Official Crystal Web ADSL performance feedback thread Part 2...

Are you satisfied with your Crystal Web account?

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Crystal Web said:
Customers with issues right now please hop on support and report it to us - please do so via live chat if possible - we have a solution to resolve it but I must confirm your username beforehand.

If you can only email, please make the subject: "Fix slow speeds" and add your username into the email.

Thanks
Click to expand...

Well This is a fairly new problem today but done... on the part with telkom i don't know they just don't seem to know of anythign that can be wrong...

This is a problem...
 
Nice to see issues being sorted asap and support being available almost on demand. Just the rest of this month to go before I join up so all this interaction and stuff is good to see from a customer point of view. Keep it up :D
 
ETA on fix is 2 hours for those with troubles. All it may require is a reboot on your side, but I will advise when to do this.
 
bgotapen said:
Crystalweb.

At what point do you intervene on a matter between you and telkom? Your account has packetloss and ping spikes on my exchange. You blame the exchange that is fine as far as I know you are probably correct.

However afrihost and webafrica capped accounts function normally on my line including a telkom uncapped account. However ont he second adsl line it seems to have the same ping spikes and packet loss?
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Crystal Web said:
It's difficult to do anything with Telkom. It's simply not our infrastructure - there may be a fault on the exchange itself, and Telkom must investigate via a report from the customer. We can escalate to Telkom Wholesale but that's often even slower, and we only have a single data point unless we have multiple customers on the same exchange complaining, in which case Wholesale ask for more data.
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@CrystalWeb

Is there any chance you could explain why/how a line can run perfectly with multiple other ISPs but have paketloss and ping spikes on another?
 
mugen said:
@CrystalWeb

Is there any chance you could explain why/how a line can run perfectly with multiple other ISPs but have paketloss and ping spikes on another?
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Sure. We don't know for sure, and there is absolutely no way for us to test, nor provide an answer until Telkom give ISPs in SA the tools to test the exchanges and the routers and systems we connect to on their infrastructure. Every ISP suffers from this - it's not unique to us. One account seems to work but the other has packet loss at the exchange. It's indicative of something faulty on the equipment at the exchange in all likelihood. Or packet loss on your internal network causing the packets to expire as they hit the exchange further down. Or a faulty line perhaps but this one is unlikely.

Bottom line is we simply cannot answer it. No ISP can. Only the owner of the infrastructure can answer it, after investigating, and that's Telkom. It's kind of like asking McDonalds why Burger King buns are stale. They can guess to their heart's content being in the industry and knowing how the technology works, but the only one who can provide the answer is Burger King themselves. Or perhaps I need to change the analogy a bit - it's like asking McDonalds why Heinz make their ketchup so sweet. Yes, McDonalds use Heinz ketchup, but only Heinz can answer the question, and the best person to ask the question is the guy eating the Heinz ketchup.
 
Crystal Web said:
Sure. We don't know for sure, and there is absolutely no way for us to test, nor provide an answer until Telkom give ISPs in SA the tools to test the exchanges and the routers and systems we connect to on their infrastructure. Every ISP suffers from this - it's not unique to us. One account seems to work but the other has packet loss at the exchange. It's indicative of something faulty on the equipment at the exchange in all likelihood. Or packet loss on your internal network causing the packets to expire as they hit the exchange further down. Or a faulty line perhaps but this one is unlikely.

Bottom line is we simply cannot answer it. No ISP can. Only the owner of the infrastructure can answer it, after investigating, and that's Telkom. It's kind of like asking McDonalds why Burger King buns are stale. They can guess to their heart's content being in the industry and knowing how the technology works, but the only one who can provide the answer is Burger King themselves. Or perhaps I need to change the analogy a bit - it's like asking McDonalds why Heinz make their ketchup so sweet. Yes, McDonalds use Heinz ketchup, but only Heinz can answer the question, and the best person to ask the question is the guy eating the Heinz ketchup.
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McDonalds is still better than Burger King though. :)
 
Weird - thought I posted :(

Mine was fine a little earlier today - bad (300Kb) now....

I sent email, live chat not working here.
 
Crystal Web said:
Customers with issues right now please hop on support and report it to us - please do so via live chat if possible - we have a solution to resolve it but I must confirm your username beforehand.

If you can only email, please make the subject: "Fix slow speeds" and add your username into the email.

Thanks
Click to expand...

I'v already logged a ticked this morning: [##4109##]

There is also another matter: see pm.
 
To understand the exchange issue a little better, here is how it works in simplistic terms:

Your line______________Exchange____________IPC_____________ISP Network____________Internet

The last three go hand in hand but all are needed to gain access to the net.

An ISP must have a registered IP range issued by AfriNIC. This range is then populated across the Telkom exchanges around South Africa so that Telkom know how and where to route the data for which ISPs. It moves over their network from there, over to the closest point an ISP has purchased IPC capacity at. It then moves over on to the ISP's network. So really what exists at the exchanges is all of Telkom's routing infrastructure - there's no ISP routing infrastructure there.

I understand the frustration when exchange issues crop up - I really do. About 50% of our support queries are actually us diagnosing a Telkom fault on their behalf. We then bear the brunt of customers getting very angry with us when we state as such. It's exacerbated when a customer switches ISPs and the packet loss disappears. But this doesn't mean the ISP has done anything there - the ISP simply cannot. We don't have facilities leasing to install infrastructure inside Telkom's exchanges - ISPs install their hardware much further down the route at a peering point for IPC. Also remember that an exchange isn't the little box up the road from you - it's a rather large building housing massive amounts of equipment. Each piece of equipment does something different, and each piece of equipment must be fully operational for the network to run smoothly across all ISPs. If one piece of hardware fails or is not working 100%, it can result in packet loss on one ISP's account and not the other, perhaps. Again, we can't test this, nor do we get any data about this from Telkom, so this remains an educated guess.

Here is a pic of a Telkom exchange, for some context:

ADTRAN_LAB_DSLAM_test-1024x768.jpg


Now imagine a single loose cable there. Or a single faulty port. Or router. Or configuration. etc. And you start to imagine the complexities of the situation. I hope this helps to explain why we can't fix, diagnose, nor answer exchange congestion for you, irrespective of the results showing no packet loss on one ISP or another.

BUT, you MUST report it to Telkom still. You absolutely have to. if you don't, the problems will 1) persist, and 2) may get worse and end up spreading to all of your ISP accounts. ISPs (including Telkom) rely on customers reporting faults. We can do a lot of stuff behind the scenes to monitor, and Telkom have bettered their reporting and management of this over the years, but they still rely on your calls and fault reports to them, in order to fix the problems. If they don't know an issue exists, how are they to fix it? You cannot assume that they are monitoring your specific connection at all times.
 
Last edited:
Within the next 30 minutes all of those who have submitted reports to us of slower than expected speeds should be fixed up. Apologies about this.

On the plus side, you do get to see us in action fixing things on the fly when needed.

What this fix will require:

Reboot of your router

What this fix will do:

Resolve 90% of the slow speeds for now

What this fix isn't: a permanent solution - that comes later this month, but this should see a drastic improvement for those with troubles.
 
Crystal Web said:
Within the next 30 minutes all of those who have submitted reports to us of slower than expected speeds should be fixed up. Apologies about this.

On the plus side, you do get to see us in action fixing things on the fly when needed.

What this fix will require:

Reboot of your router

What this fix will do:

Resolve 90% of the slow speeds for now

What this fix isn't: a permanent solution - that comes later this month, but this should see a drastic improvement for those with troubles.
Click to expand...

I don't know how many more reboots my router can take. :p

Reboot.jpg
 
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