Official Afrihost Q&A Thread

My point is you can;t get angry when an isp creates a usage limit to stay in business. I've also said if you want to download alot go to mweb because they are clearly subsidizing their internet.

The real anger actually comes from them not letting us know.... and like I said - taking from Monday midday till Tuesday 10pm-ish is not reasonable from a company that offers '24-hour support'.
 
My point is you can;t get angry when an isp creates a usage limit to stay in business. I've also said if you want to download alot go to mweb because they are clearly subsidizing their internet.

You know that afrihost just resell right? Internet Solutions (IS) have the IPC's and they too have a ton of cash:)
 
Thing is they are atm doing 60GB + for 497 so....

60GB @ 4096 / 512 / 384 @ 400 and then call it a high cap account that will solve all these issues
 
I agree that Steam games are heavy (I used 12gb in one day just pulling down the few I own). However, games that weigh ~10gb generally cost between $30 and $50, so if you're pulling 300GB a month in Steam games that's R6'500-R11'000/month in gaming spend.

If you have that much money, you can surely afford a much better internet connection.

Also, yes, it's crap that even on a 4mbps line you still need to wait for streaming service (YT, Grooveshark, etc) to buffer. At this point that's the only thing I'd want Afrihost to sort out - that the first 60GB goes at least at 80% of the advertised speed, most of the time.

And then legal torrents, right. What legal torrents? OS downloads? At 3gb an OS, that's 20/month before you hit your first throttle. Do you reformat and reinstall your PC every day? What do you do with all the windows-only Steam games you spend R6k+ a month on? Are there even that many major OSes out there?

Anime and other unobtainable media (UK/US shows, etc)? Aren't they somewhere in SA already, on faster, local bandwidth? Did you know that the first 4 seasons of Doctor Who (55 episodes) only weighs 20gb? At a 256kbps bitrate, you can stream video for the whole month (all 86400 seconds of every day) and only use 82gb. How could you possibly watch all of that while constantly reformatting your PC with new OSes and fretting about the Steam games you can no longer play?

You have to admit that there aren't really a lot of legitimate reasons to pull hundreds of gigs a month.

+1
 
Another benefit of your honesty is that most excessive users will leave, increasing the quality of the experience for everyone else.

also true, but Gian, my question is this

Lets say for 3 months, I don't have a lot of downloading to do, so lets say for 3 months, i never download more than 20GB's a month, now all of the sudden, i need [for whatever reason] to download 100GB in the 4th month, is it then fair to still throttle me? for 3 months i was way below your guidelines, but now because i need more for 1 month, im being punished?
 
The real anger actually comes from them not letting us know.... and like I said - taking from Monday midday till Tuesday 10pm-ish is not reasonable from a company that offers '24-hour support'.

They have apologized for this. Gian said sorry, he failed..... everyone needs to move on.

He even offered to pay for the 100's of gigs users have already used via of a refund.
 
They have apologized for this. Gian said sorry, he failed..... everyone needs to move on.

He even offered to pay for the 100's of gigs users have already used via of a refund.

Well that's not gong to happen if the attacks on people standing up for what they paid for continue...
 
There was no reasonable throttling - 10-20KB on a 4MB line is not reasonable... and taking from Monday midday till last night to clarify is also not reasonable.

Well, there's ISPA, GetClosure, or the option of simply walking away if you think you're not getting good value for your money. The way I see it (and the way all the regulators will see it), you don't actually have any legs to stand on here. You agreed to the potential of exactly this sort of thing.

Don't flatter yourself, you have the link in your signature.

Yes, but you had to click on the twitter link to get that bio. Well done.
 
also true, but Gian, my question is this

Lets say for 3 months, I don't have a lot of downloading to do, so lets say for 3 months, i never download more than 20GB's a month, now all of the sudden, i need [for whatever reason] to download 100GB in the 4th month, is it then fair to still throttle me? for 3 months i was way below your guidelines, but now because i need more for 1 month, im being punished?

I'm guessing they'll find a way to work that in. Like I said earlier, it would be great if conservative users could be rewarded in some way.
 
You know that afrihost just resell right? Internet Solutions (IS) have the IPC's and they too have a ton of cash:)

Do you honestly think internet solutions is going to want to lose 100's of millions? They might do it, but only because mweb is willing to do it. Thresholds are gonna come into play at some point - the only difference is afrihost are being honest about it from the start.
 
Well, there's ISPA, GetClosure, or the option of simply walking away if you think you're not getting good value for your money. The way I see it (and the way all the regulators will see it), you don't actually have any legs to stand on here. You agreed to the potential of exactly this sort of thing.

Could you please provide me with how you got the authority to speak on behalf of various regulators, and where they unanimously agreed to see things the way you see them?



Yes, but you had to click on the twitter link to get that bio. Well done.

Oh - the super-sleuth in me - managed to click twice.
 
@xrapidx - if the pain is so great ask for your refund, it'll mean 40 free gigs which should make you happy.

Gian can only make the offer, he has done his part.

I think you should move to mweb, their current subsidizing really should be made use of.
 
This thread is proof that people will never be happy, no matter what. If they don't give 100% transparency, then you complain about the time it took to respond, if they respond then you complain about the actual response, if the response is satisfactory then you complain about not being able to cancel fast enough, if they don't cancel fast enough then you complain about refunds, if all that is done then you will continue to complain about the product being inferior to Mweb even though you are happy with Mweb and moved on with no intention to return to Afrihost you'll just complain for the sake of complaining...

/facepalm


I think Afrihost put a reasonable system in place, yes it's inferior to Mweb [or Mweb just is not on the ball enough to realise what's hitting them, they might found out in 3 months that everyone has been destroying their revenue] , but hey, it's not like someone is holding a gun to your head.
 
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Having spent most my life developing application to track network usage, it was quiet obvious to me the package would be shaped and throttled if you did not play ball.

There is a certain football company in town at the moment and they have really big pipes and they pay accordingly. Most would think because they have some much bandwidth they could not care - but they very much do!
They want to know exactly who did what and when so they can eliminate anyone abusing the system. Their reasons are not different from Afrihost.
All corporates have the same concerns.

If we where part of an service that was uncapped and unshaped - what would be the results:
1) The ISP would go bankrupt very soon.
2) All members would simply contend for the oversubscribes bandwidth and have a very unpleasant experience.
3) People with a reasonable expectation of the product would subsidies those without self control/respect for others.

Having said this, I think if any ISP took the trouble to implement more than just Radius accounting and actually provided per port usage tracking, it would soon become very clear what the data is actually been used for.

In my case I run Netflow collection on my home ADSL link(s).
I have an unlimited ADSL connection to work which runs 24/7.
I then have a 1 gig Telkom account.
And now I have a Uncapped (shaped) Afrihost account.

Once the 1 gig is capped, I split local and international traffic between the capped and uncapped.
This mean I have local uncapped via Telkom and international via Afrihost.

99% of the traffic is.. my son downloading movies which hits the Afrihost link.
I have since taken corrective action against him because asking him like an adult did not work.

I am a very heavy user with regard to work traffic but it's a very small portion of the total.
My son also is a gamer of note but this consumes 4-8gigs of local traffic per month.

The point I am trying to get at is people who are prepared to steal content (piracy) are not really concerned about stealing the bandwidth as well.

I would like someone to prove there is legitimate content being distributed via bit torrent.
If there is, it's a very small amount.

I know what I have implemented and am suggesting sounds like spying but it does expose the reality.
It also eliminates the "I was watching 60gig of Youtube clips" argument.
Some people will not like to hear this, most likely the same people using the most bandwidth, but it does show abuse for what it is.

Netflow by the way does not expose the content, only the protocol layer.

Gian, you have my sympathy for what you are trying to implement - good luck.

(awaiting flames)
 
Who is attacking these people? Gian? Members of this community? Please specify

Unfortunately - I really can't help you there - if you don't see people being called idiots/losers/etc.... then there really is nothing I can do to help you.


In what way are you not getting what you paid for? Were you capped at some point?

If you mean could I access the internet and browse easily- no , I couldn't, and I posted such on Monday night, I had to change accounts just to browse MyBB (which I stated).
 
Could you please provide me with how you got the authority to speak on behalf of various regulators, and where they unanimously agreed to see things the way you see them?

I said "the way I see it", so I'm speaking my opinion, entirely under my own authority. Though you're welcome to contact them for their input?

Oh - the super-sleuth in me - managed to click twice.
Jinne, you can even count to two. Never a dull moment.
 
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This thread is proof that people will never be happy, no matter what. If they don't give 100% transparency, then you complain about the time it took to respond, if they respond then you complain about the actual response, if the response is satisfactory then you complain about not being able to cancel fast enough, if they don't cancel fast enough then you complain about refunds, if all that is done then you will continue to complain about the product being inferior to Mweb even though you are happy with Mweb and moved on with no intention to return to Afrihost you'll just complain for the sake of complaining...

aint that the truth
 
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