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

[Crystal Web Support]

Hi stephan.. If im not mistaken you were dealing with my query on the online chat.. and after logging on the other night you were not available.. I got promised you would get back to me... at least with an email.. I logged on once again and noticed the online chat was unavaible so i sent an email and got promised i would be received an email with some feedback.. as usual after the 2 week struggle i still await and email with an answer of my pathetic speeds in your so "unshaped 12am-6am period".. clearly i see my post on this thread was avoided as well but other users were responded to.. How honestly pathetic is this???

Hi Marco,

I have had a look at your account and I see that you have used a fair amount of Data so far this month on a Basic Uncapped account. You are also currently on 3 Stars.

Just as a reminder, Usage between 12 - 6am is mostly unshaped, however if there is a spike in network demand during this time, network management will kick in starting with download protocols first.

We have seen some unusally high demand over the past week or so on the Uncapped Basic bandwidth pools, management are working on some changes to profiles and the shapers at the moment, You should see a post soon with more info about this for Uncapped Basic and Home Capped Subscribers.

Regards,
Steph
Crystal Web Team

 

[Crystal Web Support]

So I posted that yesterday, I would like a reply. Something is very clearly wrong, many people have complained their streaming has taken a dive performance wise, latencies are all over the place in different locations, 300ms to Jozi and 200ms to Cape Town (when in Cape Town) is just not acceptable. So far all the questions relating to this have been ignored. Many people are experiencing diminished performance. If it is Telkom tell us, if it is IS tell us, if it is you tell us, but please stop telling us it our exchanges. Statistically that cannot be the case in the majority of people posting here seeing as all us have experienced a very sudden and noticeable drop in performance as if somebody just flipped a switch. Please all we are asking for is an explanation, no more skipping the issue. This is one of the only reasons I am willing to pay a premium, the service levels are your main selling point in my opinion, don't let that slip.

EDIT - I also dropped you a mail over the weekend, hope that gets replied to.

Hi Gatsby,

Just a reminder that Mybroadband is not our First Level Support, So we will only be able to reply when we can and not immediately, It is always best to hop onto live chat during our operating hours and have a chat with the guys so we can troubleshoot further with you, Please can you do this when you get a chance and request Stephan, I will come onto the chat and run some tests with you and see if I can come to a solution.

Regards,
Steph
Crystal Web Team

 

[Gatsby]

DJ's requested repeatedly that this thread not be used as the primary support mechanism. I see now that you've sent an email though, that will have helped I hope...?

Well aware of that, which is why I emailed yesterday as well and was on live chat. But I figured i'd repost and see if the rep would answer since he was active and my post was falling a few pages back. I was looking for a more general answer along the line of "XXXXX system is down and is affecting XYZ". As always I expected more detailed info about my problem sent directly to me

Also the other reason why I posted on here is that it established a pattern, if the rep monitoring the MyBB forum sees that many people started experiencing very similar issues all at around the same time it does lead one to believe that the problem might not be isolated to a few individual cases.

As a side note, I got an email to say they changed some things and that I should test when I get home. So will prob report back later tonight. Hope whatever was changed as resolved the issue.

 

[Crystal Web Support]

Support was very helpful, quite nice from an ISP for a change ! Speeds arent perfect , but they are much better and the news server runs at max line speed . Streaming is also working very well. It seems CrystalWeb have got their shaping sorted though , i can watch streams and not effect anyone in my houses gaming pings. Afrihost capped account certainly struggled with this.

Hi flashfire208,

Glad to hear that your issue was sorted in a matter on minutes on live chat. Thanks for the compliment, I'll be sure to pass it on to the rest of the team

 

[Crystal Web Support]

My general speeds especially streaming has been giving issues as of late. I have even suggested that I am willing to get a more expensive account. As well as I have requested twice to have my 15mb line upgraded to 20mb and don't receive the feedback.

Hi Lino,

Please could you hop onto live chat and request for Steph, I'll be happy to come onto the chat and sort you out

 

[Gatsby]

Hi Gatsby,

Just a reminder that Mybroadband is not our First Level Support, So we will only be able to reply when we can and not immediately, It is always best to hop onto live chat during our operating hours and have a chat with the guys so we can troubleshoot further with you, Please can you do this when you get a chance and request Stephan, I will come onto the chat and run some tests with you and see if I can come to a solution.

Regards,
Steph
Crystal Web Team

Fully understood and have done so but I sit in a strange situation. I am only home in the evening and the answer is always exchange congestion and its true, latencies are fairly high between 18:00 - 20:00. Problem is even when I get responses below 20ms the problem remains.

Now unfortunately since I am not home during the day I cannot prove this to you easily and I also cannot test my streaming on the Xbox remotely. But I will try my best via teamviewer tomorrow if the "change" that was mentioned in the email sent to me doesn't resolve the issue.

 

[Davedes]

what is taking you so long to sort this out? If you cannot provide me with an even half decent service, then please refund me and cancell my account, there are enough other isp's who would appreciate my business... but if you cannot accomodate, let alone get back to me after numerous responses, then please by all means cancel, just don't bull **** me

What's your usage MTD?

 

[converse]

Hi Marco,

I have had a look at your account and I see that you have used a fair amount of Data so far this month on a Basic Uncapped account. You are also currently on 3 Stars.

Just as a reminder, Usage between 12 - 6am is mostly unshaped, however if there is a spike in network demand during this time, network management will kick in starting with download protocols first.

We have seen some unusally high demand over the past week or so on the Uncapped Basic bandwidth pools, management are working on some changes to profiles and the shapers at the moment, You should see a post soon with more info about this for Uncapped Basic and Home Capped Subscribers.

Regards,
Steph
Crystal Web Team

Hi stephen.. Thankyou for your response but it's a great pity that after 2 weeks and raving and ranting i had to come onto a public forum in order to finally get a response. Please then on your site state that "between 12am and 6am it is "MOSTLY" unshaped instead of giving false expectations to clients such as myself. My bandwith usage has been fairly higher because ive had to schedule some downloads off the peak hours to get anything done.. because unfortunately between 12am and 6am i get dismal speeds continuously of 20kb/s for the last 2 weeks. This was the case since the day i started my account, i was on 1star rating for probaly 3 weeks but yet my 12am download hour speeds have been horific from the start, so please do not use that as an excuse. There is cearly something horribly wrong. Tell me if this wont be fixed, and then you can gladly cancel my account today and i will look elsewhere.. but please give me a proper response..

 

[Lino]

Hi Lino,

Please could you hop onto live chat and request for Steph, I'll be happy to come onto the chat and sort you out

Done

 

[Paul Hjul]

looks like a heck of a lot of support queries have been put into the thread. I'll check over a couple over the next hour or so but the support staff are going to be a quicker way to do things. It has been a busy week from management side so Shaun and I have had our hands a little full. As we grow an extra rep on MyBB is inevitable - so have you met Steph? [he wouldn't agree to a name change to Ted and then there is always human rights to consider].

this clearly looks like a case of CW taking on to many clients and not having the capacity to support it

is off the mark and appears to be a case of somebody wishing to poke around until they get the answer that they would like. There are lag times in getting planned capacity on stream and the additional customer signups has seen us both taking on capacity and bringing forward additional planning. [ergo a busy week for management]

As to the time of day when speeds are affected and how:
We have a sizable pipe - and our upstream provider is amazed at the capacity to residential consumer standards we have - which is used for a general mix of customer usage. The biggest demand time for us is the evening (until people go to bed) and it is this time when we really would like people to not download content that they will be consuming later during that peak. In the main our customers have been awesome in scheduling their downloads for the off-peak and we need this to continue, although this does mean that during the unshaped unattended download hours of midnight to 6am we have to get the balancing act right.

Something else that is creeping in is the home capped accounts - and these accounts aren't in the same pipe as our other accounts: It appear to have a few customers who against our recommendation for the usage case are adopting and then on finding that these accounts work as presented, but differently to our other accounts (you'll recall the thread concerning bypassing shaping).

Although I will agree the little to no response regarding the heavy shaping of torrents between 00:00 and 06:00 is a bit concerning as this is not the CW that I've grown to love.

(Follows on from 2 paragraphs ago ... )
Apologies for the slight delays in feedback from Shaun or I. The issue here isn't shaping - in fact if we were to embark on shaping the speeds for some customers would increase. There is a little bit of a mismatch here. I'll probably put together a post in the next hour or so on the shaping as a form of demand management aspect in a bit (cutting and pasting from other posts). We aren't happy with the situation as it currently is and meetings to get the mismatch resolved have been taking up quite a bit of time.

 

[Crystal Web Support]

Hi stephen.. Thankyou for your response but it's a great pity that after 2 weeks and raving and ranting i had to come onto a public forum in order to finally get a response. Please then on your site state that "between 12am and 6am it is "MOSTLY" unshaped instead of giving false expectations to clients such as myself. My bandwith usage has been fairly higher because ive had to schedule some downloads off the peak hours to get anything done.. because unfortunately between 12am and 6am i get dismal speeds continuously of 20kb/s for the last 2 weeks. This was the case since the day i started my account, i was on 1star rating for probaly 3 weeks but yet my 12am download hour speeds have been horific from the start, so please do not use that as an excuse. There is cearly something horribly wrong. Tell me if this wont be fixed, and then you can gladly cancel my account today and i will look elsewhere.. but please give me a proper response..

Hi Marco,

I believe I have given you a proper response in the previous post addressing your question, Which is:

We have seen some unusally high demand over the past week or so on the Uncapped Basic bandwidth pools, management are working on some changes to profiles and the shapers at the moment,

 

[converse]

After Hours Unshaped

"Don't worry about your downloads being shaped. Just let them fire off after hours and wake up to a completed queue each day."

Taken directly from your website.. "dont worry about your downloads being shaped" Thats pretty much my biggest worry as they shaped to the ground under.. Rather changing your wording before the CPA comes running after you

 

[converse]

But who's problem is that? me as a new client or crystral web that they have taken on to many clients? Why should i be the one to suffer, i signed up because of what was advertised on your site.. Now im experiencing something completely different and out of control.

Over and above, what is the excuse for constant promises to reply with an email and never getting back to me? Why did i have to come chase for a response on an online forum?

 

[Dipro]

We have seen some unusally high demand over the past week or so on the Uncapped Basic bandwidth pools, management are working on some changes to profiles and the shapers at the moment

As long as you don't pinch from my still amazing and without issue Uncapped Premium account...

I am still extremely happy and living the dream with CW !

4 years back in Cape Town from being used to 100mb down and 20mb up.... and finally, an ISP that allows me to use multiple devices streaming at the same time ....... I have tried, MWEB, VOX, Afrihost and Axxess... and CW beats them all hands-down !

You have a client for life as long as you don't over-burden yourselves and end up with clients that pay a lot for the service being effected, then I am a happy bunny !

So, in summary, CW is the best ISP in Cape Town, with Axxess coming 2nd.

It only took 4 years to find my Internet Utopia... CW - Simply the best !

 

[Gboss]

Hi stephen.. Thankyou for your response but it's a great pity that after 2 weeks and raving and ranting i had to come onto a public forum in order to finally get a response. Please then on your site state that "between 12am and 6am it is "MOSTLY" unshaped instead of giving false expectations to clients such as myself. My bandwith usage has been fairly higher because ive had to schedule some downloads off the peak hours to get anything done.. because unfortunately between 12am and 6am i get dismal speeds continuously of 20kb/s for the last 2 weeks. This was the case since the day i started my account, i was on 1star rating for probaly 3 weeks but yet my 12am download hour speeds have been horific from the start, so please do not use that as an excuse. There is cearly something horribly wrong. Tell me if this wont be fixed, and then you can gladly cancel my account today and i will look elsewhere.. but please give me a proper response..

Being on 1 Star will leave you with a severly crippled/shaped account... Did you not mean 5 stars?

 

[converse]

sorry i meant 5star Goss, the best star rating for minimal usage- thankyou for correcting me

 

[Gboss]

sorry i meant 5star Goss, the best star rating for minimal usage- thankyou for correcting me

I just wanna make sure we all on the same page. IS account with 5 stars will run like an unshaped account.
I was with BusyBuy a while back and when on 4-5 Stars it ran like the clappers even during business hours.
3 Stars and below left me with subpar performance all round - felt like I was throttled (they will say heavily shaped )
But looks like Paul and Shaun re already working on fixing this for all

 

[Davedes]

But who's problem is that? me as a new client or crystral web that they have taken on to many clients? Why should i be the one to suffer, i signed up because of what was advertised on your site.. Now im experiencing something completely different and out of control.

Over and above, what is the excuse for constant promises to reply with an email and never getting back to me? Why did i have to come chase for a response on an online forum?

What is your current usage MTD?

 

[Crystal Web Support]

But who's problem is that? me as a new client or crystral web that they have taken on to many clients? Why should i be the one to suffer, i signed up because of what was advertised on your site.. Now im experiencing something completely different and out of control.

Over and above, what is the excuse for constant promises to reply with an email and never getting back to me? Why did i have to come chase for a response on an online forum?

Just to be clear, You signed up for an 4Mbps Uncapped Basic Account, Which is ideally suited for Browsing and Streaming and prioritizes such, You can however download during peak hours, however this is subject to shaping depending on star rating and how busy the network is.

As stipulated on our site, Downloads are shaped during peak and unshaped thereafter, ie. When there is high demand on the network then your downloads will be shaped as the product was designed to perform like this for low usage users with a respective lower price than our other accounts.

I see your current average daily usage is 6 Gigs a day, Which would be 180 gigs estimated usage for the month - This is quite heavy usage for this account type and I strongly recommend you upgrade to our Uncapped Premium product as the Basic Uncapped will not suit your downloading needs.

 

[Davedes]

.
Something else that is creeping in is the home capped accounts - and these accounts aren't in the same pipe as our other accounts: It appear to have a few customers who against our recommendation for the usage case are adopting and then on finding that these accounts work as presented, but differently to our other accounts (you'll recall the thread concerning bypassing shaping).

Hi Paul,

What do you mean by capped accounts being in a different pipe to other accounts?

What effect does this have on torrents during business hours or before 12am?