iBurst defends shaping policies

[rpm]

http://mybroadband.co.za/news/Wireless/1171.html

 

[Cara]

Readers and contributors to the online IT media, in particular, would have noticed that iBurst has recently come under fire for its bandwidth shaping policies

Hmmm ... I wonder who that could be?

 

[Perdition]

"What do I mean by the latter statement? I mean that the reason iBurst was required to implement bandwidth shaping was because a small minority of iBurst subscribers had historically and perhaps inadvertently monopolized network resources by consuming an astonishing amount of iBurst’s available bandwidth."

I call complete and utter bullsh!t on this. Unless these users have unlimited bandwidth, they paid for their alloted usage like everyone else on the network. iBurst are just too cheap to upgrade their backbone.

"Shaping is about acknowledging that Internet traffic is like any other traffic. Different kinds of vehicles represent the various protocols such as VoIP, email, web browsing and peer-to-peer file sharing. In order for all traffic to reach their destinations quickly, Internet Service Providers like iBurst are compelled to police the information superhighway to ensure certain vehicles do not unfairly prevent other vehicles from reaching their destination. There is nothing sinister about shaping and the only reason it exists is to ensure that fairness prevails in cyberspace."

The old "the internet is a series of tubes" argument... Ted Stevens would be proud.

 

[DraK]

WOW!!

We hear fom iBurst! Defending there actions, or is it just another way of trying to get some publicity and good PR...

Everything is so badly shaped FTP hardly works and if so at 6kbps... VPN's don't connect.. And these are business related protocols..
Mail has even slowed down...

Thought people paid for there cap... why are they now limited to what they can do with that cap... Did iBurst reduce pricing when they removed a part of the service? No...

So glad i am leaving this joke of a "service provider" soon

 

[LandyMan]

Internet Service Providers like iBurst are compelled to police the information superhighway

So they police it by turning it into a badly scraped gravel road!

 

[Perdition]

So they police it by turning it into a badly scraped gravel road!

The information superslowway

 

[voipnow]

I not that they do not give detail on if they are giving QoS to Voip calls. Is there any one who can get good quality over iBurst.

 

[DblD]

Form all the statements that are coming out of Telkom, Sentech, iBursts and the likes, seems like it is expected of the user to not connect at all!
And ones that use the service that is dully paid for at premium and in advance are branded "rouge power users" which are "deteriorating networks avalibility".

This begs a question, how much broadband connection is there given the price we pay for it?

Are we expected to use broadband networks 5 minutes a day? preferably when there is noone else on and for retrieving of email headers only!!!!

If one pays almost $100 a month for broadband service isn't it reasonable to expect to be able to use it at least 40% of time a day at 80% of the speed?

Data is data, it should not matter what protocols one uses or for what purpose.


Frankly we should be able to use it 99.9988% of time at 99.9988% of speed at the proices we pay for!!!!!

 

[voipnow]

What is the address of the ant-iburst site.

 

[rwenzori]

What a lot of claptrap! This Antony McKechnie pawpaw must have been to the Lulu school of PR bullshirt!

 

[magneto]

What is the address of the ant-iburst site.

personal they just sound like telkom.
www.hellburst.co.za i think it is...

think iburst should call themselfs crapBurst instead...
100% signal
speed = slower than a f-ing dialup modem.

thats y any of our clients asks for iburst for wireless internet. i tell them not 2 go 4 them, but rather get a 3G from vodacom if they really want wireless internet..
as for fault resolutions thats even worse on there part..

 

[ic]

Readers and contributors to the online IT media, in particular, would have noticed that iBurst has recently come under fire for its bandwidth shaping policies

Hmmm ... I wonder who that could be?

I know I'm regularly very critical about iBurst's shaping policies, in the same way that I hate shaping on Telkodemonopolies-ADSL-SAIX, but apart from this post, I don't recall recently having made an issue of iBurst's draconian bandwidth shaping - at least not within the last 2 weeks - maybe iBurst has only just gotten around to reading all the anti-shaping posts about iBurst on MyBroadband and that's why Antony McKechnie @ iBurst writes that it's it 'recent' - whereas iBurst's draconian shaping has always been fairly criticised with the maximum amount of harshness that this policy deserves...

PS: I forgot to mention that what Antony McKechnie wrote in that iBurst press release is such a load of twoddle [there are infinitely many less-polite terms I could use] - I have issues with just about every sentence he wrote.

 

[ShaunSA]

A load of twoddle? you are so polite ic

 

[Cara]

I know I'm regularly very critical about iBurst's shaping policies, in the same way that I hate shaping on Telkodemonopolies-ADSL-SAIX, but apart from this post, I don't recall recently having made an issue of iBurst's draconian bandwidth shaping - at least not within the last 2 weeks - maybe iBurst has only just gotten around to reading all the anti-shaping posts about iBurst on MyBroadband and that's why Antony McKechnie @ iBurst writes that it's it 'recent' - whereas iBurst's draconian shaping has always been fairly criticised with the maximum amount of harshness that this policy deserves...

PS: I forgot to mention that what Antony McKechnie wrote in that iBurst press release is such a load of twoddle [there are infinitely many less-polite terms I could use] - I have issues with just about every sentence he wrote.

ic I would never dream of accusing you of this heinous crime .

Whilst I'm not an iBurst user I don't think they have a right to tell their subscribers how to use their 3G's ... by giving a 3G cap they are already managing their network ... no need to shape the hell out of it.

 

[ebudae]

Readers and contributors to the online IT media, in particular, would have noticed that iBurst has recently come under fire for its bandwidth shaping policies. Three aspects of this criticism have stood out. The first is that the criticism has been unusually harsh. The second is that it has not come from a broad spectrum of iBurst subscribers. The third is that the first two points are related.

I have seen this comment made by everyone from Telkom to IBurst. It seems South African internet users are expected to nothing more than check email and maybe browse a few static pages.Why bother with broadband if that's all you want to do? If I pay for 1Gig of data and a high speed, I expect to be able to use that 1Gig at high speed.

I don't understand IBurst's argument. How can you abuse a service that has a data cap? If there is not enough bandwidth to go around, then that is a problem with IBurst and not its users.

Also the statement that a limited number of users complained may be based more around the fact that not everyone makes use of data intensive applications, rather than not everyone feels that this is not an issue. I am certain that if all users were having their internet activities stiffled, all users would complain.

 

[ic]

ic I would never dream of accusing you of this heinous crime .

Whilst I'm not an iBurst user I don't think they have a right to tell their subscribers how to use their 3G's ... by giving a 3G cap they are already managing their network ... no need to shape the hell out of it.

LOL, didn't mean to imply that you might be referring to me as the source of iBurst's anti-shaping criticism, IMO there are large numbers of both ex-iBurst and current-iBurst customers that have the same collective anti-shaping opinions. Actually come to think of it, I wouldn't mind being accused of this heinous crime - from iBurst's POV .

Also, I agree that whilst there is a bitcap, there is absolutely no reason for bandwidth shaping, but it goes further than that:

iBurst promises speeds of up to 1024kbits/s in combination with bitcaps of various sizes [corresponding to available packages of different data bundle sizes], so technically the only reason why there would be a shortage of available network resources, is that iBurst does not have sufficient backbone bandwidth to actually supply its customers with a reasonable amount of bandwidth that even vaguely corresponds to the 'up to 1024kbits/s' promise.

<edited>

Instead of actually admitting this fact, and getting Telkodemonopolies to upgrade iBurst's backbone bandwidth, iBurst chooses to shape available bandwidth to death to the point where iBurst only allows unlicensed taxis [mostly html & internal smtp & pop3] <edit>with near zero passengers</edit> to travel on iBurst's roads, whereas most other vehicles [IP protocols] are pulled over by the iBurst Police and fined and have a huge wrecking-ball & chain attached to their bumper to slow them down and prevent them from reaching their destination at the same speed and time as the unlicensed taxis are allowed to - the iBurst Way.​

</edited>

 

[KampfGherkin]

Instead of actually admitting this fact, and getting Telkodemonopolies to upgrade iBurst's backbone bandwidth, iBurst chooses to shape available bandwidth to death to the point where iBurst only allows unlicensed taxis

 to travel on iBurst's roads, whereas most other vehicles [IP protocols] are pulled over by the iBurst Police and fined and have a large ball & chain attached to their bumper to slow them down and prevent them from reaching their destination at the same speed and time as the unlicensed taxis are allowed to - the iBurst Way.[/QUOTE]

LOL! Nicely put.

Yeah, bandwidth abuse is a corporate espoused myth in the context of our bitcapped society. Granted, shaping bandwidth is occuring all over the world but is still nowhere as ridiculous as in this country. If we all had uncapped volumes of data every month, there might be something to it. Otherwise, if I pay for a gig, then it's a gig that I should be able to use as I please. This goes for SAIX too.

Damn turd monkeys!

 

[rehd]

If they say that there is only a small amount of users that are using the majority of their resources, then why do they penalise everybody? Its like saying well we know 3 children in the close took 45 min lunch instead of 30 mins so now everybogy get 15 min lunch instead..

Firstly it tells me that senior management has a problem, secondly it further tells me senior management cant sort out problems. Thirdly it expressed their lack of action to resolve the problem and lay the blame at the general publics feet, and all the hard working consumers that are doing their best to earn their (weak) rand and pay for a service that they are fully entitled too. Shame on the senior management for not sorting out a "lunch break "problem

Good thing I dont use or advise my clients to use iBurst, it may be for this very reason...

 

[Slooth]

With the South African norm of capping, shaping is rather moot. What's the point in shaping a users 1-3gig experience?

 

[ejbengine]

I'm sorry but this is such k a k ! If India can provide a minimum connectivity of 1M unshaped , uncapped for an equivalence of R350/mon , then IBurst's actions are (just like many a provider here in SA) driven by excessive and insatiable greed.How much money is enough money?
The idea here is to shaft us in the rear as much as they can because the choices are limited!

For what its worth , I for one have absolute disgust for such type of spin.It's embarrassing for an official to go public in an effort to justify such a condemnable act.First they cap us , then next the shaping.So what's in store?