Because not all ADSL lines are created equal would be the simplest answer to that. Case in point a colleague and I have been comparing real world performance on a daily basis. We are both in Cape Town we are both on 4mb lines and 4mb shaped products. My downloads, streaming and P2P experience are all consistently far better than his, the only difference between us is the suburb we are in which has no bearing on MWEB's network - it's a simple matter of Telkom infrastructure not being up to the task.
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Because not all ADSL lines are created equal would be the simplest answer to that. Case in point a colleague and I have been comparing real world performance on a daily basis. We are both in Cape Town we are both on 4mb lines and 4mb shaped products. My downloads, streaming and P2P experience are all consistently far better than his, the only difference between us is the suburb we are in which has no bearing on MWEB's network - it's a simple matter of Telkom infrastructure not being up to the task.
Gordon_R
Honorary Master
And let's not forget the infamous Southern Suburbs (Clareinch) case in September, where latency was horrendous (200-300ms) for 18 hours a day (for a period of 6 weeks), due to congestion at the DSLAM to ESR level:
http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php/268237-LATENCY (50 pages of complaints!)
Greg your opinion is noted, but that is the policy as it stands. I said I didn't want to enter into a debate on the nature of the content, however nntp and bittorrent most definitely do serve the same need to the same niche of users, they are different only in terms of the delivery mechanism.
and what turnaround story that has been Gordon. I don't know about you but my line is syncing at 8mb at the moment and performing beautifully
So, according to you, Telkom are blocking my access to MWEB's newsservers for 20/24 hours/day, throttling my torrents for most of the day, and stalling my https downloads? I knew they were evil, but...WoW! ('scuse the pun)
gregmcc
Honorary Master
No problem. Generally I've been pretty happy with mweb and can't really complain.
If thats that case. That Telkom is the problem.
How is it that when people shifted on to their standby / secondary line, then HTTP was fine?
SSung if you're having general problems then the troubleshooting needs to be done. I've made it very clear that Peer to Peer performance will fluctuate and that people need to have realistic expectations about what to expect from P2P on a shaped product. We are monitoring the experience and the overall performance of P2P and it will be taken into account in terms of planning the growth of the network capacity. If what you as an individual are experiencing is not in line with the general customer experience then it would obviously indicate that there is some other factor involved, which can only be determined by going through the process.
Flojo you need to define what HTTP is being discussed here, one-click hosting and drop box sites such as rapidshare are classed as P2P, they will perform better on an account which is not shaped. Regular http traffic is heavily prioritized and should run very close to line speeds - something I test myself on a regular basis at different times of the day. Incidentally I just watched about 6 720p trailers on youtube and only experienced a short period of buffering halfway through one of the clips. I will try again closer to midnight and see if the experience changes.
Freshy-ZN
Executive Member
Will, we talk about http and you try put a P2P spin on it. Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions 2 pages back......
Also nice try throwing the Telkom infrastructure angle in. Are you suggesting that as soon as we switch to other ISP accounts Telkom's infrastructure magically heals itself? Stop skirting around the issues here please.
Also nice try throwing the Telkom infrastructure angle in. Are you suggesting that as soon as we switch to other ISP accounts Telkom's infrastructure magically heals itself? Stop skirting around the issues here please.
Any idea how i could go about testing this theory?
I am in the Southern Suburbs - (Rondebosch East) and SSung has the same problem in Durbanville (Northern suburbs).
what other suburb is there lol
Freshy I'm not trying to put a spin on anything, but I need to deal in facts not speculation.
We investigate complaints that are picked up constantly from these forums, as well as those that come in through the call centre channels. Over and above the monitoring which is in place we keep a close eye on the real world network performance, both through our testbenches and by comparing notes on our own personal usage experience, as myself and the majority of my staff are also users of standard uncapped products accross various speeds.
The facts are that the majority of the complaints we pick up through these channels either relate back to a line, or Telkom congestion related problem, or they boil down to a customer simply being unhappy about the P2P experience on a shaped product. This by no means means that we are trying to discount any complaints which do not fall into these categories, but these issues then need to be dealt with on a case by case basis with proper troubleshooting so that we can determine the cause of the individual customer's problem.
We investigate complaints that are picked up constantly from these forums, as well as those that come in through the call centre channels. Over and above the monitoring which is in place we keep a close eye on the real world network performance, both through our testbenches and by comparing notes on our own personal usage experience, as myself and the majority of my staff are also users of standard uncapped products accross various speeds.
The facts are that the majority of the complaints we pick up through these channels either relate back to a line, or Telkom congestion related problem, or they boil down to a customer simply being unhappy about the P2P experience on a shaped product. This by no means means that we are trying to discount any complaints which do not fall into these categories, but these issues then need to be dealt with on a case by case basis with proper troubleshooting so that we can determine the cause of the individual customer's problem.
Freshy-ZN
Executive Member
Ok so you cant deal with individual issues here but rather general ones? Ok heres a general issue:
All over the country people on MWeb uncapped are complaining that the basics like http, IMAP and streaming video are not performing, performing erratically or are generally very unpredictable. In short-service levels are up the pole and not good enough. This implies that you guys are fiddling and breaking things. Personally I cant believe you dont have access to this info from a technical side. I dont fart arse around with crappy service anymore so if its not sorted out by the end of the month Im cancelling and trying someone else. And just in case you missed it the first three hundred times- when we change to another ADSL account the problems mysteriously vanish. Now Im not a rocket scientist but Im sure theres a huge clue in there.
Forget P2P, if http aint working well then its pretty much a given that P2P wont fair much better.
All over the country people on MWeb uncapped are complaining that the basics like http, IMAP and streaming video are not performing, performing erratically or are generally very unpredictable. In short-service levels are up the pole and not good enough. This implies that you guys are fiddling and breaking things. Personally I cant believe you dont have access to this info from a technical side. I dont fart arse around with crappy service anymore so if its not sorted out by the end of the month Im cancelling and trying someone else. And just in case you missed it the first three hundred times- when we change to another ADSL account the problems mysteriously vanish. Now Im not a rocket scientist but Im sure theres a huge clue in there.
Forget P2P, if http aint working well then its pretty much a given that P2P wont fair much better.
hambone
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My post from earlier in the week seems to have gone unnoticed.
I appreciate that I am getting substantially more data than I was a year ago, I appreciate how MWEB has changed the broadband market, I get the difference between P2P and NNTP. I also understand that I am using more data because I have an uncapped account, downloading stuff that I wouldn't have done previously on a capped account. So, again I implore those, "you should be grateful things have changed" folk to take a step back, and remember what cone head said, "you can't go back to a capped world". Its very true in my case. So seeing as I can't go back, neither can I stop complaining that the service I am receiving now is not living up to the expectations I had at the products inception.
I am not delusional. I know MWEB monitoring the bandwiidth usage by protocols, and so they should. Managing bandwidth is one thing: pretty graphs, cute illustrations and QoS reports are sexy and all, but the real user's experience is becoming slower and less responsive each passing week. P2P is shaped, fine. We get it. How shaped is where the issue lies. If I consider that my 4096 line is getting 35kB/s from 8AM - 8PM on torrents, I am in essence getting speeds at 0.06% of my line capacity. I'm sorry but that is tantamount to blocking/throttling/killing. So what I'm saying is, I don't care how pretty MWEB's graphs are, or how clever their ads are, I just want MWEB to give me what I thought I would be able to achieve and what I was able to achieve a month ago (which I thought was reasonable). Ah, 'but MWEB said that P2P capacity depends on what other users are doing' too. Oviaas, but I don't care. MWEB must then use their pretty graphs to make a QoS report that can justify them getting additional capacity to match the uptake of the product. Failing which, the product is "unsustainable" (WA, 2010).
Now people, including myself, are noticing their regular HTTP degrading each passing day. YouTube, as isolated by cone head in a pretty video, is getting far more visits than ever before on MWEBs network. Thats hardly surprising. But its broken, its buffering and spluttering every step of the way. Other websites are sporadically timing out (like MyBB). UbuntuOne and Dropbox are being shaped the same as P2P. Latencies are sky high for gamers, sky high for streaming media and customers are getting PO'd. Little me can't call the lovelies at Telkom Wholesale and moan. Dorkville at 0800 375 375 put the phone down the moment I say MWEB and latency in the same conversation. I am paying MWEB to give me a service, they should have ensured that Telkom would keep up their end of the bargain before they rolled out such an ambitious product. One such way is a acceptable standards assurance from them. I'm sure the verbosity of the agreement would have been orgasmic for the MWEB legal team. If such an agreement were reached prior to the product being launched, then the customers should be compensated for the failings of the last mile provider, and the T&C's should reflect this commitment, if not for anything but 'the spirit of the internet community'.
I'm ignoring the fact that another ISP account does not return the same service levels as MWEB does on the same line, thats a dissertation for another early morning conversation.
When customers complain about P2P on a shaped product, it may be appealing to repeat 'its a shaped product" until they ears bleed but don't be tempted. I seriously do not think 0.06% of a lines capacity is justifiable. Its just not okay. If you need the additional capacity then get it. Conduct your benchmark tests until you're blue in face, but listen to the legitimate and realistic concerns of the customers who know better, or at least a little more than that average user. There is a problem. I can't fix it, Telkom won't listen to me and at the end of your work day I'm left high and dry: the donkey staring at a carrot thats unreachable.
So again MWEB: this is your problem to get resolved. P2P is one thing, regular HTTP is gravely concerning and it is your responsibility to ensure it gets solved. If you disagree, then please provide me with the platform to fast track a complaint to ICASA on your and all your customers behalf against Telkom. Or whomever one complains to.
I appreciate that I am getting substantially more data than I was a year ago, I appreciate how MWEB has changed the broadband market, I get the difference between P2P and NNTP. I also understand that I am using more data because I have an uncapped account, downloading stuff that I wouldn't have done previously on a capped account. So, again I implore those, "you should be grateful things have changed" folk to take a step back, and remember what cone head said, "you can't go back to a capped world". Its very true in my case. So seeing as I can't go back, neither can I stop complaining that the service I am receiving now is not living up to the expectations I had at the products inception.
I am not delusional. I know MWEB monitoring the bandwiidth usage by protocols, and so they should. Managing bandwidth is one thing: pretty graphs, cute illustrations and QoS reports are sexy and all, but the real user's experience is becoming slower and less responsive each passing week. P2P is shaped, fine. We get it. How shaped is where the issue lies. If I consider that my 4096 line is getting 35kB/s from 8AM - 8PM on torrents, I am in essence getting speeds at 0.06% of my line capacity. I'm sorry but that is tantamount to blocking/throttling/killing. So what I'm saying is, I don't care how pretty MWEB's graphs are, or how clever their ads are, I just want MWEB to give me what I thought I would be able to achieve and what I was able to achieve a month ago (which I thought was reasonable). Ah, 'but MWEB said that P2P capacity depends on what other users are doing' too. Oviaas, but I don't care. MWEB must then use their pretty graphs to make a QoS report that can justify them getting additional capacity to match the uptake of the product. Failing which, the product is "unsustainable" (WA, 2010).
Now people, including myself, are noticing their regular HTTP degrading each passing day. YouTube, as isolated by cone head in a pretty video, is getting far more visits than ever before on MWEBs network. Thats hardly surprising. But its broken, its buffering and spluttering every step of the way. Other websites are sporadically timing out (like MyBB). UbuntuOne and Dropbox are being shaped the same as P2P. Latencies are sky high for gamers, sky high for streaming media and customers are getting PO'd. Little me can't call the lovelies at Telkom Wholesale and moan. Dorkville at 0800 375 375 put the phone down the moment I say MWEB and latency in the same conversation. I am paying MWEB to give me a service, they should have ensured that Telkom would keep up their end of the bargain before they rolled out such an ambitious product. One such way is a acceptable standards assurance from them. I'm sure the verbosity of the agreement would have been orgasmic for the MWEB legal team. If such an agreement were reached prior to the product being launched, then the customers should be compensated for the failings of the last mile provider, and the T&C's should reflect this commitment, if not for anything but 'the spirit of the internet community'.
I'm ignoring the fact that another ISP account does not return the same service levels as MWEB does on the same line, thats a dissertation for another early morning conversation.
When customers complain about P2P on a shaped product, it may be appealing to repeat 'its a shaped product" until they ears bleed but don't be tempted. I seriously do not think 0.06% of a lines capacity is justifiable. Its just not okay. If you need the additional capacity then get it. Conduct your benchmark tests until you're blue in face, but listen to the legitimate and realistic concerns of the customers who know better, or at least a little more than that average user. There is a problem. I can't fix it, Telkom won't listen to me and at the end of your work day I'm left high and dry: the donkey staring at a carrot thats unreachable.
So again MWEB: this is your problem to get resolved. P2P is one thing, regular HTTP is gravely concerning and it is your responsibility to ensure it gets solved. If you disagree, then please provide me with the platform to fast track a complaint to ICASA on your and all your customers behalf against Telkom. Or whomever one complains to.
Freshy-ZN
Executive Member
Very eloquently put Sir! Pretty much what I was trying to say in the post above yours.
Freshy I think you missed my point entirely, if you as an individual are experiencing a problem then general discussion is not going to get it fixed we need to troubleshoot the issue with you as an individual and find out what's causing it. Please PM us your contact details and We'll make contact with you and try and get to the bottom of it.
Sorry for this, but I missed a few pages in this thread. Hopefully it's already been spoken about, but if not:
I still can't connect to MWEB news servers. It's been about 3-4 days now that it just sits there and won't connect. I think it went online on thursday morning for a few hours, but other than that, I've had no connectivity whatsoever. Anyone else experiencing this?
I still can't connect to MWEB news servers. It's been about 3-4 days now that it just sits there and won't connect. I think it went online on thursday morning for a few hours, but other than that, I've had no connectivity whatsoever. Anyone else experiencing this?
Freshy-ZN
Executive Member
@Will@MWEB
Thanks for the offer but I still feel like you are avoiding the point. I dont need to troubleshoot with MWeb because when I switch over to another ISP account the problem vanishes! That means you guys are the problem not my line or anything else to do with the physical infrastructure leading to my router.
Thanks for the offer but I still feel like you are avoiding the point. I dont need to troubleshoot with MWeb because when I switch over to another ISP account the problem vanishes! That means you guys are the problem not my line or anything else to do with the physical infrastructure leading to my router.
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