somebody please help me

[Nickd]

Background info is on this post: Terrible DSL speed

Basically, every time i call telkom i speak to someone different, i have to explain my problem all over again. Then they ask me if there is someone at the unit to let a technician in, then i tell them that there is nothing wrong at my place, with my router or my cabling. Then if a technician does come i have to explain to him the problem because he hasnt even read the fault report. Then off they go to the exchange to reload the software/change the port/randomly jiggle some wires.

ALL of this never helps, my line still has the same symptoms, slow during office hours, perfect after hours and perfect all weekend.
Am i the only person who is experiencing this problem?

Common sense tells me that the problem is exchange related, that the exchange is oversubscribed. And i inform each and every technician/call centre person that i talk to about it, yet none of them seem to have even heard of such a problem before, let alone know of anyone at the exchange whom i can even talk to.
Perhaps there are no people there at all and we are closer to robots taking over the world than we all think...starting at the sunninghill park 1 exchange.

Anyway, i spoke to another call centre technician this morning, and she advised me to call 1023 and ask them for the number for the "Sunninghill Park 1 exchange manager" as they didnt have it. This sounded totally fishy and predictably dead-endish to me, and much to my annoyance it was, specifically when the 1023 people told me to call the fault reporting people back and get the number from them.

There must be something i can do to resolve this problem, and if anyone can put forward any bright ideas, or help me somehow get the number for the robots at the sunninghill park 1 exchange, i will be forever in your debt.

 

[[OUPA]MrNutz]

- test the performance with all 3 TIER 1 providers based accs (saix,verizon,IS) - do speed test downloads during those 3 times of the day

- do ping -t tests

- do tracert results to a common site.

- post results here

 

[ernstn]

I had to run the Telkom speed test. When that showed that there was a problem they send out a senior techie and he found a problem in the cable about 1 km from my property. Once that was fixed no problem. Another symptom was packet loss when pinging sites such as mweb.

 

[Vember]

Hi NickD

I have good news and news you probably don't want to hear.

First ill say that I im in no way connected to telkom (except phone and dsl_ so this is just what I have picked up.

The good news, you are correct.
Typical of all over used exchanges the speed of the one place "box" must be split to all in your area. The more people that use it at one time the slower it will get If you have a office park close by then there is your problem. Else there are many people that work in your area from home .. so on.

If you know for a fact that there are few people using dsl in your area , the second possibility (i have heard this 1) Is that you are share a line ei from your neighbor. (telkom decided that it would not be cost effective to put many lines in and so only use 1 on your house is a tributary of that line.

The not so nice news
Solving the problem, If it is the the first ... you need to request a upgrade of the exchange and the will (in time) put another exchange right next to the one that is already there and whala your area has twice more exchange to share.

The second ... more people would have to get dsl in your area.

So ye on the end of the day (for at least a while) nothing will change, but later it will be smooth.

What you can do right now? Instead of speaking to the exchange or help desk speak to some guy that can put in some papers for the upgrade. Try your nearest telkom shop... when you speak face to face the can't tell you phone some one else .. the must deal with you the client NOW.

2) Find out who is working so hard (on the net) >> if it is a company , ask the boss IT guy if he has the problem , and ask him to sought it out .. telkom likes to keep business's happy .. one line to a house is not worrying them.

Otherwise, appreciate the evening speeds nad do your main downloading then and only the e-mail / researching during the day.

Good luck

 

[Nickd]

- test the performance with all 3 TIER 1 providers based accs (saix,verizon,IS) - do speed test downloads during those 3 times of the day

- do ping -t tests

- do tracert results to a common site.

- post results here

at work now so cant do much there, might zap home to switch on my server and then terminal in.
What i can tell you is that i have done speed tests on: Telkominternet shaped, SAIX unshaped, and Verizon unshaped.
During office hours the results of all three are always the same, around 20kb/ps with packet loss. After hours and on weekends average speed of all three is 400kb/ps with no packet loss.

ill get those other results ASAP.

p.s: do you think changing my line to a business account will help here?

 

[Nickd]

Hi NickD

I have good news and news you probably don't want to hear.

How long does it typically take for them to put in a new exchange?
And yes, there is an office park with around 50 businesses not 100 meters from my complex.

 

[Vember]

How long does it typically take for them to put in a new exchange?
And yes, there is an office park with around 50 businesses not 100 meters from my complex.

That sucks

I have no clue ... with the power problem starting in march again mixed in with it just being telkom

Have a walk to the park and ask some person how fast/slow there internet is... then you will at least know that that is the problem.

Good luck
[edit] maybe there are some telkom ppls around here that can hook you up

 

[[OUPA]MrNutz]

at work now so cant do much there, might zap home to switch on my server and then terminal in.
What i can tell you is that i have done speed tests on: Telkominternet shaped, SAIX unshaped, and Verizon unshaped.
During office hours the results of all three are always the same, around 20kb/ps with packet loss. After hours and on weekends average speed of all three is 400kb/ps with no packet loss.

ill get those other results ASAP.

p.s: do you think changing my line to a business account will help here?

nee - business account won't help.

one other thing : if possible - look at your line health specs. things like attenuation , signal to noise ratio/margin (SNR)...you on 512?

 

[kronoSX]

Afaik there is really nothing that you can do but complain and complain for at least 6 months.

 

[KdJ]

Thanks for this info .. I'm in Pretoria (Monument Park) and also get exactly this on adsl: "slow during office hours, perfect after hours and perfect all weekend" - however it goes much better with sites hosted inside ZA. What I don't understand is that sites I host in the USA have 90 days Telkom caching enabled for graphics and css files. It finds and shows the non-cached html files, then takes forever (or fail) on the proxy cached files. Except after hours and over weekends. I host sites on 2 independent servers on different sides of the USA - both slow now, as well as other international sites. My clients (living elsewhere in ZA) also complain, can't access their email etc. The broken undersea cables were supposed to have been fixed. I'll have no other choice but to shoot myself.

 

[KdJ]

PS: I know my ISP owner personally and I'm not near my bandwidth limit - problem seems NOT to be there. It goes through SAIX not IS.