Which Fibre ISP on Vumatel?

[DMNknight]

So I'm sitting with a dilema...

I'm cancelling with Cool Ideas. While gaming support works 100%, its the few other services that really let them down.
Video streaming - random time & day issues with streaming netflix, showmax and youtube. When the issue was reported, the reply was to give date/time, service being used and tracert to the offending provider.
Conclusion, Cool Idea's don't have any systems in place to monitor bandwidth performance and help troubleshoot issues non-technical clients cannot troubleshoot for themselves.
Tried to stream via Blizzard/facebook and failed to even sustain 12mb @ 720p 30fps. Don't log a call because I expect the same non-tech-savy troubleshooting methods as experienced before (i.e. I provide all the info and they speculate)
As I said in my cancellation message, certain things you kind of expect to work out the box. With the growth of streaming, that should be one of them.

I was eyeballing CrystalWeb because to 100/100 package at cheaper than the 50/50 package from CoolIdea's was appealing and they were the most brilliant ISP when i was using their ADSL Pro packages.
Unfortunately, a friend of mine is suffering with really terrible bandwidth issues through CrystalWeb right now and apparently you can't even reach their news server (reachable by ADSL) through Fibre. This makes me severely doubt their ability to deliver.

Webafrica, don't even make me laugh. A communications company who can't communicate.

That leaves me with a bunch of unknown ISP's. Tempted by CellC because they have their own infrastructure, but I don't need all the fluff attached to their offering.
I have my own router, I have already paid for the CPE.

Who can offer me a 50/50 or 100/100 uncapped fibre package that supports gaming, TV streaming (Netflix/Showmax/Youtube) and Twitch.tv uploads at a reasonable cost and decent performance.

Looking at R1.1k to R1.5k should be reasonable no?

 

[Sinbad]

I'm one of the people with issues on CW at the moment. Confident we'll get it sorted, I'm working with them and vuma on it. Fancy doing a couple of simple tests for me on your cisp line to see if you're having a similar issue?

 

[DMNknight]

Absolutely oh master of everything network
(If I remember ibi correctly)

I have a pfsense firewall doing my router work for me, so feel free to ask for extra mod installs.

 

[Sinbad]

Absolutely oh master of everything network
(If I remember ibi correctly)

I have a pfsense firewall doing my router work for me, so feel free to ask for extra mod installs.

Haha pm me your cell number, will continue on whatsapp.

Jeez, blast from the past there

 

[Zook]

Interesting. I'm very keen to use Cool Ideas on Metrofibre (once installed and past the obligatory month) and mostly for normal internet and streaming (no games torrents etc). The impression I've had so far on here is that they're awesome. PBCool?

 

[DMNknight]

Well, Sinbad and I are going to do some testing. It may perhaps not be a PBCool issue at which time I will apologize profusely

 

[Sinbad]

Well, Sinbad and I are going to do some testing. It may perhaps not be a PBCool issue at which time I will apologize profusely

/disclaimer
You're the first cool ideas customer I've seen with an issue. So I don't think it's the same problem, I just want to check

 

[DMNknight]

I seriously need a roll eyes emoticon here... /disclaimer was in the use of "perhaps"

However, I know from many years troubleshooting, the more data you have the better it is. Even no data tells you something.
Glad to help tho.

 

[Sinbad]

I seriously need a roll eyes emoticon here... /disclaimer was in the use of "perhaps"

However, I know from many years troubleshooting, the more data you have the better it is. Even no data tells you something.
Glad to help tho.

yeah yeah.

Just got a notification, vuma pushing out network changes...

/holds thumbs

 

[PBCool]

So I'm sitting with a dilema...

I'm cancelling with Cool Ideas. While gaming support works 100%, its the few other services that really let them down.
Video streaming - random time & day issues with streaming netflix, showmax and youtube. When the issue was reported, the reply was to give date/time, service being used and tracert to the offending provider.
Conclusion, Cool Idea's don't have any systems in place to monitor bandwidth performance and help troubleshoot issues non-technical clients cannot troubleshoot for themselves.
Tried to stream via Blizzard/facebook and failed to even sustain 12mb @ 720p 30fps. Don't log a call because I expect the same non-tech-savy troubleshooting methods as experienced before (i.e. I provide all the info and they speculate)
As I said in my cancellation message, certain things you kind of expect to work out the box. With the growth of streaming, that should be one of them.

I was eyeballing CrystalWeb because to 100/100 package at cheaper than the 50/50 package from CoolIdea's was appealing and they were the most brilliant ISP when i was using their ADSL Pro packages.
Unfortunately, a friend of mine is suffering with really terrible bandwidth issues through CrystalWeb right now and apparently you can't even reach their news server (reachable by ADSL) through Fibre. This makes me severely doubt their ability to deliver.

Webafrica, don't even make me laugh. A communications company who can't communicate.

That leaves me with a bunch of unknown ISP's. Tempted by CellC because they have their own infrastructure, but I don't need all the fluff attached to their offering.
I have my own router, I have already paid for the CPE.

Who can offer me a 50/50 or 100/100 uncapped fibre package that supports gaming, TV streaming (Netflix/Showmax/Youtube) and Twitch.tv uploads at a reasonable cost and decent performance.

Looking at R1.1k to R1.5k should be reasonable no?

Hi DMNknight, we do have every ability to monitor our links and their performance. We wouldn't be much of an ISP if we couldn't .

We ask for standard test results because we have thousands of customers on our network and need to go through this process, if it is a blackholed IP by an upstream for a random reason, we can't do an internal simulated trace from your IP. This can only happen from your location.

If I recall you didn't want to assist and just cancelled with us?

You are welcome to reach out to me directly on paul at cisp.co.za which I have advised to multiple of our customers in the past as a direct form of communication above our support teams.

Ironically the services you mention above are actually carried by our private circuits to Teraco NAP peering which we run at around 50%. So please understand when we ask for feedback it is to try and assist you in resolving it.

 

[maumau]

Edit: no longer applicable

 

[DMNknight]

Hi DMNknight, we do have every ability to monitor our links and their performance. We wouldn't be much of an ISP if we couldn't .

We ask for standard test results because we have thousands of customers on our network and need to go through this process, if it is a blackholed IP by an upstream for a random reason, we can't do an internal simulated trace from your IP. This can only happen from your location.

If I recall you didn't want to assist and just cancelled with us?

You are welcome to reach out to me directly on paul at cisp.co.za which I have advised to multiple of our customers in the past as a direct form of communication above our support teams.

Ironically the services you mention above are actually carried by our private circuits to Teraco NAP peering which we run at around 50%. So please understand when we ask for feedback it is to try and assist you in resolving it.

I didn't refuse to cooperate, but merely indicated that were I a nonproficient user in the terms of Tracert and the like, how would you go about solving my problem?
Even then, I had to go into my live firewall logs to trace which services I am currently using. Seeing as tracerouting to www.netflix.co.za or showmax.co.za would not give you the data you need. I know for a fact that those services are provided by cloud based services like Amazon Web services and the like. This is the expertise I expect you to have, agreed?

I also admit heavily to being SUPER biased in terms of support being lacklustre as I have had my fights with WebAfrica and I simply refuse to reduce myself to those stress levels again.
I also do Operational Support & troubleshooting all day at work and a techy at home, which is why I run pfsense router/firewall instead of a plug in modem. I am averse to doing extensive or in depth troubleshooting in my personal capacity when my reasonable expectation is that this responsibility lay at your door.

I'm not picking a fight, in fact I would prefer not to. I would just like it to work within reasonable bounds without argument

 

[PBCool]

I didn't refuse to cooperate, but merely indicated that were I a nonproficient user in the terms of Tracert and the like, how would you go about solving my problem?
Even then, I had to go into my live firewall logs to trace which services I am currently using. Seeing as tracerouting to www.netflix.co.za or showmax.co.za would not give you the data you need. I know for a fact that those services are provided by cloud based services like Amazon Web services and the like. This is the expertise I expect you to have, agreed?

I also admit heavily to being SUPER biased in terms of support being lacklustre as I have had my fights with WebAfrica and I simply refuse to reduce myself to those stress levels again.
I also do Operational Support & troubleshooting all day at work and a techy at home, which is why I run pfsense router/firewall instead of a plug in modem. I am averse to doing extensive or in depth troubleshooting in my personal capacity when my reasonable expectation is that this responsibility lay at your door.

I'm not picking a fight, in fact I would prefer not to. I would just like it to work within reasonable bounds without argument

Thanks for this, so did you provide us with the trace

Netflix peers directly with us at Teraco and so does Showmax.

If you were not able to do a trace then we would either help telephonically or do so remotely for our customer. If there was an issue on the Vumatel fibre or switch which is the last mile, the easiest way to see this is via a trace from customer premises.

I am not picking a fight either but when commenting about performance on a public forum around our network performance that should make it our business surely?

 

[Sinbad]

Thanks for this, so did you provide us with the trace

Netflix peers directly with us at Teraco and so does Showmax.

If you were not able to do a trace then we would either help telephonically or do so remotely for our customer. If there was an issue on the Vumatel fibre or switch which is the last mile, the easiest way to see this is via a trace from customer premises.

I am not picking a fight either but when commenting about performance on a public forum around our network performance that should make it our business surely?

Netflix is a complex beast to troubleshoot.

Trick #1 is the fact that you have no idea where on their CDN you're connecting to. Doing a traceroute to www.netflix.com takes you to the USA.
Right now, my international traffic is literally shafted. I am getting 6% of line speed on speed tests.
Yet - http://www.fast.com which is the netflix speed test shows me 96 Mbps - so it's obviously local traffic.

 

[PBCool]

Netflix is a complex beast to troubleshoot.

Trick #1 is the fact that you have no idea where on their CDN you're connecting to. Doing a traceroute to www.netflix.com takes you to the USA.
Right now, my international traffic is literally shafted. I am getting 6% of line speed on speed tests.
Yet - http://www.fast.com which is the netflix speed test shows me 96 Mbps - so it's obviously local traffic.

Yeap Netflix node is housed at Teraco Isando. Showmax used to use akamai as their content delivery but have now started peering directly, as in from yesterday.

 

[Sinbad]

Yeap Netflix node is housed at Teraco Isando. Showmax used to use akamai as their content delivery but have now started peering directly, as in from yesterday.

nice
So how would you advise a customer help troubleshoot netflix or showmax, out of curiosity? Do you provide them the IP of the local node?

 

[PBCool]

nice
So how would you advise a customer help troubleshoot netflix or showmax, out of curiosity? Do you provide them the IP of the local node?

Correct, after that it is more than likely DNS relative, IE using a private DNS that doesn't use the local content addresses etc. But these are also used to check latency to first hop next hop etc. There have been some legacy ddos stuff on upstreams that can affect single IPs etc as well.

 

[Sinbad]

Correct, after that it is more than likely DNS relative, IE using a private DNS that doesn't use the local content addresses etc. But these are also used to check latency to first hop next hop etc. There have been some legacy ddos stuff on upstreams that can affect single IPs etc as well.

Before netflix got wise to the geounlocking, life was awesome. Your auth went through a proxy to the country of your choice, and the stream came from a local node... damn you netflix, damn you.

Just FYI, though, I'm seeing packet loss on the vuma network but it does not show up in a traceroute or speedtest... we need to figure out more advanced ways of identifying these things...

 

[PBCool]

Before netflix got wise to the geounlocking, life was awesome. Your auth went through a proxy to the country of your choice, and the stream came from a local node... damn you netflix, damn you.

Just FYI, though, I'm seeing packet loss on the vuma network but it does not show up in a traceroute or speedtest... we need to figure out more advanced ways of identifying these things...

Sure, we have seen packets being mirrored from one customer to another on the Vuma network. It was a bug in the switch firmware.

A trace is the first point of troubleshooting not the last.

 

[Sinbad]

Sure, we have seen packets being mirrored from one customer to another on the Vuma network. It was a bug in the switch firmware.

A trace is the first point of troubleshooting not the last.

I'm thinking there should be some kind of Javascript applet page thing on an ISP's support portal that a user can go to, and it performs all the necessary first line tests in a standard, controlled manner and dumps the result into the support ticket...
How cool would that be?