(Small) Business ADSL - Which ISP?

B

BGE

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Hi Folks,

Can anyone here give me some input on which ISP to use for business ADSL, 10mbsp. We are a small concern, 10 staff, in Cape Town. We can't afford the 3K+ options. I've seen Afrihost is offering the cheapest option(R997/m), but they appear to have issues since moving over to MTN. The other options I've seen are WebAfrica(R1399) and MWEB (R999, heavily shaped i think).

I've also been wondering if business class ADSL is really needed. Why can't we just use a home account like Axxess @ R 496/m? Too much shaping/throttling?

In terms of protocols we using http, ftp, ssh, rdp, remote email... one or 2 light-weight client-server apps but no p2p/gaming.

Any advice/input would be welcomed...
 
Don't waste your money on a business account, just get a normal home uncapped account. Make sure you get a good router that does QOS so you can prioritise your traffic from within your network and so that you can stop your staff from hogging your bandwidth.
 
deweyzeph said:
Don't waste your money on a business account, just get a normal home uncapped account. Make sure you get a good router that does QOS so you can prioritise your traffic from within your network and so that you can stop your staff from hogging your bandwidth.
Click to expand...


+1 - QoS can make or break perceptions.
 
We have more than 10 computers on our network (probably close to 20 if you include all the tablets) - home uncapped from MWeb works fine for us. They're not all connected all the time, and for emails and web-surfing it's just fine (4Mbps).

You can block certain sites in a decent router if you want to, and Asus' routers allow you to shape traffic according to the bandwidth requirements i.e. the boss gets the most, and rest suck. :p
 
Hi FlatspinZA,

Kindly drop me a PM so that I can arrange a free trial account for you of OpenWeb's Gold uncapped product.

FlatspinZA said:
We have more than 10 computers on our network (probably close to 20 if you include all the tablets) - home uncapped from MWeb works fine for us. They're not all connected all the time, and for emails and web-surfing it's just fine (4Mbps).

You can block certain sites in a decent router if you want to, and Asus' routers allow you to shape traffic according to the bandwidth requirements i.e. the boss gets the most, and rest suck. :p
Click to expand...
 
Thanks guys for the input so far... from my little bit of research it looks like the ISP's throttle/shape home accounts more during "business hours", and then relax these restrictions afterhours. With business ADSL it looks like there's no/less throttling/shaping during business hours. If this is true surely it's worth using a business product? I'm tempted to give Afrihost a try...
 
Try a home uncapped product first and see how it goes. You can always upgrade later if you feel the need. However, I use the 4MB home uncapped product from Afrihost for my small business and we have about 7 users on the network during the day and it runs fine for us. I get full speed on everything except torrents during the day. I also have a Mikrotik router that I've set up that prioritises my bandwidth so that nobody in the office (except me) can download torrents at all.

Up to you, but personally I feel that the business accounts are a waste of money.
 
BGE said:
Is the exchange congestion not a Telkom issue, the ISP's connection is further up-stream... not so?
Click to expand...

Yes, it is a Telkom issue, which is why the ISP's have no control over it. This effectively means that they have no way to back up their promises of "premium" bandwidth for a business account. If the exchange is congested there is nothing that the ISP can do.
 
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