Uncapped ADSL: What you should ask your ISP

The problem is not many SA isps will give you this information, and people with certain isp accounts have varying results, seems to be a lottery.
 
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good luck getting any isp in RSA to give you their contention ratio
 
Just a thought, if ISP's like Afrihost, et al are prepared to let users of their 384 uncapped service download up to 30GB before throttling them, and only charge (what is it?) R219 a month for that, WHY can't those of us on 4096 lines get 30GB's for the same money?
 
I'm quite happy with my Uncapped Express+ Account. It gives me exactly what I want. But then it doesn't have all that other crap that comes with the cheaper uncapped accounts (which in my opinion are not really uncapped accounts, but a scam on the part of the ISPs to hook in more clients). But any fool could have figured that out going in just by reading the usage policies.
 
Garyvdh said:
I'm quite happy with my Uncapped Express+ Account. It gives me exactly what I want. But then it doesn't have all that other crap that comes with the cheaper uncapped accounts (which in my opinion are not really uncapped accounts, but a scam on the part of the ISPs to hook in more clients). But any fool could have figured that out going in just by reading the usage policies.
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I'm with Mweb and am quite happy, suits my needs. Wouldn't call it a scam, but I'm on 384k so I guess it's hard to f that up :D
 
rsd said:
I'm with Mweb and am quite happy, suits my needs. Wouldn't call it a scam, but I'm on 384k so I guess it's hard to f that up :D
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I am happy with my afrihost uncapped 512k .... I just did 10Gigs in 6 days. I watch TV via Internet... I download more than I stream obviously and I am at work weekdays daytime, when speeds are slow, so it doesnt affect me.
 
rpm said:
Uncapped ADSL: What you should know

Numerous uncapped ADSL subscribers have expressed unhappiness about shaping, throttling and fair use policies. Here is what you should know.
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"Shaping (aka port priotitization)

Most uncapped ADSL accounts are shaped during business hours, which means that certain traffic (typically HTTP, SMTP and FTP) are given priority over other traffic (typically torrents and other P2P protocols).

Here ISPs aim to make sure that most subscribers experience good speeds and latency when engaging in standard online activities like web surfing, online banking or checking email during periods when bandwidth usage is at its highest." - Mweb and other ISP's made mention that P2P and Torrents would be shaped, fair enough, but now they are shaping Hotfile and Rapidshare downloads too because they seemingly didnt realise that a lot of people use this kind of service.

"Throttling

Throttling (bandwidth throttling) limits the speed of a certain connection. Many local ISPs start throttling – hence limiting speed of connectivity – of uncapped ADSL subscribers who exceed a certain monthly usage limit. " - Now I pay for a 4MB "uncapped" service, but if I download too much i'm going to get punished for it?
 
"Here is a list of things to ask an uncapped ADSL provider before putting pen to paper."

That is not a link to "list of things to ask" but a link to a dicussion area of "Threads 1 to 20 of 16877" !
 
The list is below it, the link is a general adsl dicussion
 
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Pixual said:
Just a thought, if ISP's like Afrihost, et al are prepared to let users of their 384 uncapped service download up to 30GB before throttling them, and only charge (what is it?) R219 a month for that, WHY can't those of us on 4096 lines get 30GB's for the same money?
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I suspect that is because most 384k users will not actually reach 30 GB a month. In other words, they can sell those customers 30 GB at that rate, but the typical user will use less than 10 GB (for example). Give those same users a 4 Mb line, and they are sure to use more, hence less cross-subsidization, so they have to charge more ....
 
Can myBB do a news article comparing the different shaping / throttling for each of the main ISP's who offer an uncapped service?
 
Technically there are an almost infinite number of factors that influence ADSL quality, and many of them change dynamically.

For example the contention ratio varies with time of day, and the constant influx of new subscribers. Contention ratio also varies along the chain from DSLAM/exchange, as well being for the ISP as a whole.

A more remote factor is the international peer used by your ISP. SEACOM is merely a gateway to a variety of routes, some of which may be more congested than others. For example MWeb uses CogentCo, Interoute, etc on SEACOM, and Level3, etc on SAT-3 routes.
 
Just hit 18GB and 10GB of that is from Revision3, and 5GB worth of patches for WoW and Guild Wars
 
1. Contention Ratio
2. Fair Use Policy/Acceptable Use Policy
3. Shaping (aka port priotitization)
4. Throttling
5. International bandwidth provisioning
6. Rolling thresholds
7. Upstream bandwidth provider

Has anybody ever received a response on the above questions, from a local ISP when applying for an uncapped product?
 
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