Faerie Glen, Pretoria, ADSL problems

[AntDen]

Line was down for 8 days about a month ago.
Line sync'd, but did not connect;
After it was "fixed", it did not even sync!
Took them a whole week to sort it out.

To resolve the issue, Telkom explained that I was moved to a different DSLAM.

Phone No: 012 991 xxxx
Line speed: 4MB
DSL circuit lessor: iSAT
ISP: Webafrica uncapped

 

[jcheek]

Been using ADSL in this area since May 2005, always with MWeb as my ISP. Originally at 384kbps, then 1Mbps, nowadays 2048Mbps.
Moved houses once (in 2010), staying within the 012-991-xxxx area, about 1,5km further away from the exchange in Petrick Avenue.
Originally I paid separately (Telkom for ADSL and MWeb for ISP), these days I am on MWeb's All-Inclusive product.

Generally very few problems, although I'll admit my usage is not "cutting edge".
Worst problem I've experienced was in 2010, line would drop repeatedly during windy/stormy weather. Solved over many weeks with much intervention from both me and MWeb!

I suffer the following problems occasionally:
- Complete ADSL outage (unable to sync for ADSL), usually < 1hour, usually solves itself or needs a reboot : ± 1 per month
- Synced for ADSL but no data flow, usually < 2 hours, sometimes requires MWeb intervention : ±4 per year
- No access to Mweb mail server, usually < 10 mins, self-solves : ±6 per year
- General slow-speed / unresponsiveness (other than widespread faults eg Seacom breakage), usually < 4 hours, self-solves, ±1 per month

Phone Number : 012-991-xxxx
Line speed : 2Mbps down, 512kbps up
ISP : MWeb, All-inclusive (ADSL+data), uncapped
Time of day for problems : No dominant patten, but usually daytime

Line stats:
Attenuation: 48dB (down), 22.5dB (up)
Noise margin : 12.1dB (down), 15.1dB (up)
Actual line speed : 2048kbps (down), 512kbps (up)
Attainable line speed : 4096kbps (down), 732kbps (up) (as reported by D-Link DSL-2500U modem test)
ADSL Bit Error Rate over 20 secs : 105 bit errors per million

Tracing route to telkom.co.za [196.43.22.222]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1 ms <1 ms <1 ms GATEWAY [192.168.0.5]
2 11 ms 11 ms 11 ms 41-133-94-1.dsl.mweb.co.za [41.133.94.1]
3 13 ms 13 ms 12 ms 197-80-96-186.jhb.mweb.co.za [197.80.96.186]
4 13 ms 13 ms 12 ms vl-92.vic-hscore-2.mweb.co.za [197.80.2.2]
5 14 ms 15 ms 17 ms tengig0-7-0-2.12.vic-p-1.mweb.co.za [197.80.5.241]
6 14 ms 13 ms 14 ms tengig0-0-0.vic-pr-1.mweb.co.za [197.80.4.141]
7 14 ms 14 ms 13 ms jhb.telkom-ipnet.co.za [197.80.4.117]
8 13 ms 14 ms 13 ms 196.43.25.137
9 19 ms 14 ms 15 ms 196.43.39.162
10 17 ms 15 ms 15 ms rrba-ip-bssr-1-ge-2-48.telkom-ipnet.co.za [196.43.23.6]
11 18 ms 15 ms 15 ms nbsc-ip-bssr-2-atm-5-0-0-1.telkom-ipnet.co.za [196.43.23.34]
12 16 ms 16 ms 16 ms nbsc-ip-rcache-1-vif0.telkom-ipnet.co.za [196.43.22.222]

Trace complete.

 

[Pleochism]

Line is mostly fine, but for the last few weeks (potentially longer, I was not doing latency sensitive things for a few months prior) the latency in the evenings and over weekends has just been horrible. Between 800-2000ms, depending on the app. Throughput is fine, but with latency so bad, online gaming is totally impossible, which renders the line nearly useless to me. It is however perfect during work hours, 220-240.

Phone number: 012 991 ****

Speed: 4MBit ADSL

ISPs: Webafrica uncapped, MWeb capped, Afrihost capped

Time: 17:00-00:00 on weekdays, 24/7 over weekends

Sync speed: 4096/1024

Attenuation (up/down): 330/200.

Tracing route to www.telkom.co.za [165.143.158.8]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 4 ms 4 ms 4 ms 10.0.0.2
2 84 ms 78 ms 74 ms 196-210-140-129.dynamic.isadsl.co.za [196.210.140.129]
3 61 ms 62 ms 63 ms cdsl1-rba-vl2153.ip.isnet.net [196.38.73.169]
4 81 ms 82 ms 84 ms cdsl1-rba-vl150.ip.isnet.net [196.38.73.17]
5 70 ms 63 ms 64 ms core1a-pkl-te-1-1.ip.isnet.net [196.26.0.60]
6 * 41 ms 42 ms 196.26.0.10
7 * 86 ms 84 ms rrba-ip-spe-2-wan.telkom-ipnet.co.za [196.25.127.181]
8 83 ms 87 ms 70 ms 196.43.25.137
9 86 ms 83 ms 74 ms nbsc-ip-er-1-pos-8-0-0.telkom-ipnet.co.za [196.43.25.58]

 

[Alwynz]

Hey guys, I live up against the hill behind the big Pick n Pay in Faerie Glen and I have been experiencing the most horrible pings the last two weeks. It's almost impossible to do anything on my internet - this happens only in peak times, and sometimes at night up until 10pm.

It happens with my telkom and afrihost accounts - I usually have great attenuation.

Line: 4mbit
Sync: 4096/516



I've been hearing complaints in the area as well - but nobody seems to post large latency issues here. Also at the exchange in petrick.

Pleochism, I assume then its a congested exchange issue - my issue is exactly what you described.

Here are my traceroutes at this very moment :

1 <1 ms <1 ms 1 ms BEZEQ [192.168.1.1]
2 858 ms 862 ms 1036 ms ti-224-60-01.telkomadsl.co.za [105.224.60.1]
3 1254 ms 1162 ms 1121 ms ti-228-0-06.telkomadsl.co.za [105.228.0.6]
4 1126 ms 963 ms 690 ms ti-228-0-13.telkomadsl.co.za [105.228.0.13]
5 805 ms 664 ms 773 ms rndf-ip-hsll-1-wan.telkom-ipnet.co.za [196.25.39
.41]
6 825 ms * 829 ms rrba-ip-lir-1-gig-3-0-0.telkom-ipnet.co.za [196.
43.11.134]
7 977 ms 845 ms 989 ms 196.43.25.138
8 1139 ms 866 ms 942 ms mtn-gw.telkom-ipnet.co.za [196.25.58.18]
9 1128 ms 1202 ms 1191 ms 41.181.139.108
10 * 815 ms 913 ms 196.44.31.97
11 1013 ms 1052 ms 878 ms 196.30.1.53
12 826 ms 951 ms * tengigabitethernet9-1.gw20.jnb6.za.mtnbusiness.n
et [196.31.220.25]
13 1289 ms 1463 ms 1322 ms tengigabitethernet5-2.hr16.jnb6.za.mtnbusiness.n
et [196.31.63.206]
14 1130 ms 1009 ms 1040 ms vlan9.ah-ha-2.za.mtnbusiness.net [196.30.42.133]

15 984 ms 796 ms 800 ms cms-gm.afrihost.com [197.242.144.102]

We just need to phone them and keep the pressure on them I guess

 

[waslap]

Must be living close to you (up the hill behind Pick-n-Pay bit to the east). I have the exact same problem. All went well for months until the last week or two. Literally get 5KB on 4MB line.

 

[Hemi300c]

Im on the other side of Hans Strijdom.
I have always had issue with reliability and speed.
Reduced from 10 down to 4 still didn't help.
Last two weeks been down for most of the time. But the last two days 6.3 but still .52 upload.
Also on the edge of LTE so screwed. Mtn also sucks running edge 90% of the time.

 

[adsl2]

I am in Garsfontein, connected to the Constantia park exchange. Getting a ridiculous ping most evenings and over weekends.

 

[deathburst]

Staying in Faerie Glen, weekdays after 5pm there is horrible congestion, been experiencing packet loss during that time as well as over weekends. Telkom technician come to our house and said it's congestion that we're experiencing and it will be fixed by June :<

 

[Alwynz]

Great - so we are paying a ridiculous amount of money for no service. Telkom gives everyone a speed upgrade but their exchanges doesn't cater for that. Management is completely and utterly incompetent. I ping 1200ms+ now regardless if its 5 in the afternoon or 2am in the morning.

Websites time out before they load - I am getting zero value for my money!

Buuuut whats new!

Edit : de-angered my post

 

[Pleochism]

JUNE? Holy crap, don't say that I can't continue with this for another 3 months.

 

[deathburst]

So for the past two weeks, congestion has started becoming a problem again. After 6 PM I will sit without at least 10% packet loss
and 400ms ping on local servers. Browsing, gaming, streaming is horrible and extremely frustrating. Messaged Afrihost and they said everything is fine, which leaves line problems.
Anyone experiencing similar speeds?

 

[jcheek]

Hey guys

For what it's worth, I had similar problems with my "4Mbps" uncapped service from MWeb. So much so that I've more or less ditched the service in favour of Telkom LTE now.

I'm now about 2.5km west of the Faerie Glen (Petrick Avenue, +27-12-991-xxxx) exchange. At that distance, and with the poor quality of copper that Telkom has in the area, 4Mbps is really borderline. At 4Mbps the line is very unstable, with high attenuation and virtually no noise margin.

Apart from that, even when the line did sync at 4Mbps, it seemed that the congestion/backhaul issues were such that Telkom/MWeb could not deliver data consistently at anything like 4Mbps, as the graph below shows :



In March/April 2014 I was experiencing an average data throughput performance of around 1.5Mbps, even when the line was synced at 4Mbps. So this was a backhaul/congestion issue, not a line issue. I've also never used more than about 50GB in a month, which is way below any throttling thresholds.

After several weeks of whinging to Mweb, they managed to improve the service for about a month (see improvement in late April / early May in the graph above), but thereafter it started to deteriorate again - unstable at 4Mbps and about 20 disconnects a day. Not cool.

The other problem was that the maximum possible downlink sync speed (based on measured attenuation and SNR on existing copper lines) was never better than about 4.5Mbps. So without a line upgrade, I had effectively reached my xDSL ceiling at a paltry 4Mbps. Forget about ADSL2+ or VDSL - same problem. 10/20/40Mbps xDSL ? What a laugh.
Telkom aren't particularly interested in upgrading the copper lines in the area, and MWeb don't seem to care much either way, so it was a case of voting with my feet.

I solved the problem by moving to fixed-wireless LTE service. It's not uncapped, but now I can routinely get 25-40Mbps download speeds with no particular effort. I still have my ADSL line as a failover backup, but I've downgraded to a 2Mbps service, which works fine. There are many LTE-capable towers in this area on all 3 major cell networks (Vodacom, MTN, Telkom Mobile).

I gather that Hemi300C might have done the same.

For anyone else suffering with cr*ppy ADSL performance, check out the Huawei B593 LTE thread and the Antenna installation and alignment thread for practical tips on how to make the switch.

Edit (Dec 2015) : I subsequently made the switch to optical fibre (Telkom line, WebAfrica as ISP) when FTTH became available in my block (May 2015). Installation was eventually commissioned (after a very long wait) on 12 Aug 2015. Now on a 40Mbps service and very happy so far.
I still have my LTE setup but only use it as a failover for the FTTH line now. It has come in handy once or twice, although generally the FTTH is very stable and consistent.

 

[User4456]

Hey wassup, I just moved to Faerie Glen behind the PnP Hyper. When I first moved in my net was mostly okay, but last 2 weeks I've been having severe packet loss. It's weird cause browsing and streaming is for the most part okay, but gaming is now impossible. Does anyone know the names and numbers of the techies that roam around Faerie Glen? Getting through to Telkom technical support line is now no longer a possibility.

 

[Fintan]

Hi Guys

I'm just following up to find out if you guys have had any success. I am currently sitting with the same issue. Here are my results for a 4Meg line:



traceroute to telkom.co.za (196.43.22.222), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets
1 196-210-140-129.dynamic.isadsl.co.za (196.210.140.129) 89.562 ms 102.577 ms 103.227 ms
2 cdsl1-rba-vl2153.ip.isnet.net (196.38.73.169) 141.224 ms 195.643 ms 203.869 ms
3 cdsl1-rba-vl150.ip.isnet.net (196.38.73.17) 235.895 ms 235.111 ms 307.793 ms
4 core1b-pkl-te0-0-0-0.ip.isnet.net (196.26.0.62) 336.153 ms 376.774 ms 344.715 ms
5 196.26.0.130 (196.26.0.130) 423.375 ms 531.953 ms 468.915 ms
6 rrba-ip-se-2-wan.telkom-ipnet.co.za (196.25.46.89) 556.145 ms 591.554 ms 582.346 ms
7 rrba-ip-lir-1-gig-0-0-0-102.telkom-ipnet.co.za (196.43.25.137) 627.764 ms 599.248 ms 559.364 ms
8 196.43.39.162 (196.43.39.162) 546.751 ms 675.709 ms 772.729 ms
9 rrba-ip-bssr-1-ge-2-48.telkom-ipnet.co.za (196.43.23.6) 879.871 ms 1018.527 ms 1080.382 ms
10 nbsc-ip-bssr-2-atm-5-0-0-1.telkom-ipnet.co.za (196.43.23.34) 1142.316 ms 1005.487 ms 798.839 ms
11 nbsc-ip-rcache-1-vif0.telkom-ipnet.co.za (196.43.22.222) 709.362 ms 737.480 ms 634.465 ms

I'm also interested to hear if the fibre roll out has fixed the problem, any of you guys get it yet?

Perhaps if we can coordinate with one another we can approach telkom as a group?

let me know.

 

[jcheek]

I'm just following up to find out if you guys have had any success. I am currently sitting with the same issue.

Hey Fintan!

Personally I've not had any need (or desire) to move back to "fast" xDSL since moving across to LTE as described here.
I still use my 2Mbps Telkom/MWeb DSL line only as a backup for LTE, and it still seems to deliver at around 1.5 to 1.8 Mbps. Meh.
LTE blows DSL into the dust, speed-wise. Way better solution IF you need speed rather than uncapped.

I'm also interested to hear if the fibre roll out has fixed the problem, any of you guys get it yet?

I'm just inside (the extreme border of!) of the FTTH rollout area in Faerie Glen and I'm waiting to jump onto the FTTH bandwagon as soon as it's offered commercially here.
When that happens, I plan to ditch the xDSL line and use FTTH as my primary connection. I still plan to keep Telkom LTE as a failover backup line, since I already have the infrastructure and it's prepaid data, ie pay-on-use only.

I don't know of anyone in the Pretoria East area who's actually got FTTH yet, though WebAfrica's rollout map shows some deployments around the Boardwalk Manor area. So far only MWeb is taking FTTH orders in Faerie Glen and it seems to me that the circuit isn't lit up yet, but it must be close.

If you haven't already found it, you can hopefully track the FTTH commissioning and growth phase in Faerie Glen in the Telkom FTTH in Pretoria thread.

 

[GammaZor]

Anyone in Fearie Glen having issues? Since last week my line is pretty much unusable again. 1900ms latency the whole day with 300kbps download...

 

[User4456]

Anyone in Fearie Glen having issues? Since last week my line is pretty much unusable again. 1900ms latency the whole day with 300kbps download...

Ask for a crystalweb trial account. Those guys know people at telkom that can sort anything out. People at the faerie glen exchange.

 

[Fintan]

You are not alone, I have been having issues since February this year. I have logged 8 faults this year and have still not reach any kind of a resolution. I recorded my ping to telkom.co.za over most of yesterday and it was rarely below 100ms and mostly between 500ms and 1000ms, at times up to 3500ms.

 

[User4456]

You are not alone, I have been having issues since February this year. I have logged 8 faults this year and have still not reach any kind of a resolution. I recorded my ping to telkom.co.za over most of yesterday and it was rarely below 100ms and mostly between 500ms and 1000ms, at times up to 3500ms.

Guys I'm telling you- stop logging faults with Telkom. Migrate your line and account over to CrystalWeb and let them fight Telkom on your behalf... these guys are your best chance at getting issues resolved. But it's your choice in the end what course of action to take.

 

[Fintan]

Guys I'm telling you- stop logging faults with Telkom. Migrate your line and account over to CrystalWeb and let them fight Telkom on your behalf... these guys are your best chance at getting issues resolved. But it's your choice in the end what course of action to take.

Hi Alexcon, I have already signed up for a trial crystalweb account based on your advice. I Will plug in the details tonight and record some stats and then contact crystal web to see if they can assist. Are you currently with crystalweb?