Getting ripped off by your ISP?

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booboookitty

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Like me, I bet you are. I paid for uncapped internet from Internet Solutions (which I get through the reseller 'Milltech IT') and I don't even have enough bandwidth to conduct a speed test on speedtest.net

How can this possibly be right? I paid for internet that won't run out and instead I get internet that won't even start!!

When I'm looking at images on facebook it takes between 2 and 10 minutes to load each image. What the hell IS? What seems to take even longer than that is getting a response from my ISP (both milltech and IS)

How are you getting away with this? Who else is having a similar experience?

Man, I was more comfortable on the internet with 56k dial-up
 
So if I surf at night between 11pm and 5am (when speed is reasonable but still notas good as dial-up) they throttle my speed during the day? Has IS ever explained exactly how the throttling/shaping works?
 
booboookittyfukk said:
Like me, I bet you are. I paid for uncapped internet from Internet Solutions (which I get through the reseller 'Milltech IT') and I don't even have enough bandwidth to conduct a speed test on speedtest.net
Click to expand...

Milltech IT? Who the heck is that? :wtf:

1280871001.png


Courtesy of OpenWeb 4MB Gold Uncapped via the Altech backbone :)
 
I think this whole website was created to share the frustration with you and the hard working, easily ripped off South African consumer....well at least thats what its original intention was
 
Isn't IS Express Uncapped throttled to 384kbps during the day?
 
@lycanthrope

It doesn't matter who Milltech is, because I'm getting internet from IS - unless resellers can control throttling/shaping?
 
booboookittyfukk said:
@lycanthrope

It doesn't matter who Milltech is, because I'm getting internet from IS - unless resellers can control throttling/shaping?
Click to expand...

If you say so. An unknown ISP already sets off alarms. And I believe that certain IS packages can, indeed, be throttled/shaped by reseller ISPs, but I've no idea which ones those are, only what I've heard through the grapevine.

Regardless, if your issues are persistent independent of ISP/backbone then it's more than likely a fault on your side.
 
Lycanthrope said:
If you say so. An unknown ISP already sets off alarms. And I believe that certain IS packages can, indeed, be throttled/shaped by reseller ISPs, but I've no idea which ones those are, only what I've heard through the grapevine.

Regardless, if your issues are persistent independent of ISP/backbone then it's more than likely a fault on your side.
Click to expand...

Milltech is a small business known to the family, that we like to support. How can I find out if my issues are independent of my ISP? I'd like to get some hard information before I accuse Milltech of making my service unusable. Like, for instance, what is the slowest possible speed that IS offers? Surely it isnt 0?
 
booboookittyfukk said:
Milltech is a small business known to the family, that we like to support. How can I find out if my issues are independent of my ISP? I'd like to get some hard information before I accuse Milltech of making my service unusable. Like, for instance, what is the slowest possible speed that IS offers? Surely it isnt 0?
Click to expand...

Do you know what IS package you're using? Generally, it's never supposed to be as bad as you're experiencing. I'd suggest you check your router statistics and see what your Attenuation/Noise Margin and sync speed are at.

Also, one way of comparing is, go to ftp://196.43.1.13/ in your browser and download the 64MB testfile (64Meg-test.file). Monitor what the download speed is in your browser as per usual. Then, in your router, log into the Telkom guest account:
Username: guest1@telkomadsl
Password: guest1

And do it again for a few minutes and compare the download speeds.

The FTP server is Telkom's :)
 
booboookitty said:
Milltech is a small business known to the family, that we like to support. How can I find out if my issues are independent of my ISP? I'd like to get some hard information before I accuse Milltech of making my service unusable. Like, for instance, what is the slowest possible speed that IS offers? Surely it isnt 0?
Click to expand...

Why don't ypu take it up with th ISP?
 
OP here (somehow my bbkf account is unavailable - have I been banned already?)

I just got off the phone with Milltech - according to them I've got 1 star with IS which means I shouldn't be expecting anything better than 10kbit/s. I told them I'd be thrilled to get a speed that fast, but I'm not. I gave them my 30day notice (hopefully the last 4 days are negligible) because if that's all they can offer me, I don't want it.

So which ISP should I contact? Preferably a low-priced, uncapped solution that will let me check my email and browse the internet on the same day
 
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Axxess posted an alert yesterday afternoon that IS were having packet loss problems, which was true. It was virtually impossible to have a skype conversation. Fortunately it cleared up later on.

fwiw, I have the 4mb uncapped from axxess, but I have cancelled, as I am not happy about the 50% bracket, because I always seem to be getting the short end of the stick regardless of how much I do or don't download. It pisses me off that I can't properly look at youtube videos because they don't download 90% of the time. LOTRO keeps trying to update and fails, etc etc. This account is more cramp than it's worth. Going to switch to openweb gold uncapped next month. Yes, it's more expensive, but I'm willing to pay that bit extra. I'm certainly not willing to fork out several thousand for axxess's next level up package. Screw that.
 
Your usage is measured against your peers within the same bandwidth-size pool (i.e. 384,512, 4096).

So if you use your bandwidth steadily and don't try abuse the network, you should be fine. If you

abuse the service and max out your line for hours at a time, the priority on your account lessens.

You're given a star-rating, much like a hotel rating of between 1 and 5 stars. A 5-star rating has a

higher priority over a 4,3,2 and 1 star account, so when there's congestion, 5 stars will have a better

experience. If there's no congestion (mostly after hours), even a 1-star account can have a good

experience. This is because the network is designed to make all available bandwidth accessible to its

users. The star rating is determined by your usage over the last 10 days compared to the global

usage over the last 10 days for that same bandwidth pool. If your usage goes above the thresholds

set (384/512 = 20%, 4096 = %50), you lose stars according to how far over the threshold you went.”
 
A complicated system that fails because limited bandwidth is made available. A 384k user will get around 8 gigs on an uncapped account at max speed, which is quite expensive if you think about it.
 
sillybillieswithwillies said:
OP here (somehow my bbkf account is unavailable - have I been banned already?)

I just got off the phone with Milltech - according to them I've got 1 star with IS which means I shouldn't be expecting anything better than 10kbit/s. I told them I'd be thrilled to get a speed that fast, but I'm not. I gave them my 30day notice (hopefully the last 4 days are negligible) because if that's all they can offer me, I don't want it.

So which ISP should I contact? Preferably a low-priced, uncapped solution that will let me check my email and browse the internet on the same day
Click to expand...

Mweb.
 
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