MWEB Uncapped Subscribers Feedback

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I posted a question on Facebook, and got this reply from Rudi Jansen:

"Tony, I can assure you it is an equipment problem in Europe. We have been trying with Seacom the entire weekend to fix the problem. Hopefully we are now much closer to a solution, and we ensure that this problem will not be repeated in future. With all the network build we are doing there has been a number problems we have encountered and fixed along the way. We do want to offer the best service available and we will get there."

Gives me renewed hope, although it doesn't fully establish whether there has been a fundamental shift in shaping policy, or just a temporary one in response to this specific problem.
 
I will not put it past them for shaping the living cr@p out of their shaped accounts (read unusable for anything other than visiting the odd forum and reading mail), hiding behind the 'shaped' and screaming foul while they will happily promote their new (expensive) unshaped packages.

The stink is every other ISP out there is sort of doing the same right now so while it seems we moved forward in SA with these new uncapped accounts we actually took a step backwards.
 
If you bothered to read my post you would understand and not make more of an idiot of yourself. Thats the problem with "know it all" people.
The support person was speaking to a senior level supervisor / manager at the time. :rolleyes:

Unless you were talking to someone with in-depth knowledge of the goings on of the network you were very likely speaking to someone in a support capacity. In other words someone who doesn't know the details.

Again, if you bothered to read, MWEB said it was them tweaking the system, tweaking shaping rules. Why would they lie about that when clearly it puts them in a bad light?

No, YOU said that M-Web said they were tweaking the system without providing any form of context, leaping immediately to pathetic conspiracy theories and claiming they were lying about their international capacity being down. My stance has been up until this point that they haven't been lying whatsoever, but it seems you have an axe to grind, so whatever.

Says he who has posted a whole 200 odd posts in 7 years? I dont need to understand the inner workings of an ISP, get that into your thick skull. I pay for a service - I DEMAND what I pay for. When I have an issue, that is what tech support is there for :rolleyes: My god

I never said you need to understand the inner workings of an ISP, but I think if you're going to come and start "pretending" that you somehow have knowledge and make such ridiculous claims as you already have, that you would take the time to have some form of understanding about which you speak. Clearly you don't. You merely serve to further demonstrate that post count means nothing when it comes to how knowledgeable someone is. Just FYI, this account was on hiatus while I was working for Web Africa, which is why I have such a low post count.

And there you have it, probably on the support call centre? Right?

Actually no, it was higher than that, and *gasp* had to do with the provisioning of internet services.

Childish remarks

Grow up.

So then based on what you are saying, that Seacom is the reason, then by your own stupid admission, Mweb lied to me on the phone. Do you know what the definition of a lie is?

I do know what the definition of a lie is, thanks. I also stated that them saying they were tweaking the QoS was perhaps true, but being done so PURELY within the context of the bandwidth crisis they suffer(ed) this weekend. You seem to have jumped to the conclusion that they lied to you (either about SEACOM or about changing QoS rules) because you base this on the impression you have in your mind that these QoS changes are permanent, while I supply an alternative where they lied about neither, I can assure you my option is likely the more right of the two.

Anyway /I am done arguing with you, I was told something and clearly someone is LYING !!

Nope, no-one is lying except for you. You seem to have some kind of frothing conspiracy theorist (and outlandishly childish) axe to grind. But thankfully you're going to stop arguing because really, it's getting a bit tiring trying to knock some sense into your thick skull.
 
Um, they were tweaking their shaping policies because some of their pipe was broken? Duh, right?!

Makes sense, chances are to keep HTTP and other high priority traffic at top speed during the downtime they had to further drop things such as P2P to near nonexistant levels.
 
Makes sense, chances are to keep HTTP and other high priority traffic at top speed during the downtime they had to further drop things such as P2P to near nonexistant levels.

Bulls..t!!

They have 80% capacity which means they lost 20%. You could usually get 100KB/s on shaped traffic and it's now down to 2-9KB/s. If you do the math you should still get 80KB/s!!

They are shafting their clients bigtime to promote their bigger more expensive packages period!!!!!
 
Bulls..t!!

They have 80% capacity which means they lost 20%. You could usually get 100KB/s on shaped traffic and it's now down to 2-9KB/s. If you do the math you should still get 80KB/s!!

They are shafting their clients bigtime to promote their bigger more expensive packages period!!!!!
Well according to the rocket scientist, we dont know WTF we are talking about ;)
 
Just switched on my pc, and I'm getting between 53kb-63kb on torrents on my 512kb line. Yeah, I'm smiling.

:)
 
Bulls..t!!

They have 80% capacity which means they lost 20%. You could usually get 100KB/s on shaped traffic and it's now down to 2-9KB/s. If you do the math you should still get 80KB/s!!

They are shafting their clients bigtime to promote their bigger more expensive packages period!!!!!

Sure, using the simple math you used you would expect 80KB/s, but unfortunately this doesn't involve simple math. Firstly, you're assuming that the 100% you refer to is entirely dedicated to the consumer ADSL, which isn't true. You are correct however that they are prioritising their "bigger more expensive packages", because those packages are business packages with SLA's that specify maximum uptime and performance, something the consumer ADSL doesn't have.

Anyway, on to the "hard" math, keeping in mind that I'm oversimplifying here as well:

INITIAL PROBLEM
--------------------

Lets say the bandwidth usage is 60/40 in favour of their business packages, and lets say for the sake of this example that they have 100mbits intl. bandwidth, they now firstly lose approx 50% so they only have 50mbits.

Now lets say they had to tweak their QoS so that their business accounts (which were using 60mbits) will use probably close to 40 mbits so as to as best as possible maintain the SLAs that have been set up, they will have a performance hit, but it won't be HUGE (which is why you pay more). However, that leaves only 10mbits for the consumers, a far cry from the 40 mbits they used to have - they only have 25% of what they were using before!

In our example, the consumer DSL was using 10mbits HTTP and the remaining 30mbits traffic was P2P (a semi-realistic split), so now they only have 10mbits in TOTAL that they can use, so the higher priority HTTP now uses 9mbits (shaped down a little) and P2P is now using only 1mbit (shaped down a lot), or to 1/30th of what it was before, not the 1/2 the "simple math" above would suggest. You now have all those P2P users trying to suck golf balls through a straw, and no-one is getting anywhere. Much gnashing of teeth ensues.

SOME BANDWIDTH COMES BACK ONLINE
-----------------------------------------------

Okay, so now they recover some of their network and they're now at 80% capacity, lets solve for x:

Total mbits available: 80mbits.
Business accounts: 60mbits (running fine since we now have enough capacity to serve them).
Remaining bandwidth for end user accounts: 20mbits
HTTP bandwidth: 15mbits (we have enough capacity to serve HTTP unshaped again, but since P2P isn't working nicely more people are using HTTP).
P2P bandwidth: 5mbits (still running at 1/6 the speed it was).

Now let me reiterate, I have oversimplified the problem somewhat, but hopefully you can see that it's not a matter of 80% total capacity will = 80% your max speeds.
 
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Well according to the rocket scientist, we dont know WTF we are talking about ;)

Well I wouldn't put it quite that way, I would say it's just an unrealistic view of how things work, and before passing judgement based on wrong information it's worth gaining some perspective.
 
From Free the web facebook:
We can confirm that as of a few minutes ago we are back up to full capacity on our international links. Thank you for your patience over the weekend, and please accept our apologies once again for any inconvenience that it may have caused you.
 
Of course it's not black and white, it never is but it still does not explain why shaped traffic went from those previous numbers to almost nothing. They claim 100% capacity again, lets see what happens but my guess is the 100KB/s on shaped traffic seen in the past is now prob 1/2 that! I hope I'm wrong!
 
30KB/s on news server downloads.

It used to be 50KB/s, I would expect at least 100KB/s as sorry from MWEB so we can play 'catch up' :D
 
Of course it's not black and white, it never is but it still does not explain why shaped traffic went from those previous numbers to almost nothing. They claim 100% capacity again, lets see what happens but my guess is the 100KB/s on shaped traffic seen in the past is now prob 1/2 that! I hope I'm wrong!

Agreed, well I'm glad they at least got it sorted... you're right, lets see how things go for the next little while.
 
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