Mweb vs Telkom vs Me

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clownshobbies

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Hi MyBB'ers

Hoping someone out there can assist.

I have a 10mb ADSL Line with Mweb. For years i have been a Mweb fanboy, I always had the lowest ping on my game server, browsing speeds great, downloads fast, and my movie/series streams great.

About 2 months ago I started having line speed issues, Ookla speedtests were around 1-2mb/s

I called Mweb support, and ever since it has been a total nightmare. I have been send from pillar (Mweb) to post (telkom) NUMEROUS times. First Telkom denied that the line was dodge, , then I got a call from mweb staring that a truck ran over some connection box, then back to the faulty line again, then my Mweb account was recreated, etc etc, test after test after test to the point where I have totally lost my cool with Mweb support techies more than once. We (sic) have tried changing to my axxess account, an new Mweb account, we tried the saix Guest account, all with similar results.

Let me explain my symptoms, maybe you have seen this before.

I restart my router, then I have 8.2mb/s. which is acceptable. over the course of 2 hours it steadily drops to sub 1mb/s. I then have to reboot, sometimes 3-5 times, before I get a decent speed again, and the process starts over again. Sometimes I cannot even stream an entire movie before I have to stop, reboot everything, and continue again...

Now in my mind this is because of a bad line, and the router is dropping the line speed in response to this.

This weekend I spoke to Mweb support again after 3 days of "monitoring" on their side, and now they are trying to feed me some cocamaimy story that they picked up that I am running torrent software (yes i am, but its idle) and Cloud services (Dropbox on my phone, inactive), and these programs are probably flooding my router with TCP requests, causing buffers to overflow.

Can anyone tell me if this is a "wolhaarstorie" ?

In short I am seeing Wireless providers this week, all I really want is to hand someone a wad of cash, and have a stable, fast internet connection in return, something Mweb seems unwilling / incapable of doing of late.

If I have to hear one more call centre knowledge base reader give me the standard shpliel again, I will climb THROUGH the phone and... and ... you get the idea.

Please help, even if it is just a well define list of things to do, systematically PROVING where the fault lies.

Thanx

Wessie
 
Hi Wessie

Yeh, this doesn't sound very good.

I just want to make sure you did check all the filters etc at your house? These are sometimes missed in all the problem findings...

I doubt using torrents can have an effect on your physical line though... The only way torrents will degrade your line is if your ISP start throttling you (Which Mweb has done although they will deny it most of the time), but you have tried an Axxess account which tells me this is not an ISP issue but more likely the ADSL line itself.

So I would start by trying to get a Telkom Technician out to test the line (As you have not mentioned having a technician over there) by you, but this is not always a very easy and pleasant exercise because it involves 15 - 45 minutes holding on the line for assistance at their call center.

If you have a MWEB bundle where you pay them for your ADSL line you can ask them to assist you to get a technician at your premises.

Hope this helps.
 
Thanx for the reply Klippies. Yea dont think its throttling either, otherwise it would still be slow after the reboot.

UPDATE : So I had a Telkom Tech out today. He tested my line, and said it tested ok and Syncs at 10MB, but that should be impossible , since I am 2.5Km from the nearest exchange. He could not answer when I asked how it was working just fine for YEARS before.

He recommends I downgrade the line to 8Mb, "then it will be stable".

So still no idea why the slowdown. As I am typing this my line is still at 8mb, since telkom was here. Lets hope. (yea right)

@Rickster - sorry to dissapoint. I was merely asking if the premise of the explanation was solid (TCP buffer overrruns in the router) or bogus misinformation, therefore no stats given. I'll happliy post stats if you think it will help, just tell me what you need.
 
clownshobbies said:
@Rickster - sorry to dissapoint. I was merely asking if the premise of the explanation was solid (TCP buffer overrruns in the router) or bogus misinformation, therefore no stats given. I'll happliy post stats if you think it will help, just tell me what you need.
Click to expand...

In your router -> ADSL/Line statistics -> SNR and attenuation.
 
Found it

DSL Type: ITU-T G.992.5 Annex A (ADSL2+ over POTS)

Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 1.023 / 10.239

Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]: 21,5 / 33,5

SN Margin (Up/Down) [dB]: 8,8 / 8,9
 
clownshobbies said:
Found it

Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]: 21,5 / 33,5

SN Margin (Up/Down) [dB]: 8,8 / 8,9
Click to expand...

Well someone with decent xDSL knowledge would tell you that there is a problem on the line, keep in mind 6dB is the minimum for ADSL.

Do you have any noise on your telephone line? Are your filters good? Any lightning storms lately?
 
Last edited:
Thats what I thought, and could not understand when the Telkom Tech said that my S/R is satisfactory.

So this, boys and Girls, is why you should NEVER let your ISP manage your line. They simply blame Telkom , Telkom denies responsibility, and the end-user is simply left with his finger.

In my case the only option looks to be Wireless internet, but thats more expensive for a slower line, because I live in a "lower income area", there are no plans to roll out fibre to my area any time soon, and no LTE connectivity for wireless Telkom line.

Since my last post at 19:14 (8Mb Download) I now have this :

Last Result:
Download Speed: 179 kbps (22.4 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 828 kbps (103.5 KB/sec transfer rate)
Latency: 9 ms
Jitter: 75 ms
2016/09/29, 7:46:28 PM

Just great, aint it?
 
@Rickster, I swopped the Pots filter with my work one today, Yesterday i swopped routers to see if there would be a difference. Nada
 
Rickster said:
Run tracert to saix.net/evetech.co.za/mybroadband.co.za pls.
Click to expand...

Just had to reboot the router again, back up to 8mb/s


Tracing route to saix.net [196.25.1.204]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms myrouter.Home [192.168.1.1]
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 9 ms 7 ms 7 ms cpt-rx2.ip.adsl.co.za [169.1.5.82]
4 8 ms 7 ms 7 ms cpt-net1.ip.adsl.co.za [169.1.5.128]
5 8 ms 8 ms 8 ms 41.164.52.40
6 8 ms 8 ms 8 ms wblv-ip-se-2-wan.telkom-ipnet.co.za [196.25.3.10
1]
7 8 ms 8 ms 8 ms 196.43.25.205
8 94 ms 99 ms 97 ms wblv-ip-essr-1-atm-2-0-0-2.telkom-ipnet.co.za [1
96.43.11.30]
9 wblv-ip-essr-1-atm-2-0-0-2.telkom-ipnet.co.za [196.43.11.30] reports: Dest
ination net unreachable.

Trace complete.

C:\Users\Wessie>tracert evetech.co.za

Tracing route to evetech.co.za [196.38.40.245]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms myrouter.Home [192.168.1.1]
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 9 ms 7 ms 7 ms cpt-rx2.ip.adsl.co.za [169.1.5.82]
4 9 ms 14 ms 14 ms cpt-net1.ip.adsl.co.za [169.1.5.128]
5 8 ms 8 ms 8 ms 41.164.52.40
6 9 ms 9 ms 9 ms is.cinx.net.za [196.223.22.10]
7 10 ms 9 ms 9 ms mi-za-cpt-p7-te0-0-0-0.ip.isnet.net [168.209.6.1
2]
8 95 ms 96 ms 102 ms 168.209.100.101
9 27 ms 26 ms 26 ms core1a-bry-te0-0-0-1.ip.isnet.net [168.209.100.7
8]
10 149 ms 182 ms 89 ms 168.209.217.17
11 26 ms 26 ms 25 ms 196.34.134.105
12 * 28 ms 28 ms gw.aserv.co.za [196.33.227.1]
13 26 ms 26 ms 25 ms bellic.aserv.co.za [196.38.40.245]

Trace complete.

C:\Users\Wessie>tracert mybroadband.co.za

Tracing route to mybroadband.co.za [104.20.10.169]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms myrouter.Home [192.168.1.1]
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 10 ms 8 ms 7 ms cpt-rx2.ip.adsl.co.za [169.1.5.82]
4 9 ms 9 ms 9 ms cpt-net1.ip.adsl.co.za [169.1.5.128]
5 36 ms 28 ms 26 ms 41.164.52.40
6 91 ms 104 ms 109 ms 172.18.1.162
7 28 ms 28 ms 28 ms cloudflare.ixp.joburg [196.46.25.198]
8 40 ms 38 ms 36 ms 104.20.10.169

Trace complete.

Funny how the second hop always times out... normal?
 
clownshobbies said:
Hi MyBB'ers

Hoping someone out there can assist.

I have a 10mb ADSL Line with Mweb. For years i have been a Mweb fanboy, I always had the lowest ping on my game server, browsing speeds great, downloads fast, and my movie/series streams great.

About 2 months ago I started having line speed issues, Ookla speedtests were around 1-2mb/s

I called Mweb support, and ever since it has been a total nightmare. I have been send from pillar (Mweb) to post (telkom) NUMEROUS times. First Telkom denied that the line was dodge, , then I got a call from mweb staring that a truck ran over some connection box, then back to the faulty line again, then my Mweb account was recreated, etc etc, test after test after test to the point where I have totally lost my cool with Mweb support techies more than once. We (sic) have tried changing to my axxess account, an new Mweb account, we tried the saix Guest account, all with similar results.

Let me explain my symptoms, maybe you have seen this before.

I restart my router, then I have 8.2mb/s. which is acceptable. over the course of 2 hours it steadily drops to sub 1mb/s. I then have to reboot, sometimes 3-5 times, before I get a decent speed again, and the process starts over again. Sometimes I cannot even stream an entire movie before I have to stop, reboot everything, and continue again...

Now in my mind this is because of a bad line, and the router is dropping the line speed in response to this.

This weekend I spoke to Mweb support again after 3 days of "monitoring" on their side, and now they are trying to feed me some cocamaimy story that they picked up that I am running torrent software (yes i am, but its idle) and Cloud services (Dropbox on my phone, inactive), and these programs are probably flooding my router with TCP requests, causing buffers to overflow.

Can anyone tell me if this is a "wolhaarstorie" ?

In short I am seeing Wireless providers this week, all I really want is to hand someone a wad of cash, and have a stable, fast internet connection in return, something Mweb seems unwilling / incapable of doing of late.

If I have to hear one more call centre knowledge base reader give me the standard shpliel again, I will climb THROUGH the phone and... and ... you get the idea.

Please help, even if it is just a well define list of things to do, systematically PROVING where the fault lies.

Thanx

Wessie
Click to expand...


Hi Wessie, please PM me your MWEB email address so that I can look into this for you.
 
daniellgr said:
6dB or less is unusable even at 2Mb/s
>7 - 10 dB will probably work okay at 2 Mb/s but will be almost useless at any higher rates.
Click to expand...

What nonsense...

I have a dead stable 20meg ADSL(before people say this is impossible, it's not, I am on top of the exchange) at 5.4dB SNR.

SNR depends on the speed you're running at. Drop line speed and SNR will improve and vice-versa.

OP's line looks fine to me, bit marginal at 10meg but nothing serious.

EDIT: latency spikes well after the exchange too so no congestion. OP try a free 1gig account from somewhere, R10 your internet will be fine.
 
Last edited:
Update :

So I have now downgraded my Line to 8Mb/s.

New stats :
Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]: 20,5 / 31,5

SN Margin (Up/Down) [dB]: 12,0 / 6,6

Better stats, but still not great. My suspicions of a bad line all that time ago !MWEB! have been confirmed.
I have turned my Dropbox app, and uTorrent back on, and its makes bugger-all difference !MWEB! to whats going on with the line.

So now it works, or does it?

I definitely have noticed slower streaming, facebook videos and youtube is slower too (forget about viewing a Facebook animated gif), to the point where It looks like i am being heavily shaped. Certainly a drop in user experience, for which I am still paying (by my standards) big money.

Time will tell, but I still think Wireless may be the answer, but its not cheap.

Line speed now seems to be holding steady, the Fiasco between Mweb and Telkom this morning did not help things.

So the end result, I guess is this :

Telkoms ageing infrastructure, confirmed by the Telkom techie, is rapidly failing, and ADSL's days are numbered. Hell, Telkom dont even have their own support division anymore, ALL their Tech support is now outsourced. Most exchanges are oversubscribed.

Providers who rely on that infrastructure are pretty much doomed to forever delivering substandard offerings.

If you dont live CLOSE to an exchange or DSLAM, and your line is dodgy, don't expect anyone to fix it, let alone care.

Sa's internet infrastructure may just be one of the big things holding this country back from ever aiming to be anything other than third world.

Thank you everyone for your inputs, (especially Rickster , who bothered to look at my results)
 
ScottulusMaximus said:
What nonsense...

I have a dead stable 20meg ADSL(before people say this is impossible, it's not, I am on top of the exchange) at 5.4dB SNR.

SNR depends on the speed you're running at. Drop line speed and SNR will improve and vice-versa.

OP's line looks fine to me, bit marginal at 10meg but nothing serious.

EDIT: latency spikes well after the exchange too so no congestion. OP try a free 1gig account from somewhere, R10 your internet will be fine.
Click to expand...

It is NOT nonsense! IF the measurements are taken using the modulation scheme used for ADSL and for ADSL+ , AND the SNR is below 10dB, then it will be very difficult to get better performance as I indicate.

AFTER you change to a higher bit rate using a different modulation scheme, THEN the coding advantage comes into play AND it is that coding advantage that now gets factored into the calculation, allowing one to get away with a much worse noise margin!

So watch out who you try and accuse of talking nonsense! :mad:

I am pretty sick of these forum wise guys who still have to learn what I have forgotten accusing me of talking nonsense.
 
daniellgr said:
It is NOT nonsense! IF the measurements are taken using the modulation scheme used for ADSL and for ADSL+ , AND the SNR is below 10dB, then it will be very difficult to get better performance as I indicate.

AFTER you change to a higher bit rate using a different modulation scheme, THEN the coding advantage comes into play AND it is that coding advantage that now gets factored into the calculation, allowing one to get away with a much worse noise margin!

So watch out who you try and accuse of talking nonsense! :mad:

I am pretty sick of these forum wise guys who still have to learn what I have forgotten accusing me of talking nonsense.
Click to expand...

i know! its nonsense! :p

yeah some people dont realise the stats/requirements change with sync rates and modulation types. i feel they are the same that ask how their router can now be broken, "it was still working"
 
Oh So finally found a solution to my Telkom / Mweb TOTAL lack of service / Quality / professionalism.


photo.php


Short answer :

Just read the forum headings.

Anything Telkom / MWEB / Copper line WILL let you down. You will pay X amount for X-1 amount of speed.

Telkom Techs have admitted, in writing, that the copper line structure in this country will not last another 5 years.

My current 5Meg Wireless line runs WAY faster than my MWEB 10Meg line used to, from a user experience point of view. (Throttling / shaping!!!)

STAY AWAY FROM ADSL!!!
 
Last edited:
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