Saol story

Thanks pedantic for your explanation.
Just a question though. The traffic is quite weird the way i'm reading it though. I'm getting about 1.6-1.7 mb down and +2.5mb upload every hour.
So every hour i have basically 4 mb's of data that's coming in/out through my router while the router is connected?


So is this overhead a direct result of the way the dsl system works or is this because of something on the users side?

No "Internet" usage was done on my side.
I'm not a fundi on how pop an smtp works so i'm wondering if i checked my gmail account through outlook would I still be able to get emails? Or would I only have been able to get mails on my SAOL email account?



Why am I paying for adsl rental if it's hidden?
 
ItalicBold said:
Since when is all of this news? This router bw usage has been an issue since ADSL launched in SA and the only accounts around where 3gb telkom ones. Anyone whos left there router on over the weekend and gone away knows this happens. Just switch your modem off if 1mb matters so much to you. Really I think this is trivial, just my opinion.
Click to expand...


Italic. did u actually think before u posted?
I'm not complaining bout 1 or 2 megs here.
In one day about 50 megs was used even though there was no activity.
do a little sum of how much it actually is in a month and the picture changes quite drastically.

And honestly. Yes 1mb matters to me and it bloody well should to you also.
You have bought a pair of pants from telkom and there's a hole in it that your money is falling out of.
 
armitage said:
So is this overhead a direct result of the way the dsl system works or is this because of something on the users side?
Click to expand...
It would be a combination of both - the router would be sending tiny bits of data to verify the status of the connection but most the data would come from the user's network - data such as DNS requests (which would fail as a capped account could only connect to SAOL's DNS servers), email to and from SAOL's mail servers, instant messengers trying to connect ... could be anything really.

---
Pedantic
www.saol.com
 
If my IM/browser/game tries to connect would it query the router and ask "can i get on?" and based on that answer would it go further?

Scenario 1
Gtalk "router, can I get on?"
router"wait a bit lemme check and get back to you"
router"....big boss saix...can i get internet?"
saix"no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no X2 anything u said"
router"sorry gtalk no internet for you"

Scenario2.
Gtalk"Can i get on?"
router"......umm i asked bout 10 seconds ago and the answer was no.....so....no"
gtalk"awwwww but but stacybohsohorny wants to chat"

gtalk"awwwww"
 
Everybody seems to be forgetting about the amount of traffic generated by worms/viruses spamming every single frikkin' ADSL IP out there. :p

My IPCop logs are FULL of attempts at ports 1433 and 137/139 etc.
 
I can not comment on SAOL support but I can tell you that the traffic generated for authentication to SAOL radius is minimal (couple of K) and only happens once (when you authenticate). During your time online you do not communicate with the radius server again until you sign off. Both this traffic is not included as Telkoms NAS only starts calculating your traffic once you have authenticated and a connection is established! Your modem NAS traffic is not TCP/IP so this would not be included in usage reported? Traffic reported will be smtp, pop3, http, worms, broadcasts etc, mostly traffic originating on the PC side! If this is a problem you will have it with all ISP's as they all receive your traffic usage from the various Telkom NAS's. Their would be a problem if they did not calculate this correctly though!
 
It seems as though every1 here is against SAOL when all they are trying to do is offer a DECENT selection of packages at an unbeatable price, if 59mb is such a big deal maybe purchase a bigger account-(U did get a free 2gb didnt you?) I am quite sure that any SAIX reseller would also incure these authentication issues so im sure Telkom would be happy to add you to their client base for a DSL account!?
 
no dab. i'm not for one against them.
My main issue started with support that was lacking and also from usage that was reflected that I did not incur. I will rather support a reseller than get in bed with telkom internet. If i'm unable to get my support that i paid for then hell i'm gonna use this forum for one of the main reasons it was built.
That is to voice my opinion on a product that i was unsatisfied with.

My initial post is quite harsh i believe but the fact that at that stage i was already starting to feel like tearing hair out I hope comes across.

Comments that say that hell it's only xx amount of usage so stfu and buy more is not a good way to go bout solving problems.

The main thing that I am concerned about is that no matter how much that usage was. It should not appear on my account. PERIOD.
 
Oki Doki, i'm with SAOL and am very pleased with the support i have received from Desree(SP), i had no way of filling out a contract with my details so over the phone was the only option, i then needed to EFT R299 into their account so that my account would be activated but i couldnt because Telkom hadn't setup my DSL correctly and i had no way of connecting to the net, she allowed me to login with my SAOL account until 16:30 that day inorder for me to do the EFT. I later received an email Thanking me for my payment. I thought that the service was pretty good.

I understand your situation regarding authentication and assume that the relevant parties involved will do everything in their power to prevent the same thing happening to some1 else.
 
dabouncer said:
Oki Doki, i'm with SAOL and am very pleased with the support i have received from Desree(SP), i had no way of filling out a contract with my details so over the phone was the only option, i then needed to EFT R299 into their account so that my account would be activated but i couldnt because Telkom hadn't setup my DSL correctly and i had no way of connecting to the net, she allowed me to login with my SAOL account until 16:30 that day inorder for me to do the EFT. I later received an email Thanking me for my payment. I thought that the service was pretty good.

I understand your situation regarding authentication and assume that the relevant parties involved will do everything in their power to prevent the same thing happening to some1 else.
Click to expand...

They didn't have your money yet. Selling a client to come on board is one thing but providing good backup service is another. I also agree that it is unacceptable that ony Mr C. was able to explain the situation. I also find Pedantic's initial posting unacceptably agressive for a company representative. This to me reveals the kind of attitude they have toward clients. Does he not understand that not being able to have an answer for an entire day is frustrating.

We don't actualy care that he was in a meeting the whole day for the ADSL users benefit as it is of no help if we cannot use our accounts in the first place. If he is unavailalble then he should make sure there is somebody else available who is competent to be able to explain such oddities. What happened to Marco?
 
I've been with Saol for several months now running on the 10Gb package (used to be 30) without any problems whatsoever. I do have a complete Session log & local PPP logs on my ADSL router.

The session gets disconnect more often when the cap is almost reached and once capped you can only access the saol servers. I assume that all the MBytes were used on the saol servers then. I had several sessions without any traffic - max about 300KBytes...

Saol.com offers a great product at a great price... Im sure that you would have experience the same issue at any other ISP. And then again, the few MBytes is really not the end of the world... 117 / 10000 = 1%. 10Gb @ R400 pm ; Worthwhile complaining while there are complete logs of all your sessions?? These sessions are accurate - and the authenticatioh traffic really takes only a few Kbytes
 
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