Screamer ADSL

I have not had a stable connection since the last few days of Jan. Tomorrow is the 8th Feb. Which means for 1/3 of the month I was unable to utilise this account. Wonder if I am going to get my 1/3 subscription refunded. This is absolutely BS. How long does it take to sort out this network?
 
Dear Screamer,

I appreciate that Screamer is a start-up, but I've had more problems than I would expect. I know that most of South Africa had problems with broadband in the last few weeks, but with Screamer it's been worse than it should have been. I need my broadband connection for work, and I've been having to use a back-up ISP account almost daily when my Screamer account stopped working or came to a crawl of no more than 1 or 2 kb/s. And on most days my Screamer account completely stops doing anything from about 10 or 11 at night. So now I'm incurring extra costs with other ISPs in order to get a better broadband service.

Furthermore, I use Ubuntu quite a bit, and my Screamer account gives me grief here as well. Some web pages don't load properly and the layout appears broken. This seems to be because of external CSS and javascript files not loading. I'm not 100% sure, but from what I can see, the sites that exhibit this behaviour have only in common that those external files are being requested from a sub-domain. Sites that suffer from this include IMDB, Facebook, Google Image Search, Amazon, and others. I do not believe this is due to my Ubuntu installation, since I don't get the problem when I switch to any other ISP account. I've also booted from a standard Ubuntu Live CD, and this behaviour occurs on there as well, but only with Screamer. So it can't be due to any configuration on my Ubuntu installation. And all this does not occur on Windows at all. I've reported this problem to Screamer already, but haven't gotten any response as to what the progress is.

PLEASE give me an indication whether these kinds of problems are likely to continue, or whether I can expect the service to improve before February is over. This is getting really frustrating, and soon I'll be keen to switch to Afrihost or someone else.

I would appreciate an answer on this from Screamer.
 
So now I am flying f...... mad. Just spoke to a techie at Screamer about my emails not getting delivered. They knew there was a problem, and did not warn us. I have lost Thousands on quotes that never got delivered to clients. I now have to wait for Niel to phone me back. I swear I could f...... break something right now I am so furious!
 
IRG, did you enquire about the crap connection and speed and timeouts? Cause this weekend had been horrific? :(
 
@diego - nope, thats like beating a dead horse. I have anticipated shyte connectivity for the next month at least. The public IP part of it is still to be put in place on top of the influx of new users.

@supafly1- dunno, but I dont even use a screamer email, just used their smtp so that I could send mail. Tradepage is my email host for my company, I wonder if I could use thier smtp while using a screamer connection? Can I?
 
IRG said:
So now I am flying f...... mad. Just spoke to a techie at Screamer about my emails not getting delivered. They knew there was a problem, and did not warn us. I have lost Thousands on quotes that never got delivered to clients. I now have to wait for Niel to phone me back. I swear I could f...... break something right now I am so furious!
Click to expand...

Dude, whilst there is no excuse for this kind of service, it is pretty much common practice to NEVER EVER USE AN ISP EMAIL for serious things like personal business. If you are a business with a dedicated setup and an "account manager" and an "IT department" sure, but on a personal basis, NEVER.

The reason is obvious: ISPs change, they come and go and YOU also change ISPs and even connections. You might be on ADSL now, tomorrow you're on Vodacom 3G. Especially if you're on a month to month setup which you can cancel at the drop of a hat. If you now moved over to DigiChilli are you seriously going to use their email too?

Get Gmail and/or get a domain of your own that is independent of any ISP.
 
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diabolus said:
Dude, whilst there is no excuse for this kind of service, it is pretty much common practice to NEVER EVER USE AN ISP EMAIL for serious things like personal business. If you are a business with a dedicated setup and an "account manager" and an "IT department" sure, but on a personal basis, NEVER.

The reason is obvious: ISPs change, they come and go and YOU also change ISPs and even connections. You might be on ADSL now, tomorrow you're on Vodacom 3G. Especially if you're on a month to month setup which you can cancel at the drop of a hat. If you now moved over to DigiChilli are you seriously going to use their email too?

Get Gmail and/or get a domain of your own that is independent of any ISP.
Click to expand...

I dont have a "@screamerdsl.co.za" email, I have a permanent mail box hosted by Tradepage. I was only using their smtp (smtp.screamerdsl.co.za) for sending. When I moved over to iBurst, I used the smtp.wbs.co.za for years with no problems. Only now since using Screamer do I have problems.

going to try smtp.saix.net

EDIT: According to Neil @Screamer, can't use that. Have to use smtp.screamerdsl.co.za but they are now on top of the situation....
 
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IRG said:
I dont have a "@screamerdsl.co.za" email, I have a permanent mail box hosted by Tradepage. I was only using their smtp (smtp.screamerdsl.co.za) for sending. When I moved over to iBurst, I used the smtp.wbs.co.za for years with no problems. Only now since using Screamer do I have problems.

going to try smtp.saix.net
Click to expand...

Aaah ok, that's a bit more agreeable. Either way, Gmail also gives you an SMTP to use for sending (even if you're sending from a different email account), maybe try that.
 
whever111 said:
Dear Screamer,

I appreciate that Screamer is a start-up, but I've had more problems than I would expect. I know that most of South Africa had problems with broadband in the last few weeks, but with Screamer it's been worse than it should have been. I need my broadband connection for work, and I've been having to use a back-up ISP account almost daily when my Screamer account stopped working or came to a crawl of no more than 1 or 2 kb/s. And on most days my Screamer account completely stops doing anything from about 10 or 11 at night. So now I'm incurring extra costs with other ISPs in order to get a better broadband service.

Furthermore, I use Ubuntu quite a bit, and my Screamer account gives me grief here as well. Some web pages don't load properly and the layout appears broken. This seems to be because of external CSS and javascript files not loading. I'm not 100% sure, but from what I can see, the sites that exhibit this behaviour have only in common that those external files are being requested from a sub-domain. Sites that suffer from this include IMDB, Facebook, Google Image Search, Amazon, and others. I do not believe this is due to my Ubuntu installation, since I don't get the problem when I switch to any other ISP account. I've also booted from a standard Ubuntu Live CD, and this behaviour occurs on there as well, but only with Screamer. So it can't be due to any configuration on my Ubuntu installation. And all this does not occur on Windows at all. I've reported this problem to Screamer already, but haven't gotten any response as to what the progress is.

PLEASE give me an indication whether these kinds of problems are likely to continue, or whether I can expect the service to improve before February is over. This is getting really frustrating, and soon I'll be keen to switch to Afrihost or someone else.

I would appreciate an answer on this from Screamer.
Click to expand...

Please PM me your account no and I will get a techie to contact you. If you have a connection problem with Screamer it will normally affect all of your browsing and not just a few individual sites but I am sure our techie will help you identify your problem later. We ensure that browsing and normal downloads, incl news servers get priority on our ADSL network so these should always be operating optimally. Torrents, as I have explained before, get a low priority on our network planning and this is normally where you will notice fluctuations in download speed.

IRG said:
So now I am flying f...... mad. Just spoke to a techie at Screamer about my emails not getting delivered. They knew there was a problem, and did not warn us. I have lost Thousands on quotes that never got delivered to clients. I now have to wait for Niel to phone me back. I swear I could f...... break something right now I am so furious!
Click to expand...

We have only recently identified that a few of our ADSL clients had a Trojan virus on their systems which sent out thousands of unsolicited e-mails which resulted in a number of ISP's banning their accounts and some others that were also attached to the same mail server. We will have this resolved by the end of today.

diegoa said:
IRG, did you enquire about the crap connection and speed and timeouts? Cause this weekend had been horrific? :(
Click to expand...

As a wireless client the Base station you connect to has become over contended and an upgrade was done over the weekend and you connection should be back to normal.

supafly1 said:
how do i get my screamer e-mail address
Click to expand...

Send an e-mail to [email protected] with your account no and th requested e-mail address and he will get it set it up for you.
 
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howzit said:
We have only recently identified that a few of our ADSL clients had a Trojan virus on their systems which sent out thousands of unsolicited e-mails which resulted in a number of ISP's banning their accounts and some others that were also attached to the same mail server. We will have this resolved by the end of today.
Click to expand...

FFS... mass mail bombers :( PLS peeps - there are many FREE AVS apps out there!
 
You may have to take into account Altech's own links. If their links are congested, your speedtest will contest for bandwidth. Speedtest works best when the target network and the source network are both mostly idle. If either of this is not the case, you will have to factor that into the final figure.
 
Well, just to report back, got fluctuating results over the weekend as I anticipated, however looks like *touches wood* my line is back up to normal speeds according to my DuMeter app. Also got a call from Neil today for a follow up but couldn't take his call as I was in meetings. Looks like things are heading the right direction.... now can Screamer stay on this path and rectify issues before even attempting to add further load to their infrastructure, without getting their existing clients upset? We can only hope.............
 
Valerion said:
You may have to take into account Altech's own links. If their links are congested, your speedtest will contest for bandwidth. Speedtest works best when the target network and the source network are both mostly idle. If either of this is not the case, you will have to factor that into the final figure.
Click to expand...

If you check the speed-test in my signature, you can be quite confident that nobodies Screamer ADSL is going to trouble Altech's speed-test site
 
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