Neotel Fibre customers, please assist with a test

[Glipsie]

We have recently experienced a major degradation on our service whereby the maximum speed we can get on our line for a single threaded connection is exactly half of the line speed. This is detrimental to our business as most of our work is single threaded connections. Multiple emails and communication with Neotel has deadlocked, whereby they say that nothing is wrong with the service and refuse to do anything further.

If you have a Neotel Fibre service, please test and let me know if you experience the same.
To test, use a single threaded FTP client (such as WinSCP) and start a download from one of the following FTP servers:
ftp://ftp.jso.as6453.net
ftp://ftp.svw.as6453.net
ftp://ftp.hk2.as6453.net
ftp://ftp.njy.as6453.net
ftp://ftp.ad1.as6453.net
(There is a download folder, choose a large file so the download can stabilise).

If you are experiencing the same, the download should not reach above 50% of your maximum line speed (e.g. 2.5Mb for a 5Mb line or 5Mb for a 10Mb line).

E.g. 5Mb on a 10Mb line:

Thanks in advance.
Glipsie

 

[Mal1ce]

Neotel 10MB Fibre DBN

WinSCP test runs at 5MB...

 

[Glipsie]

Thanks Mal1ce. My ticket made no progress today, but was escalated twice.
I will let you know of the outcome.

Anyone else that can hammer home the point to Neotel?

 

[Glipsie]

Well I've basically been told that the contention ratio is 1:10 so I'm lucky to get 5Mb.
So I'm pretty much stone walled with Enterprise Services techies that don't understand what I'm telling them (they have closed the ticket and passed it on to my non existent account manager).

Anyone that reads this and has the same issue, please log a ticket and pm me. I may be able to escalate the issue if enough Neotel customers complain about the issue.

 

[Silver-0-surfer]

Well I've basically been told that the contention ratio is 1:10 so I'm lucky to get 5Mb.
So I'm pretty much stone walled with Enterprise Services techies that don't understand what I'm telling them (they have closed the ticket and passed it on to my non existent account manager).

Anyone that reads this and has the same issue, please log a ticket and pm me. I may be able to escalate the issue if enough Neotel customers complain about the issue.

We'll im glad im not the only one. I have the exact same issues. I have 100mbps connection and they say its 1:10...so currently I get 10

 

[rvanwyk]

NeoBroadband Fibre? Are you sure you have not reached your FUP limit? This will limit your rate to exactly half. They normally send an e-mail when you have reached this.

 

[Glipsie]

Nope. The problem is only on single threaded downloads. Start up 2 threads and you can max the line.
See the post by Mal1ce which clearly shows the problem, 10Mb line but single threaded downloads are limited to 5Mb.
I reproduced the problem at 3 different sites running 5Mb, 10Mb and 50Mb connections respectively. Each time the download was limited to 1/2 the line speed (2.5Mb, 5Mb and 25Mb). I even tried boosting the 5Mb line to 10Mb and 15Mb to see if that would resolve the issue, however, as soon as the boost was activated the download would just top out at the new maximum (5Mb and 7.5Mb).

Neotel refuse to admit that this is a problem and throw one of the following at me:
1. Line is working as normal (after testing a download with 20 threads)
2. The contention ration is 1:10, so I'm "lucky" to get 5Mb
3. The server is the problem
4. The Neotel network is fine so it must be a local LAN/Cable/Firewall/[insert random device] problem
5. Refer to your contract/speak to your account manager

I have given up on trying to explain the issue to techies who don't speak English and am in the process of looking for a new vendor.

 

[rvanwyk]

Interesting.

I tested now on NeoOne fibre and I get full speed even on a single thread. My Neotel LTE connection does the same. Going to check on some NeoBroadband Fibre lines now.

 

[Glipsie]

I just want to mention that this issue has been resolved since maintenance that Neotel carried out on the 18th of April 2015.
The reason given was: "To fix the NSB BNG policer issues."

Sounds like it was specifically to fix this issue.

Slightly off topic:
We have 3 lines with Neotel (across multiple businesses), and all of them had this issue. The service that I received from Neotel during the time that this issue surfaced was appalling. Despite me carrying out the exact tests they required, they would blame the problem on equipment, say something like "you should be happy you are receiving more than 1/10th of the line speed" or tell me to "go read your contract". I was also not notified that this policy fix would resolve my issue specifically.

If you have a choice, I would recommend staying away from Neotel. Their account managers no longer have any bargaining power, so you will always get the worst deal possible. Service levels have dropped significantly and difficult to solve problems like this one, take months to resolve (my first ticket was opened in January this year, so 4 months for a resolution).

 

[Rocket-Boy]

Mine does that every month when we exceed the FUP.
Weirdly enough though the upload has always been higher than it should be.
http://speedtest.ookla.com/result/2861323150.png
10mb line

 

[Glipsie]

Mine does that every month when we exceed the FUP.
Weirdly enough though the upload has always been higher than it should be.
http://speedtest.ookla.com/result/2861323150.png
10mb line

Isn't your entire line limited then? Not just single threaded downloads? In this case if we set the number of threads to 2 we could use the entire line speed (therefore not subject to FUP restrictions)

 

[WireFree]

Slightly off topic:
We have 3 lines with Neotel (across multiple businesses), and all of them had this issue. The service that I received from Neotel during the time that this issue surfaced was appalling. Despite me carrying out the exact tests they required, they would blame the problem on equipment, say something like "you should be happy you are receiving more than 1/10th of the line speed" or tell me to "go read your contract". I was also not notified that this policy fix would resolve my issue specifically.

If you have a choice, I would recommend staying away from Neotel. Their account managers no longer have any bargaining power, so you will always get the worst deal possible. Service levels have dropped significantly and difficult to solve problems like this one, take months to resolve (my first ticket was opened in January this year, so 4 months for a resolution).

You are right! Cancelled my Neotel fibre. Told them to cancel the service at 00:00 1 April 2015 and they decided to bill me for 1 April because they do not know whether 00:00 1 April 2015 meant they should include or exclude that day.

 

[Leno]

Having the same problem in PE, 15mbit line, speed test sits at 5-6mbit IF lucky!
International speed test rocks a whole 1.2 mbit (my mtn adsl gets 6mbit)

We really dont pull a lot of data on the line

Never mind about the port on their router dropping every few minutes, and they wont change it!



Our contract is up, busy looking at the Vodacom Fiber, has anyone had any experience?

We also cancelled another fiber link a few months back, still being billed for it! (even after their confirmation of cancellation date)

So.. agreed stay away from NEotel!

 

[Glipsie]

Our contract is up, busy looking at the Vodacom Fiber, has anyone had any experience?

We started a process with a Vodacom reseller (you can't go through them directly apparently) but the process has gone silent (no update since early March) and the guy I was in contact with doesn't answer his phone or emails (not even sure he still works for the company)

 

[Leno]

Having the same problem in PE, 15mbit line, speed test sits at 5-6mbit IF lucky!
International speed test rocks a whole 1.2 mbit (my mtn adsl gets 6mbit)

We really dont pull a lot of data on the line

Never mind about the port on their router dropping every few minutes, and they wont change it!

View attachment 210740

Our contract is up, busy looking at the Vodacom Fiber, has anyone had any experience?

We also cancelled another fiber link a few months back, still being billed for it! (even after their confirmation of cancellation date)

So.. agreed stay away from NEotel!

Just an update on this issue

After updating our Mikrotik router we picked up ethernet errors in the log



The interface to the Neotel One access router was set to auto negotiate
It seemed to connect at 100mb Full Duplex so I turned off auto negotiate and boom speeds improved.

Our other line works perfect with auto negotiate same routers, except that one connects at 1gbit
The Neotel guy said the One Access onefifty doesnt connect at 1gb so who knows

Anyway, speeds are back to their former glory

Glipsie: We had the same experience about 2 years back when trying to sign up as a reseller, emails just go to a black hole when sent to Vodacom. Have received a few quotes in good time from the local reseller in PE, they are nationwide PM if you want their details.