IS vs SAIX and speed issues

[Fulton17]

I would really value some feedback and comment on issues relating to speeds that I have now encountered over the last few weeks. I am Durban based, 384K.

I have a primary ISP who is an IS reseller, and I have a secondary ISP who is SIAX based. The reason for this was that when I had problems with my IS ISP I had a back up. Initially it was not speed related, but reliability issues with IS having dead times. When connected, performance for both was on a par.

Over the last few weeks I have seen a real decline in IS speeds. I listen a lot to Internet radio and one station would start at 21 kbps, drop to 16kbps after a short while and sometimes down to 11 kbps. Change from IS to SIAX and the station would remain at 21 kbps. Go back to IS and from 21 down to 16 in a short time.

A few days ago I was downloading an upgrade and was - at best - getting 7.5 on IS (I use net limiter so it gives me a very graphic picture of what is going on). Changed to SIAX and the whole download was at 39 kbps constant.

I know some folk on this forum have made comments that they have found similar declines in speeds.

Have spoken to my primary ISP about the matter and have not had much feedback bar to say that Telkom had a whole lot of lines down and hence the problem. I am waiting for more detailed feedback as they say they have logged the matter with IS.

Can anyone shed light on this matter? Will it just be the usual situation were everyone blames everyone else and nothing changes or is there light at the end of the tunnel?

Maybe I need to make the SIAX ISP my primary ISP, but I do not want to support Hellkom unless I really have to, but then also feel with the high prices we pay, at least I should get a decent connection.

Thanks for your thoughts and wisdom!!

 

[zippy]

Its sad when you have to have 2 ISP's to ensure you stay connected. When take into account that you are already being overcharged for your ADSL, and now you have to pay subs for 2, you have to ask yourself the question "wtf ???"

On IS vs SAIX debate : The one is as bad as the other, mostly at different timers. I use SAIX at home and we use IS at work. At work we get lots of DNS errors and performance is..well.. performance is the wrong word it so crappy. Even on websites like CNN, Google and Oracle. The response times in the day can be so bad, that the pages do not refresh for 5 minutes. I dont know about SAIX during the day, but at night when i'm gaming its not too bad.

 

[QLD]

Well I have found the same here, I am very anti Telkom as they are maybe the reason why IS is so k.a.k , But I also find IS has got more and more problems by the day , and when you call them to ask WTF they like to say you the only one with a problem .

But then try call telkom you may die before they answer (the music could kill you)

 

[evilsee]

I have a 4mbit line at work on a IS account and a 384kbit line at home with saix.

All I can say is that during work hours IS suck balls and at home my saix account flys. Cant comment on saix during the day or IS at night, but IS does seem a bit snappier after 5pm on the nights ive worked late.

e.

 

[QLD]

After today 6 Feb im not sure if any one of these two are any good ...they are both a joke , and should be had up for theft ,we not getting what we pay for

 

[Fulton17]

Update

I have received feedback from my ISP today saying that IS have sorted out somethings, so should be better.

Must say it seems to have been fine today, so maybe / hopefully things will be good again.

Thanks for your comments though, and would still enjoy hearing others views.

 

[Aqox]

is vs saix

hi all

as a matter of fact, and i can confirm it, IS is better than SAIX, well, locally anyway.

we have 10+ branch offices all on 512k adsl all across SA northern parts. we also have a IS fibre uncapped 512kb @ head office. all of the branches connect to HO via VPN, only just to transfer some AS400 data, very small, but speed is important... internet and email gets transfered through normal adsl and not the vpn (thanks to some intelligent routing setup)

for the last 4 months or so they were running all on saix 3gb accounts from www.posix.co.za

about 2 weeks ago some of the branches complained about timeout and the as400 client freezes, which they have to quit and start again. after doing intense tracert's and pings i recieved ALOT of packet loss during the day from 8am - 5pm. this is all happening on saix. ping the HO from branch through the VPN. first i thought it was the IS fibre line being overloaded, but indeed not, only utilizing 10-15kb/s upload at full load.

just for testing purposes i used my personal local-only 40gb account from openweb on one of the branches in PTA-West. guess what ? problem solved !! VOILA !!

So, indeed IS is more reliable locally with regards to stability and routing of packets.

we dont really use international bandwidth for the cause of business, but as far as IS is concerned locally, it works brilliantly.

hope this give u some inspiration... ciao

 

[Aqox]

speed

hi

i forgot to add the following... i know isp's buy bandwidth, and when i mean bandwidth i mean 1gb for R x.xx amount, and resell them to the public for R z.zz amount.

a funny thing is, i heard from our network administrator that ISP's also buy bandwidth in the form of speed. i was like WTF ? is this true ? he tells me that isp's buy speed with their cap and oversell the speed, which causes some of the accounts to be slower than other isp's

is this really happening ? i thought telkom regulates the speed, and the isp is only the supplier of cap ?

btw, i have a 40gb local-only account with saol 10gb account international, both running at 430kb/s when downloading from each (4mbps adsl)