article on the MyBB page.
Interestingly, CW is the 2nd most popular ISP amongst the survey respondents - after Telkom.

DJ is this even possible? Or is this an indicator of some form of malfeasance in the survey?
 
DJ... said:
To answer your questions honestly and succinctly:
Click to expand...

Thanks for your reply!

DJ... said:
1) Business Premium Capped treats every single packet the same way. That way is it gives it the highest possible priority on the network. Every packet you send and receive is treated equally, and with the highest overall network priority. It's the Ferrari of DSL and nobody else in this market offers this at the low price we do. Most charge anywhere from R10 to R90 per GB depending on which company you deal with. This is why it truly is a premium business product.
Click to expand...

I'm still wondering if it's intentional or an oversight that Business Premium Capped doesn't have free midnight-till-6 data like the other and cheaper capped accounts have.

DJ... said:
2) Shaping and priorities are two different things, which is why I mention them separately above. On lower priced products, no specific shaping may be applied, but there are proprietary priorities, and in order to mitigate the impact of this during times of contention (every network contends else we'd charge you raw bandwidth costs which most consumers couldn't afford), we apply set priority rules on the network and various products. So while no set shaping is applied (this is how other ISPs have previously gotten away with nonsense marketing), it will never translate into pure, unadulterated access, which would imply zero network contention. It's why I always argue that shaping is a nonsense marketing metric and is why we apply dynamic policies on the network.

Hope that helps...
Click to expand...

Yes, I fully understand. Unfortunately it doesn't really answer my question. Basically I'd be OK with (some) throttling of my connection during busy times as long as this throttling is not dependent on what kind of data you think is going through my connection. I might also be OK with it even if you do throttling based on what kind of data you think is going through my connection IF that system works well. This is why I specifically asked if and how my SSH connections, VPN connections and non-mainstream games will be affected.

Let me give you some examples of what I've previously experienced with other ISPs, and which would be a show stopper to me:

ISP #1: I was playing a game that used TCP for its game connection. When you connect to the game, it gets about 1MB of game data from the server before the connection is fully established. The game gives you 1 minute to fetch this 1MB of data before it disconnects you. ISP #1's throttling system classified this game as "P2P", which slowed down the game connection to such a degree that I could not connect. This means that my internet connection in this case was throttled to less than 16kB/s.

ISP #2: This ISP frequently terminates TCP connections through man-in-the-middle attacks. This means that if I use SSH to connect to another computer, this SSH connection will get terminated and I lose everything I have open in that session. This ISP does the same to things like IRC and Google Hangouts, where I get disconnected maybe 10-20 times per day.

ISP #2: OpenVPN UDP packets get heavily filtered. Usually I get a couple of minutes of connectivity, and then a couple of minutes where ISP #2 will filter 100% of the VPN packets.

ISP #1: This ISP's "fantastic" throttling system also throttled different customers differently based on what they thought they were doing. ISP #1 would almost always classify my browsing as "P2P", and opening simple websites such as this one would be throttled to 1/16th of the paid for speed or less. OTOH, if my neighbour on the same ISP was watching cat videos on Youtube, then their throttling system would allow full connection speed for that. Basically two different customers on the same ISP get throttled differently, the one gets a completely unusable internet connection, while the other gets to use all the bandwidth they want, simply because one is watching cat videos on Youtube and the other is not.

Basically I'm really tired of the shenanigans of South African ISPs and I want something decent. If your Business Standard Capped account's throttling is acceptable, then I'll probably take you up on that offer. If not, then I'd have to go for Business Premium Capped, which lacks the midnight-till-6 data.
 
Sinbad said:
I see there are some more graphs on an article on the MyBB page.
Interestingly, CW is the 2nd most popular ISP amongst the survey respondents - after Telkom.

DJ is this even possible? Or is this an indicator of some form of malfeasance in the survey?
Click to expand...
It's highly, highly unlikely and certainly has no reflection on real world data. I cannot comment on what the data means but it most certainly does point to what everyone has been saying...
 
new_in_za2 said:
Thanks for your reply!



I'm still wondering if it's intentional or an oversight that Business Premium Capped doesn't have free midnight-till-6 data like the other and cheaper capped accounts have.



Yes, I fully understand. Unfortunately it doesn't really answer my question. Basically I'd be OK with (some) throttling of my connection during busy times as long as this throttling is not dependent on what kind of data you think is going through my connection. I might also be OK with it even if you do throttling based on what kind of data you think is going through my connection IF that system works well. This is why I specifically asked if and how my SSH connections, VPN connections and non-mainstream games will be affected.

Let me give you some examples of what I've previously experienced with other ISPs, and which would be a show stopper to me:

ISP #1: I was playing a game that used TCP for its game connection. When you connect to the game, it gets about 1MB of game data from the server before the connection is fully established. The game gives you 1 minute to fetch this 1MB of data before it disconnects you. ISP #1's throttling system classified this game as "P2P", which slowed down the game connection to such a degree that I could not connect. This means that my internet connection in this case was throttled to less than 16kB/s.

ISP #2: This ISP frequently terminates TCP connections through man-in-the-middle attacks. This means that if I use SSH to connect to another computer, this SSH connection will get terminated and I lose everything I have open in that session. This ISP does the same to things like IRC and Google Hangouts, where I get disconnected maybe 10-20 times per day.

ISP #2: OpenVPN UDP packets get heavily filtered. Usually I get a couple of minutes of connectivity, and then a couple of minutes where ISP #2 will filter 100% of the VPN packets.

ISP #1: This ISP's "fantastic" throttling system also throttled different customers differently based on what they thought they were doing. ISP #1 would almost always classify my browsing as "P2P", and opening simple websites such as this one would be throttled to 1/16th of the paid for speed or less. OTOH, if my neighbour on the same ISP was watching cat videos on Youtube, then their throttling system would allow full connection speed for that. Basically two different customers on the same ISP get throttled differently, the one gets a completely unusable internet connection, while the other gets to use all the bandwidth they want, simply because one is watching cat videos on Youtube and the other is not.

Basically I'm really tired of the shenanigans of South African ISPs and I want something decent. If your Business Standard Capped account's throttling is acceptable, then I'll probably take you up on that offer. If not, then I'd have to go for Business Premium Capped, which lacks the midnight-till-6 data.
Click to expand...
Business standard capped should suit you just fine IMHO. And if there's an issue it's not throttling from our side. If you pick something up we'd be happy to look at it and try to fix if it's an issue...
 
Just popping in to say that I saw, ok only briefly but still, my ping to NA servers go below 240. In 5 years of playing, on various accounts, I have never seen that. Absolute gaming pleasure this.
 
Enigma_ said:
Or Narcotics Anonymous. Yes, North America.

Just to add to the theme of the last few posts: I'm very happy with mine, still going strong performance-wise.
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My replies are like when I look for things in spar or pick and pay, can't find it and finally ask someone "where is the eggs" then it's right behind me LOL. Yeah I realised it was North America once I pressed post quick reply. :D
 
If I were wanting to change from premium uncapped to home capped would I loose access to the premium news server?
 
DawieZA said:
If I were wanting to change from premium uncapped to home capped would I loose access to the premium news server?
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No, it's only our entry level home basic uncapped account that doesn't receive premium news server access, however it still has access to the standard news server...
 
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