Why everyone doesn't move to IS based ADSL

M

MrJones

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 15, 2004
Messages
945
Reaction score
2
Location
JHB
This came up in one of the other threads and I thought it deserved a new thread. It's obvious that IS has a much better offer with regards to the amount of Gigs you get for your money, so the question is this. Why isn't anyone running to IS? This is all speculation mind you, but I do feel that it is because we aren't exactly sure of what we can do with those 28GB local access. There are those select few "local" online communities who have access to the local torrent sites, ftp sites, whatever, who can download to there hearts content, but for us guys who aren't in the know, we can just carry on browsing with those 28GB's (obviosuly not making the best use of it). Now on the flipside, if we were all sharing information freely, and everyone had access to those local sites, we would have good reason to go over to IS to make use of those 28GB's. We could still use SAIX here and there for the low latency kind of stuff, but the bulk of the accounts could possibly move over to IS. Well thats my take on the situation.

Any Comments...
 
I would rather get a 3GB account with good international latency than a 30GB account with poor international latency.

Services used: HTTP, HTTPS, VPN, VOIP, FTP, POP, SMTP, Remote Desktop
Services not used: P2P, IRC, Gaming, Large downloads
 
I would love 28 gigs of local access for my local servers. However, I won't somer change over just yet because of the uncertainity that surrounds the whole Telkom hardcap - aren't we still waiting for ICASA to investigate this?
 
MrJones said:
Now on the flipside, if we were all sharing information freely, and everyone had access to those local sites, we would have good reason to go over to IS to make use of those 28GB's.
Click to expand...

Thats like asking all the drug dealers to sell their stuff at the malls so the general public has better access to them. I'd assume that most of these local torrent/ftp sites do not exactly have legal contents. Thats why they are closed to the public in the first place.
 
No Mr Jones. All I was saying was that it is unlikely that such information will be shared in a public forum.
 
Yeah, you are right, but then we need to find alternative ways of sharing that info.
 
I think quite a few people did move over to IS after November 1, as did I. I think <have no hard evidence> that this led to even greater strain on that peering link, which ultimately led to quite a few performance issues which spanned a number of days.

As far as resources for download go, IS's NNTP (news) server has all the groups you could possibly want, and also has excellent retension, so in that instance P2P is not really an issue. All you need is a decent news reader.

In the end, I decided to go for a 3gig Telkrom account as well as the IS account, mainly because of the performance issues IS experienced earlier this month.

If things improve this month on the IS performance front then I will probably drop the SAIX account again. Which I would really like to do because IMHO they are thieves of the first order.
 
Latency is the big issue here - unshaped with SAIX, my latency to google is 300-320 ms, latency over a sat link will be around 700ms including the overheads (IS).

So in my opinion I wouldnt move for just that. TCP suffers over latency.

/doc
 
Yes, IS does suffer from latency issues. However, I think that is for International Traffic only <please correct me if I'm wrong>. As a result web pages are sometimes slightly slower to open, and the raw accounts wouldn't be all that good for gaming. That is where the proxy servers come in (OpenWeb and NukeCap).

I don't do any online gaming, so I cannot comment on how these services compare to the capped / uncapped Telkrom solutions for applications that require low latency. Perhaps one of you avid gamers who use these services could comment.

One other thing is VOIP. There have been conflicting views regarding things like Skype on the forum, but the consensus seems to be that on IS there is longer delay but the voice quality is superior.
 
Well, some people can do 100+ gig on a TelkomInternet account before getting capped. Thats a helluva lot better than 3gig international, 27gig local.

Plus, you get more than 1 concurrent connection with SAIX accounts.

Just my 2c
 
"Shaped" vs "Unshaped".

Data is data no matter how you look at it. If I download 3GB of data from http or weather I download it from another port should make no difference as I am downloading the same amount of data. If I am using p2p software or normal http downloads the fact remains that I can download it. If shaping will reduce my non http/ftp traffic, then I will just use more of these ports than the others. It does not mean that I will use ADSL less. "Shaping" is a pitiful way to get more profit out of the existing infrastructure. ISDN is not shaped and it can download more data at a cheaper rate than DSL.

We are paying too much for this "always on" connection. Things need to change as I can see total Telecoms anarchy leading to chaos in the sector. International technologies that use existing unlicensed spectrums eg XMax will change broadband globally. Internationally there are business models that can and will challenge Telkom for domance in the market place. These companies just cannot compete due to current govenrment laws. The telecoms act of 1996 encourages innovation. SA is not innovating as there is no competition in the market.
 
As mentioned. The news is out that Telkom isn't capping their Telkom Internet customers. I am already well over my cap limit and the Internet is still chucking along fine. Skype sucks but apart from that it is speedy. Downloaded 2gigs yesterday beyond the cap limit.

So...

The question is, is Telkom deliberately not capping to get customers to Telkom Internet?
 
The answer is, of course they are! And the next question is how long will it last?
 
For anyone to make local access a selling point is just wrong. We all know it should be uncapped and yet they throw a bone and everyone laps it up. Besides - the main point is international. World Wide Web - sound familiar?

I'll stick with uunet thanks - might be shaped to **** but it gets the job done.
 
thedoc! said:
Latency is the big issue here - unshaped with SAIX, my latency to google is 300-320 ms, latency over a sat link will be around 700ms including the overheads (IS).

So in my opinion I wouldnt move for just that. TCP suffers over latency.

/doc
Click to expand...

one reason for me to switch to IS is that international actually still works after you reach your international cap. as promised when you reach your cap, it will be reduced to dial-up speeds and this is what they've done. unlike telkom where previously it was supposed to have been a softcap and reduced speeds after cap, but yet international was completely useless.
here's a ping to google i did just now on a capped IS account. prior to the cap being reached, return times would be normally be around 500ms which isnt that much more than SAIX.

Code: 
Pinging www.l.google.com [66.249.85.104] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 66.249.85.104: bytes=32 time=1155ms TTL=240
Reply from 66.249.85.104: bytes=32 time=1124ms TTL=240
Reply from 66.249.85.104: bytes=32 time=1156ms TTL=240
Reply from 66.249.85.104: bytes=32 time=984ms TTL=240

Ping statistics for 66.249.85.104:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 984ms, Maximum = 1156ms, Average = 1104ms

so if theres anyone capped on an SAIX account, please post a ping to google ;)
 
thanks for the feedback Highflyer_GP - can someone with an uncapped IS account paste pings to google.

/doc
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X