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

Are you satisfied with your Crystal Web account?

  • Total voters
    126
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Vlad_M said:
It sounds like you're starting to buy into your own press a little too much. I don't know about your network, but your account, for me, is by far the worst performing I have experienced - and in the past two months I have used TI, WA, OW, VOX and yourselves on my 20Mbps line. Your account is by far the slowest in NNTP, slowest in HTTP downloads, and mediocre in streaming performance.

I've only been using your account for 8 days, and all I have heard is that you know about problems, and are rolling out fixes - which I see no evidence of whatsoever. I hear about Telkom problems, while none of my other accounts are experiencing these. And the most peculiar of all - when I explicitly asked your support about this (problems, current status, long term outlook), there was no indication whatsoever of any of this - I was made to believe that everything is just stellar.

The hat-in-hand, wide eyes look act is getting long in the tooth. I asked before, and my question is ignored - will you give me a pro-rata refund in lieu of the fact that your performance is just not as advertised, and you're not providing the service I am paying for?

Please answer my question.
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Well for me and the majority it has been the best experience ever. Look back in this thread. Look at CW's explanation regarding exchange congestion per ISP accounts also.
 
Does someone know if there is a kind of map available on the net regarding ADSL? Almost like the one that shows you where 3G is available. Currently looking at a couple of new developments, but would prefer one where Telkom infrastructure is already at.
 
Ok guys, news server update:

As of an hour ago, I see "somewhere" on the net, that NextGenNews has identified the root cause of the problem and applied a fix - they are testing but everything looks good so far.

I am not saying it's fixed, but hopefully your downloads will complete. For future use, there is also a status page here: http://www.nextgennews.net/tools/status.php
 
StevenC said:
Ok guys, news server update:

As of an hour ago, I see "somewhere" on the net, that NextGenNews has identified the root cause of the problem and applied a fix - they are testing but everything looks good so far.

I am not saying it's fixed, but hopefully your downloads will complete. For future use, there is also a status page here: http://www.nextgennews.net/tools/status.php
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Tested now, downloading at about 450 KBps (on a 10mbps line though, so it's about 50% speed). Will check to see if there's data corruption when it's done, but the speed still isn't where it should be.
 
saa044 said:
Well for me and the majority it has been the best experience ever. Look back in this thread. Look at CW's explanation regarding exchange congestion per ISP accounts also.
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Sounds like the "majority" with good experience are all running low speed accounts, and people with 10Mbps and above accounts all have "exchange congestion". Maybe my consistent 400kB/s, corresponding neatly with a crappy 4Mbps account has something to do with it.

Anyway, with so many happy customers, it should be a formality for CW to give me a pro rata refund and go on making their happy customers happier. Clearly they are not quite ready to provide service to the premium end of the market yet.
 
Vlad_M said:
Sounds like the "majority" with good experience are all running low speed accounts, and people with 10Mbps and above accounts all have "exchange congestion". Maybe my consistent 400kB/s, corresponding neatly with a crappy 4Mbps account has something to do with it.

Anyway, with so many happy customers, it should be a formality for CW to give me a pro rata refund and go on making their happy customers happier. Clearly they are not quite ready to provide service to the premium end of the market yet.
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Not sure if you lived in London or the States, but 4mbps aint crappy. My Family of 3 streams Netflix, 3 devices running at the same time and we all get between 480p and 720p. My international pings are about 250ms. But I suppose if your main goal is to download as fast as possible 20mbps would make sense. Maybe call us 4mbps users the normal users?
 
Woodlands said:
http://www.telkom.co.za/coverage/index.html
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Sweet, I am very close to the edge where ADSL stops, but it is there at least. Might be looking at a stable 2mbps though, but better than my Mtn uncapped. BTW I am moving into a 3 story home in the boardwalk area, my friend told me to sort my problem with wifi i must try Ethernet via power socket, they ok?
 
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Vlad_M said:
Sounds like the "majority" with good experience are all running low speed accounts, and people with 10Mbps and above accounts all have "exchange congestion". Maybe my consistent 400kB/s, corresponding neatly with a crappy 4Mbps account has something to do with it.
Click to expand...

Admittedly, I am on a 2MB line - I do get full line speed on my NNTP though and streaming is pretty awesome. I can watch 720p video on YouTube just fine (with a few seconds "buffer" pause at start). Overall, I am happy. Sorry to hear you aren't.

saa044 said:
Sweet, I am very close to the edge where ADSL stops, but it is there at least. Might be looking at a stable 2mbps though, but better than my Mtn uncapped. BTW I am moving into a 3 story home in the boardwalk area, my friend told me to sort my problem with wifi i must try Ethernet via power lines, they ok?
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Ethernet over Power is a decent technology but bear this in mind - the plugs that you use must be on the same circuit to operate. Multi story homes sometimes use multiple circuits so probably wise to check that out before you drop a fat stack of cash on a starter kit (they can be in excess of R1200). They are quite efficient and you don't have to run ethernet cable all over the house.
 
MatthewMurdoch said:
2 questions:

what backbone is CW on
and
Prices of capped accounts from 50GB to 150GB?
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They use Cybersmart (last time I checked).

Not too sure about the capped accounts, you may need to chat to their sales team about that as they haven't launched it officially on their website.
 
StevenC said:
They use Cybersmart (last time I checked).

Not too sure about the capped accounts, you may need to chat to their sales team about that as they haven't launched it officially on their website.
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Cybersmart internation pings as good as IS?
 
StevenC said:
Admittedly, I am on a 2MB line - I do get full line speed on my NNTP though and streaming is pretty awesome. I can watch 720p video on YouTube just fine (with a few seconds "buffer" pause at start). Overall, I am happy. Sorry to hear you aren't.



Ethernet over Power is a decent technology but bear this in mind - the plugs that you use must be on the same circuit to operate. Multi story homes sometimes use multiple circuits so probably wise to check that out before you drop a fat stack of cash on a starter kit (they can be in excess of R1200). They are quite efficient and you don't have to run ethernet cable all over the house.
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I am using TP-Link powerline adapters.. They work really well. They are also quite cheap from Takealot..

I got 2 WiFi adapters and 1 ethernet adapter which I plug into my spare WiFi router.
 
saa044 said:
Vlad_M said:
Sounds like the "majority" with good experience are all running low speed accounts, and people with 10Mbps and above accounts all have "exchange congestion". Maybe my consistent 400kB/s, corresponding neatly with a crappy 4Mbps account has something to do with it.

Anyway, with so many happy customers, it should be a formality for CW to give me a pro rata refund and go on making their happy customers happier. Clearly they are not quite ready to provide service to the premium end of the market yet.
Click to expand...

Not sure if you lived in London or the States, but 4mbps aint crappy. My Family of 3 streams Netflix, 3 devices running at the same time and we all get between 480p and 720p. My international pings are about 250ms. But I suppose if your main goal is to download as fast as possible 20mbps would make sense. Maybe call us 4mbps users the normal users?
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Are you being serious ?

I've lived in Germany and the US, and have plenty of friends and family in the UK.

The 2000's called. They want their 4Mbps back.

If that's enough for you, fine.

But in reality most people I know in the states and UK have 10/20/40/80 connections, unshaped and some bundled with Sky or BT packages for very affordable prices. FTTH is available as well.

Vlad makes a valid point, it was also suggested to me that I sign-up at the end of last month and be "blown" away by the experience.

If I was paying for a 20Mbps account and only getting somewhere in the region of 4Mbps, my patience would run out fairly quickly because that's non delivery of service.

I asked for a trial account, and was told unfortunately there were none. In this instance, perhaps a trial account would be a great idea before signing up. If someone is confident about how excellent their offering is, and how it is differentiated from the competition, then this would prove the sales pitch.

While the level of feedback from CW support is admirable compared to their competitors, I'm not entirely sure the product is ready for the prime time, but as Vlad points out, that might only apply to 10Mbps accounts and up.

YMMV, and each to their own.
 
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StevenC said:
Admittedly, I am on a 2MB line - I do get full line speed on my NNTP though and streaming is pretty awesome. I can watch 720p video on YouTube just fine (with a few seconds "buffer" pause at start). Overall, I am happy. Sorry to hear you aren't.
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That's what, ~200kB/s? Obviously there's a big difference providing that level of service, and a real high speed service, properly. Doesn't seem that Crystal Web is ready to offer 20Mbps+ accounts, so why do they?

As an aside, I'm a bit surprised to see the amount of people still using 4Mbps and lower on an techy site such as myBB.
 
Vlad_M said:
That's what, ~200kB/s? Obviously there's a big difference providing that level of service, and a real high speed service, properly. Doesn't seem that Crystal Web is ready to offer 20Mbps+ accounts, so why do they?

As an aside, I'm a bit surprised to see the amount of people still using 4Mbps and lower on an techy site such as myBB.
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because my exchange only supports 4mb.
 
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