Crystal Web (NEW ISP) ADSL Feedback

[Electric]

Why the backlogs though?
Is there a reason you guys feel the need to download and store everything?
Even Steam games are stored on steam so you only really install what you play.
Some of you make it sounds like if you don't download a TB of data now then the internet is going to magically vanish.

 

[Penquin]

Lag should be far better and very stable now. There are no known issues in Cape Town at the moment. Did you perhaps reboot your router after switching accounts (which is always advised) and/or flush your DNS? Often these simple steps can resolve issues on all accounts. It's often a case of switching accounts, router rebooting, and customers thinking that the ISP was to blame. I'm not saying that this is the case here at all though - more an FYI.

Thanks, I'll reboot the router before I play next time to test. Ping to EU was below 200, averaging around 180ms, which is usually needed to have smooth no lag experience playing against EU opponents. This is what I get on my WA account as well, but in game on the CW it's smooth for 4-5 seconds, lag a second, smooth for 4-5 seconds, lag a second, which continued through the whole match. Almost like it is dropping some packets every couple seconds. I'll do the reboot before I play next time and give feedback.

 

[PhreeMe]

Picture will definitely change when the backlogs are all done. How does one check usage on CW accounts?

Usage Tracker

Should be attached to your daily mails as well....

 

[Crystal Web]

Picture will definitely change when the backlogs are all done. How does one check usage on CW accounts?

This is another one of those things we discussed internally - sending usage data during this time results in some people curbing their efforts, and others seeing it as a challenge to push more and more data every day. Not wanting to change user behaviour, we decided to remove the usage emails. We have a few hundred customers - on this low base, it only takes a few 10 and 20 meg customers to ruin the experience on unshaped, for example. So by not sending out those mails we're hoping to not encourage the few who'd be inclined to see it as a challenge. Support can send you your updated usage and can also tell you what your internal predicted usage for your account is from our side, as well as what your overall predicted usage for the month sits at based on current usage.

 

[Necuno]

Why the backlogs though?
Is there a reason you guys feel the need to download and store everything?
Even Steam games are stored on steam so you only really install what you play.
Some of you make it sounds like if you don't download a TB of data now then the internet is going to magically vanish.

Good question and to add, just switch everyone to SD for the missed episode(s) and movies. Then from there switch back to "normal" HD. You don't really need to see everything in 12 gig downloads per movie or 2 gig download per episode.

Besides as noted I got most of my stuff via the Temp IS account, then my Capped AH account and now I've cont. as I would normally as the released comes out during the week and... actually watch them

Only "treat" I got was the D3 PTR :twisted:

 

[Looney]

Why the backlogs though?
Is there a reason you guys feel the need to download and store everything?
Even Steam games are stored on steam so you only really install what you play.
Some of you make it sounds like if you don't download a TB of data now then the internet is going to magically vanish.

+1

CrystalWeb was kind enough to give us unshaped in order to test if unshaped was viable at the current pricing structure. All they asked was that we don't download the internet and run our lines at full speed for hours on end. Not an unreasonable request.

And what happens. The complete opposite!

Fsck people are so inconsiderate!

 

[mika1000]

This is another one of those things we discussed internally - sending usage data during this time results in some people curbing their efforts, and others seeing it as a challenge to push more and more data every day. Not wanting to change user behaviour, we decided to remove the usage emails. We have a few hundred customers - on this low base, it only takes a few 10 and 20 meg customers to ruin the experience on unshaped, for example. So by not sending out those mails we're hoping to not encourage the few who'd be inclined to see it as a challenge. Support can send you your updated usage and can also tell you what your internal predicted usage for your account is from our side, as well as what your overall predicted usage for the month sits at based on current usage.

I'm actually been downloading less this month due to the 41.xxx debacle and my line only peaking at 402kbps since the new account. max per hour 1.38gb instead of 1.55gb per hour.

there's also nearly nothing been sent. its in the kb's not mb's or gb's... since getting the new account. it seem that who ever been uploading stuff from me had been stopped with the new account.

my usage for the last two days had been the same as a single day pre-41.xxx.

hopefully the erratic speeds would even out in the next few days.

 

[Penquin]

Apologies, I've been inconsiderate. I started the 11GB download of Injustice Ultimate edition on my PS3 via PSN this morning. But it was an "emergency" download. My friend is down in Cape Town from JHB this weekend and we have to virtually donner mekaar tonight Batman vs Superman style. But this is an exception to my usual download habits which usually start at around 12am and is done by the morning.

 

[Aluroth]

Apologies, I've been inconsiderate. I started the 11GB download of Injustice Ultimate edition on my PS3 via PSN this morning. But it was an "emergency" download. My friend is down in Cape Town from JHB this weekend and we have to virtually donner mekaar tonight Batman vs Superman style. But this is an exception to my usual download habits which usually start at around 12am and is done by the morning.

IMO that is not inconsiderate. That is what uncapped is for. To download something when you really need it, be it a game, movie pron or whatever. Inconsiderate would be keeping your downloads on 24/7 or running netflix hd while you are playing games etc.

 

[Crystal Web]

Apologies, I've been inconsiderate. I started the 11GB download of Injustice Ultimate edition on my PS3 via PSN this morning. But it was an "emergency" download. My friend is down in Cape Town from JHB this weekend and we have to virtually donner mekaar tonight Batman vs Superman style. But this is an exception to my usual download habits which usually start at around 12am and is done by the morning.

Nothing wrong there. All that we ask is that this isn't a daily occurrence. Nothing wrong with downloading what you want when you need it. It's this lining up of 20 gigs per day and letting it fly through consistently that's cause for concern.

 

[MaximusZA]

Everything is certainly much better than what it was and thanks CW guys for all the hard work. but it seems to be intermittent and to different locations. for example, Playing Wildstar last night and the latency was great sub 200ms most of the time. then decided to move to War thunder and couldn't even complete the patch download was getting less than 20kbps on a 4mb line. when I switched to my alternate account the patch came down at 500kbps.

 

[Crystal Web]

Everything is certainly much better than what it was and thanks CW guys for all the hard work. but it seems to be intermittent and to different locations. for example, Playing Wildstar last night and the latency was great sub 200ms most of the time. then decided to move to War thunder and couldn't even complete the patch download was getting less than 20kbps on a 4mb line. when I switched to my alternate account the patch came down at 500kbps.

What's happening is that occasionally the network gets incredibly busy and speeds can be erratic at times. Once overall usage settles down things will become far more consistent.

We're contemplating putting an indicator up on the site in the customer portal to keep customers alerted to the current state of the network. Will take some interesting development as it's not as simple as it sounds.

 

[PhreeMe]

What's happening is that occasionally the network gets incredibly busy and speeds can be erratic at times. Once overall usage settles down things will become far more consistent.

We're contemplating putting an indicator up on the site in the customer portal to keep customers alerted to the current state of the network. Will take some interesting development as it's not as simple as it sounds.

I would reason that this may explain my Youtube experience last night. Funny thing is that it was Just Youtube that suffered. My gaming latencies were perfectly stable and low

That indicator would be great, IMO. Then we just need naming and shaming of the heavy users and all will be well







In case it's not clear, the Indicator bit was serious, the naming bit was a joke

 

[PsyCLown]

So can anyone join Crystal Web or is it limited at the moment?

Also what is the pricing like, took a look at the website and cannot find much info? :-/

 

[Crystal Web]

So can anyone join Crystal Web or is it limited at the moment?

Also what is the pricing like, took a look at the website and cannot find much info? :-/

Anyone can join. On our website a chat will auto-prompt you to talk to one of our consultants if you're there for around 30 seconds or longer (first time visitors only [per session]) or you can simply initiate a chat yourself with the live chat link on the site. Happy to discuss specific pricing with you.

 

[FuLL_MeT4L]

remember we're focusing on home users for the time being, so our "off-peak" is actually the opposite of what you'd expect.

Peak "off-peak" is quite unusual for an ISP! I'm sure CW has a disproportionate number of users that utilize scheduling for downloads, compared to other networks. Many of these likely start at midnight, as do mine.

It would be interesting to experiment with 'suggesting' download times for optimal network balancing. Mine are scheduled to start at midnight and typically last an hour or two, but in reality this download period could be set to anywhere between 12:00AM and 17:00PM when I return from work. I have no idea what the "best" time for CW would be here which is why mine is still set to midnight.

Given that you're looking to develop a live load graph, you could have also have a tool that looks at past 2 weeks of load, as well as a couple of user parameters, and picks a convenient average time-slot during which load is low to suggest for scheduling purposes.

The above would likely be way too much admin, and launching and pushing business products will be a better use of your time! But.. it's a thought.

 

[Electric]

Peak "off-peak" is quite unusual for an ISP! I'm sure CW has a disproportionate number of users that utilize scheduling for downloads, compared to other networks. Many of these likely start at midnight, as do mine.

It would be interesting to experiment with 'suggesting' download times for optimal network balancing. Mine are scheduled to start at midnight and typically last an hour or two, but in reality this download period could be set to anywhere between 12:00AM and 17:00PM when I return from work. I have no idea what the "best" time for CW would be here which is why mine is still set to midnight.

Given that you're looking to develop a live load graph, you could have also have a tool that looks at past 2 weeks of load, as well as a couple of user parameters, and picks a convenient average time-slot during which load is low to suggest for scheduling purposes.

The above would likely be way too much admin, and launching and pushing business products will be a better use of your time! But.. it's a thought.

So like a 5-star rating system?

 

[Crystal Web]

Peak "off-peak" is quite unusual for an ISP! I'm sure CW has a disproportionate number of users that utilize scheduling for downloads, compared to other networks. Many of these likely start at midnight, as do mine.

It would be interesting to experiment with 'suggesting' download times for optimal network balancing. Mine are scheduled to start at midnight and typically last an hour or two, but in reality this download period could be set to anywhere between 12:00AM and 17:00PM when I return from work. I have no idea what the "best" time for CW would be here which is why mine is still set to midnight.

Given that you're looking to develop a live load graph, you could have also have a tool that looks at past 2 weeks of load, as well as a couple of user parameters, and picks a convenient average time-slot during which load is low to suggest for scheduling purposes.

The above would likely be way too much admin, and launching and pushing business products will be a better use of your time! But.. it's a thought.

Actually we've setup our backend to do precisely this. The development is not that tricky, but we have to build an API on our network systems to do this. So the API is being built so that it checks overall network usage against a few parameters, does a JSON call to our usage tracker per account, and then links to our CRM system to send customised, realistic, and informative data to our customers about their current usage vs our network and how best to help us keep it in line, without having to ask customers to download less. Essentially we'd like to be able to send each customer detailed information in our daily usage emails to them, with customised information about their usage patterns, that will assist our customers in scheduling their large downloads to run off at the right time.

 

[ToxicBunny]

So like a 5-star rating system?

Actually no... I get where he is going, but I'd take it even a step further (even though the dev is not worth the effort more than likely)..

Provide an API that can be called once a day or something, that will provide suggested time frames for unthrottled connections and then users can call the API and then modify their schedules automatically to suit. It might even out the network load a bit because your high end users are also the ones who will hopefully be tech-savvy enough to implement something of that nature.

 

[ToxicBunny]

Actually we've setup our backend to do precisely this. The development is not that tricky, but we have to build an API on our network systems to do this. So the API is being built so that it checks overall network usage against a few parameters, does a JSON call to our usage tracker per account, and then links to our CRM system to send customised, realistic, and informative data to our customers about their current usage vs our network and how best to help us keep it in line, without having to ask customers to download less. Essentially we'd like to be able to send each customer detailed information in or daily usage emails to them, with customised information about their usage patterns, that will assist our customers in scheduling their large downloads to run off at the right time.

Well then, take your API and expand it ...

I'd very happily build up a powershell script to run at home that would go around my network and modify schedules to help alleviate network "peak-y-ness"