Iburst speed waning

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nocilah

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I have been observing over the past couple of weeks Iburst's speed waning.

When I first got Iburst I used to get 120KB/s speed test on Telkom's site... obviously this would vary and would be determiend by times but on average 100KB/s.

Then as time went by and more people subscribed so the speed was slowly being eaten away by signed on users. I then would on average get around 70-80KB/s

Well in the last three weeks average speed has dropped to +/- 50KB/s.

If any WBS staffers or management read this please note I do have a bandwidth meter application and can detect any wiff of spyware/malware.

I perform speed tests usually 6pm, then again at about 11pm and at times early in the morning, 2am - 4am.

This hasn't been an overnight degradation and there are some days where I do see 100KB speeds happening, but overall iburst speed has been degrading.

Conclusion. Has WBS got measures in place to ensure they don't land up like Sentech where they advertise 1Mb, but in reality are offering 512K?

I would like for any WBS representative to let us 'Ibursters' know if they are going to upgrade bw in the next couple of months.

thanks.
 
Well WBS pay nothing extra to sign up new customers, its not like they allocate more bandwidth everytime a user signs up so that everyone gets their 1mb that they pay for. So they should have pure profit rolling in from new members by now, therefore shurley they can afford a bandwidth upgrade.

I have also seen this speed drop in Cape Town, I know two people personally who connected to my tower since i got Iburst, so there must be tons of people coming onto all the towers all the time. Speed should just be getting worse and worse over time, unless they roll out new towers to get a more even spread across the towers or just buy more bandwidth.
 
They have been rolling out new towers frequently over the past two weeks.

However we should expect degradation rather than faster speeds as I feel that the number of new clients far outweigh the number of new towers coming on line.

According to a well placed source we can expect more towers to be going up over the next few months as they expand their coverage area. Let's hope that this bodes well for all iBurst users.
 
From what a remember, WBS have an open account with UUNET.
This is according to a couple guys I've spoken to at UUNET.
WBS do not buy a fixed amount of bandwidth every month. They pay a per meg charge which is open ended.

The bottleneck is the peering link / leased line (?) they have to UUNET that everyone shares. I'm sure they have upgraded this a couple times already.

"Well WBS pay nothing extra to sign up new customers, its not like they allocate more bandwidth everytime a user signs up so that everyone gets their 1mb that they pay for. So they should have pure profit rolling in from new members by now, therefore shurley they can afford a bandwidth upgrade."

They pay for the extra bandwidth those people will use. And they have to upgrade a line when it hits saturation....
 
Okay.. right I thaught they bought a specified amount from UUNET, thats what I heard on one of these threads somewhere. Anyway, then it shouldn't be too hard for them to upgrade the peering link.

My problem with the towers is that they haven't put any new ones up in CPT besides Table View in a year or more.

Oh and I doubt any WBS officials are going to reply to this.
 
WBS dont guarantee 1mbit speeds so basically you can moan as much as you want they'll just give you an explanation stating that the maximum capability is 1mbit but they dont guarantee those speeds to any subscriber.
 
Slicky said:
WBS dont guarantee 1mbit speeds so basically you can moan as much as you want they'll just give you an explanation stating that the maximum capability is 1mbit but they dont guarantee those speeds to any subscriber.
Click to expand...

I see.

And in the past when we did 'moan' and they fixed it?
 
WBS is oversubscribed and the fact is they keep on signing people up with insufficient bandwidth instead of trying to fix the current speed issues they tend to ignore it.
 
Slicky said:
WBS is oversubscribed and the fact is they keep on signing people up with insufficient bandwidth instead of trying to fix the current speed issues they tend to ignore it.
Click to expand...

I see.

they bought capcity twice last year. what makes you think they won't this year? besides your hearsay.
 
Has that extra capacity helped? You even stated yourself that the speed has slowly been declining. Iburst is good technology, but the fact remains that WBS is totally screwing it up with shaping and insufficient bandwidth.
 
Slicky said:
Has that extra capacity helped? You even stated yourself that the speed has slowly been declining. Iburst is good technology, but the fact remains that WBS is totally screwing it up with shaping and insufficient bandwidth.
Click to expand...

shaping has always been part of WBS. nothing new there.

no. WBS are not screwing anything up... if you have used SENTECH then you will know what screwing everything up is about.

yes. speeds have been declining over the past 5 months. (thats because they haven't bought any bw capcity of late). hence my request.

so once again thanks for input, but i think you have exhuasted my ability to read more of your ignorant disinformation.
 
Afaik WBS added 155mbs of satellite bandwidth to their alloted international round about November last year. Would really surprise me if they are using this to capacity. It might be that your tower is over subscribed, rather than bandwidth intl bandwidth shortage. To check this, just download the drivers off the iburst website. If you don't get 100kb/s then you have to complain that your tower is slow. If not, well then I guess WBS will have to purchase more capacity .
 
I think it might be a tower issue because we have had sever storms in this area and i am assuming one of three things could be occuring:

saturation on the tower

landscape has changed therefore interfering with my LOS

tower needs a maintenance check.

either way i will call one of the techinicians and get them too look into.

I get about 80-90KB/s direct from iBurst.
 
Good luck with that. I remember countless hours trying to get someone to fix northcliff tower. imo they should just pull it down and put it somewhere else. The planning division didn't do a very good job with that one, but then again seeing as it was like number 2 to go up, there wasn't much planning at the time :p. 80-90K is rather pathetic for a Sunday. Hate to see what speeds you get at 9am Monday morning ;). Again, good luck with getting a techie out!
 
i dont use iburst during the day as i just use it at home so i am not concerned about performance during the day.

i have luis come twice to sort out issues and both times were very succesful. its not what u know but who you know :D and lets not forget which high powerd execs use the same iburst tower i do ;) which helps loads.
 
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