SA Internet users are suffering

Hrm, ok, I gotta chime in here cause there are some factual inaccuracies in this article.

Firstly, lets deal with the TCP speeds on a single TCP session. What Ronald said in the article about speeds being limited by latency is in essence correct, however, a multi-segmented downloader is NOT the only way to resolve the speed issues, and secondly, windows defaults have changed rather drastically in latest releases.

Windows 8 has fairly advanced TCP scaling and window sizing and will give you far better speeds than an old XP box. Windows XP and Windows 7 however can be stack optimised for latency, and there are tools readily available to do this (if I remember correctly speedtest.net actually hosts such a tool). Now, first argument I'm going to get is, yes, but boxes on both sides need their window sizes adjusted. Again, true, however, keep in mind that the majority of hosted content is hosted not on windows boxes but on Linux or BSD servers. Both of these have substantially increased their TCP window sizes in releases over the last few years (Linux now defaults to a 4meg window size, which at 200ms latency if my memory serves correctly will give you a 64mbit throughput per session).

So, a multi-segment downloader is not your only option, a tcp optimiser will do amazing things :) I might point out that mirror.ac.za used to sync from ireland when I was still with TENET and would get speeds in excess of 300mbit/second PER tcp session with a bit of tweaking.

Second thing I need to take issue with is the fact that there is no local content in South Africa. Youtube has been served locally for years through GGC caches, Akamai has had nodes in South Africa on various providers for years. Limelight was local (though I believe they pulled out when their deal with a certain south african company broke down). Also, please keep in mind that a lot of content providers deliver via Akamai (look at facebook, most static content is via Akamai and IS local in South Africa). Yeah, there are some that aren't here... but to say that there is no international content hosted locally is factually incorrect.
 
There is not a single large international company – which includes Microsoft, Apple, Google, Samsung, Cisco, Dropbox, and Amazon – which has an acceptable presence in South Africa within local data centres.
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Make local infrastructure more affordable and more capable. Costs in SA are even too high for these large companies. That would be the starting point to attract them here.

What this means is South African consumers are prejudiced by international companies. They charge us a high price for services, but the quality of these services is inferior to what our international counterparts receive.
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Try looking at what our own businesses charge us - even worse!

Due to our location, South Africa has become a victim of Internet Apartheid by the large commercial Internet giants.
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Make the Internet more affordable, bigger and faster here in SA and the 'Internet Apartheid' will end.
 
Yeah, Ronald is living way in the past.
Essentially, it means that if you have a default TCP receive window of 64240 (Windows defaults to this)
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Not since Windows 2000. TCP Windows scaling is enabled on anything from Windows 2000 upwards, so this argument is utter rubbish.
 
Ronald Bartels is executive head of services at iBurst
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The article writer is from iBurst. If there's people like this in charge of their technical side, their atrocious service levels are a lot less of a mystery now.
 
elvis_presley said:
The article writer is from iBurst. If there's people like this in charge of their technical side, their atrocious service levels are a lot less of a mystery now.
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Agreed. But, I think that they are only doing what Mugabe is doing, and what the ANC will soon do as well - blame the Western first worlds for all our African problems...
 
This is a beautiful article... it's like... it's like... Malema in the IT industry.
 
ponder said:
Welcome back, have not seen you in ages, that or I'm not paying attention.
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LOL ain't been watching the SA market and things in SA as closely as I used to, but I'm still around. Just moved to Kenya and took up a new, interesting and challenging position that leaves me working long hours without as much time as I used to have :)

But life is good and I'm getting to build even bigger and faster networks than before, so couldn't be happier!
 
Info in this article is wrong.

1. Google have quite a large presence in JHB IS Datacenter.
2. Apple has local caching servers for providing IOS Updates.
 
Lynx_ZA said:
Info in this article is wrong.

1. Google have quite a large presence in JHB IS Datacenter.
2. Apple has local caching servers for providing IOS Updates.
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Not that it's that important for industry, but doesn't Steam also have local cache through MWEB?
 
So what's the practical solution for OSX? (other than multi segmental dl's?)
And PS3?
 
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