Webafrica Shaping Shenan!gans

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ViVox

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I left Afrihost a few months ago for providing me with what was the most pathetic excuse for a connection I ever experienced. And they didn't have the nuts to admit they had a problem.

I decided to pony up the cash and get onto SAIX via Webafrica.

It's been good, but the honeymoon is clearly over. Lately, my connection has been shaped back to the stone age. It is impossible to do anything with my connection other than surf the 'net or send email. Online gaming is hopeless. Downloads are dead. It's pretty dismal.

But this is what's driving me around the bend... I think they hired Afrihost's support staff. I'm getting the same, "it's your line / it's Telkom / it's your computer" BS again.

Don't treat me like an idiot. Admit there's a problem. At least then I know you give a damn about your customers.
 
ViVox said:
I left Afrihost a few months ago for providing me with what was the most pathetic excuse for a connection I ever experienced. And they didn't have the nuts to admit they had a problem.

I decided to pony up the cash and get onto SAIX via Webafrica.

It's been good, but the honeymoon is clearly over. Lately, my connection has been shaped back to the stone age. It is impossible to do anything with my connection other than surf the 'net or send email. Online gaming is hopeless. Downloads are dead. It's pretty dismal.

But this is what's driving me around the bend... I think they hired Afrihost's support staff. I'm getting the same, "it's your line / it's Telkom / it's your computer" BS again.

Don't treat me like an idiot. Admit there's a problem. At least then I know you give a damn about your customers.
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Umm yeah sorry but you are talking out your arse. I am using webafrica for gaming every day, and my pings in wow are under 260ms.
 
Doesn't sound anything like WA bandwidth. Must be your line, Telkom or your computer.
 
I'm using WA and i have experienced no disruptions whatsoever.

I was also using Afrihost a few months back and even though they said no shaping was done, it was definitely shaped.
Moving to Webafrica i have not experienced a day's issues.
Webafrica states clearly that their regular lines are shaped, but even with this I have no issues with anything...

A lot of people I know was in fact running back to their trusty WA account with all the Seacom issues affecting most other ISPs.

So it most likely IS a problem on your Telkom line, but the ISP has just as little pull with Telkom as you would personally have.
My line was also stuffed in the beginning and I didnt know who to blame, but eventually Telkom crawled out their asses and changed my connection at the exchange, fixing all the issues.
 
ViVox said:
I decided to pony up the cash and get onto SAIX via Webafrica.
Click to expand...
WebAfrica doesn't use SAIX & has done so for about a year.

There are at least 20 people on this forum using Webafrica, myself included. Most of them a hyper sensitive to changes in the quality of b/w. If there was a country-wide problem with WA b/w we'd know about it.

Post a traceroute & perhaps we can help you. Insulting support staff is not gonna get you anywhere. Promise
 
I am using Web Africa and I have begun to have problems. I have 2 ADSL accounts,the first is with Web Africa and it is their 30GB account which costs R1470,00 but I got that sweet R200 deal! The second is a 4meg uncapped account with PluGG,this account backbones off IS.

I have found since Web Africa brought out their "Titan DSL Special" my account has started lacking. For example when I play Call of Duty 4 on a 4meg line on Web Africa I get A latency of about 130 but when I play on my Internet Solutions account I get pings of 67,How can this be justified? Apparently(According to Web Africa) uncapped accounts shape gaming much more than they do however I am getting better pings on a uncapped account?

If I was paying the full R1470 for that account I would be highly peed off and although I am only paying R200 I still think a drop in service is pathetic! If you are going to make a new package dont make it ruin the other more premium accounts. I have just come to the conclusion that they dropped all the mybroadband members from the 30GB R1470 account to the Titan account that is shaped,thats all I can think of.

And why do I have 2 accounts do you ask? Well simply because some times I get such bad gaming pings and browsing on my Web Africa account that I have to use a Shapped uncapped account.

WebAfrica need to build a exchange in Johannesburg,I think that mighthelp? However until then Gaming is going to be rubbish even when you play on their gaming servers!
 
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splinter_watsup said:
For example when I play Call of Duty 4 on a 4meg line on Web Africa I get A latency of about 130 but when I play on my Internet Solutions account I get pings of 67,How can this be justified? Apparently(According to Web Africa) uncapped accounts shape gaming much more than they do however I am getting better pings on a uncapped account?
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The difference lies in the path the data takes. If you're in PTA & connecting to a gaming server in Jhb then the data first travels down to cpt & back up to jhb. They could fix this, but the gain (~50ms) does not justify the huge cost, especially since the gain would only be for local i.e. international latency would not improve. It has nothing to do with shaping. Local is rarely shaped by any ISP.
 
HavocXphere said:
WebAfrica doesn't use SAIX & has done so for about a year.

There are at least 20 people on this forum using Webafrica, myself included. Most of them a hyper sensitive to changes in the quality of b/w. If there was a country-wide problem with WA b/w we'd know about it.

Post a traceroute & perhaps we can help you. Insulting support staff is not gonna get you anywhere. Promise
Click to expand...


Actually webafrica do use saix and i have gotten confirmation from tech support that they do.
 
ViVox said:
I left Afrihost a few months ago for providing me with what was the most pathetic excuse for a connection I ever experienced. And they didn't have the nuts to admit they had a problem.

I decided to pony up the cash and get onto SAIX via Webafrica.

It's been good, but the honeymoon is clearly over. Lately, my connection has been shaped back to the stone age. It is impossible to do anything with my connection other than surf the 'net or send email. Online gaming is hopeless. Downloads are dead. It's pretty dismal.

But this is what's driving me around the bend... I think they hired Afrihost's support staff. I'm getting the same, "it's your line / it's Telkom / it's your computer" BS again.

Don't treat me like an idiot. Admit there's a problem. At least then I know you give a damn about your customers.
Click to expand...

lies... http://www.webafrica.co.za/adsl/standard/

where can you buy "saix" bandwidth on WA??

im using WA to play HON locally and on UK servers, and I have no issues. I watch youtube and sometimes dl newshost. On my 4meg line I can download at about 420KB/s on any server that can give me that speed, and newshost I get about 150KB/s.

btw. If I ping mweb.co.za I get a 11ms or 12ms response time, and if I ping a WA DNS server, I get 8ms or 9ms
 
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WA user myself and regularly play Bad Company 2 and suffer no more lag issues than anybody else on the servers. So I suspect it is not WA, but rather your side.
 
semaphore said:
Actually webafrica do use saix and i have gotten confirmation from tech support that they do.
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They run via SAT3 just like SAIX, but its not SAIX b/w per se, not since they rolled out their own network.

If it were SAIX b/w then it would be able to connect to the SAIX NS, which it can't.
 
semaphore said:
Actually webafrica do use saix and i have gotten confirmation from tech support that they do.
Click to expand...

Telkom gets paid from ALL ISP's for using there network to connect the last mile to the client!! There is no way around this without the local loop unbundling... Even Vodacom will rent backhaul on Telkom network.

I think that Neotel is "almost" curcumventing this, but I wouldnt trust them anyway!
 
HavocXphere said:
They run via SAT3 just like SAIX, but its not SAIX b/w per se, not since they rolled out their own network.

If it were SAIX b/w then it would be able to connect to the SAIX NS, which it can't.
Click to expand...

Ye ok minor semantics, its not saix network block, but it is saix backbone.
 
semaphore said:
Umm yeah sorry but you are talking out your arse. I am using webafrica for gaming every day, and my pings in wow are under 260ms.
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Sorry dude. I forgot that you're actually sitting on my lap checking out my pings. I never asked you how you're doing - I said I was having a problem. Thanks for you help.
 
ViVox said:
Sorry dude. I forgot that you're actually sitting on my lap checking out my pings. I never asked you how you're doing - I said I was having a problem. Thanks for you help.
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Dont claim to blame an ISP for your issues, when clearly its more a localized issue to either your exchange or router :) As you can see from the posts above.. Nobody else is having issues oh and wait im using it now and would you look at that.. its 250ms. Get telkom to test your line. Restart your router. But 10 times out of 10 its usually an exchange issue.
 
semaphore said:
Dont claim to blame an ISP for your issues, when clearly its more a localized issue to either your exchange or router :) As you can see from the posts above.. Nobody else is having issues oh and wait im using it now and would you look at that.. its 250ms. Get telkom to test your line. Restart your router. But 10 times out of 10 its usually an exchange issue.
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Telkom test line - check (twice)
Restart router - check (lost count)
Checked for Telkom network faults - check
Checked with other ADSL accounts to test for problems - check (none)

Anything else you'd like me to do in order to prove my point?

And thanks (again) for telling me about your amazing speeds. I couldn't care less about how wonderful you are. Do you get paid to insult people complaining about poor service from WA?
 
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ViVox said:
Telkom test line - check (twice)
Restart router - check (lost count)
Checked for Telkom network faults - check
Checked with other ADSL accounts to test for problems - check (none)

Anything else you'd like me to do in order to prove my point?

And thanks (again) for telling me about your amazing speeds. I couldn't care less about how wonderful you are. Do you get paid to insult people complaining about poor service from WA?
Click to expand...

Trust me i've had my fair share of screaming matches with webafrica. I'm just pointing the facts out, if there was issues with the network we would all be effected. What online game are you trying to play ? Which account are you using, unshaped or shaped? post a tracert to this address wow-europe.com. Remember your line might test fine but that does not mean there is something not happening on the exchange they are not being forthcoming about, i have had issues about that as-well it took them a week to realize that they did not correctly update the firmware on the hardware on the exchange.
 
The exchange having a fault has nothing to do with WA directly, though they should escalate those problems to Telkom.
 
ViVox, your problem is simple to diagnose. Buy a prepaid account from someone with unshaped bandwidth on the IS or SAIX backbones. obviously now wouldnt be a good time to check with seacom being down though.
If its better than you can call out the ISP.
I personally disagree with you. I use WA for everything from gaming to dl's, xbox live etc etc etc. They have yet to skip a beat since I have been using them and I have not lost comms with the outage of seacom.
Besides, when you get a user with 7 posts and most of them being in this thread then its entirely possible its nothing more than a smear campaign.
 
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