UUNet uncapped worst ADSL ever?

B

Brotund

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For anyone considering UUNET uncapped, don't. I've had it since it started and quite frankly its the worst ADSL service yet. Ping times are up there with War and Peace, except that unlike the Telkom account this affects local bandwidth too. Its not initially easy to put your finger on what's wrong because of the shaping they do. Sometimes, you'll connect to your internet bank and everything's flying until you jump over to HTTPS and then you're getting timeouts. All in all its most unpleasant.

IMAP was broken for half the time and don't even think of trying to use and VPN software. All this for only more R720!

We're told this is because of bandwidth problem between telkom DSLAM and UUNET. This line is grossly oversubscribed and yet they continue to sign up new members! That's like paying to use a toll road that's not yet built - gutter ethics. UUNet claim that Telkom have delayed their upgrades but this is not good enough; if they really care they should stop adding new members to the already overburdened network.

I'm sure it will improve at some point, but currently UUNET is not the panacea of corporate goodness everyone was hoping for. Currently, they're worse than Telkom.

B
 
Heard through the grape vine it will be upgraded on Sunday ... :) Just heard we'll have to wait and see.
 
On Monday browsing was good and downloads were reasonable, but last night it was impossible to do anything. Pings were as high as 3000+ locally (if it didn't time-out), browsing kept timing out and downloads weren't even responding.

And now this morning I recieved a spam mail from : http://www.ew.co.za/index.php?cmd=adsl - its despicable. Money talks, bull$h!t walks.
 
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It seems a lot of companies are jumping onto this nocap ADSL and catching out people left right and center with the promise of an uncapped service.

Can anyone give a reliable indication of exactly who controls the ADSL packages sold to ISP's ?

As far as I'm aware, only Telkom / Saix can sell ADSL packages to ISP's ?

This would mean that the only way these uncapped services could possibly work and be profitable would be to up the contention ratio, or actually, to not even have a set ratio.

Therefore you could have 100 people sharing a 512k line and if 20 try to access it at the same time - bam, there goes the bandwidth.

Am I talking BS here ? - someone let me know if I am, because I sure as hell can't see how else these ISP's can offer an uncapped service and make a profit ...
 
Arn't Telkom fscking UUNET over on a link upgrade?

Telkom control the backbone so they can nuke competitors offerings at will.
 
bb_matt, UUNet's system is completely their own, just like SAIX connects to the BRAS, so too does UUNet (in the same way, though with less bandwidth to do so due to cost). So it's completely separate from the SAIX/Telkom accounts. If I understand correctly, IS is doing this as well with their ISDSL package (I may be wrong on that point though). The reason why not all the ISP's except the major ones are doing it is because the diginet link from the BRAS to the ISP is extremely expensive (WebAfrica claims something along the lines of R100K for 10Mb) and therefore these more major ISP's are capable of cross-subsidizing the costs (with a bit of a hit to their overall profit).
 
Just to amend something here, but I'll put it as a separate post, that's probably what your R680 ADSL rental or whatever goes towards, the bandwidth required to connect SAIX to the BRAS (over the diginet lines), that's why lower bandwidth solutions have lower line rentals and higher bandwidth solutions have higher bandwidth rentals, clearly you're paying for the speed you'll be using on that diginet line.

But here's the interesting part, what happens if I switch to UUNet, does UUNet now get some of that R680pm that SAIX was getting? Hell no, it still goes directly to SAIX even though I'm no longer using any of that bandwidth, and now I also have UUNet charging me R714pm (it's not rocket science to see why the UUNet account costs more than R680pm, they have to pay for that Diginet bandwidth AND account out of that money).

Frankly, if I'm using another network (ie. something completely separate from the SAIX network) I want that portion of money that was going to go to SAIX to go to whatever ISP I'm using. SAIX should not be getting any of my money, NONE of it, because I'm not using their services at all... that's tantamount to theft, they take my money (they take it twice in fact, once on the line rental and again from uunet) and don't actually provide me anything for it.
 
Since this moring up to now, there was no connection at all. I am really getting upset for the price I am paying it getting worst and worst....
It looks to me, that UUNET selling the bear before the shot him..(German Expression)
 
My connection has been running about the same that it's been running for the past week during the afternoon... it's been usable, but it's not what I would call "good" and certainly not what I would call "512K ADSL/Broadband". It's unreliable at best and unusable at worst - stuff like video conferencing is absolutely impossible after 9AM and only really works again at about 6PM. When I can reliably form a video connection at any time of the day (and speedily at that, I don't want to have to wait 2 minutes for it to connect and hold my thumbs hoping that it'll work) and get reasonable pings to services such as IRC (sub-1 second pings please) and reasonable pings to WoW (is 600-800ms far too much to ask? hell no... nowhere in the world is 600ms considered even NEAR good and here it's considered "unattainable"... bull****).
 
agreed. huge screw up from uunet's side :(

hate them more than i hate telkom

wish i could get allyoucaneat, but they gave me so much **** just to get signed up that i just left it.
 
Last time i checked the UUNET datacentre in Cape Town, the only had a 5Mb/s line for all ADSL accounts. With all the sign-ups, this is obviously getting overloaded..
 
<pimpmode> We still have some spots on nukecap </pimpmode>

hehe
 
I wouldn't go too overboard screaming and shouting at UUNet, from what I understand they are working towards upgrading their network, it's merely a matter of time. As we all know, Telkom is notoriously lax when it comes to doing any form of work, so it's perfectly believable that UUNet's upgrades have been held up by them.

They're not Telkom/SAIX, they cannot just throw bandwidth in when they need it at the drop of a hat (do you think SAIX has to wait even a few days for an "order to be processed" for diginet installation, HAHA, not a chance, they get it the instant they want it... hell, they provide it!).

I'm still hopeful that UUNet will be able to sort out their ADSL offering and make it competitive (perhaps not in price, but definitely in what the package offers in the way of being fast and uncapped), UUNet isn't a small company, in fact, they're a global company, so it's not like they have to worry too much about investing money into bandwidth (they do have a reasonable amount of money lying around just for these kinds of eventualities - entering into emerging markets, etc.). Even if at the moment they make a loss on their ADSL accounts (bandwidth costs, etc.) I believe their greater intention is to win the business market over and attract them away from Telkom, that way their bandwidth becomes more affordable (contention, etc.) to them. The more users they have, the more affordable their ability to provide service becomes - they know this, they've already had ample experience in this in the US market.

At the moment the service is terrible, but then again UUNet is still in the implementation/testing phase and it's all about how well they can work on improving their service (perhaps through additional packages - though I would say they should stick with their #1 selling point for businesses, and that is the uncapped nature of the line), so lets not count them out JUST yet.
 
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At the moment the service is terrible, but then again UUNet is still in the implementation/testing phase
Click to expand...

I thought testing was over ages ago? It's still rediculous how they can charge the amount they do, and not offer what they advertise.
 
UUNET has been caught unexpected by the huge amount of subscriptions and an abuse by a reseller from Port Elisabeth. This will be sorted out during the following days. A huge upgrade is also in the pipeline...unfortunately Telkom is needed for that. *gg*
I know UUNET as a very good and respected provider already during my time in Swaziland in 1997. (by modem).The are not fooling us around like other providers. They have a reputation to loose.
 
"Last time i checked the UUNET datacentre in Cape Town, the only had a 5Mb/s line for all ADSL accounts. With all the sign-ups, this is obviously getting overloaded.."

K, where did you thumb suck that from?
The datacentre is in Johannesburg, my Boss was standing in it Yesterday.
And they have 3, yes 3, 155mbps ATM links. And there international bandwidth is a bit more the 5 Mb.

Secondly, UUNET has a policy that none of there links are ever over 70% average usage. If a links becomes "congested" they upgrade it. Telkom is being a right pain at the moment and giving all it's peering link partners crap about upgrading lines.
This is crap on Telkoms side not UUNET. A lot of people are complaining about SAIX ADSL problems at the moment.
 
I will agree with Crash about their datacenter, I went and visited them last year (admittedly a while back) at their datacenter in CPT, and I must say, they are sitting on about as much bandwidth as anyone could ever need. Whether their allocation is indeed that low I cannot say (though I find it HIGHLY unlikely), but yeah, this is more a Telkom/SAIX issue than a UUNet one.
 
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