UUnet ping times THIS high?

IS currently has a bussiness UNcapped offering, but you need to get a router from them and it costs over R1000 a month.
 
I want the network to be configured so that I get my fair share of available bandwidth.
Is that really so hard?
Why does it seem as though nobody can provide this?
It should not make a difference if somebody else is running at 100% utilisation, I should also be able to run at 100% utilisation.
I don't see why this is not true.
 
Stoke you will only occasionally have 100% of the bandwidth due to contension...I'm not going to open this can again but to put it bluntly if you want 100% bandwidth 100% of the time you need to fork out for a diginet line... that is why they exist to give the end user 100% of their bandwidth. However I do believe that if managed correctly you should always get between 50%-90% of your bandwidth and the current ping spikes should not happen.

Regards
Hellhound a.k.a Cerberus
 
Aaaw cmon hellhound - The ISP should buy at least enough bandwidth so that 50% of their users working at 100% utilisation will work. (1:2 ratio)
Well - the least the ISP could do is make these figures visible to us.

And - the diginet line will hit contention at some point, probablee SAIX, so a diginet line will not even be able to provide 1:1.

Anyways - point taken, swallowed, chewed and it does not taste all that good.
 
LaRoosTa said:
Is it a coincidense that since www.allyoucaneat.com started advertising, this terrible lag started too?

I've heard of people downloading as much as 240gig a month.

Maybe Uncapped is a bit out of reach for UUNet at this early stage. Could I suggest that UUNet should have a 30gig-50gig cap? That way we could distinguish the users from the abusers. I'd rather have a cap with a good ping, than a this.
Click to expand...
Spot on LaRoosta.
I don't think any ISP in this country can really accomodate the burden of an uncapped offering.
I think there are three main reasons for this:
1.) Demand for more bandwidth has become badly pent-up due to current capping story.
Whenever any service has debuted with uncapped offers (early Sentech, current iBurst, UUNET uncapped etc), these services get abused into the ground by the early adopters/HEAVY downloaders (I'm talking in excess of 100gb per month). There's a prevailing "cash in while there's no cap" mentality amongst broadband users in this country.

2.) Piracy/criminal activity is practically a South African pasttime. I'd estimate that more than half of all downloads over any SA broadband conneciton is illegal. Add to this the corruption that occurs within broadband companies (eg. the Sentech insiders that abused the bandwidth, the recurring Telkom bandwidth theft from ADSL user), and once again you have a strong reason for the current abusive behaivior of SA broadbanders.

3.) There simply isnt enough affordable bandwidth.
Contentions have got to be high for an ISP to break even thanks to Telkom's outrageous pricing of SAT3 circuits. The contentions are almost always based on "reasonable" use, so usually the presence of even a few abusers will kill everyone else's service.

So I have to agree with laRoosta on capping.
UUNET should consider taking a step back and rather launch 10GB, 20GB and 30GB accounts at prices that compete directly with the current 3GB crap we get from Telkom. Lets follow some speculative logic:

Uncapped UUNET is R560 (UUNET price to dealers). Say acceptable use is considered as 40GB, and basic account/admin/router costs (irrespective of data volume) is R100.
Then surely UUNET could afford to offer:
10GB @ (460/4 + 100) = R215
20GB @ (460/2 + 100) = R330
30GB @ (460/4*3 + 100) = R445

Hell from my position, I think UUNET could even launch an 6GB account for the same pricing as the current Telkom 3GB shaped account, and make a killing.
 
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And maybe even a comparative unshapped service for gamers. Maybe with a smaller cap but consistently low latency :cool:
 
lewstherin said:
Spot on LaRoosta.
I don't think any ISP in this country can really accomodate the burden of an uncapped offering.
.
Click to expand...

<snip> Good post LaRoosta and fairly sound reasoning. Let me try explain the rationalisation behind uncapped.

Firstly the "heavy users" are often the techies, IT okes who also do consulting, word of mouth advertising. These are by far the hardest people to impress and win mindshare from though they are definately worth pleasing. You generally make a loss on these clients and they tend to be early adopters.

Initially uncapped offerings will make a loss because of said early adopters (above), once the network starts filling up with more business orientated users etc it evens out. Business like uncapped because its known quantity and there are no additional fee's or additional bandwidth managment worries.

Also I reckon once you give someone "no limits" the desire to just max the connection 24x7 goes away.
 
Pings are actually heavily shaped, hence the very bad response times. As Sybawoods stated, this isnt (and never was) really a gaming product, so I guess its no wonder it doesnt work very well with gaming.

The upgrade has taken place and browsing is actually very nice and zippy. All the staff over here at Web Africa are actually using our uncapped for browsing/mail etc right now.
 
Was just thinking anyone know how to do a "TCP ping" on a certain port? That would actually be the only accurate way to gauge the service speeds due to the shaping.
 
I think UUNet should provide different packages. I would deffinately like to see a "Gamers" account capped at 6-10gig no shaping whatsoever. Imaginet have/had something similar with ISDN, where you'd dial Grahamstown directly and get a 250-300 ping internationally (But local pings weren't that great then).

wamatt, based on what I've read, I've come to the conclusion that it is the businesses affecting UUNet and thats why weekends are 'reasonable' compared to weekdays.

There is also a rumour that UUNet might be upgrading again within 2 - 3 weeks. I'm holding my thumbs.
 
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What is a Gamers Package?

A LOW LATENCY dedicated "channel" to a central point in USA and EUROPE <EDIT> and SOUTH AFRICA of course </EDIT>.
Throughput = A garauntee'd throughput per user of around 15K bits per second.
Latency = 220 ms max ROUND TRIP to that point.
Any port, no shaping.

Am I correct ?
 
stoke said:
What is a Gamers Package?

A LOW LATENCY dedicated "channel" to a central point in USA and EUROPE <EDIT> and SOUTH AFRICA of course </EDIT>.
Throughput = A garauntee'd throughput per user of around 15K bits per second.
Latency = 220 ms max ROUND TRIP to that point.
Any port, no shaping.

Am I correct ?
Click to expand...

I know its hellish pricey but has anyone tested gaming speeds on the Telkom 4G unshaped accounts as a point of comparison?
 
Source:http://www.mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?t=14078&page=2&pp=40&highlight=UNSHAPED+GAME+LATENCY
<b>new unshaped ADSL</b>
http://home.telkomsa.net/myhome/images/unshaped_07_june_530pm.jpg
- latency about 260ms to most of Europe
- zero packet loss
- about 350ms to USA

<b>old shaped ADSL</b>
http://home.telkomsa.net/myhome/images/shaped_07_june_530pm.jpg
- latency just under 400ms to most of Europe
- zero packet loss
- about 550ms to USA

<b>ISDN dialup</b>
http://home.telkomsa.net/myhome/images/isdn_07_june_530pm.jpg
- latency about 280ms to most of Europe
- zero packet loss
- about 400ms to USA

Looking for more ...
 
sybawoods said:
Thought I'd post some more feedback on unshaped ADSL for those interested. As you know, I posted some initial results, fights with TELKOM etc, when I first signed up for the service (http://www.myadsl.co.za/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=3172&whichpage=1).

About a month later, and after the initial disappointment, <b>apart from the costs</b>, I have to say that the service has been consistently reliable:

1. <b>Latency</b> is consistently better than shaped ADSL. Local pings (from Cape Town) to Jhb based servers are consistently in the high 20ms to low 30ms range - identical to shaped ADSL.

International latency is where the difference really kicks in - I ping all European servers in about the 250ms range. During peak hours in the middle of the day it's slightly higher by about 30-40ms. To the USA results seem to vary depending on whether I'm connecting to East Coast or West Coast servers. East coast servers are in about the 280ms range, while West Coast at about the 330ms range.

2. <b>Peer to peer</b> I'm not a heavy user of p2p applications, but I have done some random downloads now and again - and on each occasion downloads maxed out at about 450kbps. Again, this was tried at random times of the day and night, and I seemed to get identical performance. I have also tested Bit-torrent downloads over the last week, and that also maxed out consistently at 450kbps.

3. <b>Web browsing</b> can't notice any discernable difference other than during peak hours in the middle of the day when the unshaped account is noticably quicker. In the evenings, performance appears identical.

Last, but not least, I made some cryptic hints about this in other posts for fear of Telkom picking this up, but what the hell... I have no real need for it so if things change tomorrow at least I'll know how closely they monitor these forums [;)]. My i.p address has been static since they put me on the correct unshaped i.p. range about 2 days after initial sign up. Their may well be a logical explanation for this e.g. maybe there are so few unshaped ADSL users ?. I have disconnected, reconnected, reset my modem etc - but the address has remained consistent. I check it every day, and after every disconnection and it hasn't changed at all - yet!

I have not needed to use my ISDN line at all since being on the unshaped service, and my total bandidth usage as at today is 2.8 gigs. As you may know, the unshaped account has a 4 gig cap, so I am still comfortably within the limit without sacrificing any of my usage habits. The downside is that you are <b>completely disconnected</b> from the network when you cross the 4 gig limit. I have no plans to test that yet [}:)], but do have access to a family member's shaped ADSL account should that happen [:)]
Click to expand...

Pretty comprehensive.
 
Just to echo the feedback above for anyone interested - unshaped ADSL still giving excellent gaming performance locally and internationally. Sub 20ms to local game servers, and about 200-250ms to most international servers. Extremely reliable. P2P / Torrent downloads max out more often than not, and the service is perfectly usable at all times of the day and night.

Pity the price sucks so badly, but this is the ADSL everyone should have, and what we all had initally when ADSL was first released.

I can partly justify since I do on-line trading on sports-betting exchanges as a small side-line. Prices come through in real time, and opportunities present themselves for a few seconds. Being on a connection with latency of 2000-3000ms lterally costs you money.
 
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waroop said:
Was just thinking anyone know how to do a "TCP ping" on a certain port? That would actually be the only accurate way to gauge the service speeds due to the shaping.
Click to expand...

This is a perl script that returns the connect time and total time to get a single url. It is normaly used with a tool called cricket to graph the results over time. Can be used as a kind of tcp-ping for port 80.

test-url script:
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/*checkout*/cricket/cricket/util/test-url?rev=1.1.1.1

Cricket project details:
http://cricket.sourceforge.net/
 
The unshapped account sounds super duper if you can justify the extra R600/month over and above the other charges :eek: . How many gamers out there are able to afford it?

I was thinking maybe a package from one of the other providers for around the same price as the uncapped offerings but with a cap, offering lower ping times. :D
 
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