Released by Sentech Today

[mrbob]

<font face="Arial Black"></font id="Arial Black"><font color="red">What the ****!!?!?</font id="red">

[blackb]Can someone please explain to me how this works. Because really I obviously do not speak the same form of English as Sentech do. </b> ][/black][

And I quote <i>The average recorded speed at this point of time is: 128kbps between 30kbps and 60kbps.</i>

So now, if I'm selling let's say a racing car and I advertise it's speed at 450Km/h but then later on once it has been purchased I explain to the owner of the car that unfortunately the 450Km/h car only actually averages at about somewhere under half that value , say around 220 Km/h, is that fair? <font color="red">WHAT THE ****!?! </font id="red">

<i>If the package I am paying for is going to average between 30kb/s - 60kb/s then they should call it the 45k package (30+60 /2) as opposed to 128 k</i> . What then does the 128 k refer to!?!? DId it just have a nice ring to it, rolls off the tongue nicely you know .. onetwentyeight.

<b><u><i> Please . kindly. ****ing . explain. this. to. me.
[/b]</u></i>


PS Yes I am having my period today, piss off.

 

[guest2013-1]

help, I think Sentech lost the plot, this is NOT broadband

Sentech, 99% downtime guarunteed!

 

[Tharaxis]

Keep in mind, they state that under proper bandwidth management situations they should be capable of feeding all users at advertised speeds, however, due to the fact that the bandwidth at the moment is not being managed correctly you end up seeing the currently unacceptable speeds.

They are not saying "this is what you should be getting", they are stating "this is what you are curently getting because the service is not working like it should".

I mean, if Telkom can offer nearly full speed 512k ADSL at a 60:1 ratio (which they do), how can Sentech not offer nearly full speed 128k MyWi at a 30:1 ratio? Because it's not managed correctly.

 

[Ditch]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by arf9999</i>
<br />My figure of 1000 is just for example, and I understand your point. But Sentech didn't just decide to become an ISP overnight, bandwidth management is the core of their business and should have been in place when they started. Crying foul now, and saying that users are abusing the system is just pitiful.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
Well, they've said themselves that less than 6% of users are abusing the system. That's less than 2 out of every 30 users (who are "using more than half the bandwidth"), so lets say there are on average between 3 and 4 out of every 30 users downloading at any given time, in which case one should almost never get anywhere *near* as slow as 1/30th of your package speed, although based on that one seemingly could expect to often get between 1/3 and 1/4 of your package speed. This doesn't seem too far off from "The average recorded speed at this point of time is: 128kbps between 30kbps and 60kbps".

 

[MrGray]

I think Sentech is being very dishonest and misleading by quoting these contention ratios. With most ISP's in this country (including Telkom's ADSL) the contention ratio only applies to international bandwidth. Sentech is blatantly misleading people as they seem to be applying the contention ratio to EVERYTHING including the immediate connection to their own network, or at least they are using this as an excuse for why all bandwidth (not just international) is so slow.

Because Telkom ADSL's contention ratio applies only to international bandwidth, it is possible with ADSL to consistently get 300+kbps speeds (even faster on local sites). Don't forget that with all ISP's these days you go through a transparent local proxy which effectively means that at the end of the day the bulk of people surfing/downloading are actually not using international bandwidth a lot of the time and therefore the 60:1 contention ratio is effectively not such a major effect. (This is why they hate the p2p filesharers so much because their is no way to cache it).

Sentech, however, seems to apply the contention ratio to everything, including local traffic and even the connection to their own network.

There also different ways of defining the contention ratio that Sentech must clear up. For example, is their contention ratio 30 subscribers to 1 or is it 30 active downloading connections to 1 (which sometimes actually seems to be what Sentech is doing - i.e. assigning 128kbps to every 30 active 128kbps connections i/o to the whole bandwidth pool!!).

We should demand a precise definition from Sentech about exactly what their contention ratio means. If it applies to EVERYTHING then they can go get fscked as IMO that means their whole service has just been one big con job.


There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of by mere mortal men - Shakespeare

 

[MrGray]

Oh, and none of this explains to me why on a 256k package I get maximum 40kbps on a singlethreaded download but 200kbps on the samemultithreaded download using a download manager.

There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of by mere mortal men - Shakespeare

 

[guest2013-1]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Tharaxis</i>
<br />Keep in mind, they state that under proper bandwidth management situations they should be capable of feeding all users at advertised speeds, however, due to the fact that the bandwidth at the moment is not being managed correctly you end up seeing the currently unacceptable speeds.

They are not saying "this is what you should be getting", they are stating "this is what you are curently getting because the service is not working like it should".

I mean, if Telkom can offer nearly full speed 512k ADSL at a 60:1 ratio (which they do), how can Sentech not offer nearly full speed 128k MyWi at a 30:1 ratio? Because it's not managed correctly.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

stop making sense dammit

Sentech, 99% downtime guarunteed!

 

[guest2013-1]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Ditch</i>
<br /><blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by arf9999</i>
<br />My figure of 1000 is just for example, and I understand your point. But Sentech didn't just decide to become an ISP overnight, bandwidth management is the core of their business and should have been in place when they started. Crying foul now, and saying that users are abusing the system is just pitiful.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
Well, they've said themselves that less than 6% of users are abusing the system. That's less than 2 out of every 30 users (who are "using more than half the bandwidth"), so lets say there are on average between 3 and 4 out of every 30 users downloading at any given time, in which case one should almost never get anywhere *near* as slow as 1/30th of your package speed, although based on that one seemingly could expect to often get between 1/3 and 1/4 of your package speed. This doesn't seem too far off from "The average recorded speed at this point of time is: 128kbps between 30kbps and 60kbps".

<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Please note, the statement about 6% users was before the open proxy servers was closed, and Sentech made a big mistake in blaming their users, one reason why I won't renew my contract and cancel as soon as I have another more viable option, I'm actually seriously considering ADSL now, because the "roaming" feature I thought possible is not, move your modem 3 mm to the left, and you lose signal, installing antenna's and crap is NOT the solution I had in mind, so maybe iBurst can show me a better service AND technology, and perhaps they actually HAVE the systems in place PROPERLY tested BEFORE they release....

Sentech, 99% downtime guarunteed!

 

[gripen]

guys ADSL being 60:1 means nothing. The picture would be *very* different if ADSL was uncapped. Because people are not downloading they may as well make it 200:1. Effectively they are doing this with their shaping, P2P blocking etc

Sentech is effectively shaping (read: capping) all your traffic (ala capped ADSL) by dumping you in a low bandwidth pool. They do this to control incoming P2P traffic. Its the cheapest method. Its basically crude bandwidth management. Either this is deliberate or they are basically connecting 1000's of people to a fiber and not implementing any form of control. The behavior then is totally random and has evolved to be the network we have today. Unfortunately, this low level of intelligence means ALL traffic is shaped or throttled. Put it this way, the point at which your package cap is applied is the same point where the above is being implemented.

Can somebody do the SRT on ADSL? Im curious to see what the (alleged) 60:1 single thread speed is.

 

[TheRoDent]

Well, this news from NoWank is not surprising at all. This is exactly what we've all known all along, and what our Wardrive tests proved, empirically.

Those are the average thruput rates. In fact, those are probably more like the "Upper median PEAK" you'll seen on most of those packages.

And it is disgusting yes, that they're pulling this contention ratio **** out, when we're doing LOCAL speed tests to LOCAL sites, and their OWN webserver.

This is fast becoming my favorite saying:

<h3>Same ****, different way of lying</h3>

<center><h6> MyWireless <s>Hacks</s> Tweaks & Tech Info || Have you checked the fawking FAQ? <br /> <font color="red">Tired of Sentech's bad service? Want to compare speeds? We at least listen...</font id="red"></h6></center>

 

[Mean_Monster]

Can one on a 128k package pull your mail from the sentech mail server @ 16KB/s?

 

[MrGray]

Mean Monster, in my experience, no. Sentech's mail server is quite slow and is seldom faster than 4KB/s. That's *assuming* your attachments haven't been stripped.

There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of by mere mortal men - Shakespeare

 

[Brolloks]

I haven't had any attachments stripped yet, although I do get time-outs to 2 other pop hosts. The one times out in 60 to 70% of the time and on the other one I get "connection refused" in around 10% of the time.

/notdefendingsentech
In all honesty I moved all my mail to the smtp.vstar and pop.sentechsa.com hosts to check performance on a daily level. Mail checks run every 10 minutes and I haven't had issues in the last 2 weeks yet.
/notdefendingsentech
The only glitch I've had so far is still outgoing mail to webmail.co.za. I get a delivery report via pop.sentechsa.com that the mail is in the user account on webmail.co.za, but the mail actually only arrives 4hours later in the user mailbox. Constantly and tested around 10 times already. It's not a big issue though.

 

[Brolloks]

If bandwidth management is done at the tower that you connect to then I assume they do not filter international and local traffic? It would seem stupid, but that would explain why all traffic is slow. If you route all traffic to one point ie. "orc central" then you can filter in one spot and have better control over local and international traffic. Or not?

 

[chop]

Is the contention ratio for ADSL only on international or also local? Usually they give a contention ratio for local and international seperately.

I have ADSL and can consistenly download at 50KB/s, regardles if it's international or not. I do use a download manager though.

If ADSL has a 60:1 contention, they must be doing something right to get better speeds than Sentech with a lower contention.

 

[clivedoubell]

I just bought a new car. It is a BRM V12 6.8L 800BHP Twin Turbcharged. It was advertised as "Enter the Supercar Zone". After I filled in all the paperwork and got it approved (that took more than 2 months because they made 3 errors on my 9 digit bank account number as well as getting my CC number wrong) I took delivery of the car and drove it home. I found that I had to pull over on the uphills to let the taxis and big trucks pass.

When I got home I opened the bonnet and there I found a small 200cc two stroke motor. I immediately called the sales guy that sold me the car and asked what the hell was going on. He asked me what seemed to be the problem. I said that I bought this Supercar with a V12 6.8L 800BHP Twin Turbcharged engine and now I find it only has a 200cc twin stroke engine. He said no, the "V12 6.8L 800BHP Twin Turbcharged" is only a "Product Name". It has nothing to do with the engine size or with the engine power.

I then asked what the term "Supercar" meant. He said that Supercar could mean anything, for instance for a person that was used to a bicycle all their lives, a Mini could be seen as a Supercar. He also said that I should make sure that I would be at home the next day in the morning as they would send someone to pick up the car.

I asked what for? He replied, didn't you know? You are the co-owner of the car with 29 other co-owners that owns this car on a 30:1 shared contention ratio. That means that I could only use the car on average once per month. I said that this was totally unaceptable, how can customers be satisfied with this deal. He said that only about 5% of customers were unhappy with the service, and they were "Abusers" that wanted to use the car to race in Class C sports car endurance races over the weekends. These abusers were now spoiling the use of the car for all other co-owners, and these abusers were now going to be stopped in their tracks because the "Company" is implementing a new "Throttling" system that would ensure that the car isn't "overstressed".

I said that this is a lot of nonsence and I want to give the car back. He said, Sorry mate, you signed a two year lease for the car, and the only way you can get out of this lease is to go insolvent. And that was that. I am now the proud owner of a Supercar that I can only drive once a month and very slowly at that.

 

[Razer0]

*CorruptioN* jumps to mind..

Sentech just fix your S***!! No 'but..' and 'or..'
Just FIX IT!!!