Uncapped vs Capped ADSL

[jes]

Uncapped vs Capped ADSL

Do capped ADSL accounts offer better performance? ISPs explain what the difference is between their capped and uncapped ADSL products

 

[Rocket-Boy]

Ey?

Uncapped services can bring cost savings for low monthly usage, and is also seen as offering a better network performance than uncapped products.

 

[froot]

Ey? indeed. Surely Jes means Capped and uncapped, respectively?

 

[Skerminkel]

So they are all basically saying the same thing, except that some throttle uncapped and some don't. Except Vox. Smoke and mirrors stuff there.

 

[Totempole]

“Our capped ADSL products are generally not affected by shaping or throttling as usage is ‘managed’ by the product cap itself,” said Hershaw.

Generally? Generally?! Guess we know which capped accounts to avoid.

 

[Paul Hjul]

more amusingly:

“Our capped products have the least amount of shaping and bandwidth management across the shaped range and are best suited to users who value performance over volume of data. Our capped product performance is closely aligned to unshaped products,” said Hershaw.

in comparison to everybody else who spoke of an unshaped service outright on capped
except Telkom Internet who I think provide a shaped service as well but didn't comment

 

[McGuywer]

“Our objectives with all the Consumer Broadband solutions, including Satellite is to provide a decent sized high performance solution under the R600 per month all in price point.”

Anyone with links?

 

[Syphonx]

“Our capped products have the least amount of shaping and bandwidth management across the shaped range and are best suited to users who value performance over volume of data. Our capped product performance is closely aligned to unshaped products,” said Hershaw.

So mweb even shapes their capped accounts. If you could find a worse ISP it would be quite a feat.

 

[Tns]

So mweb even shapes their capped accounts. If you could find a worse ISP it would be quite a feat.

you mean beside telkom?

 

[Syphonx]

you mean beside telkom?

I don't like Telkom but they are offering double data on capped products or whatever the promo is, plus it seems their uncapped offerings are superior to mweb, and cheaper. I don't think Telkom Internet is the worst ISP anymore, mweb is.

 

[Paul Hjul]

you mean beside telkom?

Telkom Internet are definitely up there as among the best ISPs rather than the worst. Two ISPs I have no difficulty recommending is TI and Afrihost - they are also the two ISPs I use.

 

[TrueSeeker]

Meh... MWeb is not moving with the market. I've given them more than enough chance. Since my usage is well below 100GB per month I just initiated the process of going to Afrihost capped gold bundle. It will cut my internet bill including line rental by R250 (That's quite a bit) and I will get better speeds.

Unshaped+Unthrottled 10mbps (my line is capable)? Bring it on!

Free the internet!!!

 

[system32]

All ISP's

capped packages are never shaped and never throttled

The problem is that Telkom exchange / Back-haul / DSLAM's are overloaded.
On a 4Mbps ADSL, Telkom's contention ration can limit you to 0.2Mbps at the exchange / Back-haul / DSLAM.
0.2Mbps is not even fast enough to stream basic youtube.

I tried the capped, unshaped, never throttled packages.
Telkom exchange / back-haul / DSLAM slowed me down during peak times.
During off-peak I got 3.5Mbps, during peak I got 0.2Mbps

Thanks Telkom.

 

[Paul Hjul]

um no both MWEB and Telkom Internet shape their capped products -- they also dominate the market.

Telkom exchanges and backhaul needs reinvestment which needs to have a business case going - the ISPs can't come up with a business case to build their own network or even to fight for LLU using the facilities leasing regulations -- MWEB want it on a silver platter with clear harm to Telkom etc ... -- so any business case for Telkom needs to be based on a wholesale provider case. There is a history of Telkom trying to sweat the assets but the impairment changes that greatly and the settlement with the Comp Comm should open things up a lot.

I have a 4 meg line and even with exchange congestion I never get less than 2 meg service unless something goes wrong in which event Telkom refunds me.

 

[Pienats]

Interestingly enough, when I moved from MWeb to Afrihost a while back, MWeb tried to convince me to stay by saying they don't throttle at all.
Granted that was quite some time before their recent tough stance on "abusers", but now I'm so glad that I moved....

 

[Paul Hjul]

@Pienats and anybody else with evidence or dealings:
I would be most obliged if you could give me some details on incidents where MWEB specifically said that they do not throttle where a customer makes an inquiry - even if on a confidential basis to include in the escalation to ISPA next week.

 

[ranger]

um no both MWEB and Telkom Internet shape their capped products -- they also dominate the market.

'Shape' and 'throttle' are not precise enough here IMHO.

As far as I know, almost all consumer products from almost all ISPs are shaped. If they aren't shaped, they would have to be more expensive, or there would be congestion.

Maybe the implication of 'shaped' is 'protocol-based prioritisation' or 'protocol-based shaping'.

TI has specific unshaped products (where all the customer's traffic enjoys highest priority), and shaped capped products (where there is prioritisation of only a few protocols, such as DNS and gaming). Since the products were migrated from SAIX without product definition changes, P2P has lower priority for capped than other traffic. The product definitions are being changed, but thus far the focus from product management has been on 'new' functionality.

We will probably change the capped product definition so that P2P isn't deprioritised for customers not in soft-capped mode within the next month or so.

 

[Paul Hjul]

the implication is protocol based shaping and more importantly ISP planned shaping or throttling with the intent to impair certain usages (or users) in preference of others
if the idea was that there is no form of traffic shaping and a congestion free setup you are in a different league really - uncontended and "unlimited" (on uncapped) and "priority" is the sorts of descriptions I'd expect.

to be entirely honest I don't think getting to "unshaped" (in the sense of equal priority on P2P etc ...) should be a priority for TI even in the capped sphere partly because of the broad (non P2P using) consumer market involved and partly because well "new" functionality is where the competitive edge lies. For the broadest usage case if games and youtube work the customer is happy.

 

[Pienats]

@Pienats and anybody else with evidence or dealings:
I would be most obliged if you could give me some details on incidents where MWEB specifically said that they do not throttle where a customer makes an inquiry - even if on a confidential basis to include in the escalation to ISPA next week.

Hi Paul,

Unfortunately this was a couple of months ago during a phone conversation. If I remember correctly it was shortly after I canceled my account with them (MWeb), it was one of those "we want to know why you're leaving and how we can convince you to stay" calls. They basically tried to justify their higher price by implying that other providers throttle traffic in addition to shaping. At the time I did not experience any throttling with MWeb, but then again I didn't experience that with Afrihost either. I have, however, experienced shaping on both (which by the way wasn't much, if any, more on Afrihost than on MWeb), but I expected that and the shaping in both cases was reasonable.

I'm basing my throttling claim purely on the article, based on the fact that MWeb is the only ISP it would seem to actually admit to throttling now. I don't really consider myself a power user (our household typically averages around 50 GB per month), so I don't know if I would even actually have been affected by their recent tough stance.

All in all, I actually had a very good experience with MWeb while I was still using them as my ISP. My only motivation for moving to Afrihost was price.