Vodacom Problems: Slow Throughput, trying to Connect, DNS, High Latency

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3G Shedding

threegee said:
Could finally connect again to 3G around 8:30 pm ... so that was a 3 hour outage. Add to that the one from last night which lasted 10 hours ..... 13 hours outage in one day .... not so nice ... actually totally unacceptable. But nou ja.
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lets call it 3G Shedding. Just like Eskom there is not enough bandwidth on vodacom's core network for all the users lets just say that. so they have 3G Shedding. 9:00PM seems to be Vryheid standard time. Ha Ha
 
And this morning another problem has reared it's head. A problem with Vodacom's caching appliance forcing ACTIVE FTP connections into PASSIVE mode.

This same problem occurred several months ago and took about 3-4 weeks for Vodacom to fix. The problem is absolutely on Vodacom's side as I have tested from 3 external networks and I am able to FTP perfectly to my servers. From Vodacom's network .... NOT A CHANCE. Almost every server I FTP to runs in ACTIVE mode, in other words connections only allowed on Port 20 and 21.

We continually seem to go from one problem to the next.

Unamused :(
 
:mad:

I have been reading this forum with interest over the last year or so, reading and not posting, because I felt that posting had no effect other than to make the person posting feel better because they had an avenue to direct their frustration and make it known. Nothing ever changed, post after post the same content and general complaint, yet the problems have continued all along. But, I must today also add my fice cents worth, because I too am absolutely "GATVOL" now!!!

I use both Vodacom's prepaid data bundles and have a contract 1 gig bundle as well. When the contract bundle is finished then I move over to prepaid until the month starts again. We all know that bundles dont roll over, I dont want to go near that whole debate right now, BUT, I REALLY, HONESTLY, AND TRULY AM SO SICK AND TIRED OF THE CONSTANT DOWN TIME EXPERIENCED ON THE VODACOM DATA NETWORK!!! I am in business myself, and I tell you something, if I charge my clients an additional fee, over and above what they are paying for the standard services, for an enhanced service, I had better deliver or else I will no longer be in business. Vodacom offers the 3.6 m/s service at an added cost of R 49.00 per month or something like that and we, the users of that service, then expect value for money! BUT, alas, that service is but a pipe dream, because not only are you lucky to even have a connection to the network, but when you do, even on the additional cost 3.6 m/s service, the speeds are so shockingly slow (around 250 kb/s, yes thats bits not Bytes, and only if you are lucky enough to actually get onto the network) that other networks EDGE service is actually faster!! Come on chaps, what's up? Why the constant problems, constant down network, constant slow speeds?? Now and then yes, its works like a charm, but that is the exception and honestly not the rule!! Time and time again a download is stopped and has to be started again, signal just goes away, latency, etc etc etc. The rule should be quick and reliable service, taking into account the additional so-called value added service that we are PAYING extra for, with the exception being down time every now and then.

ITS TIME THAT SOMEONE PULLED A FINGER OUT OF SOMEWHERE AND STARTED DOING SOMETHING ABOUT ALL OF THIS NOW! POST AFTER POST, COMPLAINT AFTER COMPLAINT FROM FORUMITES ALL OVER THE COUNTRY, MONTH IN AND MONTH OUT, FOR SUCH A LONG TIME NOW, YET NOTHING CHANGES, ITS ALL THE SAME, CRAP SERVICE, UNRELIABLE CONNECTIONS AND AT A PRICE THAT MOST OF THE CIVILIZED WORLD LAUGHS AT!

WHAT DO WE NEED TO DO? START A CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT AS THEY DID WITH HTC? WHEN IS THIS EVER GOING TO GET BETTER?

Time to start playing the game now Vodacom, many companies have forgotten about their bread and butter, the single consumer, people like thos of us on this forum, and most of those companies are no longer around!
 
Oh, and just by the way and to prove the point that I am trying to make, it took, 5 attempts just to post that! After disconnecting and reconnecting umpteen times, I eventually took an MTN sim card and presto, I could connect and post! Great hey?
 
ic I personally do not have the patience to speak to 155 anymore, I have other avenues I pursue like contacting V3G and engineers for this area directly. You try explaining my passive FTP issue to the people on 155 .... trust me I went through that before one sure fire way to have a sense of humour failure. I have better things to do than to be spoken to like I am a windoze dummy. The biggest problems are with the CORE of Vodacom, these problems are ongoing and repeating, I doubt the 155 operators are even allowed to speak to the guys at CORE level.
 
ic said:
I could ask you why both of your posts have the exact same Vodacom IP address, but let's concentrate on something more constructive - have you reported all your problems to 155 or [email protected]? - if you have, you would know from reading posts in this forum for the last year that v3g often asks for these reference numbers and is able to motivate getting regional network engineers to go to one's premises for a site visit to find out where the problem is...
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Mmmm, good question, maybe its because of the fact that between the trying countless times to reconnect, no wait cancel that, to actually connect, and having to use different methods to do so, not only to access the forum, but the internet in general, I was confused as to which connection eventually worked!! And that is the honest truth of the matter, I know what you are insinuating and it is not so.

As for the contacting of 155 and emails etc, well I gave that up as a joke, and a lost cause very long ago. If I get told one more time to check my modem settings, or to make sure that I have the correct intialization strings, I will literally explode!

Question that BEGS asking though, is this: Is it not in itself an indication of a major problem and unacceptable situation that we, the customers, the users of a service that we pay for, and quite a princely sum every month, HAVE TO MAKE SURE THAT WE LOG CALLS, KEEP RECORDS OF E-MAILS AND CONSTANTLY MAKE SURE THAT WE ARE REPORTING ERRORS, just to make sure that we actually have the service that we are paying for? Come on, that surely does not and cannot ring true or be acceptable to anyone! The problem is that the situation and the problems that we, the paying customers are continuosly experiencing, have become such a norm, that is acceptable and recommended that we now have to have the burden of having to do this. It really should not be necessary to do all of that, get reference numbers, just to post those here so that V3G can then put pressure on regional techies to try and sort the problem out. I know that this is done, and to great effect and I know that a large number of users have been assisted in this way, and I am sure that they are all very greatfull! V3g has assisted me with a number of issues as well and I personally think that he is fantastic, BUT, should that be the way that things need to be done just to ensure that we have the service we are paying for? If the powers that be, at the service provider that we fork over our money to on a monthly basis have not YET got the message, from the thousands upon thousands of e-mails and calls that they have no doubtedly already received over the past years, then when will they? How long will we have to report to 155, send e-mails, before we get a reliable service? Not asking for a cheaper service, not for the best speeds in the world, just a reliable one! Too much to ask?
 
Dolby said:
Um. There is only so much time I can be patient for? I'm blocked from 70% of sites at work and when I get home, I look forward to getting mail, browsing the odd site, Internet banking or anything really.

For the past week though, the 3G seems to die just before I get home and stays dead. It's 2008 : I shouldn't need to worry about no access when I get home because of technical errors for days. I should connect and browse. AT worst, I can be down for an hour or two before being able to browse again.

I'm supposed to have 24hr high speed internet that I'm paying almost R500pm for. I'm entitled to get a little upset when I've needed to do all my Internet work at parents, brothers or friends connections over the past few days.

Think Vodacom will be patient if they don't get my payment at the end of the month? Or how about I pay the percentage that I could log on?
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I fully concur!!! One would think that someone, somewhere would get the message with post after post, thread after thread in this forum alone! But alas, we all have to wait in the 155 queue, and send e-mail to a faceless customer care box, just to have a reference number, when we cant even connect to send the mail in the first place!!!!!

Percentage payments, very good idea, even better would be free megs for everytime that you just logged on and started a download and the f'ing network went down, again!!!! Or better, extend the bundles cut off date by one day for each hour the network is not accessible!!!!!!Because atthe end of the 30 days, guess what? Your remaining data is GONE!!!! No concern shown for the fact that 20 out of the 30 days you couldn't even connect in the first place!!!
 
Was going well untill 20:05, when I got disconnected. I managed to get reconnected, but speed is down to 40kpbs down and 1kbps up. both 155 and 111 (data queries) are down, so I can't even log a fault :-(

I'm in Hilton in KZN.
 
GPRS browsing on my phone has been painfully slow over the last few days. I've tried both internet and internetvpn apns as well as with the proxy and without.

3g service has been yoyoing for a few days as well.
 
I believe the guys managed to trace a problem in KZN that would affect users sporadically. Let me check if they've resolved it or if not, where we stand.

Mitch's problem with FTP I'll pick up with him on e-mail. I wonder if the problem got re-introduced with the switch to legal IP's? We're bound to have missed some config somewhere in the cut-over.

While I fully appreciate any specific problems people have at any point, it's also important to remember that you're not going to get 500 000 people posting here every day that all's well.

In other words, logically the bulk of posts on service level here will be complaints. Same with HP and other sites. It's human nature.

Our 3G user base is now around the half-million mark with many times that number on GPRS. So even if 99% are happy at any given point in time, it still mean tens of thousands of people could be having problems. Obviously that's not the case, we maybe get 10's of complaints per day. So, that would imply the vast majority (between 3 and 5 nines) are OK.

That's not to say the specific problem is not important, of course it is. But to say the forum is filled up with post after post about problems is a bit of a obvious statement.

Just something to think about. ;)
 
vodacom3g said:
I believe the guys managed to trace a problem in KZN that would affect users sporadically. Let me check if they've resolved it or if not, where we stand.
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Thanks for the feedback. I did manage to get through to 155, but had very little luck. The connection oscilatted between runing smoothly and not even being able to download the speed test the whole night. The helpdesk were not able to log a fault, and promised that they would do so offline, as I had been holding for quite a while.


vodacom3g said:
In other words, logically the bulk of posts on service level here will be complaints. Same with HP and other sites. It's human nature.

Our 3G user base is now around the half-million mark with many times that number on GPRS. So even if 99% are happy at any given point in time, it still mean tens of thousands of people could be having problems. Obviously that's not the case, we maybe get 10's of complaints per day. So, that would imply the vast majority (between 3 and 5 nines) are OK.

That's not to say the specific problem is not important, of course it is. But to say the forum is filled up with post after post about problems is a bit of a obvious statement.

Just something to think about. ;)
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The title of this thread should be a clue that you're mostly going to see problem reports here too :)

The speed test thread often has someone or other bragging...
 
MIDRAND

vodacom3g said:
I see during the night there were (or still are) some srious power issues in Midrand. Not sure what the effect (if any) could be.
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FWIW The 3g service in Midrand was good last night and this morning. But here in Illovo I've had 3 very slow days, many disconnects, lots of down to GPRS. And even that was extremely slow (for GPRS)
In fact I'm going home now to Midrand to work
I'll email Voda customer care. To report, not complain

Cory

Illovo= Wanderers Stadium
Midrand= Randjesfontein (near St Saviours Church, or Teazers, depending on your bent)
 
Things are terribly slow this evening. Frequent page resets and intermittent DNS resolution issues.
 
Seconds after my post I could not resolve anything. Connected with IP but DNS says "nooooooooo". Back up after 20min <Sigh>.

After being disconnected twice in the IVR I got through to an agent a logged a fault.

Edit: Forgot to mention that I had exactly the same symptoms on my SO's iPhone. Which is also working again.
 
Last edited:
DNS resolution issues again last night between 9 & 10PM. PPDB, unrestricted APN.
 
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