mweb uncapped -"fair usage"?

[FalconZA]

so i have been using Mweb uncapped on a 1meg line and very happy. But i have been wondering one thing.

What is considered fair usage on an mweb uncapped account? 20gb? 100gb?

i know that ISP's in general tend to either throttle or downright disconnect you after hitting a certain threshold. So any experience on what that is for mweb? It does advertise on their website "download as much as you like" but is this really the case?

i use my account to work from home, so i dont want to download large files and then one day i get an email saying my account is suspended or something, i like to plan ahead.

any personal feedback would be appreciated.

 

[MWEBHelp]

so i have been using Mweb uncapped on a 1meg line and very happy. But i have been wondering one thing.

What is considered fair usage on an mweb uncapped account? 20gb? 100gb?

i know that ISP's in general tend to either throttle or downright disconnect you after hitting a certain threshold. So any experience on what that is for mweb? It does advertise on their website "download as much as you like" but is this really the case?

i use my account to work from home, so i dont want to download large files and then one day i get an email saying my account is suspended or something, i like to plan ahead.

any personal feedback would be appreciated.

Evening FalconZA, we do not limit our uncapped accounts. Instead we shape the traffic on our network, i.e. we allocate specific amounts of bandwidth to specific traffic.

Shaping is a way of managing the network to make sure that enough bandwidth is available to ensure that commonly used services like surfing and email, are given the highest priority for the best possible customer experience.

MWEB does not have any ADSL products that use throttling. MWEB offers shaped products that ensure bandwidth availability to provide the best possible service for the most commonly used Internet services, such as surfing and email. We also have unshaped products for our power users and heavy downloaders.

Shaping changes at different times of the day and is dynamic based on the demand on the network for high preference traffic. As a general rule there is less shaping during off peak hours which allows more freedom for activities that take a back seat during peak hours.

Hope that helps

 

[FalconZA]

yes that helps alot, thanks for the quick response.

Glad to hear that uncapped is indeed uncapped.

have a good evening. And thanks for the great service.

 

[MWEBHelp]

yes that helps alot, thanks for the quick response.

Glad to hear that uncapped is indeed uncapped.

have a good evening. And thanks for the great service.

Its always a pleasure, enjoy your evening.

 

[JoseP]

Can you please clarify what is not considered fair usage?

 

[SYNERGY]

Bypassing their shaping rules.

 

[Lounger]

so i have been using Mweb uncapped on a 1meg line and very happy. But i have been wondering one thing.

What is considered fair usage on an mweb uncapped account? 20gb? 100gb?

i know that ISP's in general tend to either throttle or downright disconnect you after hitting a certain threshold. So any experience on what that is for mweb? It does advertise on their website "download as much as you like" but is this really the case?

i use my account to work from home, so i dont want to download large files and then one day i get an email saying my account is suspended or something, i like to plan ahead.

any personal feedback would be appreciated.

In my experience, they use the shaping excessively to throttle. It only improves very late at night, (1am) if at all. Torrents are impossible due to very low speeds during the day. Same for Rapidshare (& the rest) as well as games. Full speed is from around 2/3 to 1/2 of line speed and pings are high.

 

[Basjohn]

Can you please clarify what is not considered fair usage?

A few months ago we had an EXPLOSION here about this very topic when several mweb users were banned from the network for abuse. The jist of what all the bickering resulted in is a lot like what SYNERGY said. Essentially if you intentionally download massive amounts through a method designed to circumvent their shaping rules, then mweb consider it naughty. Eg. Torrents through HTTP and so forth.

Am on the unshaped package myself precisely because I fear ever accidentally "abusing" the service.

 

[Quixotic]

Semantics, methinks. It is capped, in other words you will not be able to download the maximum potential based on the speed of your line. They cap indirectly by shaping, but presumably not on an individual account level and more across all accounts (so it will depend on the ratio of users and abusers at any moment in time), across the different connections and over some averaging period. A constantly moving feast. As a way of illustration. Say you scheduled 100GB of data at the start of the month. Then you stopped and did the same the next month and so on. Your maximum monthly total will differ (over and above that due to other reasons - internet bottlenecks etc). Then, for the same data, you changed the distribution or source across HTTP, P2P etc. You would yet again see a change, probably more dramatic if then biased towards P2P. Of course you will feel the greater pinch if you predominantly use the dodgy or the frowned upon methods.

Just initiate downloads to your heart's content but do not plan a movie night assuming you would have the requisite movie(s) by that time.

 

[Donovan]

Just a heads up - M-Web has been VERY slow and unusable for a few weeks now. I have a 4MB uncapped, shaped product (so the same as yours, except 4MB). I've been getting speeds of around 30KB/s, even on normal files that shouldn't be shaped at all (like updates or downloads from iTunes). Skype and similar things were unusable.

Since Friday night/Saturday morning, speeds have greatly improved but I would wait a bit if I were you before signing up to make sure that the service stays at these better levels. See the last 20 pages of the other thread about "Mweb uncapped subscribers feedback" for the full discussion.

 

[Roamer]

I found over the last few months the speed on the 1-Click sites has improved dramatically, even from early evenings.
NNTP users (not one of them) seem to be making most of the complaints. If you look at the MWeb Feedback thread for the last 100+ entries, that is where most of the complaints are.
M-Web is a bit slow this morning. Had to refresh a few times to get this page, but this is isolated, and people reporting the same thing on the other thread.
I use 200GB-300GB per month, use it to work during the day (including a lot of work related video uploads via FTP) and play at night, with any fun downloads (1click and game downloads) throughout the night. It really is a great value-for-money product that delivers exactly what I want. I appreciate that comment is subjective to my needs, but a happy camper!

 

[Alestorm]

Just a heads up - M-Web has been VERY slow and unusable for a few weeks now. I have a 4MB uncapped, shaped product (so the same as yours, except 4MB). I've been getting speeds of around 30KB/s, even on normal files that shouldn't be shaped at all (like updates or downloads from iTunes). Skype and similar things were unusable.

Since Friday night/Saturday morning, speeds have greatly improved but I would wait a bit if I were you before signing up to make sure that the service stays at these better levels. See the last 20 pages of the other thread about "Mweb uncapped subscribers feedback" for the full discussion.

Er dude he's already on the uncapped shaped service and is "very happy". What you're describing doesn't seem to affect everyone.

Torrents are impossible due to very low speeds during the day. Same for Rapidshare (& the rest) as well as games. Full speed is from around 2/3 to 1/2 of line speed and pings are high.

Your description isn't at all definitive of the service, you shouldn't make as if it is. For example, my Rapidshare still often (actually pretty much always after hours) maxes out my 4Mb line. As in 430Kb, not 2/3 or 1/2 the line speed. A few other hosts (mediafire, filesonic) can also max my line and most others get over 100Kb when shaping lightens up, which can be very late. I got a torrent with 10 seeds yesterday at 250Kb, but during the day torrents really are bad. And my pings to WAGE are very often the best in a game, i.e 5-10ms about as low as you can physically get.

 

[MegasXLR]

Er dude he's already on the uncapped shaped service and is "very happy". What you're describing doesn't seem to affect everyone.



Your description isn't at all definitive of the service, you shouldn't make as if it is. For example, my Rapidshare still often (actually pretty much always after hours) maxes out my 4Mb line. As in 430Kb, not 2/3 or 1/2 the line speed. A few other hosts (mediafire, filesonic) can also max my line and most others get over 100Kb when shaping lightens up, which can be very late. I got a torrent with 10 seeds yesterday at 250Kb, but during the day torrents really are bad. And my pings to WAGE are very often the best in a game, i.e 5-10ms about as low as you can physically get.

I note you are from CapeTown, just saying, so do not try and speak for the up country guys! We have piss poor performance and Mweb refuse to acknowledge the facts of the matter.

 

[Donovan]

OMG MWEB!

Wow guys, we found a happy MWEB customer!

 

[Alestorm]

Wow guys, we found a happy MWEB customer!

There was another one who posted just above me? And your entire post didn't make sense for this thread because the OP's first line said that he was actually a happy MWeb customer too.

I'm just posting the facts about my experience with the service, because it's so different to other people's. And obviously you'll see everybody who's complaining on the forums as opposed to everyone who's happy with the service.

 

[medicnick83]

Bypassing their shaping rules.

I know lots of people (MWEB users) who are doing this simply because it's the only way for them to get things to work then!

Not doing it, nothing works, and then when they complain, they get ignored.

 

[MegasXLR]

There was another one who posted just above me? And your entire post didn't make sense for this thread because the OP's first line said that he was actually a happy MWeb customer too.

I'm just posting the facts about my experience with the service, because it's so different to other people's. And obviously you'll see everybody who's complaining on the forums as opposed to everyone who's happy with the service.

Again, the Cape town guys are generally happy, the rest in JHB and DBN are not so happy at all.

 

[Alestorm]

Again, the Cape town guys are generally happy, the rest in JHB and DBN are not so happy at all.

Ye, that's what I'm saying too, there's this huge discrepancy. But the service can still be very much usable. Even all Cape Town guys aren't happy at all.

 

[medicnick83]

I'm in Cape Town and I'm definately NOT happy!

 

[Roamer]

Again, the Cape town guys are generally happy, the rest in JHB and DBN are not so happy at all.

I am the other "happy one". I live in Gauteng. As I said , the majority of the complaints seem to be around news servers. I spend the money and subscribe to 1-click services, and like Alestorm, I am getting my 4mbs downloads overnight.