Telkom ADSL network congestion concerns

Almost feel sorry for them. The second they upgrade one, another one pops up.
 
Tell me about it.

Yesterday was exceptionally frustrating. Battled all day with pings of >1000ms and 0.18Mb/s download speeds to local servers on a 4Mb/s line.

It only seems to have resolved itself (touch wood) at 00H45 today.
 
What's annoying is it's not even a graceful degradation. Not like your 4Mbps just performs like a 384kbps, the whole connection becomes totally unpredictable and just randomly drops packets. Even if you're not doing much on your line, they apply no QoS so that you can at least have slow and reliable, it just becomes both slow and unreliable/spiky. Makes it really difficult to use anything latency sensitive, even if you're only using a tiny amount of bandwidth.
 
But how do you know if the exchange is congested and if the ISP is throttling/shaping you?
 
skimread said:
But how do you know if the exchange is congested and if the ISP is throttling/shaping you?
Click to expand...

Easy. Run a couple of speed tests to one server. In my case I ran all my speedtests from the SAIX website to the Durban base and my 4mb line on first run performed alright. The next 2 tests straight after the first one performed like a 56k dial up line. Log a complaint with your ISP (if they hold your line) and carry on complaining. In my case I live less than 2km's from my Exchange and my line is perfect, Mweb agrees with me. However my download speeds be it Steam, http or torrents were failing 24/7. Its only recently that I have started seeing some improvement. Which brings me to my question...

Where does 8ta traffic get routed? AFAIK Telkom has not put up towers for 8ta and will more than likely use the Exchange towers, if thats the case then those Exchange boxes are going to be highly saturated therefore causing more strain on a fragile network...
 
If any of you guys have a dyndns address on your modem that you're willing to share then please pm me. I'm busy gathering performance data on a number of lines at the moment.
 
@skimread. That's easy. Just get a 1gig account from another ISP to test with.
 
But it's a BEST Effort service

Telkoms typical response in such a situation is that ADSL is a best effort service....

I persoanlly experienced their bad service 2 years ago, when my business 4Mbps ADSL line couldn't get more than 56kbps, they weren't insterested in fixing it so I moved to Neotels Wimax. I've had 2 service interruptions lasting 15 minutes in 2 years and performance is great.

If I was a business, I would seriously choose them over ADSL again!

Telkom has so much to learn about customer retention and satisfaction.
 
A bonded ADSL service provider, who spoke to MyBroadband on the condition of anonymity, said that some exchanges are so congested that they struggle to provide a 16Mbps solution to clients. He explained that while their own ADSL bandwidth allocation is more than enough, speeds are severely limited by congestion on Telkom’s network.
Click to expand...

We had a bonded solution in my old company. We maybe got 1.5mbits over 3 lines. Was just horrible.

As much as it is not ISP's fault, but telkom's fault that this is happening, I blame uncapped. :) . When our company used adsl as a primary connection, we always had congestion problems. Then one day MWeb had a problem with their international uplink, and our adsl was fine.
 
Lack of Telkom transparency

skimread said:
But how do you know if the exchange is congested and if the ISP is throttling/shaping you?
Click to expand...
Easy - try 2-3 different ISP's.
In my case, I tried MWEB, WebAfrica, FNB Connect, and a private business ADSL.
All exhibited the same problem, slow during peak times, 0.2Mbps on a 4Mbps ADSL, and fast 3.5Mbps during quieter times (4am-5am)
Also keep tabs on mybb forum on reported ADSL congestion
http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php/364262-List-of-congested-exchanges

Also create an account on speedtest.net to keep track of your tests and their run times.
Look for patterns - fast at 4-5am and slow during prime time.
Log call with Telkom and don't close the call, until the issue is resolved.
Ask telkom for a refund (I got 6 months refunded)
And finally - switch to another technology


At the time Telkom would neither confirm nor deny whether there is congestion on their ADSL network, instead explaining that congestion can happen in many places on the network.
Click to expand...
Telkom should be forced to provide access to the end-to-end network statistics to the ISP
ISPs do not have access to vital network information - and are blamed for issues, when it's telkom's fault.

Telkom needs to provide visibility and transparency to their customers - ICASA - please help.
 
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"Telkom previously said that traffic profiles on the backhaul bandwidth between the DSLAM and the ESR are continuously monitored and any subsequent congestion is addressed accordingly".... I guess they are addressing the issues the same prompt and efficient manner as most government and city council departments :erm:
Maybe the same story too... "we've allocated Rxxxx mil to improve the service".... yeah, but dont just allocate and keep aside the money... go and f*n spend it on what it is meant for already!
I've noticed some degradation myself... my 4meg line not doing so well... sometimes a speed test gives less than 1Mbps download :(
Uploads seem fine.
 
skimread said:
But how do you know if the exchange is congested and if the ISP is throttling/shaping you?
Click to expand...

Also, doing a traceroute to any site, the first hop after your gateway should have a latency of around 10-40ms. Anything over that(like mine was running into 700ms on first hop) means congestion. Even 40ms is pushing it as you should have a total ping time of 40ms on dsl to any local site
 
There are so many variables involved in providing you with the end result. Example - Is ISP on SAIX or IS; Is international on SAT3 or Seacom; Have you got shaped or unshaped; Have you got Bronze, Silver, Gold or Platinum account from ISP; is there time based throttling etc........... Very hard to point to one specific provider. I suggest testing with a Telkom Internet account and an IS account and do the trace and speedtests at various times.
 
I always take any ISP's claim that their product has "Silver", "Gold" or "Platinum" priority with a huge pinch of salt. It doesn't matter how good the ISP's network is or how unshaped it is when your traffic has traverse Telkom's network before it even gets to the ISP's network.
 
Telkom admitted to me that the exchange in my town is congested. I spoke to someone from Pinky's office and I was told that it would likely take a long time before they upgrade the exchange here as it seems they just don't have the money to do so! Now even though they know about the congestion here...they are STILL selling new adsl accounts.
 
skimread said:
But how do you know if the exchange is congested and if the ISP is throttling/shaping you?
Click to expand...

Traceroute will (or should!) tell you where the issue lies.

I'm not at home so can't post a decent example, but in my case:

  • First hop is my router. High latency on this hop indicates an issue on my local network.
  • Second hop is the BRAS at the Rondebosch exchange. (There are ~45 or so throughout the country in the major exchanges; your DSLAMs aggregate traffic towards the nearest BRAS). Any high latency on this hop indicates a congestion issue on Telkom's infrastructure.
  • Third hop is the IPC router belonging to the Tier 1 (in SA terms, before I get flamed!) network provider in question. Any high latency on this hop could be an issue with either the ISP or with Telkom; you'd probably get a better response from the ISP.
  • Thereafter, contacting your ISP will be the best bet, as the route now becomes dependent on where the packet is heading.

I'll post an example traceroute when I get home to illustrate.
 
On the positive side Telkom are doing a massive network overhaul, the areas completed as of this last fin year are WC, Gauteng and Pretoria. The next targets are EC, Kwazulu and parts of the Free State. Basically its replacing the ATM system with a Next Gen solution to supplement the NGSDH (10Gb/s fibre project) rollout. This will eventually be linked to the MSANs for plenty of awesome bandwidth:)

The network upgrades actually began in 2009 due to the soccer world cup, but I suspect everything has been pretty slow due to fiascoes like Multilinks and 8ta eating all the money they could have been spending on this. I do get the Telkom rationale behind 8ta, but I think it is flawed. I think they should have gone for wireless data only and run voice over it - basically their wimax service, but not limited to that technology. I think they would have been able to get better spectrum allocation as well - maybe Sentech's allocation would have been moved to them. I digress though..

EDIT:
It is known that there is some manipulation of the Telkom network (or was) to make it unsuitable for VOIP. As in ensure the service is a little bouncy so VOIP sucks. This also makes it easier to sell Business grade services to corporate customers..
 
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