What is Fixed?

[GougedEye]

It just occured to me, how do we judge if MyWireless is fixed or not come September? We all bitch and moan about how it is, but what are realistic and fair expectations?

I guess mine would be:

1) Average of 80% of packages bandwidth for (128k, 256k or 512k).
2) Packet loss under 5% (guess this depends on your SNL / Signal Strength).
3) Pings (to tower?) under 100ms and not jumping all over the place.
4) No shaping
5) No Cap

Are these realistic expectations or am I smoking my socks? Basically I feel that a 128k package should compare closely with a standard 128k ISDN package.

 

[arf9999]

GE,

I think I must be more accommodating:

1. Average of 75% but minimum of 50% (for international); For local I can see no reason why we shouldn't have 100% all the time.
2. Packet loss of less than 5% but preferably less than 1% with good SNL.
3. Pings to Sentech.co.za less than 150ms ALL THE TIME.
4. Shaping within reason... i.e. Some http, ftp prioritisation over p2p is ok for me, as long as they don't kill p2p completely.
5. No cap, not negotiable.


MW128, Tower <b>60</b>(Northpark Plaza), Signal:16%,S-N-L: 7, BER: 45%

 

[Bishop]

My test is much simpler.

The day I click on a torrent link, watch it load and have it download at 20KB at least ( on my 256 Package ) 5 minutes later, I will consider myself a happy customer. No shaping, no cap.

Oh... and this needs to happen consistantly for at least a month.

Cowtenna | 12% Signal | Tower 82 ( Mintek )

 

[lewstherin]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">1. Average of 75% but minimum of 50% (for international); For local I can see no reason why we shouldn't have 100% all the time.
2. Packet loss of less than 5% but preferably less than 1% with good SNL.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">This is exactly what I expect too.

I would say shaping is a BIG no no.

What they should look at is better management of bandwidth (proxies etc), and a scaling cap calculated as follows:
Using 128K package, downloading at 80% package speed (around 43MB/hour) 24/7 for 28 days = approx 29.5 GB
Using this kind of calculation for each package, they cap you at 66.67% (2/3) of this monthly figure:
29.5GB * 66.67% = 19.175GB

Similarly the caps for 256 and 512 packages would be:
256: 59 GB * 66.67% = 39.37 GB
512: 118.1 GB * 66.67% = 78.75 GB

Something like the above could be used to prevent network abuse, but also not restrict people unnecessarily - a high ceiling if you like.
I personally would be fine with a 19.175 GB cap on my 128K connection, for ease though, Sentech could make it 20GB, 40GB and 80GB respectively.

Anyhow now I'm dreaming, since 1GB per month is nigh impossible at the moment []

<font color="blue">Telkom needs a leash, ICASA needs some guts, and the </font id="blue"><font color="red">SA consumer</font id="red"><font color="blue"> needs to make it happen</font id="blue">

 

[Torlin]

Do not forget that there must be at least 98% up time. No crap about "But the wind sir, you see it blows the signal away".

Sentech a perfect example of: “When great ideas go terrible wrong!”

 

[gripen]

Since they marketed it to people who were frustrated with the 3GB cap, they must keep in mind just what no cap means. I reckon they should do the research and calculations to support a lets say 30:1 ratio with 50% of the users downloading at 75% all the time. Then buy 1.25 that amount of bandwidth. Unfortunately the profit ratio will go down so they would need some long term planning and be willing to make profits by volume (lower profit per user for thousands of users) and they MUST keep up the above scheme for the subscriber volume within a 10% tolerance. ie. the 1.25 amount must be upgraded once it dips to 90% per user base. Yes, there is some intelligence involved in calculating all the above. so fcking what.

if the above is not cost effective.. then adjust the caps to 96/192/384 or even (god forbid) 64/128/256 accordingly. They said uncapped (with the loophole package cap) so within the package uncapped and unshaped it must be.
Technically if we find any conclusive proof of shaping then there should be trouble. Regardless of anything.

They marketed the product to the downloaders whereas they should be marketing to the general public. Its the browsing/email people that make contention ratios work (ADSL/ISDN etc). Sentech should be targeting those areas for new subscribers but of course we know they arent buying more bandwidth as the user base grows.

What is Fixed?
my answer: I know how well this thing can work. I have seen it perform during peak hours. This means if I run P2P and browse everything still works fine. Typically this means I am capped by my package and not the network. Fixed means I will see this kind of thing at least 20 hours a day.
Throw in full speed on a single thread for good measure.

 

[pmik]

I expect close to 100% speed for LOCAL connections ALL the time and a minimum of 50% for INTERNATIONAL connections (but an average of say 60%-80%). Only then would I consider it to be anywhere close to being 'fixed'. The above should apply to my overall bandwidth whether I have one thread or many - this business of having to multi-thread a download to get a decent transfer rate is bollocks.

 

[regardtv]

My comparisons would be against the past 2 and a half odd months worth of latency and packet loss testing I have on record.

If ping times stabalize around the 120ms mark and packetloss stays sub 3-5% I'd be reasonably happy.

Average throughput of around 85% of package description should be possible on a single threaded download during the evenings and 75% during office hours....

<hr noshade size="1"><font size="1"><div align="right">8:00 Thursday 26 August 2004 is <font color="red">D-Day</font id="red">....</div id="right"></font id="size1">

 

[gripen]

Yip. Local should definitely be close to 100% as well as internal (Sentech) traffic. The speed test should report 15.95KB/sec ALWAYS. Not 14.5KB/sec. Latency will always be a hassle - I dont see them fixing that too quickly if they can at all. But buying more bandwidth and chucking the current system, now thats possible.

 

[MrGray]

I agree that there should be no shaping and no cap. Local bandwidth should always be near the maximum and international bandwidth should on average be more than two thirds of advertised speed and more during off-peak periods, within reason.

I would like to see them differentiate their packages based on contention - i.e. if you want a lower contention ratio, Sentech should offer different contention ratio packages as well. The corporate ISP's all do this for their business users. I also believe they shouldn't be lumping business and home users together - there should be a premium rate for business users just as there is with ADSL. Most businesses probably wouldn't flinch too much at paying say, 50%, more than home users, considering the comparative pricing on leased lines or the cap on ADSL.

The only worry would be if they used the fact that they had a premium rate service at a lower contention ratio they may be tempted to do nothing about the existing service and simply refer complainers to the premium package.


There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of by mere mortal men - Shakespeare

 

[gripen]

short answer to topic:
<font color="red"><font size="4">Nothing.</font id="size4"><font face="Comic Sans MS"></font id="Comic Sans MS"></font id="red">

In fact it has gotten worse.

 

[aborg]

I tend to agree with greedyflyza. Looks like things have taken a turn for the worst on 256k... I use to average 20-24 KB/s on any type of internet traffic single and multithreaded before 18th of Aug. Now I barely make 4 KB/s on http and ftp and on a torrent not even 2 KB/s - doesn't matter how many threads. Sucktech is definately shaping the traffic, there can be no doubt. I already logged my ticket and will follow up during the rest of today - This is ridiculous!!!! just as I thought sucktech was getting it right. []
Any other 256k users experiencing a degradation in service? - damn I said "service".

 

[Bishop]

Things are a lot worse on 256.

Downloading from exactly the same server, exactly the same file, I now get a download of 5KB where I used to get a full 30KB a week ago.

Torrents are now non-existant, I am not even bothering to open them up anymore.

If this is going to be what they consider a "fix", I am going to explode.

Cowtenna | 12% Signal | Tower 82 ( Mintek )

 

[Kaptain Khaos]

The only thing fixed is the monthly subscription everything else is variable and by that i mean it varies from crap to reall crap !!

<b>in chaos all things are harmonious</b>
<i>Tower 82 14% Signal 512k package </i>

 

[GougedEye]

Lol,

Topic Hijackers!!!

Perhaps I should have called it "How will we know when it is fixed?"

 

[passif]

We will hear angels singing from the heavens, and Hell will be frozen over. That will be the signs that it is fixed.

---
Sentech and Telkom: The pupil surpassing the master

 

[regardtv]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Kaptain Khaos</i>
<br />The only thing fixed is the monthly subscription everything else is variable and by that i mean it varies from crap to reall crap !!
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

I disagree ... they have managed to bill me incorrectly every month. Sometimes more than DOUBLE my actual subscription ....

Now I see the system says I STILL have 24 months left on my contract WTF.

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[mrbob]

I would like to be upgraded no-extra-charge to a 256 k package for two months, seeing as I have had virtually no speeds for the more than the past 2 months I think it's only fair, or 512 k for one month. While I am on my suped up package I would like to see speeds just over 90% of the package, if it's around 70/75% for international that's ok.

:O))))