Is this what I'm paying for?

W

WB2007

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I don't intend on trolling on this forum. I visit this forum on a daily basis for the past couple of months trying to keep up with the random DSL meanderings, and today I finally registered almost unwillingly so I can just vent my frustration.

I finally took the plunge and ordered my DSL4MB last week, I had DSL512K prior for about 8 months. Early one morning for the first time in months I noticed my router was blinking, and true enough I couldn't connect for the most part of the morning until I received a call from Telkom informing that my 4MB line is now active. Later that day I connected and immediately did a few diagnostics and speed tests, I was relatively happy as various speed tests and downloads reported a down rate of approximately 2Mbps - 3.5Mbps.

I was fully content with the new speed, realising that your line must be something really special to do the advertised 4Mbps. But since yesterday (10th Sept.) afternoon something went horribly wrong? Yesterday as well as earlier this evening I noticed the connection dropped with the router lights blinking. I have both a shaped 20GB SAIX-based account and an unshaped IS based account, both of which now behave like a standard DSL512K connection!

I hardly hit rates of up to 55kb/sec from numerous different locations, peer-to-peer, fileplanet subscriber, etc. I'm on the East Rand and the only noticeable issue reported was at the Klerksdorp Edge Router, and this is now 'resolved'?

I sure as **** signed up for it, but is this what I'm paying for? Does anyone know if there is problem in the greater Johannesburg area, or do I have to call these people tomorrow and ask them to do another line test?

Not a single night goes by without some weird midnight hour resets and slowdowns occurring. Only one expression comes to mind: WTF is going on!

Thx
 
I only have 384k, i mainly use it for gaming and i notice that sometimes ill time out then my ping will jump to double what it is normally. I just phone telkom everytime and moan about it saying that im paying for 384 and im getting this slow crap, etc... They then give me a reference number and say that they will call me back. They havent called me back once but they seem to fix it within a day or two.

It seems like sometimes when they reset they forget to flick some switches or something and the speeds arnt what they are meant to be. Im not really sure if my experiances are relevent here but if i was payign for 4mb id sure as hell want it as fast as possible.

have u tried called the ADSL help line? 0800 375 375
 
I fully agree with WB2007.

The 4Mb ADSL line is a joke of enormous proportions. I have it for just over a year now and have noticed a trend of steadily decreasing speeds. You can consider yourself very lucky if you get local speeds of anything above 2.5Mb/s and internationally the speed never even reaches that of a 512Kb/s line. This means you can forget about watching streaming video or listening to online radio without it buffering every 5 seconds.

I have recently began running frequent speed tests at various times of the day/night to get some sort of a baseline of the line's performance and I can tell you that even at 2am the picture doesn't get rosier.

So now, when I report this to Telkom, they will try and blameshift the problem onto my computer or line going to the exchange, but they have no foot to stand on there. I am 100% sure NOTHING on my pc is causing the line to slow down,and I live within 1km of the exchange with brand new telephone lines connecting to it.

"Up to 4Mb?" NO WAY TELKOM!
 
On saix on torrents with lots of peers.. like an invite only site.. my line hits 400K easy.. but i notice it doesn't download from a peer faster than 55Kb/s
 
It seems I rarely get full download speed if it's not multi-threaded with about 10 simultaneous connections going.
 
Totally agree with Bwana here. Only way is to multi-thread a download to max a connection. I had the same issue with Iburst you could only max it out if you used something like the 'Free Download Manager'.

I don't know why its like this, I remember asking Iburst about it and they said they don't allow you to max out a connection by just loading web pages. It would cripple their network probably. Read into that anyway you like because I don't know if true.

Streaming live events goes well for me since Realplayer adapts to your line speed at any given time. But anything thats pre-recorded and plays faster than it can download (most stuff on You Tube) can be an awful experience on my 4 meg line.

I've heard Firefox may have some settings that allow you to configure multi threading without going out of your way. Some one in the know please hel answer that.
 
You guys are right of course, but I am sure you must agree that we are not getting what we pay for. If you only get anything near this speed when you are doing multi-threaded file downloads, what good is it then? Most online videos are in .flv format which you cannot download in a straight forward fashion, so we cannot for example enjoy all the madness going on in YouTube.
 
Khyron said:
Most online videos are in .flv format which you cannot download in a straight forward fashion, so we cannot for example enjoy all the madness going on in YouTube.
Click to expand...

that reminds me, anyone know of a good *.flv player for windows or ubuntu? I've got some stuff I've saved from youtube... VLC plays it, but you cannot ffwd into the video, you have to watch it from the beginning... :o
 
NaZKuL said:
that reminds me, anyone know of a good *.flv player for windows or ubuntu? I've got some stuff I've saved from youtube... VLC plays it, but you cannot ffwd into the video, you have to watch it from the beginning... :o
Click to expand...

This one works quite nicely:

http://www.gomplayer.com/main.html

If I remember correctly, the first time you try and play a .flv file with it, it will tell you it must first connect to the web to download the codec. After that is done, all should be well.
 
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