View attachment 70555
On Openweb, also on the IS backbone.
Yep, that's shaping, which is what they advertise. It only affects downloads though (mostly P2P) and only during office hours and I am fine with that. The rest of the protocols work full speed most of the time. Gaming works the same 24/7.
I don't want a star rating system.
I'll bet my left kidney that your issues were Telkom related, as are mine most of the time when something goes wrong.
Hi KALSTER
I'm with you on that these IS uncapped accounts are "shaped home" accounts and that one should expect daytime shaping, and I'm also okay with that, as I'm at work during the day 99% of the time, but when I do end up using it during the day, it works fine, no problem, except maybe streaming video from some sites which could be improved! (youtube plays but at a lower quality for example, netflix plays fine, but some other streaming sites buffer - weird).
Maybe you misunderstood me but just to clarify: I don't have any issues, ISP or Telkom related, but I can chalk up "issues" that do crop up from time to time to ISP/Telkom network (the nature of ADSL - which is the right time to use the term "best effort").
Star rating? Different strokes for different folks kinda situation hey?
I prefer the "star rating" instead of the "contended pool" (which nobody actually knows what the ratio is, and is treated like a trade secret of national security proportions) policy, as I like to have an understanding of my FUP status and not to be in the "hope for the best" contended pool way which can sometimes be like a lucky packet (been burned too many times by ISP's not provisioning enough (IPC) bandwidth, apples and pears in this case but, and one ends up suffering with an oversubscribed service, eg: Mweb at the moment, or WA 2 months after they launched their uncapped, or when Afrihost moved over to MTN from IS), and forces one into a situation that when things eventually do go a bit wonky from time to time, that you are not entirely sure whether it's contention or something else, but at least you know where you stand with the star rating system, which makes it easier to diagnose issues if/when they pop up.
My 4mb account (4 stars, averaging 300 gigs a month) performs completely normal during "shaped" hours, and when those times come around that I'm at home for some reason, and I try download something, http performance, if I had to summarise, performs between 2-4mb depending on network load, and stuff like torrents (which takes bottom priority), ranges between 1-4mb). Normally I get home after 5pm so I'm not really affected by the daytime shaping as I keep my line idle during that time and schedule my DL's overnight.
To end off, I am happy with my account (11 months and counting) and am grateful for the fact that I haven't had to contact "support" for account details to "fix" a problem that shouldn't happen in the first place, or anything for fact of the matter, and out of 5 ISP's that I have experienced, I only experienced this account hopping with OW.
MrBEEP, I don't know why this only happens with your ISP, and eliminating all the other problem factors, this strategy of switching accounts to solve issues is not sustainable.
Point in fact:
You had a happy customer, account stopped working one day ("A SUDDEN COMPLETELY DEAD ACCOUNT") without warning (which was strange, as I have never experienced this out of all the ISP's I've been with), and was forced to contact support (which is a big no-no in my book) which was quick and efficient I must say, and I was provided with new account details, problem solved. A few weeks later, even tho this was a gold (proper original) account, and without "abusing" or even "using" it during the day, the day would arrive when I would get home and would be faced with a "dead" account AGAIN, contact support, new details, solved, but after the 4-5th time, it just became annoying.
I belong to the school of thought that the function of an ISP is to be exactly that, an INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDER and make sure that **** just works ("best effort" and all).
From my experience, IS have it waxed! They provide a proper "semi-unshaped" service, and "unshaped" during the times I use it, and am still a happy IS customer, just not with OW anymore which is unfortunate.
Constructive criticism, which is always hard to swallow but I'm just saying..... Solve this "routing/software/account/or whatever" problem and you will stop bleeding customers because other than this, you are a great ISP, with many satisfied customers that don't/haven't experience this issue, or ones that just put up with it (but for how long).
Use it, don't use it
