Telkom Internet Uncapped User Feedback.

[falcon786]

So this story about Telkom upping all ADSL customers' line speeds: http://mybroadband.co.za/news/adsl/87278-free-adsl-speed-upgrades-from-telkom.html

What will this mean as far as the insane throttling that they've been hitting all uncapped customers with?

Ranger, care to comment?

What insane throttling are you talking about?download at night and you wont be throttled during the day is how I understand it,thats what I'm doing and its working just dandy no throttling on my 1mbps account and line with TI.

 

[falcon786]

This is my current speed tested now on a 1mbps line as you can see no throttling.

 

[b1gstan]

What insane throttling are you talking about?download at night and you wont be throttled during the day is how I understand it,thats what I'm doing and its working just dandy no throttling on my 1mbps account and line with TI.

I'm fairly certain that this story has been told many a time before - by different narrators:

On my 4mb uncapped line, I'm lucky If I get 200kb/s.
Last night I was averaging between 30kb/s and 56kb/s. Sub 1Mb line speeds - closer, in fact to 384kb/s speeds.

This was at 11PM i.e. at night.
On HTTP downloads - no torrents here.

The only time I get full speeds (when I'm awake) is when I get up at 6AM to try and rock a quick download.

From what I've seen on this very forum, and I welcome any corrections, the commonly accepted version of the truth is that Telkom throttles (in addition to shaping) ALL uncapped customers and are apparently not the only ISP to do so. Again, I could be wrong - it's one of the stompies I've picked up.

Based on that stompie and my own experience (and a very similar experience of a buddy on an uncapped line in another part of SA), it's really not fair to be paying for a 4Mb line and not get 4Mb speeds.

That's why I call it insane.

 

[MickZA]

Based on that stompie and my own experience (and a very similar experience of a buddy on an uncapped line in another part of SA), it's really not fair to be paying for a 4Mb line and not get 4Mb speeds. That's why I call it insane.

My torrents last night:



... I'm guessing you've got problems with your line/exchange - BTW I've done about 220GB on my 4Mb uncapped so far this month, average about 300GB and haven’t been throttled ever.

 

[Azul]

As per usual no response from Telkom about what the problem is.

This has literally been going on for months. Sometimes it's fine, and sometimes it's not. Pings just shoot up to 500ms and stay that way for hours and hours. I have noticed this most often at night. So over the this guy asking for people to paste traceroutes, how many traceroutes you need? By the 3rd hop to telkom.co.za you are already at 150ms, international is 500ms.

 

[Hectic]

As per usual no response from Telkom about what the problem is.

This has literally been going on for months. Sometimes it's fine, and sometimes it's not. Pings just shoot up to 500ms and stay that way for hours and hours. I have noticed this most often at night. So over the this guy asking for people to paste traceroutes, how many traceroutes you need? By the 3rd hop to telkom.co.za you are already at 150ms, international is 500ms.

In that case your exchange is probably congested, but the traceroute is a useful tool too pick up where problems could be.

 

[Electric]

I'm fairly certain that this story has been told many a time before - by different narrators:

On my 4mb uncapped line, I'm lucky If I get 200kb/s.
Last night I was averaging between 30kb/s and 56kb/s. Sub 1Mb line speeds - closer, in fact to 384kb/s speeds.

This was at 11PM i.e. at night.
On HTTP downloads - no torrents here.

The only time I get full speeds (when I'm awake) is when I get up at 6AM to try and rock a quick download.

From what I've seen on this very forum, and I welcome any corrections, the commonly accepted version of the truth is that Telkom throttles (in addition to shaping) ALL uncapped customers and are apparently not the only ISP to do so. Again, I could be wrong - it's one of the stompies I've picked up.

Based on that stompie and my own experience (and a very similar experience of a buddy on an uncapped line in another part of SA), it's really not fair to be paying for a 4Mb line and not get 4Mb speeds.

That's why I call it insane.

This is certainly not my experience.
I get full line speed.
I'm currently downloading without any issues.

 

[b1gstan]

My torrents last night:

View attachment 71930

... I'm guessing you've got problems with your line/exchange - BTW I've done about 220GB on my 4Mb uncapped so far this month, average about 300GB and haven’t been throttled ever.

I'd be inclined to agree with you - except that I get full speeds on newsgroups.

 

[ranger]

My TI disconnects continuesly.... The callcentre allredy recreated the port. But it still disconnects. And now, it,s been disconnected for the last 15min...

What would you guys suggest...

DIsconnects can only be due to line quality.

We don't disconnect, except for cancellations, and at your discretion when you do a password change/reset.

Please log a line fault (online or via @TelkomZA).

 

[ranger]

Pings to UK is higher than it was before (a month or 2 ago, I was getting about 160ms where I now get 190ms) this is to the official UK CS go servers:
Telkom Internet:


I am getting lower pings to Luxembourg than UK:


Afrihost Backup account for comparison:


Thats almost a 40 ms ping difference!
Compare hop 7 on telkom and afrihost
Ranger, the afrihost and telkom pings were near identical just a few months ago, what has happened?

There is a cable failure (started last week, I think Thursday). I think it was EASSy, but I am not sure (it is on the Durban to Amsterdam route, which I think is on EASSy).

The SAIX/IPNet guys have been getting more temporary capacity on other routes, and doing some routing changes. But, until:
-EASSy is fixed (I believe it should be fixed by today, but I am not 100% sure if is up yet)
-Telkom Internet and Telkom Wholesale finalise negotiations for increasing our international bandwidth requirement so that we can place an order on Telkom Wholesale, so they can conclude new transit agreements that cover sufficient capacity to be able to sustain a major cable failure

there will be some impact to international traffic.

 

[ranger]

Mweb / afrihost / Telkom, all seem borked at the moment. Where does one go now? Maybe openweb? Ffs, I just want decent Internet!

The internet is clogged with iOS7.

We've done *our* bit to try and influence our users (NIghtSurfer is what you should be using for software updates).

 

[MickZA]

I'd be inclined to agree with you - except that I get full speeds on newsgroups.

In that case your problem might be with TI's QoS policies (torrents getting low priority when the network is busy) but, given the nature of torrents, there are many other factors that can impact their performance.

 

[ranger]

I'm fairly certain that this story has been told many a time before - by different narrators:

On my 4mb uncapped line, I'm lucky If I get 200kb/s.
Last night I was averaging between 30kb/s and 56kb/s. Sub 1Mb line speeds - closer, in fact to 384kb/s speeds.

This was at 11PM i.e. at night.
On HTTP downloads - no torrents here.

Was this an isolated incident, or has it been the case for more than a week? Note that iOS7 is currently impacting all ISPs (since Wednesday night, starting to drop off now).

What did speedtest give? A traceroute would also be useful. Where were you downloading from?

The only time I get full speeds (when I'm awake) is when I get up at 6AM to try and rock a quick download.

And DSLAM congestion can explain this too (not saying it is the cause, but many DSLAMs are congested at specific times, during business hours in areas that have businesses, and during 'prime time' in residential areas).

From what I've seen on this very forum, and I welcome any corrections, the commonly accepted version of the truth is that Telkom throttles (in addition to shaping) ALL uncapped customers and are apparently not the only ISP to do so.

If you want to be sure, feel free to cancel and go to MWEB, we'll see you back here in November ....

We throttle uncapped users to their account speed, and to a lower speed if they have been doing most of their heavy leeching during peak times, after they have reached a point where it is obvious their use is impacting other subscribers, until the end of the month. About 3% of our 1Mbps customers fall into this category, about 2% of 2Mbps uncapped, and about 1% of 4Mbps uncapped. Some of them haven't figured out Night Surfer yet ...

Again, I could be wrong - it's one of the stompies I've picked up.

Based on that stompie and my own experience (and a very similar experience of a buddy on an uncapped line in another part of SA), it's really not fair to be paying for a 4Mb line and not get 4Mb speeds.

That's why I call it insane.

Then downgrade.

 

[ranger]

As per usual no response from Telkom about what the problem is.

Response to what?

This has literally been going on for months. Sometimes it's fine, and sometimes it's not. Pings just shoot up to 500ms and stay that way for hours and hours. I have noticed this most often at night. So over the this guy asking for people to paste traceroutes, how many traceroutes you need? By the 3rd hop to telkom.co.za you are already at 150ms, international is 500ms.

But, the crucial question is, is it at the ESR (first hop after the DSLAM, before the ISP), or after it hits the ISP? If there high variability in the hop to the ESR or the ISP? The ISP will also correlate with whether an IPC link is running near capacity, other trends on the network etc..

Alternatively, when you are experiencing the high latency, do a DSLAM congestion test (disconnect your normal account, connect as guest@telkomadsl with password guest, and ping the ESR's IP - the gateway of your PPPoE session).

BTW., some customers find their DSLAM is uncongested, log an ISP fault, we investigate, only to find something like:
-the customer installed some software which is uploading stuff to the internet, congesting the uplink, which is causing downstream traffic to be slow
-the customer has other users (children, grandchildren, etc.) leeching on their network
(since very limited traffic is allowed on the guest account, the speeds/latencies are fine there, so they blame the ISP ...).

 

[add]

Was this an isolated incident, or has it been the case for more than a week? Note that iOS7 is currently impacting all ISPs (since Wednesday night, starting to drop off now).

What did speedtest give? A traceroute would also be useful. Where were you downloading from?



And DSLAM congestion can explain this too (not saying it is the cause, but many DSLAMs are congested at specific times, during business hours in areas that have businesses, and during 'prime time' in residential areas).



If you want to be sure, feel free to cancel and go to MWEB, we'll see you back here in November ....

We throttle uncapped users to their account speed, and to a lower speed if they have been doing most of their heavy leeching during peak times, after they have reached a point where it is obvious their use is impacting other subscribers, until the end of the month. About 3% of our 1Mbps customers fall into this category, about 2% of 2Mbps uncapped, and about 1% of 4Mbps uncapped. Some of them haven't figured out Night Surfer yet ...



Then downgrade.

ranger, what is this nightsurfer?

 

[ranger]

ranger, what is this nightsurfer?

Leave/schedule your heavy downloads for 00h00 to 06h00. You will see a benefit (if you are a heavy uncapped user, or a soft-cap user that gets into soft-cap mode).

 

[b1gstan]

Was this an isolated incident, or has it been the case for more than a week? Note that iOS7 is currently impacting all ISPs (since Wednesday night, starting to drop off now).

What did speedtest give? A traceroute would also be useful. Where were you downloading from?



And DSLAM congestion can explain this too (not saying it is the cause, but many DSLAMs are congested at specific times, during business hours in areas that have businesses, and during 'prime time' in residential areas).



If you want to be sure, feel free to cancel and go to MWEB, we'll see you back here in November ....

We throttle uncapped users to their account speed, and to a lower speed if they have been doing most of their heavy leeching during peak times, after they have reached a point where it is obvious their use is impacting other subscribers, until the end of the month. About 3% of our 1Mbps customers fall into this category, about 2% of 2Mbps uncapped, and about 1% of 4Mbps uncapped. Some of them haven't figured out Night Surfer yet ...



Then downgrade.

Ranger, I really think this has blown out of proportion. In my initial post I asked if the speed upgrades would make a difference to the throttling that I encounter. Your first two comments are valid.
As far as you telling me to go cancel or downgrade, I'm not going entertain what I see as surly and frankly unprofessional comments from someone that purports to be a representative of Telkom. Not on a Public forum.

There's a time and a place for everything.
I'm happy to address via PM, where I can spell out the numerous frustrations I encountered ever since Telkom asked me to not cancel my service and to stay on for another 12 months at a discounted rate.

 

[MickZA]

What will this mean as far as the insane throttling that they've been hitting all uncapped customers with?

Ranger, care to comment?

Ranger, I really think this has blown out of proportion. In my initial post I asked if the speed upgrades would make a difference to the throttling that I encounter.

Hmm, not quite what you stated in your initial post methinks.

... also ranger is not an official Telkom rep and definitely not a TI "hand holder", I think I speak for many other forumites when I say I prefer his "warts and all" style of commentary

 

[Hectic]

As far as you telling me to go cancel or downgrade, I'm not going entertain what I see as surly and frankly unprofessional comments from someone that purports to be a representative of Telkom. Not on a Public forum.

You have it wrong.
Ranger is not an official TI rep.
He has mentioned this countless times, unless something has changed in the mean time.
Ranger does try to keep us up to date with relevant info and also try to help solve issues, when and if possible.

You can contact TelkomZA with issue's on the forum.
There have been very good feed back regarding their results.

 

[Grouter]

... also ranger is not an official Telkom rep and definitely not a TI "hand holder", I think I speak for many other forumites when I say I prefer his "warts and all" style of commentary

Yup, techs tell it like it is, "warts 'n' all". We leave the PR s**t to upper management.