Prevailing line issues. Advice needed

[Danegerza]

Hey people

So I have been having major issues with my line over the past year. I originally thought it was just as a result of my 1mb line being too slow but, as you will see, turns out I was wrong.

I continually phoned mweb and telkom (as my line was with telkom and my bandwidth was with mweb) regarding the issue and all they managed to do was perform a line reset once or twice, which never actually solved the issue. So last month I upgraded to a 2mb line premium package with mweb and had my line transferred over to them. Since then my line speed has deteriorated even further and I am getting packet loss of up to 20% every single day.

I have spent over R600 in calls to mweb over the last month trying to get to the bottom of it, yet nothing has been done. I finally managed to get in contact with an actual technician at mweb who seemed to have some understanding as to what the issue was (most of the time the guys at technical support know less than I do about networking). He said that they had logged a fault with Telkom and that they would follow up on the issue. However it's been almost 2 weeks and the only feedback I received was when I contacted mweb myself. Needless to say there has not been any progress.

The person I spoke to then told me the issue was congestion on the line and it was a problem that Telkom had apparently known about since February this year and that he did not know how long it would take before anything is fixed. However, I don't quite believe this story as the technician I spoke to told me it is unlikely that it is congestion and that it is most likely some sort of line fault. Once again the communication aspect is very frustrating as I keep having to speak to a different person every time.

I am sorry for the sob story but the reason I am posting it is because I was hoping someone has an idea of what my next step should be, seeing as I feel quite helpless right now as a consumer. I am a student, so as you can imagine the R600 per month I am now paying for the internet connection that I need is quite a tall order. Clearly there is an issue and I am just being ignored seeing as I have been having to constantly contact mweb for the last 6 months at least.

I don't see how it's fair, or even legal, for me to be treated this way. I am not being given the service I am paying for and mweb seems indifferent to the matter, whilst still forcing me to pay every month.

I know there are thousands of people in the country with internet hassles and this probably isn't that unique of a situation, but any help or advice would be much appreciated.

Any insight on my rights in terms of the consumer protection act would be much appreciated as well.

Thanks

Dane

 

[Kawak]

Ok, I know you have heard this a hundred times, but, have you checked all your line stats? Your attenuation, SNR and generally exchange congestion can be checked.

Both attenuation and SNR figures are available on your modem, once you log in, its on the status page (depending on your router its either under WAN stats or DSL stats). if attenuation is above 55 or SNR below 7 then your line will not function properly, you will need to lower your ADSL line speed or get a router that can boost your ADSL signal, the Asus DSL n10 has a feature that can boost signals very well, clients have gotten 7mbps instead of a stable 5 using a tuning of -3 db.

checking for exchange congestion can be done by running a trace route to, say, telkom.co.za, just go into command prompt and type "tracert www.telkom.co.za", you want to look at the second and third hop and see the "ms" figure, if thats over 40ms then you have a rather congested exchange, if the subsequent hops are high then you need to talk to mweb. generally, telkom.co.za should not be over 50ms.

As with the CPA, under chapter 2, part H, 54.
"Consumer’s rights to demand quality service"
sub section 2
(2) If a supplier fails to perform a service to the standards contemplated in subsection
(1), the consumer may require the supplier to either—
(a) remedy any defect in the quality of the services performed or goods supplied;
or
(b) refund to the consumer a reasonable portion of the price paid for the services
performed and goods supplied, having regard to the extent of the failure.

this is available online

http://www.info.gov.za/view/DownloadFileAction?id=99961

 

[HavocXphere]

firstly - calm down we'll sort it out.

stop phoning them - its a waste of time
ignore the cpa stuff and forget legal - again - its a waste of time
post technical details here (line stats, tracert, speed test etc...google the terms for instructions).
explain where you got the packet loss number from
try the Telkom guest account and see if you still get packet loss

 

[Venomous]

OP.....

Knock knock....

You were asked a few questions. If you do not know where to get the info, at least post the router name so you can be told where to find the info.

 

[Danegerza]

Thanks a lot for the fast and helpful responses guys. Sorry if I sound clueless, I'm just new to mybroadband.

I have been running frequent trace routes to www.mweb.co.za, and have been getting packet loss of between 7-20% (over 30 traces). I just ran another one to www.telkom.co.za and this is what it gave me:

Tracing route to www.telkom.co.za [165.143.158.8]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms home.gateway [192.168.1.254]
2 12 ms 15 ms 15 ms 41-132-48-1.dsl.mweb.co.za [41.132.48.1]
3 * 10 ms 9 ms 197-84-96-162.cpt.mweb.co.za [197.84.96.162]
4 12 ms 12 ms 11 ms 197-84-2-2.cpt.mweb.co.za [197.84.2.2]
5 17 ms 14 ms 12 ms 197-84-5-226.cpt.mweb.co.za [197.84.5.226]
6 16 ms 22 ms 24 ms 197-84-7-5.cpt.mweb.co.za [197.84.7.5]
7 18 ms 20 ms 20 ms cpt.telkom-ipnet.co.za [197.84.4.21]
8 10 ms 10 ms 10 ms 196.43.25.205
9 37 ms 34 ms 36 ms 196.43.51.78
10 * * telkom-sa-tienet-gw.telkom-ipnet.co.za [196.25.54.62] reports: Destination net unreachable.

Trace complete.

It seems that my ping is fine, but packet loss is a major issue. I have also attached an image of another trace route, which gives a summary of the packet loss as well.

I logged into my router and retrieved the following regarding my line attenuation and SNR details, they were as follows:

SNR margin (upstream): 14dB
SNR margin (downstream): 27.5dB
Line attenuation (upstream): 13.5dB
Line attenuation (downstream): 28dB

I am currently unable to run a speedtest, as the saix website is only able to give me my ping and then it just never performs the speedtest. I usually have this issue during evenings or late in the afternoon. Earlier today I was able to run one which yielded a speed of 1.5mbps, which I know isn't too bad for a 2mbps line. However this performance is very rare and as soon as it gets later in the day the line just dies completely to the extent where I can't even perform a speedtest. My lowest recorded speed so far was 0.02mbps.

I'm not sure if these figures will provide any additional insight regarding the issue, but hopefully they do. Please let me know if there is any other information I need to get. The router I am using is a Billion W40.

Once again, the help is very much appreciated.

Here is the tracert attachment: