Fastest ISP in SA?

MraL

Well-Known Member
Joined
Oct 18, 2005
Messages
157
Reaction score
7
Location
Cape Town
I'm feeling out of touch with MyBroadband forums... does anyone here know who the fastest ISP in SA is?

Which has the fastest international / local interconnections / backbone to the Internet?
 
I'm feeling out of touch with MyBroadband forums... does anyone here know who the fastest ISP in SA is?

Which has the fastest international / local interconnections / backbone to the Internet?

The biggest bottleneck is not their international links, it's the local loop from your house to the exchange, and from the exchange to the ISP, which is all controlled by Telkom. All the ISP's are at Telkom's mercy, at least as far as ADSL is concerned.
 
The biggest bottleneck is not their international links, it's the local loop from your house to the exchange, and from the exchange to the ISP, which is all controlled by Telkom. All the ISP's are at Telkom's mercy, at least as far as ADSL is concerned.

In terms of ADSL but other means like FTTH is another story
 
I found peeringdb.com recently.

https://beta.peeringdb.com/net/3809 (<<< cybersmart example)

Fastest will probably one of the smaller, niche providers on FTTH with the fewest downstream customers and the fastest peering. Lightspeed/Cybersmart, Cool Ideas etc ?
 
thanks Kuberkoos - close but no cigar :) see my post earlier for the netindex...
 
In that Netindex explorer view for SA "Top-ISPs" list, Cool Ideas shows up 3rd. Behind Northwest Uni and "vanilla" which I take means unknown/other.

Nice link.
 
Last edited:
This all means nothing.

Oh really? I do acknowledge that the data they have per city is based on Telkom data but the ISP speeds are based on all speedtests >5million so you may need to backup when you say it means nothing....
 
Oh really? I do acknowledge that the data they have per city is based on Telkom data but the ISP speeds are based on all speedtests >5million so you may need to backup when you say it means nothing....

It's a peak rating, says nothing about consistency and/or bandwidth quality. In any event, ISPs prioritise Speedtest in order to trick consumers.
 
It's a peak rating, says nothing about consistency and/or bandwidth quality. In any event, ISPs prioritise Speedtest in order to trick consumers.

Oh dear, I fear that you are mistaken. If you read the page it states - just above the ISP names - not peak but average. Whilst you know each speedtest server is managed by a different ISP, and each ISP has different packages, then you must know that you are testing the speeds to that ISP only... if you are connecting to another ISP server there are two speeds you are checking - yours and the other ISP. It may not reflect the different links outwardly although I think that your comment that it means nothing should be retracted... it means the average speed from the client to the network is just what is indicated...
 
Vanilla = http://vanilla.co.za seriously the fastest ISP in Africa :)

Hmmm. Someone at their offices must be hitting Speedtest.net hard. On a FTTB pipe. ;) Their website advertises products up to 15Mbit. I'm interested to find out how they get an "average" that high.

I take the results for small ISPs with a bag of salt.

(That said I'm giving CISP a try as soon as my fibre lands.)
 
Last edited:
Hmmm. Someone at their offices must be hitting Speedtest.net hard. On a FTTB pipe. ;) Their website advertises products up to 15Mbit. I'm interested to find out how they get an "average" that high.

I take the results for small ISPs with a bag of salt.

(That said I'm giving CISP a try as soon as my fibre lands.)

Vanilla do only Gbps fibre connections (sold by word of mouth), and if you have a look at their fixed wireless they have 100's of customers with over 100Mbps connections all around the City of Cape Town... Where are you? Maybe we can do better than you are expecting to try out?
 
Oh dear, I fear that you are mistaken. If you read the page it states - just above the ISP names - not peak but average. Whilst you know each speedtest server is managed by a different ISP, and each ISP has different packages, then you must know that you are testing the speeds to that ISP only... if you are connecting to another ISP server there are two speeds you are checking - yours and the other ISP. It may not reflect the different links outwardly although I think that your comment that it means nothing should be retracted... it means the average speed from the client to the network is just what is indicated...

I just hope you're smart enough to not base your ISP decision on Speedtest results (if that's what you're wanting to do).
 
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X