Mweb - Shaping Policy's Clarification please

[MegasXLR]

I must admit, while I understand that torrents and whatnot need to be shaped, I think MWEB need to expand their network a little, as torrents during the day, simply don't work at all most of the time.

Low speeds I'm cool with, sure, that was expected from the outset. In the beginning though, it was great, used to get sort of half my max speed on a 384 which was wonderful.

Now it's just as dead as a doornail, which is pathetic.

Agreed!

That is the difference I find between IT departments and ISP's (Should be the same tho). If the network get congested it's time to expand the network capacity. ie create larger pipes. ISP's tend to rather restrict or slow down the users so all that happens is the user now stays on the network even longer with a scheduled list of "outstanding work" to be serviced. The backlog just then seem to grow and grow. That was old Telkom philosophy that never worked, now it seems that Mweb adopted that style? Who knows

 

[Chevron]

Ok, not an "infinite" amount of bandwidth unless they have an infinite number of customers of course, but so much more bandwidth so that each and every customer can download at line speed 24/7/365 (on shaped accounts?). Therefore, to all intents and purposes, "infinite". Especially if their customer base continues to grow and they don't manage/shape their accounts... Unless bandwidth is "infinite", it's a limited resource, pure and simple.

Doesn't everyone who torrents do so 24/7? Whether they get 1kB/s or 100kB/s surely. Or is it absurdium to assume that people will torrent only a file or two...

How can you expect a constant experience from a dynamic system like "The Internet"? If you want good performance on the shaped protocols on a shaped account, get an unshaped account.

Mweb was perfectly fine till a few weeks ago. The changed their shaping rules and everything is messed up. No one expects full line speed, but things are messed up at the moment. Thank goodness I have other accounts I can use untill my cancellation is final.

 

[RaptorSA]

Mweb was perfectly fine till a few weeks ago. The changed their shaping rules and everything is messed up. No one expects full line speed, but things are messed up at the moment. Thank goodness I have other accounts I can use untill my cancellation is final.

Same problem here. If the speeds I'm getting now continues until next weekend I'm cancelling. This is ridiculous now, used to be fine a few weeks ago.
I mean WTF?!?! http://www.speedtest.net/result/1338326406.png

 

[Lounger]

Ok, not an "infinite" amount of bandwidth unless they have an infinite number of customers of course, but so much more bandwidth so that each and every customer can download at line speed 24/7/365 (on shaped accounts?). Therefore, to all intents and purposes, "infinite". Especially if their customer base continues to grow and they don't manage/shape their accounts... Unless bandwidth is "infinite", it's a limited resource, pure and simple.

Doesn't everyone who torrents do so 24/7? Whether they get 1kB/s or 100kB/s surely. Or is it absurdium to assume that people will torrent only a file or two...

How can you expect a constant experience from a dynamic system like "The Internet"? If you want good performance on the shaped protocols on a shaped account, get an unshaped account.

More old arguments re-hashed = upgrade to get what you bought!

Mweb should have done their own research and found how much each customer is likely to download (averaged) and then allocate that much bandwidth. Instead they shape it so much that it's throttled most of the time and ignore the complaints. Who wins?
I suspect that the old fogies that started Mweb DSL hadn't heard of RS or a torrent in their life. They had NO online type gamers to speak of, that much I do know.

 

[Chevron]

MWEB should actually have priced their uncapped packages more realistically. The saping is so bad now because they made them too cheap. Choosing a quantity of customers over quality for those customers.

 

[Wolfy]

Wow why all the hate, Im loving the service Mweb is giving me. At least their not like Afrihost who assured me its "UNCAPPED" and throttled me to hell when I reached 40GB. I applaud MWEB, a very good service, keep up the good work!

 

[MWEBHelp]

Wow why all the hate, Im loving the service Mweb is giving me. At least their not like Afrihost who assured me its "UNCAPPED" and throttled me to hell when I reached 40GB. I applaud MWEB, a very good service, keep up the good work!

Hi Wolfy

Thank you for your support.

Kind regards
MWEB Guy

 

[techead]

alright let me break this down

ive been an MWEB uncapped client for ages. I download at home during the day (while Im at work) and used to get max line speed, always. I cant download in the evenings while I game online, its not a viable option... obviously. I had my ways and means of bypassing the shaping during the day, and it worked. For the record, I dont rape the internet. I simply download what I want to. Im not greedy.

Then last week it stopped working. I called MWEB support (the first time I've had to!) and explained Im not happy. Being a techy I could hear this woman had no cooking clue what I was talking about. She just kept on blabbing about shaping. I then spoke to her manager. This was 7pm friday night.

Downloading from site A @ max 2KB/sec (im being dead serious, no joke)

I pause that download in FDM then continue

downloading from site B @ 350KB/sec
downloading from site C @ 420KB/sec

(so no there is nothing wrong with my connection)

After speaking to a techy yesterday at MWEB he denied ANY new shaping policies. Basically lied right to me. He knew exactly what I was talking about, but the best he could come up with at the end of the conversation wasm Im sorry Mr. xxx Im afraid there isnt anything I can do about this.

I have since "fixed" my account and will continue to download full speed during the day for the rest of this month. Then I will cancel.

Id rather stick with my OpenWeb UNshaped after hours 10MB even if it does cost a bit more

 

[Juice]

If shaped traffic gets whatever bandwidth is available after the unshaped protocols have been considered, and shaped traffic appears to be heavily shaped at the moment, then this obviously means that one or both of the following applies: (1) there is currently heavy unshaped usage -- lots of people are downloading over HTTP, streaming YouTube, etc. and/or (2) there is heavy shaped usage, so that whatever bandwidth remains is being contested over by everyone who is using a shaped protocol. So, to take both cases: it's a Sunday afternoon so many people are online streaming YouTube, downloading Windows updates, etc. This means that a small percentage of the total capacity remains for shaped protocols which is then divided between everyone who is downloading something over a shaped protocol.

I'm guessing that all of MWEB's commercial and consumer band-width is lumped together and contested directly. Makes sense, I guess, if you consider that consumers are going to be at work when commercial bandwidth demand is high and vice versa. However, what it also means is that consumer applications like P2P and news:// traffic will be at the mercy of business traffic during the day. I've recently signed up for MWEB and was quite amazed when I saw my news throughput drop right down to LESS than 1k/s. Yup, you read that right: less than 1000 bytes per second. And then, surprise-surprise, 6 Gigs would come down overnight without any hiccups whatsoever. MWEB's definitely made some changes to their bandwidth distribution; I guess they're trying to maximise the customer to bandwidth ratio. Hey, as long as I get my news:// bandwidth eventually, I don't care. I still get to use normal internet services at reasonable speeds regardless.

Juice

 

[Juice]

Again a completely false direction to take the argument. Mweb must ensure that their customers have enough bandwidth. It isn't about being unlimited or not (which they do claim btw). They appear to be taking on more and more customers and increasing shaping, which doesn't make sense. Some would call it profit taking.

Judging by which protocols are currently suffering the worst shaping, it looks like it's only those protocols used mostly by torrents and newz users. You know, the ones where 5% of your users can use up 95% of your bandwidth. Seems to me to be a fair way of managing the load fairly for at least 95% of the users. Sucks to be one of the 5%, but there are other options if you don't like it.

Juice

 

[Juice]

Wow why all the hate, Im loving the service Mweb is giving me. At least their not like Afrihost who assured me its "UNCAPPED" and throttled me to hell when I reached 40GB. I applaud MWEB, a very good service, keep up the good work!

Ditto. I moved from Afrihost to MWEB from this month for that reason alone. At least now I can still watch a YouTube video without buffering any time I want, even while my news:// traffic is as slow as a unionist turtle during strike-season. Shaping >> throttling.

Juice

 

[Juice]

I have since "fixed" my account and will continue to download full speed during the day for the rest of this month. Then I will cancel.

I suspect MWEB is very soon going to find you in breach of the AUP (for purposefully circumventing the shaping policies) and terminate your connection early... If you even get to cancel, I'll be very surprised.

Juice

 

[copacetic]

MWEB should actually have priced their uncapped packages more realistically. The saping is so bad now because they made them too cheap. Choosing a quantity of customers over quality for those customers.

Not that this is MWEB's fault by any means, but I would not call 500 bucks for data only cheap.

 

[Grouter]

Wow why all the hate, Im loving the service Mweb is giving me. At least their not like Afrihost who assured me its "UNCAPPED" and throttled me to hell when I reached 40GB. I applaud MWEB, a very good service, keep up the good work!

I agree with you. Though I am on the 1 meg account and I realise it's the 4 meg guys experiencing all the grief. I was with Axxess and they throttled just like Afrihost you mention. In fairness, I was told that Axxess don't have any control over those accounts - they're managed directly by IS.

I was pretty impressed last night watching the Canadian F1 GP on Supersport.com - rain affected race ran for 4 hours and the stream didn't hiccup once - not once. This is what I pay for, and it's what I get. I'm a happy camper.

 

[MegasXLR]

Wow why all the hate, Im loving the service Mweb is giving me. At least their not like Afrihost who assured me its "UNCAPPED" and throttled me to hell when I reached 40GB. I applaud MWEB, a very good service, keep up the good work!

No hate here matey, I was very vocal and disappointed recently due to the degradation of this product. Since a week ago things seem to be much better so Mweb must have fixed something. No more bashing from me until it degrades again.

 

[Will@MWEB]

As I've mentioned in some of my posts in the main feedback thread I have undertaken to do my own extensive testing in recent weeks to gain a clear understanding the p2p experience and to address your concerns in a more direct fashion. Using a combination of bitorrent and a paid international news feed I have to date this month been able to download in excess of 180GB. I would say that the experience on NNTP was definitely different in terms of the times of day when it hit high speeds, but over the long haul it is probably achieving about the same results as bittorrent. This was done utilizing a standard shaped 4mb product and making no attempt to bypass any shaping policies.

I really would have to say that this to me does not seem to be an unreasonable experience on a cost effective shaped product, if your needs are more extreme than this then you need to consider moving to an unshaped experience.

Also just to clarify a point that was raised here regarding shaping vs throttling. Our definition of throttling, which we believe to be the commonly accepted one, is to apply a limitation on the individual user's overall speeds, based on an arbitrary usage limit which has been predetermined in a Fair Usage Policy. MWEB has never employed any such mechanism in our shaping policies. All users on the same product type will have a similar network experience, notwithstanding the influence of external factors.

Kind Regards
Will

 

[techead]

I suspect MWEB is very soon going to find you in breach of the AUP (for purposefully circumventing the shaping policies) and terminate your connection early... If you even get to cancel, I'll be very surprised.

Juice

dont care, im on my horse anyway

 

[RaptorSA]

Will@Mweb
That still doesn't explain this: http://www.speedtest.net/result/1339254593.png
And just to show you how messed up and erratic my connection now is, this was done within 4 minutes of the first one: http://www.speedtest.net/result/1339259357.png

And yes, I am on a 4MB account. And yes, I used to get about 3.2Mb/s up until about 2 weeks ago.
WHAT IS GOING ON...?

 

[MegasXLR]

As I've mentioned in some of my posts in the main feedback thread I have undertaken to do my own extensive testing in recent weeks to gain a clear understanding the p2p experience and to address your concerns in a more direct fashion. Using a combination of bitorrent and a paid international news feed I have to date this month been able to download in excess of 180GB. I would say that the experience on NNTP was definitely different in terms of the times of day when it hit high speeds, but over the long haul it is probably achieving about the same results as bittorrent. This was done utilizing a standard shaped 4mb product and making no attempt to bypass any shaping policies.

I really would have to say that this to me does not seem to be an unreasonable experience on a cost effective shaped product, if your needs are more extreme than this then you need to consider moving to an unshaped experience.

Also just to clarify a point that was raised here regarding shaping vs throttling. Our definition of throttling, which we believe to be the commonly accepted one, is to apply a limitation on the individual user's overall speeds, based on an arbitrary usage limit which has been predetermined in a Fair Usage Policy. MWEB has never employed any such mechanism in our shaping policies. All users on the same product type will have a similar network experience, notwithstanding the influence of external factors.

Kind Regards
Will

Will we all accept your explanation. We appreciate what you are doing. But, why can we not get the same experience? Not one of my torrents since we started to discuss my issues ever finished, yes its large files greater than a few GB but if you can do the 180 GB and I can just do half of that they all should have been completed by now. I do appreciate that the news server et al is performing better and PSN gaming improved but if you claim it's not the product there it must be either windows/modem settings or line/Telkom issues that affects our experience.

 

[Lounger]

Wow why all the hate, Im loving the service Mweb is giving me. At least their not like Afrihost who assured me its "UNCAPPED" and throttled me to hell when I reached 40GB. I applaud MWEB, a very good service, keep up the good work!

Didn't you say only a few weeks back "i have no beef with Afrihost". You then say it is bad.

You were also very anti Cell-C as well as IBurst. All last month in fact you were very vocal.

You're sounding like an Mweb brand advocate awaiting the cheque. I simply can't believe you were a member of all these companies in May.