Questions to ISPs.

Gatecrasher

Gatecrasher

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TelkomInternet are trialing unlimited post-cap local bandwdith on their accounts in order to comply with the ADSL regulations. They may charge for that bandwidth in the future, but for the time being it is free.

I have questions to ISPs, Openweb, WebAfrica, Axxess etc:

1) Do resold SAIX accounts also have unlimited local access after capping? Or do ISPs have to pay for local?
2) If SAIX accounts do have uncapped local, do resold IS regular accounts (local only, 2/28, 3/27) make sense anymore, given that SAIX international bandwidth is of much greater quality?
3) What is the point of SAIX local only accounts?
4) Is this just another example of Telkom/SAIX moving the goalposts, making it impossible for ISPs to compete with TelkomInternet?

Have your say before people start cancelling their accounts with you, and joining TI in droves.
 
1) Yes but not free! ISP's have to pay for all bandiwth used on the realms they own. The pure SAIX resell accounts will dissapear next year, ISP will only be able to resell SAIX if they do the authentication.
2) IS accounts will make economical sense as you will have to pay for your local traffic on youre SAIX accounts.
3) Absolutely nothing. SAIX has proposed a Radius setting that will enable the ISP to use a single realm for Local/Shaped and Unshaped bandwidth.
4) It is a way for SAIX to to adhere to the ADSL regulations as they are currently written
 
xdsluser said:
1) Yes but not free! ISP's have to pay for all bandiwth used on the realms they own. The pure SAIX resell accounts will dissapear next year, ISP will only be able to resell SAIX if they do the authentication.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply.

Are there two different types of SAIX account? pure resell? And ISP authenticated? What is the difference, and how does post-cap local currently work with each?

Some TI and WA users have reported that their local usage is not contributing to their international cap. And the local counter (which may in future be charged for) only kick in when the international cap is reached. Will this now be the norm for SAIX accounts?
 
BTECH : Telkom internet will also be billing you for local bandwidth used after reaching your initial cap.

Gatecrasher : 3 Types of Saix (Telkom) accounts exist.
1 TelkomInternet accounts which has a relaxed capping policy (This wil change)
2 Telkom Resell accounts (ISP's that do not have a Radius server and uses SAIX), I do not know of any ISP still using this. Pre november 2005 most SAIX based ISP's were issuing accounts this way. These accounts gets capped on exactly your cap. They will be discontinued in 3 months time.
3 Per gig ISP's. These ISP's charge per gig and gets charged per gig by SAIX. Capping depends on the bussiness rules put in place by each ISP.

With the new systems that will be coming online in the next couple of weeks you will receive a username [email protected] with a initial amount of gig's. once you have reached your cap the account will be changed to a local only account (with a radius attribute) which comes into effect the next time you sign on. You will then be charged for the local traffic at the local only traffic rate. This will be the norm for SAIX yes. If you are with a ISP with a decent online management system it will be possible to set your account yourself as a local/shaped or unshapped account and then get billed accordingly for the traffic according to the setting when you connected the session.
 
Is it just me or is this a stupid way of doing this? Surely it would be better to measure only the international portion and allocate that usage towards the cap. sell the account as being 3GB (or whatever amount) International usage with 20GB (or unlimited or whatever) local usage. Measure them separately and manage them separately. The current system means that you will pay international bandwidth prices for all local usage before you reach the cap.
 
ARF9999 It's not stupid, it is very stupid. Unfortunately the ISP's have to work with what Telkom gives them. Telkom say they do not have the capability to measure the traffic seperately, although it is obvious that it can be done fairly easy.
 
xdsluser said:
ARF9999 It's not stupid, it is very stupid. Unfortunately the ISP's have to work with what Telkom gives them. Telkom say they do not have the capability to measure the traffic seperately, although it is obvious that it can be done fairly easy.
Click to expand...

If I (someone who is not particularly network proficient) can use routesentry, and can set up my own router to differentiate between local and international - I find it hard to believe that this cannot be done by Telkom.
 
Presently, in the trials, it would seem that:

1) Local use is not counting towards the international cap and not registered on the Local Bandwidth meter while the international cap is intact.
2) Local use is registering on the local bandwdith meter only after being capped.

This would imply that local usage would be free provided the international cap remains intact. And only local usage after the cap will be (in future) charged for. Can anyone confirm or refute this?
 
What you hypothise is indeed interesting.Though something immediatley jumps at me which makes me think that's not how it works.
 
Gatecrasher said:
Presently, in the trials, it would seem that:

1) Local use is not counting towards the international cap and not registered on the Local Bandwidth meter while the international cap is intact.
2) Local use is registering on the local bandwdith meter only after being capped.

This would imply that local usage would be free provided the international cap remains intact. And only local usage after the cap will be (in future) charged for. Can anyone confirm or refute this?
Click to expand...
For all ISPs or just TI?
 
arf9999 said:
For all ISPs or just TI?
Click to expand...

Either.

There is a lot of mixed messages going around. Some say they are experienceing the above scenario on both TI and WebAfrica account, others say not. But there may be a difference in the account types as xdsluser mentions above. i.e., I'm sure prepaid will behave differently to regular accounts.

I'll run an experiement on my Openweb SAIX account tonight. I'm not overly optimistic though.
 
Gatecrasher said:
Presently, in the trials, it would seem that:

1) Local use is not counting towards the international cap and not registered on the Local Bandwidth meter while the international cap is intact.
2) Local use is registering on the local bandwdith meter only after being capped.

This would imply that local usage would be free provided the international cap remains intact. And only local usage after the cap will be (in future) charged for. Can anyone confirm or refute this?
Click to expand...

I don't think that is correct - local is taken from the original cap.

All my usage (local & international) with TI was taken from the blended cap. Once that cap had been exhausted and I was allocated a local only IP address the Local Bandwidth meter started recording usage. After buying 1GB topup all my usage was once again taken from the blended cap and the local only meter stopped registering usage.
 
mikef said:
All my usage (local & international) with TI was taken from the blended cap. Once that cap had been exhausted and I was allocated a local only IP address the Local Bandwidth meter started recording usage. After buying 1GB topup all my usage was once again taken from the blended cap and the local only meter stopped registering usage.
Click to expand...

Thanks for that.

Is anyone getting post-cap local access on non-TI SAIX accounts?
 
IntTraffic vs Local

The issues here are that the problem exists on the nases, if you connect to the nas, the nas has no way of determining which is local/international traffic. The nases are network devices and they do not interrogate the traffic stream to see if the packet is destined for local/int and the accounting system just tallies up used MB for sent and received traffic as a total based on the session.

If you install a router like a tplink router and configure the router to use 2 sessions and configure the routing table to route traffic for local addresses via the local session and the other traffic via the int session it works 100%, BUT you need 2 seperate accounts.

The nases just give us a figure of total sent / total received for the session they dont give us a local / int total.

Effectively in the rest of the world, traffic is traffic and they dont differentiate local / int traffic, however there you get like 100Gb for the same price u pay for a 3Gb account here.

For SA the int Traffic costs are much higher than local and I agree the local traffic should fall against local access charges and Int traffic fall against your Capped traffic charges, but the equipment is unable to provide this functionality regardless of the SNO's, in reality this is not possible at this point in time.
 
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