agentrfr
Executive Member
DarkD, long time no see. What PN you on now?
-
Join the MyBroadband community
South Africa’s biggest forum. Discuss, discover, and connect with thousands of members.
-
Question of the Day: How do you normally pay for purchases in stores?
Neotel network speed degradation update
- Thread starter Neotel
- Start date
broken
Active Member
Neo Dataflex 15G
Last Result:
Download Speed: 1023 kbps (127.9 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 518 kbps (64.8 KB/sec transfer rate)
But in reality..
Downstream: 3.20 KBytes/s Upstream: 1.22 KBytes/s
That's downloading some random things off torrents.. Max speed I'm getting on one is 0.2kB/s
What gives?
Time : 12:53am
Last Result:
Download Speed: 1261 kbps (157.6 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 362 kbps (45.3 KB/sec transfer rate)
Time : 1:01am
Downstream: 4.54 KBytes/s Upstream: 1.80 KBytes/s
Last Result:
Download Speed: 1023 kbps (127.9 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 518 kbps (64.8 KB/sec transfer rate)
But in reality..
Downstream: 3.20 KBytes/s Upstream: 1.22 KBytes/s
That's downloading some random things off torrents.. Max speed I'm getting on one is 0.2kB/s
What gives?
Time : 12:53am
Last Result:
Download Speed: 1261 kbps (157.6 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 362 kbps (45.3 KB/sec transfer rate)
Time : 1:01am
Downstream: 4.54 KBytes/s Upstream: 1.80 KBytes/s
Last edited:
agentrfr
Executive Member
Evil torrent is evil.... There are two things that can be wrong. 1) Not enough peers and seeds, or 2) you've been labeled a slow ULer, and therefore are capped to the same DL speeds as you UL speed. (Could just be that you're in Africa, and haven't capped it on purpose...)
PN 152 with antenna mounted horizontally. When mounted vertically I pick up 304 and 320 only.
DarkDenim
Stupid question, probably. Where do you get the tower numbers?
And does anyone know of a site with the locations of the towers? If we can get proper GPS locations I can write a simple program that people can use to enter their home GPS locations to determine the most likely mounting point and direction for a yagi. It might be that I have mine on the wrong side of the house.
BTW. This morning my download speeds automatically increased from around 8kbytes/s to 37kbytes/s avg. And this is from the same site I downloaded from last night.
Now 800 MHz propagates better than 900MHz and these modems and routers are designed for 2.4mbit/s to 3.1mbit/s, so it only leaves several options open why the speed drops so much:
(1) They don't want us to get used to high speeds, which is probably possible right now, as they cannot supply for the next possibility(2)... so everybody gets a good first day and then gets throttled.
(2) The network cannot handle full roll-out. As per (1) you can theoretically get 3.1mbit/s but then your next door neighbour also would expect the same.
(2b) The network is already overloaded as it is. Their R7.5bn only took them so far and they need to sign up thousands more to be able to buy more equipment. This causes more problems as they never actually catch up.
(3) The idiot team, who planned the location of the towers, actually believed in the 13km cell sizes which is theoretically possible with CDMA2000.
(3b) If so then it means that even if 13km is possible that the ratio of users to a single tower is staggering. This means that every post we write like this puts tears in Neotel's eyes as they are out of real money and completely powerless to expand the system. They are just sinking deeper and deeper as people subscribe.
(4) Their server rooms are filled with Celeron machines running Vista home. ;-) Well, that would be funny. ..And every machine is running at 100%.
(4b) Or they just bought the technology over as-is and the techies are just looking at these machines and saying "eish". There might be a simple .ini file with a setting saying: "Comment out this line to exit demo mode".
(5) They might be 'limited' by some hidden ICASA/Telkom aggreement to throttle bandwidth so Telkom won't look so bad and lose money. Have you guys ever thought what would happen if Neotel actually did what they set out to do? It feels like Neotel paces itself to not over perform, so everybody's internet works but not well enough to seriously threaten the other guys. If Neotel could roll out wireless connections that actually work people would drop their fixed lines. But due to forums like these we are possibly assisting Neotel to curb the influx of new clients.
I should stop now as my next statement would be something like:"The moon landing was a hoax" (which was actually a video I downloaded through the night from YouTube ;-)
BTW, download speeds now dropped to 8kbytes/s to 14kbytes/s while I typed this post....
VMS
Stupid question, probably. Where do you get the tower numbers?
And does anyone know of a site with the locations of the towers? If we can get proper GPS locations I can write a simple program that people can use to enter their home GPS locations to determine the most likely mounting point and direction for a yagi. It might be that I have mine on the wrong side of the house.
BTW. This morning my download speeds automatically increased from around 8kbytes/s to 37kbytes/s avg. And this is from the same site I downloaded from last night.
Now 800 MHz propagates better than 900MHz and these modems and routers are designed for 2.4mbit/s to 3.1mbit/s, so it only leaves several options open why the speed drops so much:
(1) They don't want us to get used to high speeds, which is probably possible right now, as they cannot supply for the next possibility(2)... so everybody gets a good first day and then gets throttled.
(2) The network cannot handle full roll-out. As per (1) you can theoretically get 3.1mbit/s but then your next door neighbour also would expect the same.
(2b) The network is already overloaded as it is. Their R7.5bn only took them so far and they need to sign up thousands more to be able to buy more equipment. This causes more problems as they never actually catch up.
(3) The idiot team, who planned the location of the towers, actually believed in the 13km cell sizes which is theoretically possible with CDMA2000.
(3b) If so then it means that even if 13km is possible that the ratio of users to a single tower is staggering. This means that every post we write like this puts tears in Neotel's eyes as they are out of real money and completely powerless to expand the system. They are just sinking deeper and deeper as people subscribe.
(4) Their server rooms are filled with Celeron machines running Vista home. ;-) Well, that would be funny. ..And every machine is running at 100%.
(4b) Or they just bought the technology over as-is and the techies are just looking at these machines and saying "eish". There might be a simple .ini file with a setting saying: "Comment out this line to exit demo mode".
(5) They might be 'limited' by some hidden ICASA/Telkom aggreement to throttle bandwidth so Telkom won't look so bad and lose money. Have you guys ever thought what would happen if Neotel actually did what they set out to do? It feels like Neotel paces itself to not over perform, so everybody's internet works but not well enough to seriously threaten the other guys. If Neotel could roll out wireless connections that actually work people would drop their fixed lines. But due to forums like these we are possibly assisting Neotel to curb the influx of new clients.
I should stop now as my next statement would be something like:"The moon landing was a hoax" (which was actually a video I downloaded through the night from YouTube ;-)
BTW, download speeds now dropped to 8kbytes/s to 14kbytes/s while I typed this post....
VMS
I've said it before...
Neotel is capping us. Just because the capping is not taking place at the end of a calender month does not mean its not happening. So far my pattern is this : 5 or six days of decent speed mixed with one or two days at full speed, then up to 10 days of less than 20KB speeds. Then back again. Yesterday was day six back at speed again. This morning my max speed was 8KB.... so bad in fact I could not get onto mybb.
If its back to full speed tonight I will gladly cook a fish in my (tinfoil) hat. Unless it drops tomorrow...
Neotel is capping us. Just because the capping is not taking place at the end of a calender month does not mean its not happening. So far my pattern is this : 5 or six days of decent speed mixed with one or two days at full speed, then up to 10 days of less than 20KB speeds. Then back again. Yesterday was day six back at speed again. This morning my max speed was 8KB.... so bad in fact I could not get onto mybb.
If its back to full speed tonight I will gladly cook a fish in my (tinfoil) hat. Unless it drops tomorrow...
agentrfr
Executive Member
I've been getting a constant 1.2meg for a while now... dont know what you guys are on about...
Last edited:
cyberbyte
Active Member
It all depends on the specific tower you are using. My PN is 140 (Rooihuiskraal) and is utterly useless every evening from 18:00 - 03:00
Neotel Prime 8kByte download
Which is starting to really irritate me now...
MDE
Expert Member
Well neotels done it again...a whopping 5KB/s on neoflex...great! gonna be a loooong night
MDE
Lucky you. I am back on Vodacom. Neotel is officially still dead on my side. No signal here in Wierdapark ext 2. Someone broke the tower ;-)
The tech support guy is using todays failure as an excuse for my week long degradation of speed.... and once the tower is booted again (someone lost the boot floppy ;-) then I will have super duper speed again.
I had 700MB left on my Vodacom bundle. I flew through 490MB of it in a very short while and had to pace myself to not use it up tonight. For Neotel I have 1.32GB to show for the intense effort of 4 days (well minus half a day) "hard surfing". I believe that at these speeds I will (1) lose interest and not able to use 15GB or (2) lose money sitting and battling to try and use 15GB. I can now just as well route the data (controlled) through my other wireless and share my 15GB with all my neighbours. We can play a game to see who can hurt the "cap" the most. To blow 100MB is easy or 3G, but to figure out what to download (or upload) at 3 to 5 kbytes/s takes time and effort. I probably lost several times more than the monthly cost on time spent tuning antennas and trying to apply the low speed on something worthwhile.
Lucky you. I am back on Vodacom. Neotel is officially still dead on my side. No signal here in Wierdapark ext 2. Someone broke the tower ;-)
The tech support guy is using todays failure as an excuse for my week long degradation of speed.... and once the tower is booted again (someone lost the boot floppy ;-) then I will have super duper speed again.
I had 700MB left on my Vodacom bundle. I flew through 490MB of it in a very short while and had to pace myself to not use it up tonight. For Neotel I have 1.32GB to show for the intense effort of 4 days (well minus half a day) "hard surfing". I believe that at these speeds I will (1) lose interest and not able to use 15GB or (2) lose money sitting and battling to try and use 15GB. I can now just as well route the data (controlled) through my other wireless and share my 15GB with all my neighbours. We can play a game to see who can hurt the "cap" the most. To blow 100MB is easy or 3G, but to figure out what to download (or upload) at 3 to 5 kbytes/s takes time and effort. I probably lost several times more than the monthly cost on time spent tuning antennas and trying to apply the low speed on something worthwhile.
cyberbyte
Active Member
I share the same feelings as VMS and I only have 1GB to kill a month.
What a mission, even day 2 day browsing is a mission at 5KB.
Wish some D@@S at NeoFlop will just wake up and stop selling to clients on already overRaped towers.
Their customer service is maybe quicker on the answer than Telkom, but at least Telkom eventually comes back with an answer.
2 weeks and Neotel did not even say "Hey dump ripped off client, your tower is overused and we cannot help you"
Maybe they think all the people complaining will just go away.
Damn, every post I do about this I get more and more irritated. Maybe I should go find some more "friendly" topic on the forum
What a mission, even day 2 day browsing is a mission at 5KB.
Wish some D@@S at NeoFlop will just wake up and stop selling to clients on already overRaped towers.
Their customer service is maybe quicker on the answer than Telkom, but at least Telkom eventually comes back with an answer.
2 weeks and Neotel did not even say "Hey dump ripped off client, your tower is overused and we cannot help you"
Maybe they think all the people complaining will just go away.
Damn, every post I do about this I get more and more irritated. Maybe I should go find some more "friendly" topic on the forum
agentrfr
Executive Member
Im getting a constant 110kB/s.
Quite happy with it.
Quite happy with it.
Flashgear
Flashgear
- Joined
- Feb 25, 2008
- Messages
- 3,645
- Reaction score
- 389
I am also quite happy with mine, I wasn't able to connect for the last 2 days properly but its all good now. I went to a shopping center today where Neotel advertising with people around on Computers testing it out, I made it a point that everyone heard me that I was down for the last 2 days though ahaha.
ShadowsLight
Active Member
Greetings
So in the past week, my connection speeds have been abysmal. My RSSI has never dropped below 68 and averages at about 63-64 (I normally connect to tower 212; if I connect to tower 44, I get bad RSSI values and TERRIBLE download rates, so I reboot the unit again to get it off that tower). I have a Poynting antenna so my connection is now pretty stable (Ie. it does not lose the connection for no apparent reason which has tended to reboot my PC in the past).
Here is a spreadsheet of my connection speeds for the 7 Months that I have been on NeoTel. I'll be honest, I torrent a lot. This is the reason I got the NeoConnect Prime Unlimited account. I am always downloading more data than I have bandwidth for, so my connection is NEVER idle. This means that I can simply divide my total number of KBs downloaded by the number of seconds connected for the day to get my average Download Speed.
As you can see, the Average Download speed per month has been steadily declining (Sheet 3). And for the last week, it has been in the toilet.
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AnKHXYha7ebXdHdSZ1JGcU5JQ0pOdGg3SVlkTDlINXc&hl=en
Things I have noticed:
My IP address has not changed in a while. Have they sent me to a "Sin Bin" IP address range and are port shaping me to death?
ALL my ports are shaped... I can now no longer VNC, RDP or LogMeIn into my client's computers. I downloaded an 8.5 Meg File from the NeoTel website and the average speed was 10KB/s.
I have an open investigation with NeoTel (Code: 102007) and am now waiting the 7 days (and I am sure they will make wait the full 7 working days, the motherfrakkers) for a technician to come out to my home to fiddle with my connection. I wonder if I will get a straight answer from him?
So in the past week, my connection speeds have been abysmal. My RSSI has never dropped below 68 and averages at about 63-64 (I normally connect to tower 212; if I connect to tower 44, I get bad RSSI values and TERRIBLE download rates, so I reboot the unit again to get it off that tower). I have a Poynting antenna so my connection is now pretty stable (Ie. it does not lose the connection for no apparent reason which has tended to reboot my PC in the past).
Here is a spreadsheet of my connection speeds for the 7 Months that I have been on NeoTel. I'll be honest, I torrent a lot. This is the reason I got the NeoConnect Prime Unlimited account. I am always downloading more data than I have bandwidth for, so my connection is NEVER idle. This means that I can simply divide my total number of KBs downloaded by the number of seconds connected for the day to get my average Download Speed.
As you can see, the Average Download speed per month has been steadily declining (Sheet 3). And for the last week, it has been in the toilet.
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AnKHXYha7ebXdHdSZ1JGcU5JQ0pOdGg3SVlkTDlINXc&hl=en
Things I have noticed:
My IP address has not changed in a while. Have they sent me to a "Sin Bin" IP address range and are port shaping me to death?
ALL my ports are shaped... I can now no longer VNC, RDP or LogMeIn into my client's computers. I downloaded an 8.5 Meg File from the NeoTel website and the average speed was 10KB/s.
I have an open investigation with NeoTel (Code: 102007) and am now waiting the 7 days (and I am sure they will make wait the full 7 working days, the motherfrakkers) for a technician to come out to my home to fiddle with my connection. I wonder if I will get a straight answer from him?
Last edited:
ShadowsLight
Happy waiting. I have now been been waiting for a week now and my number is 101743 (that is 264 calls before you). I don't know how many techies they have but it cannot be near enough to sort out their crap.
According to tele support nothing is shaped, but I know that is nonsense. Some people are lucky to have an apparent unshaped connection, getting constant speed 24/7. I and others are the unlucky ones who can visibly see the shaping/throttling but I cannot seem to convince Neotel that there is a problem. They will "call" me to arrange a time for a site visit, but I now believe that they will never come.
My connection shows a visible 1/x throttling algorithm. The problem is that the progression throught the throttling is way too fast. Instead of slowly declining from high speed to e.g. 50 to 100kbytes/s the speed rather moves quickly to 3kbytes/s. Disconnecting and forcing a new IP restarts this process but the decline form over 100kbytes/s to 10kbytes/s take about an hour, and levels out to 3kbytes/s after a day.
Now how do you explain math and RF basics to a call centre who cannot even coherently hold a English to English conversation?
I would actually like to visit the Neotel network core to see what the hell is going on there. Do these people actually know what they are doing? Have they just dumped hardware into a control room and are they just running it from default setup files?
My signal, -72dBm, is good enough for high speeds. Even -68dBm is excellent compared to tele support's -90dBm value for good transfers. So this opens up several possibilities: (1) There is enough bandwidth but their configuration is screwed up shaping all out data or (2) They don't have enough and they are dishing it out only to certain users while the rest suck the hind tit or (3) the techies are having the time of their lives, throttling people, disconnecting and basically using up our bandwidth to download terabytes of porn. In all cases I am paying for a service (R900 per month) which I can hardly use.
Since the 1st (now going for 4 full days) I have successfully moved 547MB. ... and that is trying very hard. I have files queued in DAP9 and Flashget, also Youtube videos in Aura. When I leave the system on during the night I find it disconnected in the morning. If I expect an email, or need to send one, I need to pause all downloads else it is impossible to do anything. I also had to stop using Outlook. If one of my friends sends me a MASSIVE 2MB email then that blocks the flow completely, so I operate from Webmail only. That way I can decide if I want to download the attachment. At this rate I will be lucky to use 4GB of data.
The worst part of this is that this is apparently going to cost me a small fortune to cancel. I have to pay for the device (23 months worth) and at least one month's payment. Then I sit with a useless device that cannot currently work on any other network. I can atleast buy a pre-paid SIM for my 3G modem. Neotel has me by the shoty-n-curlies and there is nothing else I can do to improve the situation.
Some people do the "Save the whales" thing. Maybe we should start the "Saving the Neotel bandwidth" thing??? We march and protest around Neotel branches and shopping centres for people to not get Neotel so those with it can have better speed.
Happy waiting. I have now been been waiting for a week now and my number is 101743 (that is 264 calls before you). I don't know how many techies they have but it cannot be near enough to sort out their crap.
According to tele support nothing is shaped, but I know that is nonsense. Some people are lucky to have an apparent unshaped connection, getting constant speed 24/7. I and others are the unlucky ones who can visibly see the shaping/throttling but I cannot seem to convince Neotel that there is a problem. They will "call" me to arrange a time for a site visit, but I now believe that they will never come.
My connection shows a visible 1/x throttling algorithm. The problem is that the progression throught the throttling is way too fast. Instead of slowly declining from high speed to e.g. 50 to 100kbytes/s the speed rather moves quickly to 3kbytes/s. Disconnecting and forcing a new IP restarts this process but the decline form over 100kbytes/s to 10kbytes/s take about an hour, and levels out to 3kbytes/s after a day.
Now how do you explain math and RF basics to a call centre who cannot even coherently hold a English to English conversation?
I would actually like to visit the Neotel network core to see what the hell is going on there. Do these people actually know what they are doing? Have they just dumped hardware into a control room and are they just running it from default setup files?
My signal, -72dBm, is good enough for high speeds. Even -68dBm is excellent compared to tele support's -90dBm value for good transfers. So this opens up several possibilities: (1) There is enough bandwidth but their configuration is screwed up shaping all out data or (2) They don't have enough and they are dishing it out only to certain users while the rest suck the hind tit or (3) the techies are having the time of their lives, throttling people, disconnecting and basically using up our bandwidth to download terabytes of porn. In all cases I am paying for a service (R900 per month) which I can hardly use.
Since the 1st (now going for 4 full days) I have successfully moved 547MB. ... and that is trying very hard. I have files queued in DAP9 and Flashget, also Youtube videos in Aura. When I leave the system on during the night I find it disconnected in the morning. If I expect an email, or need to send one, I need to pause all downloads else it is impossible to do anything. I also had to stop using Outlook. If one of my friends sends me a MASSIVE 2MB email then that blocks the flow completely, so I operate from Webmail only. That way I can decide if I want to download the attachment. At this rate I will be lucky to use 4GB of data.
The worst part of this is that this is apparently going to cost me a small fortune to cancel. I have to pay for the device (23 months worth) and at least one month's payment. Then I sit with a useless device that cannot currently work on any other network. I can atleast buy a pre-paid SIM for my 3G modem. Neotel has me by the shoty-n-curlies and there is nothing else I can do to improve the situation.
Some people do the "Save the whales" thing. Maybe we should start the "Saving the Neotel bandwidth" thing??? We march and protest around Neotel branches and shopping centres for people to not get Neotel so those with it can have better speed.
Its all crap. I know people in "Good" area's getting better speed than I get in my "Excellent" area. I hardly ever get above 1 bar reception now (NEVER above 2) and my speed is up and down. More down than up.
I am currently serving the last month of my sentence, I gave notice at the beginning of the month. Then its back to copper.
I lose about 2 routers a year due to lightning.. but still much better than this crap.
Onizuka
Active Member
Neotel's been flying for me the past month. Ive been getting a constant 110kb/s, even got up to 230kb/s on a torrent the other night! This is with Neotel Prime device without an external arial in a "Good Coverage" area in Hyde Park. Going to put an arial up over the weekend and see what happens 
Last edited:
jeanres
So your suggestion is just to sit back and pay them R21600 over 2 years ... and let thousands of people step in the same trap. I want Neotel to deliver on their promises.
My bad signal "requires antenna" Lite telephone works great. Good indoor signal must thus be better for my flex? My Vodacom signal is really bad but I still have to live with 150 kbytes/s when using it (which is, compared to Neotel, frigger awesome).
I will keep on complaining for 2 reasons and that being to warn people and to put some heat on Neotel to fix the problem.
So your suggestion is just to sit back and pay them R21600 over 2 years ... and let thousands of people step in the same trap. I want Neotel to deliver on their promises.
My bad signal "requires antenna" Lite telephone works great. Good indoor signal must thus be better for my flex? My Vodacom signal is really bad but I still have to live with 150 kbytes/s when using it (which is, compared to Neotel, frigger awesome).
I will keep on complaining for 2 reasons and that being to warn people and to put some heat on Neotel to fix the problem.
medicnick83
Paramedic
I see alot of people are cancelling accounts, we should all start doing this, show Neotel.
I think we could also take them to small claims court if they demand "early exit" costs... and when the court wants documentation, we show them this (and other) threads!
We will win, hands down.
I think we could also take them to small claims court if they demand "early exit" costs... and when the court wants documentation, we show them this (and other) threads!
We will win, hands down.