Web Africa ADSL general feedback

Globetrotter said:
Jeff, what is the official policy on the news server? Do you have a business rule in place that automatically shapes/throttles the news server to death between business hours? If you do, then no troubleshooting is required since you have that policy in place anyway.
Or are we supposed to be able to download from the news server at max linespeed, regardless of time of day? What is the current traffic management policy rule that is set for the news server?
Click to expand...

No business rules in place here, traffic is prioritised per protocol. P2P and Usenet being a Best Effort service for Home users sitting on a silver priority.
Best effort doesn't mean "shaped into the ground" though, in or out of business hours. As I've said, our ADSL guys and Networking Teams are looking into the slow news server issues and are constantly running multiple tests from our end to get things up to what they used to be.

http://kb.webafrica.co.za/article/A...vity/ADSL/Bandwidth-Priority-Profiles.html#H3

Fulton17 said:
Very valid question

What I find odd is that as a capped user, it would seem that during office hours the news server and DL's are a no-no, yet for uncapped, they are free to DL. Surely as a capped user who has paid for a specific service and capacity I should have the choice of using my bandwidth how and when I please (taking into account DL+ hours). For me I do +95% of my DL's in DL+ time, but do feel that if I need to do some in office hours, I should be able to, especially if uncapped users can.

Anyway let's see what Jeff says. In addition Jeff, could you comment on my comment? Thanks
Click to expand...

I've answered above, along with your queries that I've seen. Anything else I'm missing?

WAJeff said:
Fulton17 said:
No response from anyone at WA and still sitting on 0 kbs.

I think all the time and energy that WA has is being given to uncapped and the rest of us are put on the back burner :(
Click to expand...

http://forums.webafrica.co.za/showthread.php/6833-WebAfrica-News-Server?p=56309&viewfull=1#post56309
Click to expand...
 
WAJeff said:
No business rules in place here, traffic is prioritised per protocol.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply. So unfortunately that means there is a problem after all. :(
I sent en email to Support. I frequently get the following error: "error 499 - remote server down" when I try and connect (during bus hours). I don't get the error at night, then it downloads fine.
 
Globetrotter said:
Thanks for the reply. So unfortunately that means there is a problem after all. :(
I sent en email to Support. I frequently get the following error: "error 499 - remote server down" when I try and connect (during bus hours). I don't get the error at night, then it downloads fine.
Click to expand...

The news server should still be accessable during business hours, we're running testing on it as I'm writing this post.
If this is not the case, then yes - there is an issue. Our ADSL guys have all the necessary info that they need to pass onto our Networking folks to have this resolved.

Not sure where the business rules part came in here... Our network is prioritsed per account, don't think business rules define how fast/ slow our network runs - these are networking rules.
 
Thanks Jeff. Just started a DL now and it is going 100% :) Hopefully all sorted now.
 
I can connect to the news server but there's no actual downloading. Been like this all day. Everything just sits at 0% and eventually just times out. When I switch over to an intl news server (for the same files) I download at max speed.
I contacted WA support and they're aware there are issues but said that the news server is a best effort service and therefore service is not guaranteed. I'll do some tests after hours, hopefully I have some joy then.
 
WAJeff said:
Not sure where the business rules part came in here... Our network is prioritsed per account, don't think business rules define how fast/ slow our network runs - these are networking rules.
Click to expand...
Just a misunderstanding, I didn't say that business rules still applied. Earlier I asked if there was a bus rule governing the news server, you confirmed there wasn't, so no problem. When I referred to "problem" later on I was simply referring to my own problem that I still cannot download from the WA news server. :) It's been timing out on me all day and that is still the case.
 
Slow browsing :(

Browsing is poor at the moment.

Can not watch youtube 360p without buffering; pages taking really long to load. Not great at all and this is after the upgraded capacity :(

Have not tried to DL during office hours, but was slow during DL+ hours. Took over an hour to DL 360 megs

I long for a consistent, decent service. Is that too much to hope for?


Tracing route to www.privateproperty.co.za [196.36.224.82]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.0.1
2 10 ms 8 ms 10 ms ndn-ip-esr-3.ipnet.wa.co.za [41.185.66.1]
3 36 ms 35 ms 36 ms wnls-ipc1-vl-105.wa.co.za [196.220.59.250]
4 40 ms 40 ms 53 ms wnls-cr1-vl-801.wa.co.za [41.185.0.67]
5 35 ms 57 ms 35 ms wbs-ip-hsll-1-vl-102.telkom-ipnet.co.za [196.220
.59.230]
6 67 ms 59 ms 38 ms 196.43.11.218
7 63 ms 63 ms 36 ms 196.43.25.206
8 67 ms 59 ms 39 ms 196.25.247.26
9 66 ms 69 ms 39 ms core1a-ctn-gi0-1.ip.isnet.net [168.209.2.5]
10 96 ms 75 ms 348 ms core1-dbn-gi0-3-104.ip.isnet.net [168.209.100.18
6]
11 101 ms 104 ms 73 ms csw3-umh-gi-5-2.ip.isnet.net [168.209.93.231]
12 96 ms 106 ms 70 ms sw-osfw-shared-1-umh-vl105.ip.isnet.net [196.14.
92.8]
13 146 ms 96 ms 74 ms pp-fw-primary.onsite.hosting.co.za [196.36.224.2
42]
14 97 ms 69 ms 70 ms ppwebserver1.onsite.hosting.co.za [196.36.224.82
]


Tracing route to www.nytimes.com [199.239.136.200]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.0.1
2 8 ms 9 ms 10 ms ndn-ip-esr-3.ipnet.wa.co.za [41.185.66.1]
3 56 ms 37 ms 36 ms wnls-ipc1-vl-108.wa.co.za [196.220.59.238]
4 40 ms 39 ms 40 ms wnls-cr2-vl-801.wa.co.za [41.185.0.66]
5 37 ms 68 ms 37 ms 41.185.1.49
6 81 ms 42 ms 41 ms 41-66-150-177-b1.available.africainx.net [41.66.
150.177]
7 214 ms 190 ms 201 ms LD-GS-MSC-M-to-CT-RO-MSC-M-SAT3-core-p2p.africai
nx.net [41.66.132.49]
8 196 ms 217 ms 197 ms 195.50.122.217
9 211 ms 232 ms 193 ms ae-21-52.car1.London1.Level3.net [4.69.139.98]
10 217 ms 197 ms 195 ms xe-0-1-0-6.r02.londen03.uk.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.2
50.8.137]
11 255 ms 200 ms 218 ms ae-4.r22.londen03.uk.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.5.2
4]
12 267 ms 264 ms 286 ms as-0.r22.nycmny01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.3.2
54]
13 297 ms 265 ms 300 ms ae-2.r05.nycmny01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.4.1
73]
14 303 ms 262 ms 263 ms ge-1-1.a00.nycmny01.us.da.verio.net [129.250.30.
113]
15 128.241.244.54 reports: Destination net unreachable.

Trace complete.
 
It's the same https problem ALL over again. Google+ is unusable slow ...
 
It's now 10h45 pm and video watching is impossible. Stuttering the whole time, even small frames, cnbc, forbes, every financial site i go, its all the same. This is very , very poor service quality from WebAfrika !

No problem with normal browsing though, which tells me WebAfrika is shaping the video feeds into the ground. Either that or they are again overselling their bandwidth, but we should not have trouble this time of day.
 
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Plaasjapie said:
It's now 10h45 pm and video watching is impossible. Stuttering the whole time, even small frames, cnbc, forbes, every financial site i go, its all the same. This is very , very poor service quality from WebAfrika !

No problem with normal browsing though, which tells me WebAfrika is shaping the video feeds into the ground. Either that or they are again overselling their bandwidth, but we should not have trouble this time of day.
Click to expand...

I haven't tried video but WOW is useless on WA at the moment. Has been pretty much since the uncapped was introduced. Browsing is fine. Pinging www.webafrica.co.za produces consistent 35ms odd ping times so the problem is from wa onwards.

Not a happy camper with WA at the moment.
 
My DL's in DL+ time this morning were slow to very slow. At best it performed at 50% capacity.

For me another annoying factor is that to a large degree capped users are just being ignored with the odd comment from Jeff.

Sadly the whole thing that capped users were not going to suffer is just marketing speak
 
Seems to be ok on my side.. but I scheduled a download during dl+ and something went wrong and used all my regular cap ... eish. Now to top up is like over R100 !!
 
Browsing was generally fine over the weekend.
DL+ time started very slow, but speeds did improve with time - still not operating like it used to
 
When DL+ Kicked in yesterday. Nothing Except browsing worked Normally, I really hope matters improve by the latest Thursday. Otherwise Ill have to Reconsider my options.
 
Had a look at my throughput over the past week or so using a RedAfrica account. My DL+ average has definitely come down a bit. I used to average about 10 Gig from 12am to 7am, but lately it has dropped off to around 7 gigs for the same period (using international NNTP on 4meg line).

My browsing over has been unaffected and have not once had any issues with https (FNB and ABSA). So I can't really complain about anything, still happy with me RedAfrica account.
 
cavedog said:
Its also sometimes just suddenly have no international and then after 5min gets back online.
Click to expand...

Been having that issue since August, i have reported it to the support department twice but iam yet to get any feedback.

In any event if anybody knows of a good isp for gaming please lety me know :)
My webafrica account ends Jan 2012
 
Fur said:
Been having that issue since August, i have reported it to the support department twice but iam yet to get any feedback.

In any event if anybody knows of a good isp for gaming please lety me know :)
My webafrica account ends Jan 2012
Click to expand...

Sadly I can't recommend anyone else that has the latency etc of WA,,,, but I get the very same issue as everyone else.. It's good for awhile and then WHAM international dies for some reason and then back up.. no pattern
which made me switch to IS for consistency during gaming. Luckily I only mainly race Trackmania which do not require much, so I'm fine using Afrihost or the likes.

I really can't understand how one ISP has had so many hiccups in one year ? Always blaming it on Google or Telkom. Don't get me wrong, I still support WA, but things are looking bleak.
 
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Dan C said:
Sadly I can't recommend anyone else that has the latency etc of WA,,,, but I get the very same issue as everyone else.. It's good for awhile and then WHAM international dies for some reason and then back up.. no pattern
which made me switch to IS for consistency during gaming. Luckily I only mainly race Trackmania which do not require much, so I'm fine using Afrihost or the likes.

I really can't understand how one ISP has had so many hiccups in one year ? Always blaming it on Google or Telkom. Don't get me wrong, I still support WA, but things are looking bleak.
Click to expand...


Tbh the last few months my latency on my telkom account has been better then WA, its is also alot more stable, with Wa its a luck game atm somedays its great other days its crap, somedays their news servers work other days they dont.

Also seems to be that uncapped services are causing issues for alot of capped clients which is totally unfair to people paying for a supposedly better service cause they are capped.
 
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Fur said:
Also seems to be that uncapped services are causing issues for alot of capped clients which is totally unfair to people paying for a supposedly better service cause they are capped.
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Totally agree and not only that but we are lucky if Jeff comments on this forum more than the odd occasion.

Capped were promised an unaffected service - well that promise has most certainly not been delivered on
 
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