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[silversurfer]

http://www.itweb.co.za/sections/internet/2003/0308121254.asp?O=E

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Service providers seek to extend ADSL



BY WARWICK ASHFORD, ITWEB JOURNALIST


[Johannesburg, 12 August 2003] - The greatest dissatisfaction with SA's asymmetrical digital subscriber line (ADSL) service has been with the monthly download limit of 3GB. Local Internet service providers (ISPs) have responded by extending the Telkom service by introducing a variety of solutions involving load balancing and utilising additional user names.

Telkom's corporate communications senior manager Hans Van der Groenendaal says ADSL is aimed at providing fast Internet access for the residential and small business market and is optimised for that.

“However, for those who wish to use ADSL for peer-to-peer connections, Telkom is investigating the possibility of introducing an additional ADSL service.” He says such a service will require expensive international bandwidth and will therefore cost more.

Meanwhile, ISPs like Tiscali are making additional user names available to subscribers, effectively increasing the download limit by 3GB with each additional user name or ADSL plug-in purchased.

Tiscali's business-to-consumer manager Michelle Branco says although Telkom aimed the ADSL at the small business market, up to 70% of ADSL users are online gamers and downloaders of MP3 and video. She says Tiscali decided to offer additional “raw plugs” after Telkom conceded it was “powerless to block this method of bypassing the 3GB cap”.

Telkom says although this approach may increase the cap, it does not increase the capacity of peer-to-peer communication required by those who are most dissatisfied with the initial ADSL offering.

For small businesses wishing to make the best use of what ADSL provides within the constraints set by Telkom, some business solution providers have introduced the necessary load balancing between up to five simultaneous ADSL links.

Network Sentinel Solutions director Gregory Nietsky says his company is offering server-based software that manages the connectivity. “Each additional ADSL link from a client's ISP is dedicated to a specific service and allocated a service level to ensure the 3GB limit is not reached before month-end.”

Nietsky says to achieve the benchmark of downloading 20GB a month, a user would need about seven ADSL links, and although this will cost around R3 000 each month, “it's a lot cheaper than the R5 000 to R6 000 it would cost for a leased-line”.
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[PK]

"Meanwhile, ISPs like Tiscali are making additional user names available to subscribers, effectively increasing the download limit by 3GB with each additional user name or ADSL plug-in purchased."

They are?!?

 

[silversurfer]

"plug-in" is just jargon for buying a second adsl account. I can
sell you multiple ADSL accounts aswell, any ISP can. R2xx per 3gigs.

 

[DarkHelmet]

My comment on ITWeb read as follows - would be interesting to see how much is edited out in the name of free speech:

Warwick, I think you are missing the boat and falling for Telkom's miss-information campaign.

The issue is not at all the 3GB Cap - the cap is actually pretty understandable. The whole gripe with ADSL is the fact that people get limited to what they can do.

ADSL subscribers can only use ADSL for surfing the web, downloading software using the FTP protocol (which happens when you click on a link in Internet Explorer or Netscape to download a file) and to download e-mail.

It is called port prioritisation and we as users are unhappy because we cannot make use of other Internet services other than the above. Any Internet service other than the above gets low priority and as a result the service is poor to non-existent.

There are people that like to use Peer-to-Peer applications on the Internet, these guys download large amounts of files daily. If they wish to continue to do this they have the option to pay for a 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc account.

The gripe in particular is with,amongst others and a lack of a better explanation, Client-Server applications - whether you are a broker that uses a custom written program to connect to a central stock market server or a person (I fear to mention the word GAME) that indulges in some online gameplay - it is your right as a consumer to do what u want.

Internet communications revolve around a protocol called TCP/IP, a program like Internet Explore or Netscape Navigator communicates with a server on the other side using a specific port. Surfing the web is done using port 80 (http) on the server on the other side. If you wish to download a file port 21 is used for FTP (file transfer protocol). Downloading of email is done on port 110 and sending uses port 25.

Logic prevails that to give the best performance for web surfing - which impresses everyone the most - port 80 traffic needs to get first priority, thereafter file downloads on port 21, incoming mail and outgoing mail shortly after that.

Now, this is the tip of the Iceberg these days in Internet communications - as you can imagine there are umpteenth other ports that can be used for communication.

Most of these ports are set in stone and beyond the scope of my response, but there is a LOT of applications in the mainstream market that use other ports.

The ports that do not fall in the websurfing/email category above are basically throttled... Users that use these applications have to wait in line for the websurfing and e-mail downloading to get thru first - then those packets get thru too.

All I ask - let us use up our 3GB as we please - if we need to pay more - charge us or limit us.