Web Africa Uncapped Test - My Review

E

envo

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After seeing this thread: http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php/633049-Care-to-explain-web-africa?highlight=web+africa

I figured I'd see how Web Africa's service shaped up when the star rating went down.

I have a 2mb Home Uncapped from them and comparing it with Afrihost 2mb Home Uncapped

First I made sure to be downgraded to 1 star by downloading at full speed day and night for a few days. After Day 6 it started to drop, and by day 8 (or 10, I forgot to check) I was on 1 star (note, I added a new service and had no prior usage patterns to "learn" from) Total downloaded was 20 GB more or less when it started dropping and 1 star by the time it was at 35gb. In total it took basically 10 days to drop to 1 star. Daily average downloaded was 4.5gb

Once I was on 1 star, I figured I'd test my download speed during the day and night.

Day time it averaged at 130kb/s depending on the service I used (which is mostly FTP). Http downloads were also shaped a bit more than usual, but the speed a web page opened up at or the downloaded completed at was way more than Afrihost's shaping of 8-9kb/s and I was quite happy with it.

At night (after 6pm) my average speed went up to 190kb/s on FTP and 202kb/s on HTTP

Now, for real-time services like streaming (I use Netflix), there wasn't 1 single issue on 1 star/2 star or 3 star rating. I really couldn't see a difference at all and the quality received back (compared with stuttering/buffering constantly on Afrihost) was great.

I was quite surprised when, at a 1 star rating, I was still able to do most everything without really worrying about speed/buffering/whatever

So how long does it take to get back up on the star rating system? Not as long as you might think. After 3 days of no downloading (still using Netflix/browsing etc), I was back up at a 2 star rating, the next day, the 3 star rating was waiting for me :D

I would definitely recommend Web Africa Uncapped, but since they have a special on, go get a capped account and try use that 50 TB you get free from midnight to 6am :D
 
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Thanks man, I actually applied for the home account from this month, 10mb package, 6th day, 25gb used and still 5 stars. No one at home during the day, so most usage happens from 16:00 - 23:00.

Judging from your findings, I will turn things up a notch!
 
Howzit Envo,

Thanks a lot.
I also made the jump from AfriCrap to 10Mbps WA uncapped.
I've used 34GB (just checked) to date, and still on 5 stars :)

I've used it 95% on Netflix and Hulu though.

Seems to be decent so far, however I do notice that sometimes Netflix quality drops/fluctuates a bit.
I tried it previously and I promise you... Netflix was stuck on 1080p streaming!

Cheers, enjoy!
 
That's actually awesome. I've been down that low. Well once, then upgraded to Business same day :)
 
shreez said:
Howzit Envo,

Thanks a lot.
I also made the jump from AfriCrap to 10Mbps WA uncapped.
I've used 34GB (just checked) to date, and still on 5 stars :)

I've used it 95% on Netflix and Hulu though.

Seems to be decent so far, however I do notice that sometimes Netflix quality drops/fluctuates a bit.
I tried it previously and I promise you... Netflix was stuck on 1080p streaming!

Cheers, enjoy!
Click to expand...

How often do you see it fluctuate? I'm trying to figure out if my PC sometimes downloads updates during or not. It flucuates very rarely for me (maybe once a week), rest of the time I get full SD quality going. Won't mind upgrading to 10mb to see 1080p ;)

With the R100+ I'm saving going from Afrihost to Web Africa, I can actually upgrade for less than it would have cost me with them. Might just make that jump
 
thank you for this review :)

wonder how

the home compars to business uncap from WA

speed/stable and that good stuff after hours
 
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sybertiger said:
thank you for this review :)

wonder how

the home compars to business uncap from WA

speed/stable and that good stuff after hours
Click to expand...

The upgrade to business takes like 2 seconds.

So start on home, then upgrade if needed.
 
I am seriously considering WA, seems pretty good.

35GB on a 2Mbit account in 10 days...Not too bad I guess.
I'd imagine you can download more on a 4Mbit account before getting downgraded to 1 star?
 
PsyCLown said:
I am seriously considering WA, seems pretty good.

35GB on a 2Mbit account in 10 days...Not too bad I guess.
I'd imagine you can download more on a 4Mbit account before getting downgraded to 1 star?
Click to expand...

Yes. That's how it works. Even more if you keep your downloads for after midnight.
 
I doubt I will be downloading all THAT much and can queue downloads for after midnight.

We may end up streaming quite a bit though - would that be an issue with a WebAfrica uncapped account?
I plan on starting off with a capped account and then most likely moving over to an uncapped account within a few months as more people will be using the ADSL then.
 
I used my wa account exclusively for streaming and had 10 days of fun, until the rolling cap kicked me right in the furniture. Dropped the line speed so low I could not even browse. Their tech support says that at that stage its not even worth it to upgrade, as the account is already in the throttled pool and upgrading it will not take it out of there.

He also said that if I want to use 250gb per month and I don't want to be throttled, I'd have to use their business pro uncapped @ R1300 a month. Hmm, needless to say, I cancelled.
 
Mcwidowmaker said:
I used my wa account exclusively for streaming and had 10 days of fun, until the rolling cap kicked me right in the furniture. Dropped the line speed so low I could not even browse. Their tech support says that at that stage its not even worth it to upgrade, as the account is already in the throttled pool and upgrading it will not take it out of there.

He also said that if I want to use 250gb per month and I don't want to be throttled, I'd have to use their business pro uncapped @ R1300 a month. Hmm, needless to say, I cancelled.
Click to expand...

Hmm, so streaming will screw me over as well unless I go for a capped account.
Well, perhaps then I just need to consider larger capped packages. I have a few months to decide on an uncapped solution as well, perhaps things will change in those few months.
 
Mcwidowmaker said:
I used my wa account exclusively for streaming and had 10 days of fun, until the rolling cap kicked me right in the furniture. Dropped the line speed so low I could not even browse. Their tech support says that at that stage its not even worth it to upgrade, as the account is already in the throttled pool and upgrading it will not take it out of there.

He also said that if I want to use 250gb per month and I don't want to be throttled, I'd have to use their business pro uncapped @ R1300 a month. Hmm, needless to say, I cancelled.
Click to expand...


on what account was it?and how many did u use?
 
Mcwidowmaker said:
He also said that if I want to use 250gb per month and I don't want to be throttled, I'd have to use their business pro uncapped @ R1300 a month. Hmm, needless to say, I cancelled.
Click to expand...

People need to add their account speed to their posts to help with the context.
 
Mcwidowmaker said:
I used my wa account exclusively for streaming and had 10 days of fun, until the rolling cap kicked me right in the furniture. Dropped the line speed so low I could not even browse. Their tech support says that at that stage its not even worth it to upgrade, as the account is already in the throttled pool and upgrading it will not take it out of there.

He also said that if I want to use 250gb per month and I don't want to be throttled, I'd have to use their business pro uncapped @ R1300 a month. Hmm, needless to say, I cancelled.
Click to expand...

As someone else said, it depends on your line speed. The different line speeds all have different thresholds. Sometimes it's better getting an account that's higher than your actual line speed if you need to move a lot of data.
 
Mcwidowmaker said:
Its a 4meg line
Click to expand...

Then you should probably be using the 10Meg home account.

I'm on 10Meg business though with the same usage and was never worse than 3stars. Currently on the new system I'm still green.
 
I have been using 4mb home uncapped for about 3 months now and it's been good up until the past few weeks where I seem to jump down in star ratings to 2 stars (seemingly) quicker than I did before - most of my traffic is streaming with some torrents during D+ hours and usually I sit on 3 stars all the time, which is still fine - but hitting 2 stars makes things really ****.

Swapped to MWEB 6MB standard uncapped which according to MWEB guy and numerous other people only gets throttled at around 150GB, because it's cheaper than most 150GB capped accounts (not sure I am willing to go back to Afrihost) and I almost never push over 140GB in a month. Will see how that goes.

With WA I drop from 5 to 3 stars quite rapidly but to go up a star takes quite a while. I haven't used the account since the 4th (only 320mb on the 4th) and I'm still on 3 stars - 17.6GB for the month so far, 142GB last month (higher than usual)
 
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