MWEB Uncapped ADSL - Official Q & A

[drukkie]

@ rep...PMed you my stuff....thanks for quick reply!
Next question ...any plans on local packages? or unshaping local usage? if that is even possible?
Also wrt to your comment on congestion...when i download something from microsoft(via firefox) i get a measily 10-20KB/s but when i download via a download manager i max out my line????
is that still congestion?
thanks!

 

[MWEBHelp]

Hi drukkie,

We are constantly looking at our services and clients' feedback assists us in determining which type of products we need to consider for the best client experience

Congestion will happen regardless of which file you are downloading. If it only happens with Microsoft updates it might be a linking problem to the content server where the updates are stored. This is something that I'll have to get feedback for 1st and I'll confirm this with you

Regards
Mweb Ops

 

[d$k_1]

pings are very bad

I heard that MWEB has gone back to Seacom entirely. I am finding that I can play games or download updates because the pings are too high. So high that programmes think that I have disconnected altogether. I am getting 500ms in COD4 MP and 400ms in TF2, BFBC2 cant sometimes connect.
When I ping www.mweb.co.za i get ping rates of 700+ms. 900ms for google. I have the 384mb uncapped line. So whats the deal?

 

[SabreWolfy]

Hi Sabrewolfy

Firstly to answer your question about abuse: I would say yes that the abuse definitely has a role to play in the amount of bandwidth that we can allocate to shaped P2P. This is an area that is getting a lot of my attention right now, both from the point of view of addressing the behaviour with the individuals in question and working with our networks team to find ways to close these holes without having a negative impact on the average user’s functionality.

In terms of bandwidth allocation and the question as to what shaping occurs outside business hours keep in mind that our network is consumer based, so the assumption that usage falls off sharply after business hours and only resumes again the following morning is not completely accurate. The curve tends to fall off gradually over the course of the evening and the increase in P2P allocation is structured to follow this curve as closely as possible.

Regarding congestion and slow speeds experienced by certain customers if these problems were occurring at a network level all of our customers would be having the same experience. This is clearly not the case and points back to the instances of DSLAM level congestion that we’ve been encountering recently. Customers having these problems need to make contact with our support staff and work through the issues so that we can investigate them fully and determine exactly where the problem lies.

Kind Regards
MWEB Operations (Tech Manager)

Thanks for the detailed reply. I've highlighted the relevant section for anyone who missed it in your original reply. I think it's important to draw attention to the negative effect which network misuse has on other users.

 

[Tanya35]

I heard that MWEB has gone back to Seacom entirely. I am finding that I can play games or download updates because the pings are too high. So high that programmes think that I have disconnected altogether. I am getting 500ms in COD4 MP and 400ms in TF2, BFBC2 cant sometimes connect.
When I ping www.mweb.co.za i get ping rates of 700+ms. 900ms for google. I have the 384mb uncapped line. So whats the deal?

Me too. I suspect a Telkom issue, but can't be sure. I have been told that shaping is on 'high' because of the return of the full service (people catching up I presume)

 

[drukkie]

Hi drukkie,

We are constantly looking at our services and clients' feedback assists us in determining which type of products we need to consider for the best client experience

Congestion will happen regardless of which file you are downloading. If it only happens with Microsoft updates it might be a linking problem to the content server where the updates are stored. This is something that I'll have to get feedback for 1st and I'll confirm this with you

Regards
Mweb Ops

Thanks, just used Microsoft as an example as they almost never have speed issues...
Any other sites i can try?

 

[hambone]

Hullo again MWEB;

Before I continue: I've not received a call from you guys to do anything. As I got (mostly) unproductive responses on the other thread, I though I'd post here. I'm simply posting to see whether my usage patterns would, even remotely, raise any flags so that i can alter the way I do things before I get a call. The details of my setup are as follows: I have a 4Meg account, with two laptops (connecting intermittently) and PC all behind a router - obviously. The laptops usage is negligible compared to the PC: this is connected all the time. The PC downloads roughly 7 RSS feeds at 20 minute intervals, which in turn trigger uTorrent to fetch the latest, um... stuff. However said stuff is scheduled to begin leeching at 6PM, and shuts off again at 8AM. There is no "other stuff" to interfere with the shaping imposed by MWEB at anytime such as VPNs or SLL's or other such things I know little about. (Of no relevance to you, but for the sake of completeness, the PC also runs Media Center, which feeds my PS3 and external HDD). Since March my average usage over the 5 months until today is about 128GB, and I envisage that situation to remain roughly the same. Any advice, words of caution? Would such a setup cause such havoc?

 

[MWEBHelp]

Hullo again MWEB;

Before I continue: I've not received a call from you guys to do anything. As I got (mostly) unproductive responses on the other thread, I though I'd post here. I'm simply posting to see whether my usage patterns would, even remotely, raise any flags so that i can alter the way I do things before I get a call. The details of my setup are as follows: I have a 4Meg account, with two laptops (connecting intermittently) and PC all behind a router - obviously. The laptops usage is negligible compared to the PC: this is connected all the time. The PC downloads roughly 7 RSS feeds at 20 minute intervals, which in turn trigger uTorrent to fetch the latest, um... stuff. However said stuff is scheduled to begin leeching at 6PM, and shuts off again at 8AM. There is no "other stuff" to interfere with the shaping imposed by MWEB at anytime such as VPNs or SLL's or other such things I know little about. (Of no relevance to you, but for the sake of completeness, the PC also runs Media Center, which feeds my PS3 and external HDD). Since March my average usage over the 5 months until today is about 128GB, and I envisage that situation to remain roughly the same. Any advice, words of caution? Would such a setup cause such havoc?

Hi hambone

I don't see that your setup would raise any flags on Mweb's side. You are not in any way hiding your activities or fooling our shapers in thinking that you are downloading anything else other than P2P content

Regards
Mweb Ops

 

[MWEBHelp]

Thanks, just used Microsoft as an example as they almost never have speed issues...
Any other sites i can try?

HI Drukkie,

You can try any other site or download to test your speed, but if you're already getting full speed using your download manager, it is definitely not congestion on the exchange

Regards
Mweb Operations

 

[hambone]

Hi hambone

I don't see that your setup would raise any flags on Mweb's side. You are not in any way hiding your activities or fooling our shapers in thinking that you are downloading anything else other than P2P content

Regards
Mweb Ops

Well, thats awesome. Thanks. Really glad I avoided getting involved in AeroVPS and the like. Thanks again for the great service and support.

 

[Kosmik]

Hi hambone

I don't see that your setup would raise any flags on Mweb's side. You are not in any way hiding your activities or fooling our shapers in thinking that you are downloading anything else other than P2P content

Regards
Mweb Ops

So as long as we don't fool the shaper in anyway, downloading aint a issue? I'd have assumed so already as the shaper is controlling your low priority bandwidth pool so it should not be possible to affect the network in any negative manner?

 

[Veneficus]

there is a lot of specials of which you can get a lot of games for very good pricing. i have about over 100 games in my profile of which i've only installed 16. however your 5 gig size average is a bit outdated for the latest releases as most of them are 7 to 15 gigs.

*sensitivity alert*

no rational person is going to download it all at one shot unless there is some fail some where. it was just an example of continues streaming traffic.

nope average game size is still below 5GB

remember I'm not talking about new games only I'm talking about all the games on steam
5GB is well above most of the games on there

if you go for new games then the average can be higher but the prices is also generally higher

 

[Chevron]

Just a quick one for MWEB OP:

Why is it that I and a couple other users here seem to get better torrent speeds after 7am then before 7am? Like literally 3x more performance. Yes, still slow compared to before seacom but very weird. It used to be once 7am hits my torrents slow down.

 

[SabreWolfy]

Just a quick one for MWEB OP:

Why is it that I and a couple other users here seem to get better torrent speeds after 7am then before 7am? Like literally 3x more performance. Yes, still slow compared to before seacom but very weird. It used to be once 7am hits my torrents slow down.

Because everyone who was misusing the network and bypassing shaping overnight has stopped their downloads, so usage from 7am onwards is actually lower than overnight

 

[Chevron]

Because everyone who was misusing the network and bypassing shaping overnight has stopped their downloads, so usage from 7am onwards is actually lower than overnight

What I'm trying to say is that day time torrents pre and post seacom failure are the same, but night time pre and post are hugely different. Now day time is speed increase instead of decrease. Makes me think something is wrong.

 

[drukkie]

What I'm trying to say is that day time torrents pre and post seacom failure are the same, but night time pre and post are hugely different. Now day time is speed increase instead of decrease. Makes me think something is wrong.

I can confirm the same with news groups

 

[Kosmik]

What you'll probably find, as has been mentioned, is that with the removal of the bypassers a lot more of the bandwidth has become available in the daytime pool so it appears to be going faster but its just less users.

 

[Tanya35]

Because everyone who was misusing the network and bypassing shaping overnight has stopped their downloads, so usage from 7am onwards is actually lower than overnight

A presumption, fact or just conjecture?

 

[Necuno]

A presumption, fact or just conjecture?

a presumption would be saying that you are either mr perre or mr smith

edit:
though SabreWolfy doesn't really make sense there.

 

[ajules]

I am actually quite disappointed with the speeds I have been getting these past few days from Newservers between 6.00.pm and 12.00.pm
Considering Seacom is 100% again and all "abusers" have been kicked off the network I was hoping for an improvement but speeds are exactly the same as they have been the past 2 weeks.
I wasn't expecting a dramatic improvement but expected at least some improvement.
Perhaps I need to give it a few more days........