- Joined
- Sep 10, 2009
- Messages
- 568
- Reaction score
- 288
==============
This is the official Afrihost Question & Answer thread.
You are welcome to post a question here or simply
browse through the thread and hopefully find the answer
to any question you may have.
==============
As you may know a storm erupted today over our
throttling heavy downloaders and thus the first topic
that I'd like to cover is our Fair Usage Policy (FUP).
But before I get into the explanation of this I'd like
to say this:
If anyone feels that they were deceived into signing up
an uncapped account with us on false pretences then I
will waive the 30 days notice period, cancel your
account now and make sure you are refunded the pro-rata
amount that you paid for March regardless of how many
GBs you may have already downloaded.
We will also refund you the R497 that will be debited
from your account or credit card on the 1st.
(Unfortunately this payment run has already been sent to
the bank so we cannot stop it. However, be rest assured
that we will refund you in full.)
Back to the Fair Usage Policy:
A FUP in the Uncapped ISP world has traditionally been
the most opaque, confusing set of terms that you have to
agree to.
So we tried to make it as clear as we could initially.
The current incredibly cheap uncapped accounts that are
being sold at the moment in SA are a completely new
animal and quite frankly there is and was no way to
predict how users would behave on them.
There has been such a hunger created for bandwidth in
South Africa over the years by pricing constraints set
by Telkom that when certain people hear uncapped all
they think about is how much can they get.
It actually stops becoming about WHAT they download but
more about HOW MUCH they can download.
Now we knew this.
And we also knew that we needed to be clear that these
uncapped accounts were not created for this purpose and
that if anybody tried to use it for this purpose they
would be disappointed.
So we stated this wherever we could on our website. On
both the Packages page and the FAQ's page.
We also included this in the email we sent to all of our
clients when we announced the launch of our Uncapped
products.
We were honestly hoping that across the base of users
taking up the offering the average would be manageable
and that we would not need to take any action against
many (if any) users.
To cover ourselves (and to be as transparent as
possible) we thought that we'd mention that we reserved
the right to investigate and possibly terminate any user
doing over 200 GBs of traffic.
This in itself led to a furore on the MyBroadband forums
as many felt that this meant we would cut people off at
200 GBs which is never what we intended to do.
However, we were unfortunately naive to the extreme in
the quantity of usage that some of our clients would aim
for.
There were many clients that started downloading 24/7
as soon as they signed up and would move close to a
Terabyte (1000 GBs) a month if nothing was done.
Also given the fact that we have many advanced users
(and not so many of the 'Moms & Pops') this led to a far
higher overall average across our userbase than we had
anticipated.
This meant that we needed to take the action we were
hoping we wouldn't have to take.
And this led to our biggest mistake.
The week since we launched last Tuesday has been
incredibly busy and almost overwhelming for the entire
team at Afrihost.
We have gone on a massive hiring spree to hire 10 more
Support engineers so that we can continue to give the
great service we aspire to to our clients.
This meant that when we decided to throttle we didn't
fully think it through it as we should have.
We should have been prepared for the backlash we'd get
from the small percentage of clients that it did affect.
But we weren't.
We had originally mentioned that we were still testing
our packages. We thought that making changes that slowed
our clients who knew they had downloaded heavily would be
seen as fair, part of the package and a part of the
testing.
Many of those users had already made their R143 they'd
paid us travel far and we were unprepared for the anger
our throttling caused.
In hind sight I see clearly that we should have
communicated directly with them regarding this and I am
sincerely sorry for the confusion and anger this
generated for these clients of ours.
When the backlash came we were not 100% prepared and we
replied to people enquiring about their slow speeds:
"The Afrihost uncapped solutions are designed to give
great results for the first 60GB of usage, but after that
Afrihost will shape or throttle the service to protect
other users on the network. You will still be able to use
your account and it will never be capped, but it will not
be as fast as our capped accounts at that point."
This was to interpreted by many to mean that we had
instituted a 60 GB soft cap. This was never our
intention.
Our intention has been to try and deliver a service that
delights the majority of our clients. For this reason we
have stated on our website:
"The uncapped service is designed for humans who want to
use the internet as much as they want - for some
downloading, streaming media, browsing, and more. It is
not designed for computer programs that are setup to
continuously download ..."
Now many of our clients who have been throttled fall into
this category of setting up programs to download for a
large portion of the day and night from various sources.
So for the benefit of our clients who have moved many GBs
with us in the last week (and anybody else who intends to
download as much as they possibly can on their 4096 kbps
uncapped solution) I will now try to explain exactly how
we plan to handle it from the 1st of April.
[By the way we have removed all throttling on all
accounts for now but we will be starting with the
procedure as described below in April - Please take some
time to think whether this is the right account for you.
If not please feel free to cancel with absolutely no hard
feelings from our side]
Here is what the plan was (and is) for the 4096 Uncapped:
==============
PLEASE NOTE: These are our current settings we plan to
use - however, they may change in the future.
Quite simply we do not know if this needs to be tweaked
or not - we will only be able to tell over time. This is
all brand new to us too and due to the incredible
appetite for downloads we are learning as we are going.
We are hoping that as the novelty wears off and fewer
clients look to download heavily the accounts we can
allow more and more GB usage.
But I do not foresee that happening while there are so
many bandwidth hungry people that are trying to download
1000 GBs on their accounts.
==============
Initially you will be getting our standard service. (i.e.
certain ports are shaped somewhat and web and email are
prioritised.)
After you have moved 30 GBs you will be moved into a
different category whereby certain ports will be shaped
more aggressively. However, web and email will still be
prioritised.
After moving a total of 60 GBs you will be moved into a
different category where your line speed is throttled to
1024 kbps per second and certain shaping protocols are in
place.
After moving a total of 90 GBs then you will be moved
into a category where you will be throttled to 512 kbps.
Certain shaping protocols will also be in place here.
After moving a total of 120 GBs you will be moved into a
category where your line will be throttled to 386 kbps.
Certain shaping protocols will also be in place here.
After moving a total of 150 GBs you will be moved into a
category where you are throttled to 128 kbps.
You will never be capped.
If you use this account for heavy downloading then you
WILL be throttled at some point in the month so please
think about whether this account is for you.
Please note: The above explanation is how we are
currently planning on dealing with accounts from April
but we do reserve the right to change these at any time -
The bottom line is that if you intend to use this account
for heavy downloading you will be shaped and throttled at
some time.
As stated before if you feel that you were deceived into
signing up with us then I will cancel your account, waive
the 30 days notice period and make sure you are refunded
the pro-rata that you paid for March regardless of how
many GBs you may have used
We will also refund you the R497 that will be debited
from your account or credit card on the 1st.
(Unfortunately this payment run has already been sent to
the bank so we cannot stop it. However, be rest assured
that we will refund you in full.)
I hope this answers all your questions relating to how we
will deal with heavy users of the 4096 kbps uncapped
service.
For those of you who know us you will know that we are
100% committed to integrity, honesty and to driving
consumer Internet costs down.
We've made some mistakes so far in this uncapped arena
and we unreservedly apologise for this.
However, we are learning from them and we hope to iron
out all difficulties over the coming months.
As always please feel free to ask any questions and I'll
do my best to answer as soon as I can.
Thanks again for your support!
This is the official Afrihost Question & Answer thread.
You are welcome to post a question here or simply
browse through the thread and hopefully find the answer
to any question you may have.
==============
As you may know a storm erupted today over our
throttling heavy downloaders and thus the first topic
that I'd like to cover is our Fair Usage Policy (FUP).
But before I get into the explanation of this I'd like
to say this:
If anyone feels that they were deceived into signing up
an uncapped account with us on false pretences then I
will waive the 30 days notice period, cancel your
account now and make sure you are refunded the pro-rata
amount that you paid for March regardless of how many
GBs you may have already downloaded.
We will also refund you the R497 that will be debited
from your account or credit card on the 1st.
(Unfortunately this payment run has already been sent to
the bank so we cannot stop it. However, be rest assured
that we will refund you in full.)
Back to the Fair Usage Policy:
A FUP in the Uncapped ISP world has traditionally been
the most opaque, confusing set of terms that you have to
agree to.
So we tried to make it as clear as we could initially.
The current incredibly cheap uncapped accounts that are
being sold at the moment in SA are a completely new
animal and quite frankly there is and was no way to
predict how users would behave on them.
There has been such a hunger created for bandwidth in
South Africa over the years by pricing constraints set
by Telkom that when certain people hear uncapped all
they think about is how much can they get.
It actually stops becoming about WHAT they download but
more about HOW MUCH they can download.
Now we knew this.
And we also knew that we needed to be clear that these
uncapped accounts were not created for this purpose and
that if anybody tried to use it for this purpose they
would be disappointed.
So we stated this wherever we could on our website. On
both the Packages page and the FAQ's page.
We also included this in the email we sent to all of our
clients when we announced the launch of our Uncapped
products.
We were honestly hoping that across the base of users
taking up the offering the average would be manageable
and that we would not need to take any action against
many (if any) users.
To cover ourselves (and to be as transparent as
possible) we thought that we'd mention that we reserved
the right to investigate and possibly terminate any user
doing over 200 GBs of traffic.
This in itself led to a furore on the MyBroadband forums
as many felt that this meant we would cut people off at
200 GBs which is never what we intended to do.
However, we were unfortunately naive to the extreme in
the quantity of usage that some of our clients would aim
for.
There were many clients that started downloading 24/7
as soon as they signed up and would move close to a
Terabyte (1000 GBs) a month if nothing was done.
Also given the fact that we have many advanced users
(and not so many of the 'Moms & Pops') this led to a far
higher overall average across our userbase than we had
anticipated.
This meant that we needed to take the action we were
hoping we wouldn't have to take.
And this led to our biggest mistake.
The week since we launched last Tuesday has been
incredibly busy and almost overwhelming for the entire
team at Afrihost.
We have gone on a massive hiring spree to hire 10 more
Support engineers so that we can continue to give the
great service we aspire to to our clients.
This meant that when we decided to throttle we didn't
fully think it through it as we should have.
We should have been prepared for the backlash we'd get
from the small percentage of clients that it did affect.
But we weren't.
We had originally mentioned that we were still testing
our packages. We thought that making changes that slowed
our clients who knew they had downloaded heavily would be
seen as fair, part of the package and a part of the
testing.
Many of those users had already made their R143 they'd
paid us travel far and we were unprepared for the anger
our throttling caused.
In hind sight I see clearly that we should have
communicated directly with them regarding this and I am
sincerely sorry for the confusion and anger this
generated for these clients of ours.
When the backlash came we were not 100% prepared and we
replied to people enquiring about their slow speeds:
"The Afrihost uncapped solutions are designed to give
great results for the first 60GB of usage, but after that
Afrihost will shape or throttle the service to protect
other users on the network. You will still be able to use
your account and it will never be capped, but it will not
be as fast as our capped accounts at that point."
This was to interpreted by many to mean that we had
instituted a 60 GB soft cap. This was never our
intention.
Our intention has been to try and deliver a service that
delights the majority of our clients. For this reason we
have stated on our website:
"The uncapped service is designed for humans who want to
use the internet as much as they want - for some
downloading, streaming media, browsing, and more. It is
not designed for computer programs that are setup to
continuously download ..."
Now many of our clients who have been throttled fall into
this category of setting up programs to download for a
large portion of the day and night from various sources.
So for the benefit of our clients who have moved many GBs
with us in the last week (and anybody else who intends to
download as much as they possibly can on their 4096 kbps
uncapped solution) I will now try to explain exactly how
we plan to handle it from the 1st of April.
[By the way we have removed all throttling on all
accounts for now but we will be starting with the
procedure as described below in April - Please take some
time to think whether this is the right account for you.
If not please feel free to cancel with absolutely no hard
feelings from our side]
Here is what the plan was (and is) for the 4096 Uncapped:
==============
PLEASE NOTE: These are our current settings we plan to
use - however, they may change in the future.
Quite simply we do not know if this needs to be tweaked
or not - we will only be able to tell over time. This is
all brand new to us too and due to the incredible
appetite for downloads we are learning as we are going.
We are hoping that as the novelty wears off and fewer
clients look to download heavily the accounts we can
allow more and more GB usage.
But I do not foresee that happening while there are so
many bandwidth hungry people that are trying to download
1000 GBs on their accounts.
==============
Initially you will be getting our standard service. (i.e.
certain ports are shaped somewhat and web and email are
prioritised.)
After you have moved 30 GBs you will be moved into a
different category whereby certain ports will be shaped
more aggressively. However, web and email will still be
prioritised.
After moving a total of 60 GBs you will be moved into a
different category where your line speed is throttled to
1024 kbps per second and certain shaping protocols are in
place.
After moving a total of 90 GBs then you will be moved
into a category where you will be throttled to 512 kbps.
Certain shaping protocols will also be in place here.
After moving a total of 120 GBs you will be moved into a
category where your line will be throttled to 386 kbps.
Certain shaping protocols will also be in place here.
After moving a total of 150 GBs you will be moved into a
category where you are throttled to 128 kbps.
You will never be capped.
If you use this account for heavy downloading then you
WILL be throttled at some point in the month so please
think about whether this account is for you.
Please note: The above explanation is how we are
currently planning on dealing with accounts from April
but we do reserve the right to change these at any time -
The bottom line is that if you intend to use this account
for heavy downloading you will be shaped and throttled at
some time.
As stated before if you feel that you were deceived into
signing up with us then I will cancel your account, waive
the 30 days notice period and make sure you are refunded
the pro-rata that you paid for March regardless of how
many GBs you may have used
We will also refund you the R497 that will be debited
from your account or credit card on the 1st.
(Unfortunately this payment run has already been sent to
the bank so we cannot stop it. However, be rest assured
that we will refund you in full.)
I hope this answers all your questions relating to how we
will deal with heavy users of the 4096 kbps uncapped
service.
For those of you who know us you will know that we are
100% committed to integrity, honesty and to driving
consumer Internet costs down.
We've made some mistakes so far in this uncapped arena
and we unreservedly apologise for this.
However, we are learning from them and we hope to iron
out all difficulties over the coming months.
As always please feel free to ask any questions and I'll
do my best to answer as soon as I can.
Thanks again for your support!
Last edited:
