Stellenbosch ADSL congestion?

[Pada]

No, not yet. I'll follow up tomorrow again.

 

[Strange]

I had great speeds yesterday, not sure why. I will see again tonight.

 

[hoodoo]

My connection was also a bit better last night. I've never had problems speed-wise so it's only latency that is terrible. It's very noticeable when gaming on Xbox live. Last night things were definitely better. Still very far from what it used to be.

Telkom told me this morning that there is a problem with the ESR and that their technicians are investigating. She said the ESR is the main exchange in Bellville. Not sure if that makes sense though, unless all Stellenbosch traffic is routed through there. I guess that it's possible.

The lady said she will keep me updated so if I hear anything I will post it here.

 

[Pada]

Last night was most definitely faster than tonight. I got like almost 2Mbps, where as now I'm barely hitting 1Mbps.

 

[Strange]

I am hitting 4Mbps at the moment...maybe I bitched enough and some poor sucker is getting even slower internet now?

 

[Pada]

I am hitting 4Mbps at the moment...maybe I bitched enough and some poor sucker is getting even slower internet now?

Perhaps they have done exactly that. I saw just now that since the 15th of April (this Monday) my latency has for the first time climbed from like 15ms to 600ms minumum! See the blue line for the latency and the green line for my download speed.

So ja, right now my ADSL connection is really unusable and I've tried multiple accounts (WebAfrica, MWEB & Afrihost)

Full size image can be downloaded from: http://s627.photobucket.com/user/Awemonster/media/Network Issues/Latency.png.html

 

[Pada]

I can now barely even browse myBB due to this insane latency and poor download speeds!

Here are some of my other results:

C:\Users\Chris-Desktop>tracert www.google.co.za

Tracing route to www.google.co.za [173.194.41.95]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1     1 ms     1 ms     1 ms  mikrotik.tuis.local [192.168.11.1]
  2   870 ms   900 ms   939 ms  41-133-106-1.dsl.mweb.co.za [41.133.106.1]
  3   852 ms   772 ms   700 ms  197-84-8-82.cpt.mweb.co.za [197.84.8.82]
  4   870 ms   879 ms   913 ms  197-84-2-2.cpt.mweb.co.za [197.84.2.2]
  5     *      828 ms   868 ms  tengige0-0-0-2.11.cpt-p-2.mweb.co.za [196.28.178.98]
  6   959 ms   983 ms  1000 ms  197-84-4-197.cpt.mweb.co.za [197.84.4.197]
  7   930 ms   864 ms   868 ms  176.67.177.131
  8  1112 ms  1055 ms   955 ms  176.67.177.133
  9   951 ms   943 ms  1019 ms  176.67.177.255
 10  1085 ms   942 ms   860 ms  209.85.240.61
 11   662 ms   597 ms   580 ms  72.14.238.51
 12   769 ms   802 ms   819 ms  lhr08s01-in-f31.1e100.net [173.194.41.95]

Trace complete.

C:\Users\Chris-Desktop>tracert 41.185.60.1

Tracing route to vl306.er.gw.cpt.za.wa.co.za [41.185.60.1]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1     1 ms     1 ms     1 ms  mikrotik.tuis.local [192.168.11.1]
  2  1064 ms   964 ms   771 ms  196-210-148-129.dynamic.isadsl.co.za [196.210.148.129]
  3   714 ms   811 ms   928 ms  cdsl1-ctn-vl2173.ip.isnet.net [196.38.72.113]
  4  1110 ms  1130 ms   828 ms  196.35.115.128
  5  1004 ms   838 ms   667 ms  wa-is.isdsl.net [196.38.72.84]
  6   836 ms   942 ms   991 ms  wnls-cr1-vl-140.wa.co.za [41.185.1.2]
  7   740 ms   707 ms   714 ms  vl306.er.gw.cpt.za.wa.co.za [41.185.60.1]

Trace complete.

 

[Strange]

Sigh. I hoped that they would actually upgrade the back haul. Silly me. I am going to hammer them anyways and refer to this thread.

 

[Nirv]

Test conducted on 4/17/2013 2:12:06 PM (LOCAL)

Download Speed: 712 kbps (89 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 338 kbps (42.3 KB/sec transfer rate)
Latency: 371 ms

Test conducted on 4/17/2013 5:09:37 PM (LOCAL)

Download Speed: 289 kbps (36.1 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 139 kbps (17.4 KB/sec transfer rate)
Latency: 1133 ms

Now:

Test conducted on 4/18/2013 11:39:53 AM (LOCAL)

Download Speed: 440 kbps (55 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 207 kbps (25.9 KB/sec transfer rate)
Latency: 201 ms

 

[hoodoo]

A Telkom technician phoned me earlier and we had quite a long conversation. What it comes down to is that, according to him, the exchange we are on (Onderpapegaaiberg) is definitely NOT congested. He has graphs and stats of the traffic in and out of the exchange during the time period that I have latency issues (about 8PM to 12AM) and the peak traffic comes to about 8Mbps (please excuse and correct me if I am incorrect with the unit). The capacity of the exchange is 13Mbps. Apparently the only time in the last day that the exchange came close to capacity was yesterday between 14h00 and 15h00.

If I do a trace route to local websites during the morning / afternoon I get 13ms throughout. My connection speeds have stayed consistent throughout.

So yeah, I am at a loss as to what the problem is. All I know is that I am not the only one in Stellenbosch and Onderpapegaaiberg struggling.

 

[Pada]

MWEB Guy came back to me regarding the congested exchange after I contacted him yesterday and he told me that he has no ETA for when the issue would be resolved since the Exchange is completely under Telkom's control.

So I've now just gone and submitted a fault escalation form: http://residential.telkom.co.za/emailcontact-residential/escalationform.htm

 

[Strange]

3MBps...Telkom definitely prioritised my line at the expense of you guys. :/

 

[Pada]

Its cool man. As long as you got yours working, it means that Telkom is indeed capable of fixing/changing stuff for the good I suppose

I've now also logged a complaint in HelloPeter. I'll ask my neighbour tomorrow if he's also experiencing the same issues with his 4Mbps line, because he cannot play WoW when his ADSL is down or lagging...

 

[hoodoo]

Tonight from about 21h30 latency started to go back to normal. Much better than the last few months. I'm hoping it's not just a once-off but actual improvement.

 

[Pada]

OMW! Telkom actually responded to my HelloPeter complaint within 24 hours and gave me an escalation number. Now the question remains whether anything will be done to fix it...

I also heard from my friend in Paradyskloof that his 4Mbps uncapped is now having the same symptoms as mine, but his download and upload speeds were way worse.

 

[TipTopPoet]

I'm in Stellenbosch Central and I've been having similar issues since Wednesday. Seems something is going on in Stellenbosch. A telkom tech came out to look at the exchange yesterday, but nothing has changed. My latency is fine in the early morning and then around 9am it starts going up until it hits a peak between 8pm and 12 of anywhere between 1k and 5k ms.

 

[Hectic]

OMW! Telkom actually responded to my HelloPeter complaint within 24 hours and gave me an escalation number. Now the question remains whether anything will be done to fix it...

I also heard from my friend in Paradyskloof that his 4Mbps uncapped is now having the same symptoms as mine, but his download and upload speeds were way worse.

I also had exchange and area faults and also eventually went the HelloPeter route. They always responded and I was contacted several times by someone that basically did the "Switch of your Router" routine. Then they would escalate to Network guys. They took about 3 days to respond. None of them were able to fix my problem, but they did try.

I eventually went the ICASA route. I know there is not a lot of faith in them, but after all, they did get Telkom to fix my line within about 10 days (0.3Mbps to 3.5Mbps) and the exchange was upgraded in about 3 weeks.

I'm from a small town, so maybe I was lucky and the exchange was cheap fix, don't know.
All I know I struggled from about June 2012 and I started complaining to Hello Peter in November I think and the ICASA complaint was done somewhere in February and the line was perfect by the 7th of March and the exchange was done on the 14th of March

 

[Pada]

Thanks for the feedback RoMark. I don't like going the ICASA route, but I suppose it would eventually come to that...

 

[Strange]

I am down to 1MBps.

 

[Pada]

I just spoke to my neighbour and he said that his latency is the best its been till date. So I really have no idea what the heck Telkom is doing, because mine is still shockingly bad...