Web Africa ADSL general feedback

[Seeyou]

Dude. Don't know what to say. Wish I could alleviate some of your pain. BTW I do keep an AH capped account as backup, I do find that AH throughput speed is higher at times, and at times I do use AH for downloading and uploading. But when it comes to international streaming, and for me that would be stock market data, I find WA to have consistent international latency even when throughput speed drops, which AH doesn't consistently have on the MTN international backbone. Hence WA works for me - no glitches when buying and selling on the markets.

Absolutely. I don't dispute the fact that IS accounts have great latency and great streaming performance. But I've found lately I do more downloading than streaming, and often still have some downloading to do that didn't finish in the download plus hours. Not being able to download at all during office hours when this happens is a deal breaker for me.

I've found Vox fat pipe to have similar and sometimes superior latency / streaming performance to WA, and far, far superior general browsing. My plan is to buy the same amount of gigs I currently utilise at WA, one third from Vox for daytime, and two thirds from AH for after hours. I think I'll be far more satisfied with that combination, albeit with the hassle of changing accounts.

 

[Jimmy]

Does Vox have a trial account I can test?

 

[Chris_H]

Does Vox have a trial account I can test?

lol?

 

[AthenianOwl]

Today I ordered a WA Business account and it was fine until tonight. Everything's slow as ****. P2P is being shaped hard. What did I do to deserve this crap performance??!! I still have 5 stars! My usage today is over 1gb.

Now I'm downloading a torrent at 220kB/s on my 2Mbps line which is fantastic as ****............................................................ this is on my spare WA Capped account. I literally jumped out of the fire (AH) into a frying pan (WA).



FIX THIS, WA!

 

[m0zy]

Today I ordered a WA Business account and it was fine until tonight. Everything's slow as ****. P2P is being shaped hard. What did I do to deserve this crap performance??!! I still have 5 stars! My usage today is over 1gb.

Now I'm downloading a torrent at 220kB/s on my 2Mbps line which is fantastic as ****............................................................ this is on my spare WA Capped account. I literally jumped out of the fire (AH) into a frying pan (WA).

View attachment 134299

FIX THIS, WA!

Based on your signature about Afrihost:
The grass is greener on the other side!? :twisted:

 

[AthenianOwl]

Based on your signature about Afrihost:
The grass is greener on the other side!? :twisted:

I need a hug now

 

[m0zy]

I need a hug now

I would send you one but don't think you have the bandwidth to download it

 

[Fulton17]

I have just checked my usage stats and see that my DL that ran this morning in DL+ time was actually offset against yesterday's usage (DL 2 1/2 gigs between 00:01 and 01:00 but - as per WA stats - was actually allocated to yesterday at 23:00 to 23:59 slot so I lost 2 1/2 gigs of anytime cap)

Just a suggestion if you are on a capped account to check your stats.

I have emailed support so hopefully will be sorted out but this really should not happen

 

[Jim West]

I have just checked my usage stats and see that my DL that ran this morning in DL+ time was actually offset against yesterday's usage (DL 2 1/2 gigs between 00:01 and 01:00 but - as per WA stats - was actually allocated to yesterday at 23:00 to 23:59 slot so I lost 2 1/2 gigs of anytime cap)

Just a suggestion if you are on a capped account to check your stats.

I have emailed support so hopefully will be sorted out but this really should not happen

Thanks for the heads up!

 

[Slip]

My experience with the WebAfrica Live chat today. 20 minutes later and no answer to my question.

Your Question: If I sign up for your capped 240GB account today will I be billed a pro rata amount? What will it be?
Please wait and one of our operators will be with you shortly.
You are now chatting with Chantal Botha (Technical Support Advisor - Hosting) - Sales
12:40Chantal Botha: Hello, How may I assist you?
12:40Paul: Hi. If I sign up for your capped 240GB account today will I be billed a pro rata amount? What will it be?
12:42Chantal Botha: Hi Paul, that is correct
12:42Chantal Botha: you will be billed pro rata
12:43Paul: and is the data cap also pro rated?
12:46Chantal Botha: you have a choice to activate the data with the line, or activate the data while the line gets transferred. To answer your question, you will be billed pro rata if you activate the data.
12:46Paul: I dont want to transfer my line across.
12:47Paul: I want to know if all the data will be available is I sign up today and what pro rata amount I would be billed?
12:50Paul: Chantal are you there?
12:53Paul: This seems to be taking quite long.......
12:58Paul: ?
Chantal Botha has left the conversation.
Click here to leave a message.
The conversation has ended.
Click here to take a short survey about this live chat.

 

[Seeyou]

I'm amazed someone actually answered your Live chat request. Back when I was trying to sort out hosting issues, I think I got hold of someone maybe once out of 15 tries on Live chat.

Also - I'm pretty sure the service rep was talking crap. AFAIK, they do not prorate capped accounts, because there's nothing to prorate. You're buying gigs, and you either use them before month end, or you don't. Either way, they charge you the full amount. It's my understanding only uncapped accounts are prorated.

 

[Webafrica Helper]

I just want to compliment WA on the improvement in their telephone support times. I'm talking specifically about how long it takes for support to answer the phone.

Have you made changes in the last 2/3 months WA, or have i just been lucky ?

Thanks for the feedback Maumau. There have been improvements on our support side so we're happy to hear that it has improved.

I'm not too sure what issues and stuff people are experiencing, but I've just switched from another ISP (Axxess) to Webafrica. I'm a pretty big gamer, and game mostly on the North American servers, which yes the latency is higher, but eh. Lately, all routes to NA on axxess have become bogged down or slow with massive packet loss. I sent a ticket, to which they said it was my line blah blah. Well, I decided to switch to WA uncapped. 2Mbps connection as I wanted to test and I'm really impressed! Lowest Latency I've had to any North American based game! And I see that they have a steam server hosted as well, which I am downloading from ATM. Haven't gotten anything less than 240Kpbs (4mb ADSL line)

Latency I used to have: 313Avg, 330 when Network was busy, 310 when quiet
Latency I get now: 290Avg, 310 During Busy times. 310 Max so far

Also line jitter and packet loss are virtually nothing, so its really really good!

Thanks for the feedback and great news that our account is performing well

 

[Webafrica Helper]

Just trying out the Web Africa free 2Gig account and it seems as though International stream speeds are the same as my AH business. They both slow as hell when viewing in 720p on Youtube and medium quality buffers on Twitch. I'm on a 4meg line.

This is what I get on a 4meg line...

Its using the 1Gig trial account

Hi 50-Saint,

Could you provide us with a trace route (local and international) as that speed on a 4mbs line is a bit low and it should be close to full line speed as possible.

 

[Webafrica Helper]

Hi
Im on a 10Mb Business Uncapped account which has performed flawlessly up to now.
Line speeds are good when I test them.
Currently on 280 Gb for the month and 3 stars.
The line is just so badly shaped atm its impossible to download anything even during download plus hours and the streaming is very erratic.
If I moved to a capped line - would you guys stop doing this?

Hi
I'm in the eastern cape. Streaming was as good as always today. Line speeds as well. The only issue I'm having is with downloads from 12-6. I used to average around 1MB/s - basically non-existent for the last three days. I called technical support- was told that nntp traffic is a best effort service-someone was gonna look into it and call me back on Monday.

Hi Gopes,

The capped accounts do not get impacted by throttling so you should get full performance during the day but P2P/NNTP traffic will be shaped during the day and resume to normal after 5pm on all Home accounts.

Download plus has no shaping attached to it at all so your torrents should be flying but of course this is dependent on the torrent you chose.

+1 I sent them traceroute results, timeouts on some of their vlan hops. After hours very slow. Tested with Telkom guest account - no issues. I just get the same 3 star nonsense reply. They used to be good.. looks like they are going down the same round as AH.

Could you PM me your account details so I can get our team to assist.

 

[Webafrica Helper]

Congrats WA on breaking records every day!

89K/sec NNTP downloads on a 20mbps line. Truly groundbreaking.

EDIT: I should mention this is the capped product. I feel for your uncapped users.

Very recent, and no parts missing. If WA are shaping based on usage, on CAPPED accounts, then I honestly have no words.

I think it's pretty ridiculous that a capped account, where I'm paying for every gig, is shaped more heavily than a business uncapped account, which is "unlimited". I could understand some shaping during the day, but this is literally less than 1/20th of line speed. They don't even offer business uncapped 20mbps, and I'm sure the price would be pretty insane if they did.

Hi Seeyou,

As I stated previously P2P and NNTP traffic are shaped on all Home type accounts so there is unfortunately nothing we can do about that. If you want to get full speed on this protocols you will need to move onto a Business capped account.

We are not throttling your account at all and if you do a normal HTTP download or anything else besides P2P/NNTP you will get full line speed which is a clear indication that it is not throttled.

 

[Seeyou]

Hi Seeyou,

As I stated previously P2P and NNTP traffic are shaped on all Home type accounts so there is unfortunately nothing we can do about that. If you want to get full speed on this protocols you will need to move onto a Business capped account.

We are not throttling your account at all and if you do a normal HTTP download or anything else besides P2P/NNTP you will get full line speed which is a clear indication that it is not throttled.

Don't worry about trying to sell me the company line. "You need to pay for Business bandwidth to get more than 6% of your line speed" isn't going to sound good to me, no matter how you phrase it.

 

[Webafrica Helper]

A suggetion to WA on their DSL console. Split the d/l plus hours from normal hours so that at a glance I can see what I have used during 'normal' hours.

Thanks for the suggestion Jase. I have passed this onto our product team to review.

i was thinking of moving to Webafrica capped from Afrihost. Does webafrica shape their capped traffic at all? (afrihost doesnt).

I see they have Home and Business capped...not sure what the difference is? I mainly Game, download the odd torrent (by far my lowest bandwidth usage) and stream netflix.

Hi FalconZA,

The only traffic that is shaped during Business hrs (7am-5pm weekdays) is P2P and NNTP. Our capped accounts work very well for gaming and streaming which won't be affected during the day unless there is an issue with your line/exchange or a major network outage e.g: cable or IPC link failure.

Best thing to do is try us out by signing up for the free 2gb account

Im using a capped webafrica account, last night 2pm I tried to download an iso with an accelerator.
Maxed out at 600kb, switched to telkom,1000kb, switched back to WA and hitting limiter at 600kb.
Will be doing more test tonight, but this is horse****

Hi bboy,

Are you still having issues? Please PM me your account details so I can get our team to assist.

 

[xrapidx]

My experience with the WebAfrica Live chat today. 20 minutes later and no answer to my question.

Your Question: If I sign up for your capped 240GB account today will I be billed a pro rata amount? What will it be?
Please wait and one of our operators will be with you shortly.
You are now chatting with Chantal Botha (Technical Support Advisor - Hosting) - Sales
12:40Chantal Botha: Hello, How may I assist you?
12:40Paul: Hi. If I sign up for your capped 240GB account today will I be billed a pro rata amount? What will it be?
12:42Chantal Botha: Hi Paul, that is correct
12:42Chantal Botha: you will be billed pro rata
12:43Paul: and is the data cap also pro rated?
12:46Chantal Botha: you have a choice to activate the data with the line, or activate the data while the line gets transferred. To answer your question, you will be billed pro rata if you activate the data.
12:46Paul: I dont want to transfer my line across.
12:47Paul: I want to know if all the data will be available is I sign up today and what pro rata amount I would be billed?
12:50Paul: Chantal are you there?
12:53Paul: This seems to be taking quite long.......
12:58Paul: ?
Chantal Botha has left the conversation.
Click here to leave a message.
The conversation has ended.
Click here to take a short survey about this live chat.

LOL - was lunch time.

 

[Webafrica Helper]

My experience with the WebAfrica Live chat today. 20 minutes later and no answer to my question.

Your Question: If I sign up for your capped 240GB account today will I be billed a pro rata amount? What will it be?
Please wait and one of our operators will be with you shortly.
You are now chatting with Chantal Botha (Technical Support Advisor - Hosting) - Sales
12:40Chantal Botha: Hello, How may I assist you?
12:40Paul: Hi. If I sign up for your capped 240GB account today will I be billed a pro rata amount? What will it be?
12:42Chantal Botha: Hi Paul, that is correct
12:42Chantal Botha: you will be billed pro rata
12:43Paul: and is the data cap also pro rated?
12:46Chantal Botha: you have a choice to activate the data with the line, or activate the data while the line gets transferred. To answer your question, you will be billed pro rata if you activate the data.
12:46Paul: I dont want to transfer my line across.
12:47Paul: I want to know if all the data will be available is I sign up today and what pro rata amount I would be billed?
12:50Paul: Chantal are you there?
12:53Paul: This seems to be taking quite long.......
12:58Paul: ?
Chantal Botha has left the conversation.
Click here to leave a message.
The conversation has ended.
Click here to take a short survey about this live chat.

Hi Slip,

I have taken this up with our team who advised that they have been having issues with our live chat system and it has been logging some agents out automatically. Apologies for this.

I also see that Chantal has provided you with the incorrect information. Our capped accounts do not get billed pro-rata and you will be charged for the full price anytime of the month you sign up as we provide you with the full allocation of GBs on capped.

Only uncapped accounts get billed pro-rata. You will need to select to activate the capped account at the beginning of August 2014 so that you only get billed at that time.

 

[Webafrica Helper]

Today I ordered a WA Business account and it was fine until tonight. Everything's slow as ****. P2P is being shaped hard. What did I do to deserve this crap performance??!! I still have 5 stars! My usage today is over 1gb.

Now I'm downloading a torrent at 220kB/s on my 2Mbps line which is fantastic as ****............................................................ this is on my spare WA Capped account. I literally jumped out of the fire (AH) into a frying pan (WA).

View attachment 134299

FIX THIS, WA!

Hi,

Could you please PM me your account details so I can get our team to assist.