The Truth behind MWEB's uncapped

[Tick]

I have a very similar 'graph' to you, gdiza (am also a monitor-er), so yes, that is about the shape of the shaping.

My primary wish would be for them to leave *local* bandwidth unshaped, or much less heavily shaped. I suspect part of the reason this might be difficult is the dearth of local peering that MWEB are pushing for.

 

[Mike Hoxbig]

Kosmik, mich does have a point hey in 1 sense;

384 & 512 users seem to get constant speeds where as 4MB users don't.

That's untrue. As a 512k user, I often find myself shaped (on NNTP and P2P) to between 15 - 25 KB/s up until about 11pm. And even that varies because the speeds don't seem to increase or decrease at any given time. The only thing that is virtually guaranteed is that you will get your highest throughput in the early hours.

 

[Kosmik]

Kosmik, mich does have a point hey in 1 sense;

384 & 512 users seem to get constant speeds where as 4MB users don't.

4 Meg users also have a much broader pipe to be shaped in. Shaping protocols are applied on a % basis I think to the actual acounts line speeds and the norm is prety much 25% from what I and friends have experianced, ie: 100kbps max speed shaped protocols in the day on 4meg and 10kbps max shaped for 384k. The stability you seeing is just that theres less of actual data that deviates versus %. But again that might just be a misconception. Shaping is QOS, so think of it as a "politicly correct queue". People let old folks in to tend to business and wait their turn but at certain times there are more old folks in a queue than young and we just get pushed further and further back.

I can't complain about the account as I get everything I want out of it: download, gaming and surfing wise. I use it for vpn when I need to for work and mail. Also if you are trying to compare p2p speeds, it's very difficult unless folks are using the exact same setup/file/download as a lot depends on the peers.

 

[medicnick83]

My primary wish would be for them to leave *local* bandwidth unshaped, or much less heavily shaped. I suspect part of the reason this might be difficult is the dearth of local peering that MWEB are pushing for.

I wish this was possible too.

 

[supersunbird]

All is agreed, but what about someone who got uncapped because they wanted to use like 60gb a month? i dont think thats a heavy downloader, thats like punishing everyone, ive seen tncs on another ISP's website and they have a tiered system which makes sense, because u cant punish everyone, really what if somoene only needs 300mb to 1gb of BW a day, which i imagine is a "fair" percentage of their customer base, why punish them too?

i also saw something on their fb page that they are shaping p2p heavily - ".........Peer-2-Peer traffic is, however, being heavily shaped. We don’t have an ETA yet as to when we expect this failure to be rectified. We will keep you posted.on Wednesday"

is this temporary? i asked this on the page and Mweb Guy didnt reply.... hmmm silence is golden?

If you want a tiered by-usage system then go with Afrihost, they give you full speed (i think) till you reach a certain threshold which they start throttling you at slower speeds. MWeb didn't design their product like that and do offer a unshaped service for the premium of full speed all the time.

The best you can do is suggest to MWeb to impliment what you desire but if they ignore that it is their business prerogative and then you can either look for another provider of what you require or open your own business offering that.

 

[HavocXphere]

I have said in the past (other threads) I understand the shaping, so do it, but really now, why kill the line?!?

If there was more bandwidth available they'd hand it out...they gain nothing from purchasing but not using b/w.

And they can't simply keep buying more bandwidth because it costs a fortune. And those cost are not being covered from the heavy downloaders.

the truth is as follows;

They limit us HEAVILY during the day and at night to keep us "downloaders" within a acceptable limit.

Thats not only the truth but also the official MWEB line. They've been saying from the start that they will limit downloading to whatever extent is necessary to maintain browsing & downloading.

Ultimately, it's not really UNCAPPED, but a 300GB account per person (±10GB a day)

Every account has a finite amount of gigs that can be pushed through it. If you consider the maximum possible to be the "cap" then there cannot by definition be an uncapped account. (Unless qubits are involved )

They don't really shape HTTP and E-MAIL because they can't really

They do shape HTTP download for the filehosting sites like rapidshare.

 

[Kosmik]

I wish this was possible too.

Agreed, especially when the seacom link is down. WTF does local shaping have to do with the link being down but then I suspect it's because they can't control their traffic shaping over the different links of local\int and just apply it to all.

 

[medicnick83]

HavocXphere, true, but then you see that MWEB deny that, they claim stuff like "possible problem with your ADSL line" and such... they've tried those stories with me.

The guy was "errrrrrrrrr" "mmmmmmm" when I said, okay, so, with MWEB I get XX speeds, but when I change to a SAIX account, I get XXX speeds... still think it's a problem with my ADSL line or with MWEB itself and it's HEAVY shaping?!?

 

[the_don46]

Let everyone who is bleating on and on about how poor MWeb is take very special note of this. Almost 1TB in two months! How is MWeb not delivering?

This makes me wonder how much people can download when/if a 10meg line becomes available!

I'm going for 4meg uncapped MWEB as soon as I can & if by the time I sign up it's a 10meg @ the same costs I'll be only too happy.. What would the worst shaping & throttling equal then, a download of say 100kb/sec? I can live with that I have a life, will just queue up my downloads - why watch your speed? Do something else!

 

[medicnick83]

When 10MB or more becomes available, we won't get access to those speeds... FACT!

MWEB might give it but will have a different package.
Either way, we'll get shaped just as bad, 10MB will be worse!

 

[Kosmik]

This makes me wonder how much people can download when/if a 10meg line becomes available!

I'm going for 4meg uncapped MWEB as soon as I can & if by the time I sign up it's a 10meg @ the same costs I'll be only too happy.. What would the worst shaping & throttling equal then, a download of say 100kb/sec? I can live with that I have a life, will just queue up my downloads - why watch your speed? Do something else!

Won't happen. ISP's who sell speed accounts ( Mweb , Openweb others ) have already said they will sell 10Meg accounts ( I think the going rate is R899? ). Accounts like the Axxess Express which are line speed accounts not speed accounts, will benefit from the increased speed at no aditional cost for now.

*EDIT* Scratch that, I see Axxess now state max of 4Mbps.

You will still have the FULL line speed(max of 4Mb/s) after 8pm on weekdays and the weekend. This means that if you have a 4Mb/s line, you will get 4Mb/s speed, even if you only have a 384Kbps account!

 

[Tharaxis]

*sighs*

Firstly, would just like to add to the chorus, that it blows my mind how someone could start a topic called "The Truth behind MWEB's uncapped" and then be so factually WRONG about nearly everything. There's no truth here, and to indicate otherwise is disingenuous.

Rubbish. Uncapped means download as much as you want. The real world limitations of your line are a given and not taken into account. But any other constraints are not acceptable with the use of the term. Uncapped means download as much as your line and bandwidth supports. The entire world knows this.

If you see a restaurant advertising all you can eat... it is a given that you cannot eat more than they can physically provide. That is just plain common sense.

I think what the poster you were responding to meant was that there are infrastructural elements which serve to ultimately limit what you can download. You yourself point that out by saying "...download as much as your line and bandwidth supports...", but you fall short in indicating what "bandwidth" entails. The reality is that the "bandwidth" in the equation constitutes the entire end-to-end connection between you and the remote site. In this case their shaping is put in place because the overall available bandwidth (you->mweb->internet->server) doesn't support anything higher.

Likewise, and I'm really happy. However, I must admit that recently MWEB's QoS has been decreasing ;/

Also, the shaping is not RANDOM...from my stats I've noticed that it starts @ 07:00 (15%), continues to 23:00 (50%) and opens up completely @ 01:00 (80-100%).

There isn't another provider that can provide 300GB+ of data a month @ R549. Nuff Said...

Those stats you're seeing are likely the inverse of the overall load M-Web sees on their network, it's very similar to stats I saw when I was working in the broadband sphere. Bandwidth usage tends to peak between 1 and 3PM and then starts dropping after business hours, with the lowest points generally being around 3-6AM. Shaping definitely isn't random, it's directly linked to network load, which is why you're seeing it so poor during office hours and much better later on.

Kosmik, mich does have a point hey in 1 sense;

384 & 512 users seem to get constant speeds where as 4MB users don't.

Well think about it this way, M-Web is charging ~R200 p/m for 384K access (data only), so lets say 384K access only actually costs them R150p/m (purely speculation, probably incorrect, it probably costs them a lot closer to that R200). 512K is approx 33% faster, so you would expect it to be close to 33% extra on the price (R266) and they offer it at R299, so they make a little bit on that, namely R100-odd bucks (if their wholesale cost is R150). However, 4mbits is 8x larger than 512K, so if you wanted the same performance as 512K it would cost you R2128, but they only charge 2x the cost (approx). So you see, there's a huge price deficit there. So firstly, yeah, the 4mbit accounts are going to perform slower, probably closer to 1mbit, and the 384K accounts will perform better.

 

[SabreWolfy]

<snip>
MWEB has never done the SA consumer any favours and I don't think they will start anytime soon.
<snip>

What? What do those who download hundreds of GB per month feel about this?

 

[Tanya35]

That's untrue. As a 512k user, I often find myself shaped (on NNTP and P2P) to between 15 - 25 KB/s up until about 11pm. And even that varies because the speeds don't seem to increase or decrease at any given time. The only thing that is virtually guaranteed is that you will get your highest throughput in the early hours.

Ah, but then you would be in bed and using an unattended download (not permissible). So we can conclude that Mweb is effectively trying to stop P2P.

 

[SabreWolfy]

<snip>
So it seems this account is intended for those that have a 384 Kbps line that were on dial up and MWEB oversold them a product that they don't really require, so as to extort funds from them as it was loosing clients at an alarming rate due to excessive charges for Internet access. (higher than Telkom - check MyBB's comparison a few months ago) Tinfoil time
<snip>

ROFL! "Tinfoil time" +1

 

[SabreWolfy]

Poor example. You can't take 1 users performance and use it as a margin for grading the service. I get the point your trying to make , this one is just not applicable.

This example is one of many. Search the forums for an indication of just how much many people have downloaded. If one user can get close to 0.5TB in a month, it is not difficult to imagine that others can pull down even half of that. How can one person get 400GB+ two months in a row if the service is so poor? Is this person just incredibly and consistently lucky? No.

 

[Tanya35]

This example is one of many. Search the forums for an indication of just how much many people have downloaded. If one user can get close to 0.5TB in a month, it is not difficult to imagine that others can pull down even half of that. How can one person get 400GB+ two months in a row if the service is so poor? Is this person just incredibly and consistently lucky? No.

We're not talking sheer numbers, but rather Quality Of Service. Can you guarantee that if I login at 2 in the morning and get full download speed? No, because the service is unstable. Like it is.was today and as it has been just about every Friday for various reasons.

 

[SabreWolfy]

We're not talking sheer numbers, but rather Quality Of Service. Can you guarantee that if I login at 2 in the morning and get full download speed? No, because the service is unstable. Like it is.was today and as it has been just about every Friday for various reasons.

Yes, within the T&C as we've said before. What difference does it make if you can just as easily download whatever later or tomorrow and still get it all. I'm not excusing bad QoS of course, but the issue of shaping at 2am in the morning does not prevent downloading of a large number of GB in total in a month.

There are any number of reasons why downloads at 2am here are slow. Maybe the serving location is under load in a different timezone? Your router is not connected directly onto Seacom or directly to the machine serving the resource. Do a tracepath. See all the hops in between. A problem at one of them can slow your connection. I presume you know this, so I don't know what answer would satisfy you.

 

[Auntpol]

Your argument is still void - There's about 50-100 people that actually posted their usage , if not less. How can you set a margin on the performance based on their replies if :
1. You don't even know how big their consumer base is?
2. You don't know how many people are experiencing problems?

In a typical case where all the facts are available , one would weigh each up and come to a conclusion , but just because a handfull of people (including myself) are satisfied with the product , does not mean everyone is getting the same service. Thats where QoS comes in. Currently MWEB is Unstable is various aspects - and thats a fact.

I'm more than happy with my MWEB account , but I'm not stupid enough to go and say its perfect - its actually horrible , its just a good kind of horrible when compared to a capped account from 3months ago.

 

[SabreWolfy]

Your argument is still void - There's about 50-100 people that actually posted their usage , if not less. How can you set a margin on the performance based on their replies if :
1. You don't even know how big their consumer base is?
2. You don't know how many people are experiencing problems?

In a typical case where all the facts are available , one would weigh each up and come to a conclusion , but just because a handfull of people (including myself) are satisfied with the product , does not mean everyone is getting the same service. Thats where QoS comes in. Currently MWEB is Unstable is various aspects - and thats a fact.

I'm more than happy with my MWEB account , but I'm not stupid enough to go and say its perfect - its actually horrible , its just a good kind of horrible when compared to a capped account from 3months ago.

Neither am I "stupid enough" to claim it is perfect. How do you explain the fact that X users on MWeb pull 400+GB per month, while Y users claim it is impossible to browse the web and/or download anything? Could this possibly be something related to the quality of the Telkom lines and/or installation, local exchanges, router hardware, etc.

If it is EXCLUSIVELY an MWeb issue, then what would that issue be? Selective throttling of individual users? Based on what? Random throttling of users in specific areas? Based on what? I'm very interested to know the CAUSE of the poor service MWeb is accused of delivering to some, but not to others.