Interesting ADSL offer

[thewanted_]

Can anyone shed some light on this? How does it work? Is it worth the extra money?

http://www.eastcoast.co.za/adsl/matrix.html

 

[Chubs]

I mailed them yesterday and this is the reponse. Seems like a waste:

QUOTE:
<i>
Once you have an ADSL connection (from any provider), we can provide a
diginet level bandwidth option to layer on that.

Essentially your traffic is routed through to our network, and from here we
route it over the Internet. The bandwidth we provide is dependent on what
you purchase - we charge R2850 (Vat incl) per 128kb/s per month.

This gives you 128kb/s (guaranteed @ 16kb/s) local and international, no
traffic cap and a fixed IP for use in mail/web/etc servers

Regards, </i>

 

[thewanted_]

R2850 for 128kbit/sec? Thats a very good offer. I know 128kbit diginet runs well over R10000 a month. The point still stands though, we should not have to resort to this!!

Bring on Sentech Wi-Fi.

 

[Vie]

The way I would guess that they achieve this, is by using a VPN. I was testing this for a friend of mine. You create a VPN Dialup Networking connection to a specified host with a username and password, and then all traffic from your machine gets routed directly to them, and they in turn reroute the traffic out through the internet.

I can safely say that the VPN solution does work. Heck, I even did it from behind NAT using the Telkom supplied Marconi Ethernet Router POTS.

One of the other nice features of this, is that you can selectively turn the connection on or off by literally double clicking on the connection, and then disconnecting it as you would a regular dialup account.

What I would be concerned about, is their bandwidth prioritisation that they seem to be using. I'm not entirely sure of the mechanics of how VPN's actually work, but I guess its a regular TCP/IP connection out to a specific host that runs on a designated port. Now, wouldn't this be affected too?

 

[ASnogarD]

AFAIK:

Basically you would use your ADSL to connect to ECA's server which would act as a proxy fetching what internet related traffic you wanted. From your house till the ECA's server, you will still be effected by Telkoms network shaping, however since it is local you would not be effected by Telkoms cap, <b>BUT</b> ECA has probably got its own cap for users on its <u>basic</u> ADSL over Diginet offer 3 gigs. I can't see how they can garentee any rate because you will still be effected by Telkoms ADSL network to and from the ECA server.

Anyways the lot above is merely as I see it and not a experts opinion either

EDIT: oops, good lesson..read carefully before you post I edited the ISDN over ASDL to read ASDL over Diginet..sorry guys

 

[thewanted_]

You make a good point. Unless they've found a way to put the VPN on port 80 or 21 or something with high priority? I don't know much about VPN's so I won't speculate any further!

 

[Vie]

ASnogarD - Thanks... I wasn't really all that clued up on how the network shaping works exactly, but you cleared up that point nicely.

 

[odge]

As far as I can tell:

Traffic shaping, on local traffic... there is none... nothing at all, all ports are equal, port prioritization only starts once you cross any peering points or intl points.

 

[ASnogarD]

I think there is network shaping locally, I tried to play a game online locally and the lag made the game unplayable, but my local surfing was not effected.

diff in latency : @ 2:15 pm Fri 1 Latency @ SGS Dashur server av 240
diff in latency : @ 7:25 pm Fri 1 Latency @ SGS Dashur server av 40

Can anyone confirm if the shaping is local and int. or just int. ?


<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by odge</i>
<br />As far as I can tell:

Traffic shaping, on local traffic... there is none... nothing at all, all ports are equal, port prioritization only starts once you cross any peering points or intl points.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">