@lantic R59 uncapped 'bolt-on' feedback

ld13 said:
Chris, read his post again. And please look into allowing more than one concurrent connection on one line for those of us sitting with unstable lines.

@Trixanno
They probably refresh the session for usage stats reasons. I know my last two I$ uncapped accounts recreated my session every ~55-59 minutes without interrupting my connection to keep usage up to date or whatnot. In short, I do not know and as long as it does not bother you I would recommend that you do not lose any sleep over it.
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I can't speak for any firmware of a router, so I won't.

There are open sessions and closed sessions. A closed session occurs when there is a STOP record that we receive from SAIX or for open sessions which are 5 days old with no STOP record. Aside from that there are ALIVE records, which do not have a STOP. Being one of the original architects for the OSS/BSS system that Atlantic uses, I know that the sessions displayed are closed sessions. This means that there was a start and a stop. Anyways moving on, I have no control over the number of concurrency with the bolt-on product. This was a business decision that was made and my team implemented the rules on the back end to ensure that this works the way the business asked for it to.

I would suggest contacting or petitioning Atlantic to release a product which doesn't force the connection to a single connection; we can support it, but I do not have the influence on the business choice.

I hope this explains everything. If not and you feel like I missed something else, let me know!

Chris Van Wie
Solutions Architect
Vox Core
A Vox Telecom Division
 
Not something that's bugging me, just picked it up as I worked through my usage report. As long as this product performs the way it does, I'll definitely not lose any sleep over the sessions in the background.
 
What is necessary for one to sign up and use the Bolt-On, aside from a capped ADSL account with @lantic? Will I need my own ADSL line rental from Telkom? Anything else?
 
Nosotros said:
What is necessary for one to sign up and use the Bolt-On, aside from a capped ADSL account with @lantic? Will I need my own ADSL line rental from Telkom? Anything else?
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1) Telkom analogue telephone line
2) ADSL line via telkom, or any other ISP, at any line rate you choose
3) Standard @lantic data account (for example Gig4Gig). The gig4gig accounts are not capped, the first gig is free and thereafter you pay for any usage over that at the end of the month. I.e Gig4gig Home costs R0/month and R15/gig for usage over 1 gig.
4) Bolt-on added to your standard data account
 
Ok, so I have been trying out the bolt-on account for a couple of days, and already I can see problems with the way the usage is allocated between normal and bolt-on usage. If any session either starts or ends in peak time, the total bandwidth usage of that session will be allocated to your (peak time) package use. For example, I was downloading during the night which resulted in a session in my logs that lasted from 4:25am to 6:06am. (My download was scheduled to stop at 6:00, but can understand that the end of the recorded session will not line up to 6:00 exactly.) The result of this is that 100% of the bandwidth used for that session (about 2.5GB) was allocated to my package use and not to bolt-on use, even though time-wise peak usage was only 6% of that session. Same thing happens with sessions that start before 6pm but ends after 6pm; total bandwidth gets allocated to peak usage, instead of it being distributed proportionally.

The longest session in my logs is 3h 52m long, and I don't think it would be "fair" to allocate all the bandwidth usage in a session to peak use if you miss the 6am/pm cut-off time by a minute or so.
 
cenuij said:
Ok, so I have been trying out the bolt-on account for a couple of days, and already I can see problems with the way the usage is allocated between normal and bolt-on usage. If any session either starts or ends in peak time, the total bandwidth usage of that session will be allocated to your (peak time) package use. For example, I was downloading during the night which resulted in a session in my logs that lasted from 4:25am to 6:06am. (My download was scheduled to stop at 6:00, but can understand that the end of the recorded session will not line up to 6:00 exactly.) The result of this is that 100% of the bandwidth used for that session (about 2.5GB) was allocated to my package use and not to bolt-on use, even though time-wise peak usage was only 6% of that session. Same thing happens with sessions that start before 6pm but ends after 6pm; total bandwidth gets allocated to peak usage, instead of it being distributed proportionally.

The longest session in my logs is 3h 52m long, and I don't think it would be "fair" to allocate all the bandwidth usage in a session to peak use if you miss the 6am/pm cut-off time by a minute or so.
Click to expand...

With me there is also some bandwidth leaking into pakage usage even if I did not use it. Not always and its getting frustrating cause it was working fine. Paid for 4GB usage last month that I did not use but didn't want to fight to get it fixed cause that is what you need to do.
 
My first billing run on this package and everything went as expected. Bandwidth allocated correctly and no 'surprise' usage on gig4gig.

Similar to cenuij, I have also noticed any data used in a session established prior, or terminated after, the 6-6 period, falls into the gig4gig usage. For this reason I just make sure to only establish the connection after 6pm and make sure the connection is terminated before 6am.
 
Correction. For some strange reason even though they have indeed overbilled me the previous month I see they automatically fixed it this month and hence my account in credit and they never pushed the debit order through. Hmmmm I never logged a query but they seem to have fixed it.....

http://i47.tinypic.com/sytvma.png
 
To anyone who is thinking about using this package.

If you want be be billed way more than you signed up for and struggle to get help from the account department this product is for you.

For some reason they think I used my full 10Gig package and kept charging me for the use afterwards, even thought I did not take the gig4gig package. I took a 10Gig anytime and the agent told me if I used the full 10Gig I would not be able to access the web and they would not bill me automatically for extra usage.

I would not recommend this to anyone.
 
klipdrifter said:
To anyone who is thinking about using this package.

If you want be be billed way more than you signed up for and struggle to get help from the account department this product is for you.

For some reason they think I used my full 10Gig package and kept charging me for the use afterwards, even thought I did not take the gig4gig package. I took a 10Gig anytime and the agent told me if I used the full 10Gig I would not be able to access the web and they would not bill me automatically for extra usage.

I would not recommend this to anyone.
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Totally agree,

I dont ever use my capped 5gb (Not gig4gig) during the day as I am at work and my pc is with me. So basically no one is at home and no pc. What's been happening to me is that the system is beginning my session prior to 6pm and thus my downloads after 6pm fall into my capped account. So basically its worse than a capped account- Im paying up and above what Im suppose to do. I got home this evening after 5. Started downloading some stuff at 7pm. Noticed my usage for my capped account was still increasing. Called in to customer service. According to them my session had started before I got home from work 4:50pm and ended at 8pm. So now I have to pay a couple hundred bux for just tonight. and this has happened twice already this month. They gonna rip me off for so much money come month end. Im flippen disgusted. I bought a prepaid account from afrihost now. I'll just use that so I know I wont being giving them more hard earned cash . Knowing atlantic, even with me not dialled in they will charge me

the agent also told me on this package I will not be charged over the 5gb
 
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I agree there is something not right here. I had to increase my cap on Friday just to get on since according to their records I used 2gb between 6 and 8 the morning before. I don't remember doing this - I am careful now to only use it a little in the morning to check news sites since something simaliar happened before. So I increased the cap and made sure to disconnect and reconnect the account in the time range. But this morning I am capped again! According to their site I connected the account at 2012-10-15 17:53:03 which I did not - I connected at 18:05. So between 17:53 and 21:41 I used 1.8gb which they are counting ALL towards Capped. I can't login in to SAIX for some reason from home so I will just when I am work for this.

This is such a great product but I am now paying the same amount I would with another ISP if I went capped. Depending what comes out of my investigating today I might leave this product.
 
Corrosive said:
According to their site I connected the account at 2012-10-15 17:53:03 which I did not - I connected at 18:05.
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Could just be a mismatch between your clock and their clock. I know their clock is about 7 minutes slow compared to mine, so I have to take that into account when connecting ... ridiculous, I know ...

Anyway, compare their session timing with the times you find on http://userstats.adsl.saix.net/. I keep my clock synchronised to a time server and now my connect/disconnect times is exactly the same as the stats found on http://userstats.adsl.saix.net/, which differs with about 7 minutes from @lantic's
 
I check on saix when i got into work - for some reason it doesn't conenct at home which is weird since I am using the same details and no firewall is active.

Anyway. The session time with the 1.8gb is correct on SAIX
Mon Oct 15 18:00:02 2012 - Mon Oct 15 23:59:33 2012

Got in the bolt-on window by 2 seconds but still in there. I have sent @lantic this info and now just waiting for thier feedback.
 
Hey all,

This feedback is exactly what's needed!

For those having billing issues regarding the bolt on and normal packages, the problem is with the disconnect (Packet of Disconnect) that Telkom/SAIX provides. We have recently found that some disconnects (randomly) don't work (not even an error code). This is out of our control as the infrastructure is Telkom/SAIX's; I know it sounds weak but it's reality. I would suggest speaking with Atlantic with regards to specific sessions on/around the times and ask for refunds where applicable.

Our RADIUS servers were in fact 7 minutes out of sync. We have just fixed this issue. Thanks for pointing this out!

Thanks again for the feedback guys, it really does help everyone involved.

Chris Van Wie
Solutions Architect
Vox Core
A Vox Telecom Division
 
Youtube videos extremely slow for the past 2 weeks

Hi

I use the bolt-on package primarily for p2p and Youtube - until 2 weeks ago I could watch 720p youtube videos in realtime without any buffering issues - now even low res videos are stop-start... what's wrong?

Any help would be appreciated!
 
So I have been credited with R300 or so with regards to my incorrect billing.. But... A day later I have been charged an extra R605 over and above my subscription: 11847 Session MB(s) consumed by access account user [email protected] .

Firstly im with a gold capped account so its hard capped unlike the gig4gig. Secondly I was 2.8gb over due to their incorrect timings last month. Where the hell does this 11847mb come from


What is wrong with these people??? R605 after I first get credited.. This is just insane..
 
Hi Chris,
You say "Our RADIUS servers were in fact 7 minutes out of sync. We have just fixed this issue. Thanks for pointing this out".

The problem is much bigger than this. I have made a point, for the past 4 months, of disconnecting my session every morning and every evening before I start using my "Bolt-on" package. I have confirmed that the SAIX server shows my disconnect before I use significant data. I complained about 2 months back about being billed for "Bolt-on" usage and sent a full analysis of the usage. No correction to my account.
This month the account dept took ALL my usage as "Gold Gig4Gig" and billed me for way over usage. SAIX shows my capped usage to only 0,24 GB of the allowed 1GB which tied up with the 0.26GB which was shown on my @lantic account page just before month end.

I will be raising a complaint through the normal channels. Hope I don't get the same "non-reversal" of the error with no explaination.
 
cvanwie said:
For those having billing issues regarding the bolt on and normal packages, the problem is with the disconnect (Packet of Disconnect) that Telkom/SAIX provides. We have recently found that some disconnects (randomly) don't work (not even an error code). This is out of our control as the infrastructure is Telkom/SAIX's; I know it sounds weak but it's reality. I would suggest speaking with Atlantic with regards to specific sessions on/around the times and ask for refunds where applicable.
Click to expand...

In turn I would like to suggest Atlantic makes it clear that their Bolt-On package is in Beta stages as the automatic 6pm switchover might not function 100% correctly due to technological limitations and advise their clients accordingly: "Please restart your modem at 6pm to ensure that your usage gets accounted for correctly."
 
ld13 said:
In turn I would like to suggest Atlantic makes it clear that their Bolt-On package is in Beta stages as the automatic 6pm switchover might not function 100% correctly due to technological limitations and advise their clients accordingly: "Please restart your modem at 6pm to ensure that your usage gets accounted for correctly."
Click to expand...

Hi ld13,
Restarting may solve some of the problem. I have been doing it since I got "had" 3 months ago- the SAIX server shows all the dis-connects correctly. They have another admin problem in capturing the usage into the 2 packages. They get the data mixed up, even though SAIX shows the disconnects. :(
 
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