Only getting 60% bandwidth from Afrihost

[froot]

Is your line idling? Because those are nasty pings on the traceroute.

This is what it should look like, more or less:

Tracing route to games.saix.net [196.43.22.251]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    11 ms    11 ms    11 ms  **-esr-lo.mtnbusiness.co.za [**]
  2    12 ms    23 ms    13 ms  ipc-recieve-rb-3a.za.mtnbusiness.net [41.181.178.77]
  3    14 ms    13 ms    13 ms  rb-cr-1.za--rb-dca-1.za-a.mtnns.net [196.44.0.146]
  4    19 ms    14 ms    13 ms  jh-cr-2.za--rb-cr-1.za-a.mtnns.net [196.44.31.95]
  5    12 ms    13 ms    13 ms  qux-jh-dca-2.za-b.za.mtnbusiness.net [41.181.165.115]
  6    14 ms    14 ms    14 ms  rrba-ip-se-2-wan.telkom-ipnet.co.za [196.25.58.17]
  7    14 ms    15 ms    14 ms  196.43.25.137
  8    35 ms    37 ms    36 ms  wblv-ip-esr-2-atm-5-0-0-1.telkom-ipnet.co.za [196.43.23.110]
  9    39 ms    38 ms    38 ms  wblv-ip-rcache-3-vif0.telkom-ipnet.co.za [196.43.22.251]

 

[Logo]

Hey,

I decided to do a little speed test and see if I update all of my different games at once what kind of speeds I could get from Afrihost over a longer period of time.

I updated Starcraft II, Minecraft, Path of Exile and Rift while downloading the beta files for Defiance.

View attachment 43726

My average download speed is 2443kbps. I supposedly have a 4Mbps line, but I'm basically getting 60% of my download speed. I would have been happy with a download speed of about 3500kbps taking the packet overhead into account. Essentially this means that I have to wait 30% longer for my downloads to complete. The test was done in Centurion at 10AM on Thursday the 21st of March.

After the screenshot was taken Starcraft II, Path of Exile and Rift were still updating. The Defiance files were also still downloading. Only Minecraft had completed.

I would be interested if other people can repeat this experiment and post their results.

On a 4Mbps line you want an average download speed of 3500kbps ? That is not likely to happen. ADSL runs at about 20% overhead, that means in optimum conditions you are looking at averaging about 3300kbps over an extended period of time.

Then take in to consideration your pings times which are not looking pretty, possible exchange congestion, packet re-transmits, CRC errors in received packets then I really don't think averaging 300KBps over a three hour period to international sites is that bad, especially not when you are downloading from multiple servers at the same time.

 

[Wyzak]

Is your line idling? Because those are nasty pings on the traceroute.

Yes my line was idling.

Here's another one.
Tracing route to games.saix.net [196.43.22.251]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 59 ms 225 ms 202 ms 105-236-4-129-esr-lo.mtnbusiness.co.za [105.236.
4.129]
2 196 ms * 50 ms ipc-recieve-rb-3a.za.mtnbusiness.net [41.181.178
.77]
3 340 ms 202 ms 88 ms rb-cr-1.za--rb-dca-1.za-a.mtnns.net [196.44.0.14
6]
4 374 ms 236 ms 235 ms jh-cr-2.za--rb-cr-1.za-a.mtnns.net [196.44.31.95
]
5 72 ms 40 ms 583 ms qux-jh-dca-2.za-b.za.mtnbusiness.net [41.181.165
.115]
6 79 ms 518 ms 231 ms rrba-ip-se-2-wan.telkom-ipnet.co.za [196.25.58.1
7]
7 56 ms 245 ms 154 ms 196.43.25.137
8 560 ms 164 ms 264 ms wblv-ip-esr-2-atm-5-0-0-1.telkom-ipnet.co.za [19
6.43.23.110]
9 460 ms 58 ms 514 ms wblv-ip-rcache-3-vif0.telkom-ipnet.co.za [196.43
.22.251]

Trace complete.

Seriously very shakey pings.

 

[Wyzak]

I suspect foulplay when it comes to pings because I was just playing Torchlight II over the Internet with a friend for several hours and I did not feel a single lagspike.

 

[Wyzak]

On a 4Mbps line you want an average download speed of 3500kbps ? That is not likely to happen. ADSL runs at about 20% overhead, that means in optimum conditions you are looking at averaging about 3300kbps over an extended period of time.

When I still had 384kbps I frequently / most of the time saw downloads of 38.4kBps. That is 80% of the speed, so you are correct. I will be happy if I get in the order of 3200 or 3300kbps. Although I have seen downloads some time back of 3.5Mbps on my line.

 

[Wyzak]

Funny enough, as I'm going to bed I am now getting 3008kbps on average for the last 13 minutes on Afrihost .