Why does Telkom shape?

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alaincraven

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I was just thinking about my current file download, and I thought "Why does Telkom shape?"

Suely, it makes no difference if I use my 3GB cap on HTTP transfers or P2P? Does the data not travel along the same lines, do I not use the same international (or local) circuits?

Could it be so they could charge an outlandish price for 4GB uncapped?
 
/conspiracy mode on

Telkom shape traffic in order to make diginet look appealing, it also is a convenient way to defuse the VOIP threat.

/conspiracy mode off

Http traffic unlike p2p and other protocols is not usually continuous, so they don't need to shape it since they way people use http achieves the same result. Keep in mind too that http traffic gets proxied which helps reduce the load on international lines.

From my experience there is no speed difference between the unshaped and shaped accounts, the only difference is that the latency on the unshaped is more consistent and slightly less than the shaped. This implies that the overseas lines are not operating at max capacity ( otherwise unshaped should have higher throughput ), which leads me to believe that shaping is not needed at all. Of course the unshaped accounts may be flagging the data packets with higher priority to get better latency, but somehow I doubt it.

My guess is that shaping is a business decision and not a technical one.
 
pookfuzz, no need for the /conspiracy...its common knowledge that Telkom has purposefully crippled ADSL to keep Diginet profits high.

Hence the high contention, heavy shaping, low capping, dynamic IPs, lack of SLA, poorer service times, slow install times, and daily (soon to become 12 hourly) IP resets.

All the above measures force companies - especially SMMEs who would prefer ADSL - to use Diginet, since Diginet is free of most of the above issues.

Of course the 1st world is so over Diginet - they long ago moved to direct STM and direct fiber connections as a "Diginet" style substitute.
 
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Don't fool yourself, even Telkom/SAIX Lease Line internet services don't have any SLA in place. It is a best effort service.

Most if not all ISP's do some form of shaping. It could be limiting how much bw SMTP, WWW, FTP, etc can use. This is regardless of whether the service is local or not. This is done to get better use of the available bw. Browsing will typically get a higher priority over other services. Lease line clients will get a higher priority over dial or DSL users.

It is similar to setting a priority of your daily tasks at work.. You have to ask yourself what tasks need to be completed before others.. then you prioritize them and work on them..

The same applies to prioritizing packets/clients. You have to give priority to your lease line clients, then adsl and dialup. The worst thing that could happen is to have a lease line client walk away (and taking their money) since you let a client paying 1/20 or less eat all the bandwidth.

Also, VoIP works fine over ADSL even without high compression.

David
 
VoIP works better over dialup than it currently does over ADSL.

With the current weird shaping I can't even listen to streaming radio without it stuttering.
 
paarlberg said:
Don't fool yourself, even Telkom/SAIX Lease Line internet services don't have any SLA in place. It is a best effort service.

Most if not all ISP's do some form of shaping. It could be limiting how much bw SMTP, WWW, FTP, etc can use. This is regardless of whether the service is local or not. This is done to get better use of the available bw. Browsing will typically get a higher priority over other services. Lease line clients will get a higher priority over dial or DSL users.

It is similar to setting a priority of your daily tasks at work.. You have to ask yourself what tasks need to be completed before others.. then you prioritize them and work on them..

The same applies to prioritizing packets/clients. You have to give priority to your lease line clients, then adsl and dialup. The worst thing that could happen is to have a lease line client walk away (and taking their money) since you let a client paying 1/20 or less eat all the bandwidth.

Also, VoIP works fine over ADSL even without high compression.

David
Click to expand...


While that argument may be understandable, it is still not correct. I can use just as much BW over HTTP as over P2P, and affect the Diginet users just as much.

The whole shaping thing comes down to BBB (Bullsh1t baffles brains).
 
paarlberg said:
Also, VoIP works fine over ADSL even without high compression.

David
Click to expand...
cr@p.

International VoIP is unusable over shaped ADSL. More than 25% of return Sip packets are lost at times and the latency on any port other than 80 is generally over 800ms internationally due to packet inspection.
 
pookfuzz said:
VoIP works better over dialup than it currently does over ADSL.

With the current weird shaping I can't even listen to streaming radio without it stuttering.
Click to expand...
Ditto, and on a 512/256 line nogal as well.
 
I have had no problems with it except last Thursday when everything was screwed... Are you using Skype or similar? We are using a commercial PABX product so this might be the difference.
 
paarlberg said:
I have had no problems with it except last Thursday when everything was screwed... Are you using Skype or similar? We are using a commercial PABX product so this might be the difference.
Click to expand...
locally or internationally? local is fine..
 
/me remembers when I could play BZFlag against/with people in Denmark.
That server was configured to kick people off when your lag got higher than 250ms.
This was 2001/2002.
Then they introduced shaping.
Instantly, I can never get to Denmark in less than 350 ms on a shaped account.
/me wonders just how much time "packet inspection" is costing us.
/me wonders just how bad browsing would be without everyone being shaped.
/me suggests that "packet inspection" is costing 100ms per packet. What a waste.
 
We use it locally and internationally. I am in the US at the moment and had a 45 minute call yesterday and a 30 minute call today.. both were fine.. some occasional packet loss, but nothing major. VoIP can become unstable above 200ms depending on the VoIP provider and equipment. Therefore any international is subject to issues from SA. If we use our H323 gateways, we have very good quality normally. However, any issues along the link between the sites can cause problems. Mostly the issues are on the US side surprisingly in our experience in the past 3 years of using it. Oops, did I say that ;)

I agree that the poor ADSL stability could cause many issues.. we usually use our lease line for VoIP except when remote and calling via a soft phone.

I am not defending Telkom/SAIX... if you see how much I spend per month for service, and still receive **** support.
 
stoke said:
/me remembers when I could play BZFlag against/with people in Denmark.
That server was configured to kick people off when your lag got higher than 250ms.
This was 2001/2002.
Then they introduced shaping.
Instantly, I can never get to Denmark in less than 350 ms on a shaped account.
/me wonders just how much time "packet inspection" is costing us.
/me wonders just how bad browsing would be without everyone being shaped.
/me suggests that "packet inspection" is costing 100ms per packet. What a waste.
Click to expand...

This is to my house in Atlanta from CPT

Pinging xxx.xxx.xx.86 with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from xxx.xxx.xx.86: bytes=32 time=233ms TTL=49
Reply from xxx.xxx.xx.86: bytes=32 time=232ms TTL=49
Reply from xxx.xxx.xx.86: bytes=32 time=231ms TTL=49
Reply from xxx.xxx.xx.86: bytes=32 time=231ms TTL=49

Ping statistics for xxx.xxx.xx.86:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 231ms, Maximum = 233ms, Average = 231ms

I get about 197ms to Miami..

Then again this is not on an ADSL link in CPT..
 
paarlberg said:
This is to my house in Atlanta from CPT

Pinging xxx.xxx.xx.86 with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from xxx.xxx.xx.86: bytes=32 time=233ms TTL=49
Reply from xxx.xxx.xx.86: bytes=32 time=232ms TTL=49
Reply from xxx.xxx.xx.86: bytes=32 time=231ms TTL=49
Reply from xxx.xxx.xx.86: bytes=32 time=231ms TTL=49

Ping statistics for xxx.xxx.xx.86:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 231ms, Maximum = 233ms, Average = 231ms

I get about 197ms to Miami..

Then again this is not on an ADSL link in CPT..
Click to expand...

Yessssss - thanks - thats the proof I was looking for.
You've just proven that ADSL is 100ms slower than a proper connection.
100ms is a freaking loong time.
The BARSTARDZ !!!
So - what connection are you running on ? Who'z the ISP ? It cannot be an IS connection, cos we've got one and it's as bad as the ADSL one.
 
That was via a UUNET connection.. I will post via SAIX at a similar time of day this evening.
 
Why does telkom do anything they want? BECAUSE THEY CAN!
 
alaincraven said:
While that argument may be understandable, it is still not correct. I can use just as much BW over HTTP as over P2P, and affect the Diginet users just as much.

The whole shaping thing comes down to BBB (Bullsh1t baffles brains).
Click to expand...

You can use as much, but HTTP is mostly burstable bandwidth, you request the page and download it, that is it.. where P2P is mostly a constant stream, or can be.
 
erm, whats the point of shaping "in order to prevent downloaders and abusers" if i can still download at 55kb/s from Easynews? it runs on unshaped ports yes, but i can download whatever at full speed. soooo, are there other ways of fooling the shaping in order to improve skype etc?
 
Nice - Cape Town to Portugal = 60ms [According to SAT3 link from above].

So - This is our IS Link :
Pinging uic.pt [207.44.182.16] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 207.44.182.16: bytes=32 time=310ms TTL=49
Reply from 207.44.182.16: bytes=32 time=311ms TTL=49
Reply from 207.44.182.16: bytes=32 time=310ms TTL=49
Reply from 207.44.182.16: bytes=32 time=321ms TTL=49

And this is my 512 ADSL at home :
Pinging uic.pt [207.44.182.16] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 207.44.182.16: bytes=32 time=407ms TTL=46
Reply from 207.44.182.16: bytes=32 time=410ms TTL=46
Reply from 207.44.182.16: bytes=32 time=410ms TTL=46
Reply from 207.44.182.16: bytes=32 time=410ms TTL=46

Holeeeeee crap - check how bad the ADSL link is - this is not laughable anymore - it's blatant theft.
 
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