Why Iburst has been cruddy

[w1z4rd]

Hey all,

Was at a business meeting this evening, and spoke to some big players in the telecoms industry. I was told by a person there that the reason our services have been so cruddy, is simply that WBS have run out of bandwitdth, they have over sold what they have, and currently theres multiplexing of like 300/1.

The person who told me is extremely savvy, and a server op on LAGnet. He also has high connections in the wireless industry, so I have no reason not to believe him.

If this is true.... What say you Shaun?:>

 

[Gatecrasher]

Fits in with why they have bought additional bandwidth from IS.

Fits in with why they are too embarrassed to come clean tell us the truth.

Let's hope they don't make the same mistake again... and that the return to decent daytime speeds is permanent.

 

[kingrob]

The lotto will be slow on Saturday...

That might explain why ol' Shaun was so upbeat yesterday - he most probably ran off to purchase more bandwidth from Telkom or UUNET!

If it was from Telkom, that might explain why my connection is still a dog.

 

[w1z4rd]

kingrob: they bought 15MB pipe for IS... thats why problems will be "sorted" out tomorrow

 

[ic]

...
If this is true.... What say you Shaun?:>

Sounds plausible, however, I think it should read:

If this is true.... What say you Sasan Parvin?:>

 

[PeeVee]

Hey guys, not wanting to be a wet nanny here, but

At work slow internet speeds is something that we at work are experiencing as well, an we is getting our bandwidth from either IS or Telkom.
Our network guys are totally baffled as the reason does not appear to be obvious.
This started about a week into April.

Anybody else have the same experience?

 

[Raithlin]

Yeah, we also use IS for work, and sometimes it just plain sux.

 

[DFantom]

Anybody else have the same experience?

Nah, I have a decent IT dept
Seriously though my first guess would be internal, grab a linux box, put it on the edge of the network and run something like NTop...you'll be amazed at what you'll find.
Oh and have NTop accessable by not only the IT dept...It's an all too common situation where the biggest bandwidth hogs are the IT dept, and it's easy for them to hide it.

 

[nocilah]

what i dont understand with regards to what you heard pan is why was the degredation so sudden. i remember a few days prior to launch things were going very well, then all of a sudden monday hits and everything goes downhill. could they have oversold so much bw over the weekend?

i do not think an additional 15mb will help, but i am waiting for saturday to see if the issues have been resolved and i am eager to see how wbs carry on communicating to us. lately i have been finding wbs communications on this forum non-conducive to our plight and problems

 

[bb_matt]

How far will 15MB go ?

 

[ic]

what i dont understand with regards to what you heard pan is why was the degredation so sudden...

Agreed, there is still a rotting sardine stinking everything up - I think the bandwidth contention is part of the story - that's probably been ongoing for some time now, but the sudden degradtaion suggests something internally on the iBurst network itself - possibly the bandwidth management system, i.e. what Luis' department has been working to correct - if the 15Mb pipe to IS is a new peering link, then it's unlikely that Luis would be physically installing the thing himself - instead methinks Luis would be working on the cap & bandwidth management system .

 

[hexium]

After MWEB moved over to IS, I noticed a definite slowdown on the IS network (obviously...with that many users moving over...lol)

 

[rebel]

Why do I see Saturday from everyone's post? Didn't they say they'd have everything fixed today?

Anyway, my speeds are fine.

 

[LoneGunman]

*speaking as the resident Forum paranoid*
if there's 'slowness' across different networks, this wouldnt have anything to do with the ICASA hearings would it? I mean, Telkom is being gently threatened currently. They control the pipe in and out of SA, so if there is a 'slowness' across multiple networks, using the pipe - this wouldnt be a subtle demonstration of Telkom's muscle and a signal to some Powers That Be, would it?

 

[Kei]

At work slow internet speeds is something that we at work are experiencing as well, an we is getting our bandwidth from either IS or Telkom.
Our network guys are totally baffled as the reason does not appear to be obvious.
This started about a week into April.

Anybody else have the same experience?

Yes, we're having the same problem here at work on our Telkom line. Local is slow, as
is international. I bet Telkom is capping again

 

[bHOLDher]

How far will 15MB go ?

Hehe, at 300:1... about another 4500 users... Hehe..

Seriously, if there is any near truth in 300:1, then Sentech must be running at much worse than 300:1

Whats news about the IS/Telkom peering issue? Could this have a general influence at lots of places?

Hmmm, LGM, if telkom can put a sleuth on VOIP traffic, then who knows what else they are up to...

(Just my usual theories and half truths)

 

[guest2013-1]

Seeing as UUNET has it's own peering agreements with both Telkom and IS, I doubt the whole IS and Telkom peering issue would affect us much.

I seriously doubt the ratio is 300:1, people should stop using linear math and do some investigation on how transparent proxy servers work and how ISP's save on bandwidth etc.

Mweb has a couple of hundred thousand users, if a quater of that figure connected with their ISDN 128k and half of that figure was on 56k, it would far surpass WBS's measly bandwidth usage, but still, they get more done with less... think about it.

However, if WBS did follow the suit of Mweb (I've spoken to Shaun on many occastions and he was "did you know we use more bandwidth than mweb, mweb having so many users!") and tried getting away with the same amount of bandwidth but selling 1mb 24/7 connections.... won't suprise me.

Sentech, I know for a fact, has around 19 meg of international bandwidth (they could have upgraded, but chances are less than nil that they did)

This services their entire client base, and is uncapped. Yet, users never get more than 56k speed on a constant download. It bursts for the first 40 seconds or so, which is great for browsing... but yea, who would want a broadband connection, which is uncapped and supposedly 512k, but you only get 56k speeds....

This being said, Sentech claims a ratio of 30:1 (or was it 15:1) with a local contention of 4:1 or something. I won't believe them though, because marketing usually utters a load of crap just to sound cool....

 

[guest2013-1]

Fits in with why they have bought additional bandwidth from IS.

Their additional bandwidth is from UUNET, not IS. I've spoken to several staff and all said UUNET. I doubt WBS would break ties with UUNET this early in the game unless there is some real trouble.

Like Sentech changed their providers several months in... but WBS have UUNET as one of their partners on their website...

 

[guest2013-1]

oh, and seeing as Mweb is now with IS and not with UUNET, I can't see why UUNET has a bandwidth shortage. I doubt they have.

According to a rep, the reason why their uncapped adsl package sometimes have trouble is because they have allocated certain amount of bandwidth to it.

If you look back, iburst never really had a bandwidth problem up and till they went live (officially). So one thing is for sure, they're on a set amount of bandwidth and have totally misjudged how much they would use.

All in all, the whole situation is just too familiar to me. They've turned out to be an accelarated version of Sentech.

Can't wait to hear how ICASA rules on ADSL.

 

[w1z4rd]

noone: Well, Shaun told me IS, take it up with him