MWEB vs WebAfrica?

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Fluttershy

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Durban, South Africa
Hi there.

WebAfrica Home Uncapped 384k:
R279/month with line

MWEB Shapped Uncapped 384k:
R349/month with line

I wanted to find out more about WebAfrica's Home Uncapped service (384k).
I read on their website that for that package, if you use 305mb in 6 hours your speed gets halved.
By the way I'm getting about 30kb/s on MWEB's shaped uncapped service at the moment.
What sort of speeds should I expect from WebAfrica's package (before and after the 6 hour throttling)?
For instance do I get a good UNSHAPED speed like they say, before the throttling, and average to bad speeds afterwards, like MWEB's shaped package (30kb/s average)?
Or does it go from average to extremely bad?

Another thing, what is the difference between IS and SAIX??
And which ones do the two ISP's use/provide? o:

Thanks :)
 
Last edited:
Fluttershy said:
Hi there.

WebAfrica Home Uncapped 384k:
R279/month with line

MWEB Shapped Uncapped 384k:
R349/month with line

I wanted to find out more about WebAfrica's Home Uncapped service (384k).
I read on their website that for that package, if you use 305mb in 6 hours your speed gets halved.
By the way I'm getting about 30kb/s on MWEB's shaped uncapped service at the moment.
What sort of speeds should I expect from WebAfrica's package (before and after the 6 hour throttling)?
For instance do I get a good UNSHAPED speed like they say, before the throttling, and average to bad speeds afterwards, like MWEB's shaped package (30kb/s average)?
Or does it go from average to extremely bad?

Another thing, what is the difference between IS and SAIX??
And which ones do the two ISP's use/provide? o:

Thanks :)
Click to expand...

Good Afternoon Fluttershy, you could inbox me your contact details. We can then arrannge a trial account for you.

Kind regards,
MWEB Guy
 
Last edited:
MWEB and Web Africa are independent of the big bandwidth providers in previous years. They both rent their own "pipes" from Telkom and then push it through their own international/local capacity.

MWEB uses Seacom with fallback on SAIX (run by Telkom). Web Africa uses SAIX exclusively although they have said several times they might look into Seacom as well.

IS runs mostly on Seacom and Satellite now (AFAIK they've ended their SAIX provided bandwidth).

Back in the early days of the internet, it depended where you stayed on which international bandwidth was right for you, depending on landing points of the cable systems etc. Nowadays there's no real difference, although you have to realize that if you're on SAIX based bandwidth (ie, not MWEB, Web Africa but Telkom) your ping times between gaming servers locally hosted by IS will be huge. However with MWEB's open peering agreements it's more or less the same as if you were on that specific ISP's bandwidth.

The downside to Web Africa is they only have one point of presence, and that is in Cape Town. MWEB has multiple POP's so latency between Cape Town and Johannesburg for example will be almost half (if not more than half) if that Web Africa can offer you if you were a Cape Tonian trying to connect to gaming servers mostly hosted in JHB etc.

Having been on Web Africa and MWEB, I can recommend MWEB hands down. Their latency to international games like World of Warcraft beat that of Web Africa's unshaped gaming protocols by a clear 100ms at least. And that was without using MWEB's free "WTFast" account as proxy/vpn. MWEB's stability also weighed heavily on my decision to move to them as there was quite a few lag spikes with WA and at a point getting 3k+ms lag. They blamed my line for that and since I was trialing MWEB's uncapped (to me, uncapped should have been ****tier than the capped of WA so decided to have 2 accounts), I quickly proved it wasn't my line or over-congestion of my Exchange.

In previous years, the shaping policies were decided by SAIX and IS, nowadays, the shaping policies are decided by the ISP (MWEB/Web Africa. Other ISP's merely resell IS or SAIX). Web Africa is by far *NOT* unshaped. They still shape all their traffic (but not to an extreme extent like we were used to with Telkom). 30-38kb/s on a 384kbps line average is what you will expect. And I think this is more or less what you will get with Web Africa as well.

The reaction/response time by MWEB to correct a shaping issue is quite fast, compared with Web Africa where I had to spend several days on their forums trying to convince the team something is wrong with World of Warcraft and their shaping (which, in the end, they admitted that something was wrong on their side and their "vendor" was looking into a fix, something to do with WoW going a more p2p route)

I concentrate on WoW since that's my barometer when it comes to testing out new ISP's. Patch downloading/connecting/playing smoothly without getting booted etc.

MWEB doesn't have "half speed" policies like WA does, even though WA claims they only do that when their capacity is reached which is (according to them) rarely. In my experience with them since 2005, it's a hard and bitter pill to swallow between what really happens and what is actually happening. I've loathed MWEB since the iAfrica days, and vowed never to become their client, but with the uncapped revolution (yes I call it that), I haven't looked back once. Even if Seacom goes down, 15 minutes later you're on SAIX and happily browsing. (As long as you don't do hosting with them or Web Africa you'll be fine)

Another thing that impressed me with MWEB vs Web Africa was that MWEB's shaping is extremely well done. I can run torrents (downloading at full speed) and once I visit my favorite website or check my email, the torrent's speed is AUTOMATICALLY throttled down so I can get full speed on my HTTP and mail. This makes downloading torrents while I work quite nice since I don't have to worry about speed or stopping the download just to get something done quickly like I did with Web Africa.

Do please note It's going to be one HELL of an experience switching your ADSL line from MWEB to Web Africa just to be disappointed (maybe) by their service/speeds.

What I would suggest you do is get yourself an uncapped account from them (just an account, not the line) and test it out. Your ADSL line, even though administered by MWEB, is still Telkom (all of ours are) so it doesn't matter or have any negative affect if you choose to use other ISP's on the line.

I think this will help you decide which is best for you going forward. That way you can get a taste of what WA has to offer without having to spend a month/two before getting your line moved, and then have to repeat the entire process just because they failed to live up to expectations.

It really does depend on what you use the internet for. I'm happy to keep recommending MWEB. The few extra bucks won't kill you
 
It's very confusing when you mix up your bits and bytes.
 
Fluttershy said:
Hi there.

WebAfrica Home Uncapped 384k:
R279/month with line

MWEB Shapped Uncapped 384k:
R349/month with line

I wanted to find out more about WebAfrica's Home Uncapped service (384k).
I read on their website that for that package, if you use 305mb in 6 hours your speed gets halved.
By the way I'm getting about 30kb/s on MWEB's shaped uncapped service at the moment.
What sort of speeds should I expect from WebAfrica's package (before and after the 6 hour throttling)?
For instance do I get a good UNSHAPED speed like they say, before the throttling, and average to bad speeds afterwards, like MWEB's shaped package (30kb/s average)?
Or does it go from average to extremely bad?

Another thing, what is the difference between IS and SAIX??
And which ones do the two ISP's use/provide? o:

Thanks :)
Click to expand...

AFAIK,

If you live in CPT mweb is the best option.
Im on 384 uncapped atm and mine never drops below 39.4kb/s
 
If you want speed, then you should get a bigger capped product (i.e: 20GB of Data or 50GB of data) + ADSL Line from Telkom or somewhere else. Uncapped products get throttled so frequently. I used to have an uncapped product for a month (my 5GB unshaped ran out). My 5GB would get me speeds between 39 - 50kb/s (anytime). The Uncapped I got would get me speeds of 38kb/s, the highest was like 43kb/s but that was for a split second.

If you just want to download and dont care about speed then get uncapped. I dont use too much internet, unless If i have a game to download so my 5GB + 1GB from Telkom keeps me going
 
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The benefits and needs are two separate things people usually ignore.

If you have a capped account, then sure, you'll get whatever you want faster. If you have an uncapped account you can get anything you want for as long as it takes to download and you wouldn't care.

I was amazed to see that my 384k usage with MWEB on a monthly basis was hitting 160gb a month. And I'm quite happy with it. They don't shape it to death at all (people would say it's slower than a capped account but it's not)

Durban is the epicentre (according to me, and please check spelling!) of high speed internet access. Since MWEB has a POP in Durban, it's more than likely you're connecting as fast as humanly possible already.

In fact, I might even tell you to upgrade to 1mb just for the **** of it :) It's really not much difference in terms of what you pay and you get up to 98kb/s download.

But like I said. It depends what you want to use it for. If it's a question of saving money, then a nice 1gb capped account and a hawk eye on your usage might save you a few bucks. But as for performance and uncapped usage, you have yourself a winner with MWEB.

FYI, Axxess/Afrihost etc are all on the IS backbone. And IMO, IS sucks donkey balls and loves drinking the semen as well.
 
I'm on WebAfrica.. Once you go over the limit, the speed reduction is not so bad for browsing around. But the fact remains that theres still a limit. I'm only on WebAfrica cause my dad didn't want to spend anymore than the R279. If you can afford it, go with Mweb.
 
AcidRaZor said:
MWEB and Web Africa are independent of the big bandwidth providers in previous years. They both rent their own "pipes" from Telkom and then push it through their own international/local capacity.

MWEB uses Seacom with fallback on SAIX (run by Telkom). Web Africa uses SAIX exclusively although they have said several times they might look into Seacom as well.

IS runs mostly on Seacom and Satellite now (AFAIK they've ended their SAIX provided bandwidth).

Back in the early days of the internet, it depended where you stayed on which international bandwidth was right for you, depending on landing points of the cable systems etc. Nowadays there's no real difference, although you have to realize that if you're on SAIX based bandwidth (ie, not MWEB, Web Africa but Telkom) your ping times between gaming servers locally hosted by IS will be huge. However with MWEB's open peering agreements it's more or less the same as if you were on that specific ISP's bandwidth.

The downside to Web Africa is they only have one point of presence, and that is in Cape Town. MWEB has multiple POP's so latency between Cape Town and Johannesburg for example will be almost half (if not more than half) if that Web Africa can offer you if you were a Cape Tonian trying to connect to gaming servers mostly hosted in JHB etc.

Having been on Web Africa and MWEB, I can recommend MWEB hands down. Their latency to international games like World of Warcraft beat that of Web Africa's unshaped gaming protocols by a clear 100ms at least. And that was without using MWEB's free "WTFast" account as proxy/vpn. MWEB's stability also weighed heavily on my decision to move to them as there was quite a few lag spikes with WA and at a point getting 3k+ms lag. They blamed my line for that and since I was trialing MWEB's uncapped (to me, uncapped should have been ****tier than the capped of WA so decided to have 2 accounts), I quickly proved it wasn't my line or over-congestion of my Exchange.

In previous years, the shaping policies were decided by SAIX and IS, nowadays, the shaping policies are decided by the ISP (MWEB/Web Africa. Other ISP's merely resell IS or SAIX). Web Africa is by far *NOT* unshaped. They still shape all their traffic (but not to an extreme extent like we were used to with Telkom). 30-38kb/s on a 384kbps line average is what you will expect. And I think this is more or less what you will get with Web Africa as well.

The reaction/response time by MWEB to correct a shaping issue is quite fast, compared with Web Africa where I had to spend several days on their forums trying to convince the team something is wrong with World of Warcraft and their shaping (which, in the end, they admitted that something was wrong on their side and their "vendor" was looking into a fix, something to do with WoW going a more p2p route)

I concentrate on WoW since that's my barometer when it comes to testing out new ISP's. Patch downloading/connecting/playing smoothly without getting booted etc.

MWEB doesn't have "half speed" policies like WA does, even though WA claims they only do that when their capacity is reached which is (according to them) rarely. In my experience with them since 2005, it's a hard and bitter pill to swallow between what really happens and what is actually happening. I've loathed MWEB since the iAfrica days, and vowed never to become their client, but with the uncapped revolution (yes I call it that), I haven't looked back once. Even if Seacom goes down, 15 minutes later you're on SAIX and happily browsing. (As long as you don't do hosting with them or Web Africa you'll be fine)

Another thing that impressed me with MWEB vs Web Africa was that MWEB's shaping is extremely well done. I can run torrents (downloading at full speed) and once I visit my favorite website or check my email, the torrent's speed is AUTOMATICALLY throttled down so I can get full speed on my HTTP and mail. This makes downloading torrents while I work quite nice since I don't have to worry about speed or stopping the download just to get something done quickly like I did with Web Africa.

Do please note It's going to be one HELL of an experience switching your ADSL line from MWEB to Web Africa just to be disappointed (maybe) by their service/speeds.

What I would suggest you do is get yourself an uncapped account from them (just an account, not the line) and test it out. Your ADSL line, even though administered by MWEB, is still Telkom (all of ours are) so it doesn't matter or have any negative affect if you choose to use other ISP's on the line.

I think this will help you decide which is best for you going forward. That way you can get a taste of what WA has to offer without having to spend a month/two before getting your line moved, and then have to repeat the entire process just because they failed to live up to expectations.

It really does depend on what you use the internet for. I'm happy to keep recommending MWEB. The few extra bucks won't kill you
Click to expand...

Hi AcidRaZor

Thank you for continued support :)
Regards
MWEb Guy
 
I really don't get why WebAfrica is frowned upon. I've been with them for over a year, not a single issue. In my experience, support from their side is about a million times better than mWeb can ever hope to be. Despite the fact that I get a free account from mWeb due to working indirectly for them, I refuse to use it. I'd rather spend money somewhere else, where I get decent internet!

That happens to be WebAfrica!
 
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evolution said:
I really don't get why WebAfrica is frowned upon. I've been with them for over a year, not a single issue. In my experience, support from their side is about a million times better than mWeb can ever hope to be. Despite the fact that I get a free account from mWeb due to working indirectly for them, I refuse to use it. I'd rather spend money somewhere else, where I get decent internet!

That happens to be WebAfrica!
Click to expand...

Exactly the opposite (apart from the support thing, can't judge mweb yet) of what I've been experiencing with WA the last 2 to 3 months. I'm actually leaving WA for Mweb, never thought I'd do it, but I am. The Mweb trial account was good enough for me.

Edit: I just have to add that when WA works, it works bloody well. But when it breaks, I cry...

Dylan_G said:
...Once you go over the limit, the speed reduction is not so bad for browsing around. But the fact remains that theres still a limit...
Click to expand...

^ This also. There will always be a limit regardless of which ISP you use, but you reach WA's just way too fast for my taste.
 
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Joe_the_GR8 said:
Exactly the opposite (apart from the support thing, can't judge mweb yet) of what I've been experiencing with WA the last 2 to 3 months. I'm actually leaving WA for Mweb, never thought I'd do it, but I am. The Mweb trial account was good enough for me.
Click to expand...

That's the problem, I think MWeb deliberately tweak trial accounts. Several people that I know who ended up going with MWeb ended up leaving them after a while. Once u take your account, month or two in... your connection just sucks. That's my experience of it personally as well. You mileage my vary, but yeah. Just throwing my 2cents on that bit.
 
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