New Afrihost TCs

[Necuno]

actually if 7% of their userbase is congesting their network, i'd have just thrown those 7% off

its like one table at a buffet hogging the queues and eating 90% of the available food.

going to have a long laugh if it turns out to be a thumb sucked number.

 

[soundbox]

Cancelled

Cancelled my AH 4mb uncapped account, their T&C's must have changed more than 5 times since I signed up in March.

 

[Necuno]

Cancelled my AH 4mb uncapped account, their T&C's must have changed more than 5 times since I signed up in March.

t&c track record so far

v0.1

v0.1 quick update to v0.1b

and now after few modifications

Please note that our Uncapped ADSL terms of service
and the way we manage these packages will be changing
from the 1st of July.

Our uncapped accounts will be managed each day on an
hourly basis depending on the capacity available on our
network at that time.

Why are we making this change?

We have a certain capacity available on our ADSL network
for all of our Capped and Uncapped ADSL clients - If the
network is congested and slow at any time we will dynamically
manage our biggest uncapped users to ensure the best
experience for all clients across our network.


How will we do this?

We monitor our overall network usage on an hour to hour basis
and if our capacity is stretched we will dynamically shape and
throttle certain clients' uncapped accounts to relieve congestion.
These uncapped clients will be chosen based on their historic
bandwidth usage.


Who will this affect?

Based on our usage patterns over the last few months we have
calculated that this will affect 7% of our client base.

Uncapped users who have used the most bandwidth will start to
be throttled first if there is network congestion.

Capped accounts will never be throttled and will always be
unshaped and unthrottled.


If I am one of the top 7% will I always be throttled?

This depends on the usage of our network during any given
hour - We evaluate our capacity each hour and if capacity
opens up we will unthrottle uncapped users who may have
been throttled until such a time that the capacity is maxed
out again.


What if I am one of the 7% affected and I'm not happy?

If you need to get full speed consistently no matter your
usage then your best bet is to convert to a Capped ADSL
package that best suits your needs. You can instantly
change your package by logging into your Client Zone.

We understand that this may not be ideal for you and if you
are unhappy with your service then you can cancel your
account at any time of the month before the 25th and your
account will be cancelled from the 1st of the next month.


Will this affect me if I am on a capped account?

No - Your capped account will always be unshaped and
unthrottled. We will always give you as much speed as
your line and our network allows.


The reality is that currently 7% of our clients have the potential
to negatively affect the service of the other 93% of our clients.

We need to change our terms so that we can manage this as
well and as fairly as possible - It is our goal to ensure the best
possible experience for both the biggest and smallest of our
clients given the parameters we have.

 

[jannier]

Sadly, I have also cancelled.
I just felt they keep changing the goal post, sure they entitled to it....
I rather get myself a capped account that I can manage at my own free will, so took the WebAfrica Titan Complete 3 package, 50GB data + adsl line up to 10mbit/s for R799.
At least I know I will get full line speed up to 10mbit/s when available and I am good for 50GB.
Adls line Rental = R413
50GB Data = R386
Total R799
Tel Line Rental + R131
Grand Total R930

 

[Basjohn]

You cannot HOG bandwidth on an uncapped account. If you're paying for all you can eat then you deserve all you can eat. Any company that advertises all you can eat (I'm mixing the buffet analogy with the cap system so forgive me) but does not provide it is falsely advertising. There is no argument here. Uncapped is uncapped.

Blame imaginary "abuse" all you want but you can't abuse it. If these users were getting say 8mbs on a 4mbs account then YES that would be them getting more than what they pay for, but to expect unlimited 4mbs downloads on a 4mbs account is nothing but pure and simple logic.

I really cannot understand how ANYONE can argue against this as it's like arguing against the very definition of a word.

If afrihost cannot provide an actual uncapped account they should stop selling it as uncapped, end of story.
(And on that note: These accounts would be better called "Softcapped" as they seem to match that a hundred times more than they do "Uncapped")

 

[Vincent_Thorn]

I'm AfriHost customer and count positively service they offered. But anyway this game with 'big' and 'small' downloaders make me a bit confused: Let's say I (provider) bought 1Mbit line (yep, providers never pay for a 'bytes', just for speed!) and I took thousands of customers. If my channel start to be fully busy, I have two ways: 1) Greedy way (like AH does now): kicking some users to free some bandwidth. 2) Normal way: INCREASE BANDWIDTH (with some price ajustments) to provide REAL NUMBERS people paid for.

We, customers, don't give a **t about all those traffic, firewalls, shaping etc - we need full speed of our 384/512/etc channels. If provider cannot provide it, their busines become fraud. So I cannot agree with all those provider's complains "our heavy customers down our channel" - that's not a problem of customers, IT'S A PROBLEM OF PROVIDER. Pity to see how all those companies **t on us, lying on the public.

 

[Shayd]

When will you guys get it... ADSL is a BEST EFFORT service... none of them guarantee you 4096k that would be impossible. If you want guarantee's feel free to spend R30000 on diginet. If you don't like the service, do the capitalist thing and LEAVE, enough leave and they have to improve their service or close down. It's that simple.

 

[who.is.michael]

...just stay away from MWEB "Uncapped" - it is much worse than Afrihost.

 

[Basjohn]

When will you guys get it... ADSL is a BEST EFFORT service... none of them guarantee you 4096k that would be impossible. If you want guarantee's feel free to spend R30000 on diginet. If you don't like the service, do the capitalist thing and LEAVE, enough leave and they have to improve their service or close down. It's that simple.

The complaint (on my part at least) isn't that users aren't getting 4mbs constantly but rather that users are intentionally penalized when they do get that 4mbs. The second you start throttling instead of shaping you are no longer a best effort service. (Although shaping specific users based on prior usage also takes them out of being an honest best effort service)

 

[Bosvark@]

OK. so in all honesty everyone is throwing their toys around because

1) they cannot download illegal torrents / news server
2) their uncapped is now restricted because of heavy internet use... probalby all illegal distribution of copyright material.

In the beginning of the uncapped options (IS - R 1350 montly; and the first UUNET option (R600 monhly) there were always some tipe of monitoring of these accounts and shaping would be implemented for heavy users (these proiders will probably deny this - but we have seen it hapening).

I can understand what is happening here - the bandwidth demand of some uncapped accounts are simply to much and AH is not prepared to keep the heavy users affect the service of their capped and "normal" use uncapped clients.

At these prices you are really buying the cheapest you can get - did you expect it to work like a R 4000 IS uncapped account? Never because it cannot make sense financially. I thought there was a forum somewhere with a rumor that MWEB is cancelling their uncapped accounts in the next few months - not sure how accurate this info is but I would like to know how feasible their uncapped options has really been since launch.

At the end of the day these are all businesses and they all have overheads - they need to make money - not throw it after torrents.

OK, now that I have put myself in the firing line I am sure most will shoot me down... but at the end of the day it does make sense to protect your network. Not out of spite but from a feasibility perspective. If it aint working it aint working...

I have not moved to an uncapped account because I was sort of excpecting this pawpaw and it seems the fan is now closer than ever before.

 

[Necuno]

OK. so in all honesty everyone is throwing their toys around because

1) they cannot download illegal torrents / news server
2) their uncapped is now restricted because of heavy internet use... probalby all illegal distribution of copyright material.

In the beginning of the uncapped options (IS - R 1350 montly; and the first UUNET option (R600 monhly) there were always some tipe of monitoring of these accounts and shaping would be implemented for heavy users (these proiders will probably deny this - but we have seen it hapening).

I can understand what is happening here - the bandwidth demand of some uncapped accounts are simply to much and AH is not prepared to keep the heavy users affect the service of their capped and "normal" use uncapped clients.

At these prices you are really buying the cheapest you can get - did you expect it to work like a R 4000 IS uncapped account? Never because it cannot make sense financially. I thought there was a forum somewhere with a rumor that MWEB is cancelling their uncapped accounts in the next few months - not sure how accurate this info is but I would like to know how feasible their uncapped options has really been since launch.

At the end of the day these are all businesses and they all have overheads - they need to make money - not throw it after torrents.

OK, now that I have put myself in the firing line I am sure most will shoot me down... but at the end of the day it does make sense to protect your network. Not out of spite but from a feasibility perspective. If it aint working it aint working...

I have not moved to an uncapped account because I was sort of excpecting this pawpaw and it seems the fan is now closer than ever before.

i think you need a bit of education. using the internet is not illegal.

a little education for those who can't seem to grasp the concept that some of us actually really use the internet for other things than what they would normally associate usage with. however i suppose i can't really blame them if that is the only exposure they have been exposed to and automatically go ZOMG series, movies, games and applications when confronted with a lot of bandwidth or can't seem to realize how some other people are using more than what they would consider normal. clearly most or and some other people just don't know what else is out there imho...

...to the usage.
steam - anything from 500 meg up to 10 gig and even more per game title legally bought.

ign - patches, demos, previews and clips of mostly games. also can get quite huge thinking of nowadays demos weighing in at least 1gig+. not to forget HD streams and so on from them.

direct 2 drive - mostly same idea as steam. buy a game and download it directly, aslo anything from 500 meg up to 10 gig.

beta testing of games - yep online testing of coming mmos and even some other non mmo developers does this. anything from 2 to 5+ gig a shot. then there will also be the constant patches and content being added to the beta testing.

test clients (mmo) - some of us likes to play around on the test clients of mmos and that too can get a lot to download at times. the test client which normally equals the non-test client (5+ gig) and as well as the patches and content being added and removed on a more than normal basis.

msdn/technet training - anything from 50-250meg a video can get quite a lot when you go though a few courses being presented.

msdn software - same as with beta/test clients if you go for application testing and excluding the released applications. normally from 1-3+ gigs. for releases software, well the normal sizes it would be like around 3 gig for windows 7.

vpn to work - just add a normal day of network traffic, documents you might work on and everything else that needs to be seen and worked on to complete an 8 hour day of work or less. also throw in some server administration and maybe some reporting on the side too, not to mention if you have to pull and push large files over the vpn.

HD streams via xbox - it starts at 2 gig a flick, goes up to 5/6 gig for proper HD flick via xlive. this does not include the total pay tv series you can get via sky i think. there is also the getting games with their direct 2 console thing. slap any released xbox game onto that which easily weighs in at around 7 gigs.

video conferencing - anyone who have done a bit of proper video conferencing know that it takes a lot of content in size.

upload of work - try doing some digital painting and design for someone in a foreign country, trust me uploading each set of raws can get really huge.


...and this is not even all of the things one could do to really use your bandwidth. bit tiresome of when some go ZOMG you must be pirate, how else can you use 50-150 gig a month ? or lol the isp geez these ****ers must only be into pirating since they decided they actually want to use our product and not just go some oom and tannie via facebook.


Update to list
Voicy -
game development videos - 60-100mb each

Pilgrim -
Online stores that sell digital copies, eg Amazon, Audible, iTunes (need international account for that, but possible) etc.
MMO with VOIP - over 3 gigs for w/e

warchylde -
Citrix - RDP tool when working from home
SIP/AIX (VOIP) - VOIP connectivity to Office PBX (this can be quite a hog)
Linux Distros
Linux Distro updates everytime a VM is reinstalled (between 450GMB and 1.5GB depending on what's installed)
Uploading of VM's to a datacentre.
Microsoft updates for test servers (no indication of amount.)

right now i'm going to use about 5-6 gig of bandwidth on getting spellbourne chronicles test client. is that abuse ? obviously not as getting the trial and it's patches are quite legal. few days i'll be doing the same with around 10-12 gig getting darkfall's test client...

 

[Bosvark@]

boy - how i wish there was such a thing as granular stats for ADSL... I have a feeling we will have a few red faced people around the forum...

 

[Cat011]

All of you legitimate heavy users are entitled to download as much as you want at full speed. You should expect to pay an appropriate amount.

Low cost uncapped ADSL accounts are not for you. AfriHost said exactly that when they launched. Stop trying to act like they are trying to rip you off.

 

[marine1]

All of you legitimate heavy users are entitled to download as much as you want at full speed. You should expect to pay an appropriate amount.

Low cost uncapped ADSL accounts are not for you. AfriHost said exactly that when they launched. Stop trying to act like they are trying to rip you off.

Well then who are they for? Please enlighten us. :rollyeyes:

 

[Degaron]

Uhm actually MWEB uncapped is more stable then this and predictable, Works well for Music streaming, Gaming and browsing.

 

[Cat011]

*UNLIMITED DATA:

You can use as much data as you want. Our uncapped service is designed for someone sitting in front of their computer using the internet as much as they want. It is not designed for computer programs that are setup to continuously download 24/7, 30 days a month. If it is your intention to setup programs to download every hour of the day, every day of the month then these uncapped packages are not for you. We reserve the right to terminate any account whose usage affects our other clients internet experience negatively. We reserve the right to investigate and possibly terminate any account that moves over 200 GBs per month. Our primary concern is for the majority of our clients. If there are individuals that are putting strain on the network through their downloading habits and in so doing affecting our other clients negatively we reserve the right to stop offering them the service.

That was posted on these forums when they launched their uncapped offering. They were completely upfront with their intentions. Heavy users still took a chance and signed up. Sorry for you.

/Facepalm

 

[hammell]

I don't get the fuss here or maybe Mweb has made a mistake with me. I get over 400kb/s all day, every day. I'm so bored of downloading things now I don't any more...

 

[Brawler]

I have been very happy with afrihost 384k.
As long as I get around 30gb per month without being limited too badly I will remain wiht them,

 

[3Com]

Just a thought:

When upstream providers give ISP`s huge amounts of Bandwidth at ridiculous prices (Below R1 per GB). You pay then R 499 per month where most don`t even get 100 GB`s where you then pay R 399 more. Rather bring a fair usage to these cheap uncapped or bring down the prices as Mweb and Afrihost are making a lot of moola on this "Cheap" uncapped accounts.

This is not "Free The Web", unless you bring fair prices and fair policies.

 

[SirFooK'nG]

My wife and I play MW2 (a lot), we use about 14gig a month, just on MW2. So you guys who want to know how to use up gigs, thats just one game! And it does not include updates etc, just gameplay. Anyonewho has a 384 line will tell you that they never host a MW2 game, ever, and their usage is about 50mb an hour for MW2. Its about 160mb an hour for me on my 4mb line. Upstream is as heavy as downstream. Perk of having a good 4mb connection is being chosen as the host automatically.