So Mweb...

F

Fredward

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Recently we were contacted, out of the blue, about this absolutely AMAZING offer. We'd keep our line or whatever with Telkom but Mweb would be taking over as our ISP. They said although we technically had a line of 2mb with telkom we actually never attained that speed, this was not news to me. What was news to me was that they were offering this new, shiny service for cheaper and it would be completely uncapped. The completely uncapped thing was especially appealing because Telkom's 'uncapped' account gets you a slap on the wrist if you use more than 100 gig for three months in a row and they can and have switched of our internet despite being on an 'uncapped' account. Couple this with the fact that we had recently had issues with an extremely erratic internet connection that lasted two weeks and Telkom was largely inept at dealing with and this totally random offer came at a suspiciously opportune time.

Now today we got the new username and password and I punched it rather gleefully only to be kinda meh about the results:

Telkom: Ping - 38ms
DLSpeed - 1.68 mbps
Upload - 0.27 mbps

Torrent - anywhere from between 120 kb/s to 220 kb/s

Mweb: Ping - 10ms
DLSpeed - 1.72mbps
Upload - 0.44 mpbs

Torrent: 6 kb/s to 10 kb/s

I'm especially miffed about the torrent thing. The speeds are faster, obviously but it's hardly the kind of blistering speed the call implied it would be. To be clear here he said something along the lines of: "You have a 2mb line but your download are only at about 200kb which is actually quite slow." Yes. Yes it is. The only thing is the speeds are STILL there. We're not whizzing around at anything remotely close to 2mb. So the little weasel was lying. Blatant porkies! I'm not the account holder so I wasn't speaking to him but he got me dear mum to sign a year contact and added in two different optional packages no one asked for that had to cancelled separately and would have amounted to an extra R100. This brouhaha for what? Exactly? Something functionally equivalent to Telkom? The devil you know right?

So I wanna know a few things from those of you who have mweb as an ISP:

1. This torrent throttling isn't new to me. Telkom does it too sometimes. What I wanna know is: how pervasive is it? Is it down sometimes and up other times (Telkom usually gets off my dick at night, sometimes during the day) or do they just hate torrents in general?

2. Have you ever achieved anything remotely close to even a single mb in internet speed? Is it even achievable in our wee country?

3. For those of you who've had both, who gives more ****? Glancing over some of the threads on here there seems to be a general dislike of Mweb, at the same time some of the info seems outdated. Like Telkom not throttling uncapped accounts or of regularly using more than 300 gigs a month.

4. Most importantly - is it genuinely and with no strings attached uncapped? I don't wanna receive some more passive-aggressive emails about potentially having to 'shape' my account for the general good of mankind.
 
Soooo many threads on this ..... You won't find any cheap commercial uncapped product where torrents are not shaped / throttled. Especially not MWEB. Go read the fine print closely....
 
Fredward said:
Recently we were contacted, out of the blue, about this absolutely AMAZING offer. We'd keep our line or whatever with Telkom but Mweb would be taking over as our ISP. They said although we technically had a line of 2mb with telkom we actually never attained that speed, this was not news to me. What was news to me was that they were offering this new, shiny service for cheaper and it would be completely uncapped. The completely uncapped thing was especially appealing because Telkom's 'uncapped' account gets you a slap on the wrist if you use more than 100 gig for three months in a row and they can and have switched of our internet despite being on an 'uncapped' account. Couple this with the fact that we had recently had issues with an extremely erratic internet connection that lasted two weeks and Telkom was largely inept at dealing with and this totally random offer came at a suspiciously opportune time.

Now today we got the new username and password and I punched it rather gleefully only to be kinda meh about the results:

Telkom: Ping - 38ms
DLSpeed - 1.68 mbps
Upload - 0.27 mbps

Torrent - anywhere from between 120 kb/s to 220 kb/s

Mweb: Ping - 10ms
DLSpeed - 1.72mbps
Upload - 0.44 mpbs

Torrent: 6 kb/s to 10 kb/s

I'm especially miffed about the torrent thing. The speeds are faster, obviously but it's hardly the kind of blistering speed the call implied it would be. To be clear here he said something along the lines of: "You have a 2mb line but your download are only at about 200kb which is actually quite slow." Yes. Yes it is. The only thing is the speeds are STILL there. We're not whizzing around at anything remotely close to 2mb. So the little weasel was lying. Blatant porkies! I'm not the account holder so I wasn't speaking to him but he got me dear mum to sign a year contact and added in two different optional packages no one asked for that had to cancelled separately and would have amounted to an extra R100. This brouhaha for what? Exactly? Something functionally equivalent to Telkom? The devil you know right?

So I wanna know a few things from those of you who have mweb as an ISP:

1. This torrent throttling isn't new to me. Telkom does it too sometimes. What I wanna know is: how pervasive is it? Is it down sometimes and up other times (Telkom usually gets off my dick at night, sometimes during the day) or do they just hate torrents in general?

2. Have you ever achieved anything remotely close to even a single mb in internet speed? Is it even achievable in our wee country?

3. For those of you who've had both, who gives more ****? Glancing over some of the threads on here there seems to be a general dislike of Mweb, at the same time some of the info seems outdated. Like Telkom not throttling uncapped accounts or of regularly using more than 300 gigs a month.

4. Most importantly - is it genuinely and with no strings attached uncapped? I don't wanna receive some more passive-aggressive emails about potentially having to 'shape' my account for the general good of mankind.
Click to expand...

Hi Fredward

The consultant I'm sure was referring to normal downloads as we won't advise that torrents speeds can be better.

Did you tell him you download torrents?

On MyBB, it must have been a topic, sub topic etc of how torrents are prioritised on MWEB and other ISP's ( Flooded )

Torrents, p2p etc receives the lowest priority on our network.

Please feel free to PM me your MWEB email address and we will gladly listen to the call.
 
Rickster said:
Like who?
Click to expand...

Like whoever viewed my profile 410 times despite my total post count being really low or whoever views a thread with no replies 83 times in a few hours' time. Those aren't actual people right?

MWEB Guy said:
Hi Fredward

The consultant I'm sure was referring to normal downloads as we won't advise that torrents speeds can be better.

Did you tell him you download torrents?

On MyBB, it must have been a topic, sub topic etc of how torrents are prioritised on MWEB and other ISP's ( Flooded )

Torrents, p2p etc receives the lowest priority on our network.

Please feel free to PM me your MWEB email address and we will gladly listen to the call.
Click to expand...

This would be the one that ends on @dslmweb.co.za yeah?
 
Fredward said:
<snip>
Click to expand...

They are uncapped. But uncapped does not mean all you can eat. You have the wrong interpretation of the term in the internet sense. Uncapped means you will never get cut off.

Torrents are shaped most of the time during hours. The pipes open up between about 19h00 - 00h00. Closer to 00h00 as of late.
 
Fredward said:
Alas. It should really be un-capp-till-a-certain-point-and-then-we'll-squeeze-you-by-the-balls-ed. Yah know. For clarity's sake.
Click to expand...

Not really, it's just best to approach with common sense and do your research, as you learned with Telkom. If you want proper uncapped all you can eat, you need to pay for it and get a business account. ISPs are not charities, I find so many people who moan about ISPs have a massive sense of entitlement. It is a selfish attitude and if everyone was bandwidth hungry there'd be none to go around.

Furthermore it is quite right that p2p/downloads are restricted to after hours.

Find another ISP if you disagree.
 
Just use a scheduler and schedule your torrents to start at 00:00 - 06:00 am. Works like a charm for me, and over weekends I dont use a scheduler at all. Only in business hours that torrents are very slow on MWEB.
 
PostmanPot said:
Not really, it's just best to approach with common sense and do your research, as you learned with Telkom. If you want proper uncapped all you can eat, you need to pay for it and get a business account. ISPs are not charities, I find so many people who moan about ISPs have a massive sense of entitlement. It is a selfish attitude and if everyone was bandwidth hungry there'd be none to go around.

Furthermore it is quite right that p2p/downloads are restricted to after hours.

Find another ISP if you disagree.
Click to expand...

All perfectly valid points. All I want is for ISPs to be blunt and upfront about the drawbacks of their service and not wrap them in ambiguous wording. They have no problem doing this with their benefits so would it be so prohibitive to add to their advertisements a caveat that says: restrictions apply after X amount of data used. Researching your ISPs for these specific things is only necessary because they're intentionally vague about it.

EDIT:

Drifter said:
Just use a scheduler and schedule your torrents to start at 00:00 - 06:00 am. Works like a charm for me, and over weekends I dont use a scheduler at all. Only in business hours that torrents are very slow on MWEB.
Click to expand...

Useful advice, thanks.
 
Last edited:
Fredward said:
All perfectly valid points. All I want is for ISPs to be blunt and upfront about the drawbacks of their service and not wrap them in ambiguous wording. They have no problem doing this with their benefits so would it be so prohibitive to add to their advertisements a caveat that says: restrictions apply after X amount of data used. Researching your ISPs for these specific things is only necessary because they're intentionally vague about it.
Click to expand...

It will never happen, the nature of people is to then exploit as much as they can until they reach the boundaries. This is not good for business.

MWEB's first uncapped accounts which everyone flocked to were properly uncapped for the most part. Only a few people would get kicked off later in time, and it was mainly for using SSL to bypass torrent shaping.

The point is that it created a generation of users with a massive sense of entitlement. Their use ultimately leads to a degraded experience for everyone else, and those who actually use their internet for tasks besides downloading as much as they can.
 
PostmanPot said:
It will never happen, the nature of people is to then exploit as much as they can until they reach the boundaries. This is not good for business.
Click to expand...

Are we talking human nature now or business? Cuz I've always disliked that stance when it comes to human nature. 'We're all slaves to our lesser natures!' It's too often used as a convenient excuse to obviate any kind of consistent personal morality. For business (understanding here that businesses are still made of people but their nature requires a slightly more flexible interpretation) I'd agree that it's not smart business. Doesn't make it any less sketchy. I can't imagine it's good for business to be so opaque about your practices that Google logs increasingly impressive results where people bitch about it either.

Kinda like this one.
 
Fredward said:
Are we talking human nature now or business? Cuz I've always disliked that stance when it comes to human nature. 'We're all slaves to our lesser natures!' It's too often used as a convenient excuse to obviate any kind of consistent personal morality. For business (understanding here that businesses are still made of people but their nature requires a slightly more flexible interpretation) I'd agree that it's not smart business. Doesn't make it any less sketchy. I can't imagine it's good for business to be so opaque about your practices that Google logs increasingly impressive results where people bitch about it either.

Kinda like this one.
Click to expand...

The fact of the matter is that it's a minority (a vast one I'd say) who is affected by this. Most users' usage is a fraction of yours and mine, and the general usage of people on this forum.
 
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