SAOL - am I the only one?

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TheREV

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Ever since Telkom's major DNS issues (according to SAOL) of a month or so back, my SAOL account has been crawling along at less than 300Kb/s down and up - on a 4Mb/s line.

Prior to that, I could pretty much rely on seeing between 2Mb/s and 3Mb/s down, and 512Kb/s up fairly consistently.

I've spoken to their "support" people on at least four occasions - each time changing from "[email protected]" to "[email protected]" and back again (all with the DNS and SMTP server of every frickn PC having to be changed each time).

Today my line is running at 600Kb/s down and 400Kb/s up - but still nowhere near what I had before.

I am reluctant to phone them again, only to be given another story.

Anyone? Help?

Edit: oh and the DNS speed reported by TCPIQ used to always run at around 800ms and it is now 4000ms ...
 
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Isn't there a way of using another dns service. google OpenDns
 
Did I miss something I'm not aware of any major SAIX DNS issue a month ago ? This sounds like an excuse.

SAOL and their sister company Cybersmart make use of an IP Connect, this means that they don't have access to huge amounts of bandwidth with SAIX, but rather the bandwidth they pay for their IP connect from SAIX as well as their upstream bandwidth.

In a nut shell IP Connect = Bottleneck = Slow speeds

I personally want fast ADSL so I only go with, providers of true SAIX accounts, like Axxess, Web Africa, Adept etc I stay a mile away from services that use IP Connect.
 
Look. if you really think DNS is an issue, there is nothing stopping you from running your own DNS caching server to prove it is not DNS.

As for the speeds you report, is this kbyte or kbit per second? It makes a huge difference. On a 4mbit line yes you can easily get 2-4mbit/s but that will pretty much limit you to about 400-450kbyte/sec.

I assume you meant kbit/s ? Because if that is the speeds you get now its horribly slow. If the line syncs fine at 4096/512 then its probably your ISP SAOL. You should probably try a test 1gbyte prepaid account from another ISP.
 
DNS has no relation to the download speed.

DNS only translates a hostname (URL) to an IP adress. Once that's done your PC uses the IP address directly and DNS no longer plays any role.

Sounds to me like there's a bottleneck somewhere.
 
Ah, yes! Someone else getting pathetic speeds from these useless bastards!

Aside from all the crap I've had from these fools, see http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?t=154401 now I have to deal with unbelievably slow download speeds as well.

Tested my SAOL account 5 mins ago on speedtest.net. 4mb line - 1.5mbit down, 22kb up with a 103ms ping to jhb server.

Retested using axxess immediately afterwards. 3.6mbit down, 27kb up with a ping of 25ms to jhb server.

Major ****ing differece and **** you very much, SAOL.
 
TheREV said:
Ever since Telkom's major DNS issues (according to SAOL) of a month or so back, my SAOL account has been crawling along at less than 300Kb/s down and up - on a 4Mb/s line.

Prior to that, I could pretty much rely on seeing between 2Mb/s and 3Mb/s down, and 512Kb/s up fairly consistently.

I've spoken to their "support" people on at least four occasions - each time changing from "[email protected]" to "[email protected]" and back again (all with the DNS and SMTP server of every frickn PC having to be changed each time).

Today my line is running at 600Kb/s down and 400Kb/s up - but still nowhere near what I had before.

I am reluctant to phone them again, only to be given another story.

Anyone? Help?

Edit: oh and the DNS speed reported by TCPIQ used to always run at around 800ms and it is now 4000ms ...
Click to expand...

Flanders said:
Ah, yes! Someone else getting pathetic speeds from these useless bastards!

Aside from all the crap I've had from these fools, see http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?t=154401 now I have to deal with unbelievably slow download speeds as well.

Tested my SAOL account 5 mins ago on speedtest.net. 4mb line - 1.5mbit down, 22kb up with a 103ms ping to jhb server.

Retested using axxess immediately afterwards. 3.6mbit down, 27kb up with a ping of 25ms to jhb server.

Major ****ing differece and **** you very much, SAOL.
Click to expand...

Funny enough i also thought i was the only one that noticed the speed drop on my 4mb line. It used to be fine, but i recall it becoming slower when they moved "turbo" users to a new username, from this day i havent seen my 440kb/s (kilobyte) speeds. I also tested using my Webafrica prepaid account and noticed a vast difference... Ill go to Telkom soon.
 
Where to now?

After reading this thread I gave them 30 days notice, because mine is sluggish as welland I couldt not understand why. I have a 1024 adsl line and are on the 10 gig option. Any suggestion where to go after SAOL
 
I've been looking at Axxess - not bad pricing, but I think I'll wait it out a few days because allegedly SAOL are getting more bandwidth at the end of the month... according to them. :confused:
 
Cybersmart == SAOL? No bloody wonder I've been having problems.

Well I guess most people get it wrong the first time :/
 
TheREV said:
I've been looking at Axxess - not bad pricing, but I think I'll wait it out a few days because allegedly SAOL are getting more bandwidth at the end of the month... according to them. :confused:
Click to expand...


Nah, they blew it as far as I'm concerned. The only reason I was still using them was because my business account was with them. Never again will I be tied into a contract with an ISP. Too much competition and you never know when an ISP's service is going to go down the tubes. Oh, and they're an arrogant, rude bunch of pr1cks.

Axxess pre-paid is great. I'll be using that for the foreseeable future.
 
Hi,

Service has been extremely poor and I have also "lost" a lot of bandwidth this month. Somehow I managed to download 3GB in 2 hours. My bandwidth monitor showed 950mb? Phoned their support line and they jsut do not seem interested im my problem at all. Also having issues sending email, most get bounced back. Cannot log onto any news groups, the list goes on. How does an ISP not have enough bandwidth?
 
Gave them 30 days notice and bought 1 gig pre-paid from axxess to test their pproduct. It much, much faster. Test 6 you tube videos and they all play without stopping. With SAOL you have to wait every few seconds for it to load. Send them two emails to confirm my cancellation and asked them in both to acknowledge receipt. First was send on the 27th and the the second one on the 29th and up to now not a word from them
 
Wag said:
Send them two emails to confirm my cancellation and asked them in both to acknowledge receipt. First was send on the 27th and the the second one on the 29th and up to now not a word from them
Click to expand...

Don't be surprised when you get a "Not my fault, I was on leave!"
 
Seriously now. :mad:

SAOL need to catch a fricken wake up already. I've tried to download a few files now on a 10GB SAOL connection, it fricken crawled below 10kb/s, switched to WebAfrica and it's almost peak line speed (4mbps).

This is the same crap I sit with at work and then I want to swear at the sys admin, because it feels like he's speed limiting me.

Both SAOL and WA are on SAIX, why the hell does SAOL suck so much then?

CATCH A WAKE UP!!!
 
They've got this week with me - and then it's bye bye to SAOL if they are lying. They claim that by the middle of Feb their bandwidth will be upgraded.

Is anyone at SAOL listening? (-er reading?)
 
Whole day it's been up and down with them. Wasn't sure if it was the work connection or not, but it isn't, as it's the same at home.

International is off for a few minutes, then back on, constantly.
 
You have a case of the cybersmarts

SAOL seems to be using some link provided by Cybersmart, if you trace route something you'll notice one, or more, of the hops end in cybersmart.co.za. For the last few months Cybersmart has been doing the same line upgrade which was delayed and delayed and delayed because Telkom was busy eating xmas cake or something. Finally in Feb their spanking new bandwidth / line / whatever was installed and big surprise their connectivity is actually worse than it used to be, GG

As a Cybersmart sufferer let me share some of the symptoms so that fellow sufferers dont have to feel alone. Symptoms may include but are not limited to increased latency, packet loss, random loss of international connectivity, total loss of all connectivity (atm its every 15 minutes or so).

Moral of the story, Cybersmart + resellers = pointless unless u have a 1gb acc that your only use on Sundays for 15 minutes to check you local cybersmart hosted email

*waits to get flamed*
 
Cybersmart

I have been having the exact same problem with Cybersmart. They have been promising that this will be sorted out by the end of January but it’s almost the middle of February and its even worse now.

Its highly frustrating paying the full service fee but only receiving half a month of service, if you’re lucky. If you ask their totally useless support line how they plan on reimbursing us for this total and utter useless service we have been getting, you get the uncomfortable silence and then, “it will be fixed by the end of January”.

I have canceled my service with them and warn anyone planning on using them for anything but getting emails that it’s a waste of time, money and patience.
 
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