Crystal Web (NEW ISP) ADSL Feedback

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Read what i said... I did not ask regarding their shaping policies, I asked what they deemed as business hours.
No idea then. they havn't said directly what hour they stop normal shaping(p2p/nntp is midnight to 6/7) http i assume is evening.Streaming is never shaped.
Who knows. I don't see separation between local or international "big" downloads.
They don't stop you downloading during the day though, they just ask you not to. And i assume local is not shaped anyway.(if it is thats not good.....)
 
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I have no problem with the possibility of shaping P2P during the day, but Http downloads must be available at line speed or close to it, at all times.

Then everyone wraps up their downloads in put.io? The relationship between an ISP and its customers must be sustainable - we can't simply release everything and shut up shop in 6 months time. People often get really upset (and rightly so) in SA about thresholds, shaping, throttling and so on, and it's largely a few incumbent ISPs' faults for this in the first place. I have no sympathy for them because they brought it on themselves by initiating price-wars in the first place in an attempt to gain market share.

Customers need to look at their usage patterns and select the correct product for their needs, not based on price alone but rather the quality of the overall experience as the deciding factor. Affordability obviously still plays a role, no doubt, but the responsibility is up to the ISP to ensure that a reasonably priced product is available, and is advertised honestly, to ALLOW the end user to select accordingly. We've come to the conclusion that no single account type will please everyone until we can offer uncontended ADSL at current prices. And that's not going to happen for a long time, or at least until there are some drastic changes in the wholesale market.

This is why we try to be transparent and open with you guys. ADSL bandwidth in SA is expensive. IP address space is expensive. Maintaining a network is expensive. Running a full-fledged, sustainable ISP is expensive. There's no beating around the bush. Having a price-war in the market without input cost reductions is short-term stupidity, and lands up with you having to later on make drastic changes to your, um, "corporate structure", and products, to the ultimate detriment of the wider market and end user.

What's happened in this market over the last year or so if mybroadband users are honest about this with themselves? It's gone backwards - business accounts now have thresholds; uncapped accounts now all tend to have thresholds, even those from ISPs who promised they never would; users are actively being encouraged to move to capped products by their ISPs; capped products are shaped; shaping is applied more than it's ever been before etc.

Why? Because uncapped pricing was dropped to the floor in an unsustainable manner, by ISPs with big budgets to do so in an attempt to gain market share - to the ultimate detriment of who? The consumer. Consumers now have a pricing and quality of service expectation that's often fairly unrealistic. What's this leaderboard of downloaders nonsense all about as well? While you're instituting new draconian shaping policies because your users are downloading too much? Consumers are played like the proverbial fiddle at the moment - having to change ISPs every few months because <insert next stupid thing their ISP did>.

Our core values are not premised around being the cheapest in the market at all. You ultimately get what you pay for. We will have a cheap product, but don't expect much from it (from your average mybroadband user's perspective at least). Don't expect unshaped http downloads. Don't expect nntp and p2p priority in any way. And don't expect streaming priority. Rather, we have a correctly priced product for you if your usage demands require any mix of the aforementioned activities. And likewise, we're not going to try to market the entry-level product as anything more than it is. We have that responsibility.

Anyways, that's my Sunday rant over for now. Apologies for the lengthy answer to a simple question. :D
 
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They don't stop you downloading during the day though, they just ask you not to. And i assume local is not shaped anyway.(if it is thats not good.....)

If we are only talking about p2p // nntp then of course, but surely we are not talking about digital distribution because then is one big ****ing joke to be honest. What is the whole point of using steam, origin, psn, itunes etc then?

So now I can't download whatever is next on my playlist after I've done with what I'm playing now because its too big? really? one big ****ing lol?

I think there is just a simple misunderstanding here: Its p2p, nntp or whomever is stupid enough to force his movies, series and or porn over HTTP / other instead of " smart downloading ".
 
@CW - Please tell me your "business" hours are not as draconian as webafrica from 06:00 - 00:00 ?

Business hours are a misnomer in this market. There are peak and off-peak, and we actually don't dictate them - users do. On the aforementioned product relating to p2p and nntp downloads though, that product open up from midnight.
 
Aren't most games like that locally cached....meaning it doesn't impact an ISP as heavily?(i know steam is......PSN im not completely sure.)

The largest cost component is IPC. That cache sits behind IPC. So locally cached helps on international bandwidth, but not on the core cost components.
 
Then everyone wraps up their downloads in put.io? The relationship between an ISP and its customers must be sustainable - we can't simply release everything and shut up shop in 6 months time. People often get really upset (and rightly so) in SA about thresholds, shaping, throttling and so on, and it's largely a few incumbent ISPs' faults for this in the first place. I have no sympathy for them because they brought it on themselves by initiating price-wars in the first place in an attempt to gain market share.

Customers need to look at their usage patterns and select the correct product for their needs, not based on price alone but rather the quality of the overall experience as the deciding factor. Affordability obviously still plays a role, no doubt, but the responsibility is up to the ISP to ensure that a reasonably priced product is available, and is advertised honestly, to ALLOW the end user to select accordingly. We've come to the conclusion that no single account type will please everyone until we can offer uncontended ADSL at current prices. And that's not going to happen for a long time, or at least until there are some drastic changes in the wholesale market.

This is why we try to be transparent and open with you guys. ADSL bandwidth in SA is expensive. IP address space is expensive. Maintaining a network is expensive. Running a full-fledged, sustainable ISP is expensive. There's no beating around the bush. Having a price-war in the market without input cost reductions is short-term stupidity, and lands up with you having to later on make drastic changes to your, um, "corporate structure", and products, to the ultimate detriment of the wider market and end user.

What's happened in this market over the last year or so if mybroadband users are honest about this wit themselves? It's gone backwards - business accounts now have thresholds; uncapped accounts now all tend to have thresholds, even those from ISPs who promised they never would; users are actively being encouraged to move to capped products by their ISPs; capped products are shaped; shaping is applied more than it's ever been before etc.

Why? Because uncapped pricing was dropped to the floor in an unsustainable manner, by ISPs with big budgets to do so in an attempt to gain market share - to the ultimate detriment of who? The consumer. Consumers now have a pricing and quality of service expectation that's often fairly unrealistic. What's this leaderboard of downloaders nonsense all about as well? While you're instituting new draconian shaping policies because your users are downloading too much? Consumers are played like the proverbial fiddle at the moment - having to change ISPs every few months because <insert next stupid thing their ISP did>.

Our core values are not premised around being the cheapest in the market at all. You ultimately get what you pay for. We will have a cheap product, but don't expect much from it (from your average mybroadband user's perspective at least). do't expect to unshaped http downloads. Don't expect nntp and p2p priority in any way. And don't expect streaming priority. Rather, we have a correctly priced product for you if your usage demands require any mix of the aforementioned activities. And likewise, we're not going to try to market the entry-level product as anything more than it is. We have that responsibility.

Anyways, that's my Sunday rant over for now. Apologies for the lengthy answer to a simple question. :D

I didn't even know that site existed....expect every single person who ever reads your post to use that from now on :P
uhm....btw can't you just severely shape http coming from that website instead of shaping all of us....
also....why not just add different shaping "profiles"(all under the same product) and if your caught taking advantage you get locked to shaped during the day unshaped after hours :/
 
uhm....btw can't you just severely shape http coming from that website instead of shaping all of us....

Because we don't resolve to named addresses on the core network, we use IP addresses, and these sorts of services are forever changing their hosts and IPs. We can't set up a team to monitor for this all of the time, and it's also a real PITA if I'm honest, as there are new ones cropping up all of the time.

also....why not just add different shaping "profiles"(all under the same product) and if your caught taking advantage you get locked to shaped during the day unshaped after hours :/

We do have this, and it will be introduced. It's at that point that we expect our first Hellopeter rants. :D
 
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The largest cost component is IPC. That cache sits behind IPC. So locally cached helps on international bandwidth, but not on the core cost components.
So downloading wolfenstein off steam is going to be shaped to hell and should only be downloaded after hours? well sucks to be on 2mbps....
 
Just wanted to say D3 latency's are awesome. Streaming is awesome as well. Steam downloads ran great this morning. Only http downloads are a little slow but I can live with that. A question why can't the nntp downloads only be allowed from 0:00 till 6 or 7 am? Clearly that is what is eating the most bandwidth?

I have a few episodes I download to watch most days of the week. Why should I wait another day to watch them if I could get it after 5pm the day it comes out?

How would you feel if you have wait to stream your stuff from Netflicks or Hulu from 12am to 6 am? All my big stuff, season dvdrip's or games run from 10-11pm to 6am anyway.
 
Because we don't resolve to named addressed on the core network, we use IP addresses, and these sorts of services are forever changing their hosts and IPs. We can't set up a team to monitor for this all of the time, and it's also a real PITA if I'm honest, as there are new ones cropping up all of the time.



We do have this, and it will be introduced. It's at that point that we expect our first Hellopeter rants. :D
Well....actually you should be asking them to use that site......at least it doesn't degraded the network as much, nor does any service like that.

you can avoid those rants by giving warning before hand and not trying to hide you "criteria" to be classified as abuse.
i.e. most HP complaints are because of fine print. be open about it and don't use automated systems to do the work....

also might help if you can have separate tracking for P2P HTTP and Streaming...
 
So downloading wolfenstein off steam is going to be shaped to hell and should only be downloaded after hours? well sucks to be on 2mbps....

Not if you're on the right product. If you're a user who knows you're going to be downloading 40GB games at a time and want/need those to run at full line speed, then you should be on an appropriate product for your needs. We're not going to market our entry-level products to this sort of user. That's dishonest, and unethical in my opinion.

Let's take your usage - you should never be on an entry-level ISP product, wouldn't you agree? But we're also not going to go screw over our customers either on this, so we've looked at our network when we had issues, and now we're looking at it without issues and letting you guys have great access unshaped, and we're going to find the right product for you all, individually if we need to, and with as little cost impact as possible. In other words 90% of you should be absolutely fine and there will no changes to pricing, 5% may get a price decrease, and the other 5% may be asked to move to a more appropriate package at much cheaper rates than normal retail.

We're still looking into this. It's about ensuring that everyone is on the correct package, really. And it's not about overall usage either - it's about what you need to do on your line. Gaming, Steam downloads, http downloads, streaming, torrents and nntp? Well you're a premium user - you should be on premium bandwidth for your needs. Anything else and you're just going to have a poor experience to some degree.
 
I have a few episodes I download to watch most days of the week. Why should I wait another day to watch them if I could get it after 5pm the day it comes out?

How would you feel if you have wait to stream your stuff from Netflicks or Hulu from 12am to 6 am? All my big stuff, season dvdrip's or games run from 10-11pm to 6am anyway.
what we'd ideally like to be able to do is to allow you to do that - pick up two or three reasonable sized files even during "peak" time without really quickly and without a glitch. However this requires a general understanding and acceptance from a general user base.
 
So in other words I have to download enough p0rn now for the dry times ahead.... :p
 
We're fast going to see a premium time-based product unless Telkom come to the party with some surprisingly large IPC cost reductions.
The big cause of all these price/shaping/contention problems is Telkom. They are taking way too big a slice of the pie. They charge exorbitant prices for their services and we have no option but to pay. I would love to know what percentage of my internet costs go to Telkom (including ADSL line and data).
 
Not if you're on the right product. If you're a user who knows you're going to be downloading 40GB games at a time and want/need those to run at full line speed, then you should be on an appropriate product for your needs. We're not going to market our entry-level products to this sort of user. That's dishonest, and unethical in my opinion.

Let's take your usage - you should never be on an entry-level ISP product, wouldn't you agree? But we're also not going to go screw over our customers either on this, so we've looked at our network when we had issues, and now we're looking at it without issues and letting you guys have great access unshaped, and we're going to find the right product for you all, individually if we need to, and with as little cost impact as possible. In other words 90% of you should be absolutely fine and there will no changes to pricing, 5% may get a price decrease, and the other 5% may be asked to move to a more appropriate package at much cheaper rates than normal retail.

We're still looking into this. It's about ensuring that everyone is on the correct package, really. And it's not about overall usage either - it's about what you need to do on your line. Gaming, Steam downloads, http downloads, streaming, torrents and nntp? Well you're a premium user - you should be on premium bandwidth for your needs. Anything else and you're just going to have a poor experience to some degree.
So a home account should not be streaming, or downloading off steam(note you can only see how big a game is AFTER you buy it)......whats your "entry" level product? facebook with a couple emails?

we're 5 days into you unshaped trial
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if 8 gbs a day on 10mb/s uncapped is considered "overuse" then i don't know, not to mention it's almost all netflix/hulu
(if you factor in usage from other CW accounts i've been on this month it works out to about 10-11gb a day.)

if were talking about my last months usage, not only was that inflated with a lot of backlog (courtesy of mweb) but Ive already upgraded and 450gb on uncapped should hardly be a problem on 10mbps when you can get 400gb capped data in the same price range.
 
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