Why your 24/7 downloading is a problem ?

[kopite1985]

What you're not taking into account is that a good ISP tries to keep as much traffic internally as possible.

Torrents, NZBs, websites - All these things can be cached locally, and therefore use considerably less of their pipe than you would think.

Think about CDN nodes too - This is where a huge portion of content is stored, and evert CDN provider has a local source nowdays too, which is accessed through things like JINX and SAIX.

For exactly this reason, MWEB set up their local Steam server.

On a given month, you are probably doing 70% of your usage to the local datacenter, rather than to the source.

What he said!

 

[ProfA]

Ok.

Company X has capacity for 10 people to download 24/7. It gives those 10 people internet, but they don't use it 24/7. They use about 50% of the capacity. Now Company X is still paying the full price for their reserved capacity. They decide to give another 10 people access to the internet, expecting they will also use 50%. This way they can reduce the prices for everyone, as their capacity does not change, thus their running costs stay the same (besides the little extra admin). Now these new 10 people all use the internet 24/7. They make the service bad for everyone. How do you handle this problem? The easiest way is to warn these people and slow them down, or make them pay more for unthrottled.

Now people complain and say "but tell me exactly how much I can use?", "Give me exact rules to follow so I can plan and use accordingly" etc etc. To keep internet as affordable as possible for everyone, they have to keep changing the usage allowed per person because they still only have a fixed capacity, but customer usage keeps changing. The available capacity thus determines how much you can use, but it is ever changing, and that is why you will never get fixed number, unless you want to pay a lot more. If you wan't rules to guide you, just pay more for unthrottled etc. But you buy the same as the guy on the street, and then expect to be treated the same, but you royally abuse the shared capacity.

New users come and go. Tomorrow their capacity is reached, two days from now it is 10% below capacity. Now a psossible solution to this is to adapt every persons cap according to what is available. This month you get 50gb, next month you get 40gb, the month after you get 100gb, etc. but they can't sell you a product that changes like this for many obvious reasons.


Now how about we introduce a product, where your bill at the end of the month equals the amount of gb you used? The problem is the bigger part of the population can't comprehend a gb, and thus when they see their bill suddenly doubled next month... Its begging for a PR/CR nightmare. Secondly people can hit and run, by using the internet excessively, then complain at the end of the month and refuse to pay and demand to go to another isp. The easy solution to make life so much easier for everyone, and avoid costs on PR/CR that will carry over to customers anyway. is to introduce a simple easy to understand and worry free product. Its like the iphone: There is one, and its the same everywhere. They call it uncapped, but technically its a (changing cap or unknown cap) But you can't sell internet where you tell people you will get capped at some point, we just can't tell you when. So instead of capping/cutting you off randomly, they slow you down so you can never reach that capacity. Which is ideal because you still have access all the time

So yes the conduct may not be nice, but they can improve it, but the costs will carry over onto you.

Just LOL. So they have capacity for 10. But put on 20 because of greed?

 

[Chevron]

Just LOL. So they have capacity for 10. But put on 20 because of greed?

Not greed, to make the product affordable. As was said, most of the public only cares about cheapness, not quality.

 

[LazyLion]

Can't ever remember a time when I downloaded 24/7. I've always done it at night only... usually from midnight onwards.
And even then the downloads often finish well before the morning.
And that's for a family of five on a 4/6 mbps line.

 

[Nanfeishen]

Can't ever remember a time when I downloaded 24/7. I've always done it at night only... usually from midnight onwards.
And even then the downloads often finish well before the morning.
And that's for a family of five on a 4/6 mbps line.

One must ask the question -
Is it really heavy downloaders, or is it that more and more people are utilising internet TV ?

Streaming live Tv and video is going to run your line pretty constantly, and if one reads through the thread on Tv, Series, one finds many users streaming on 1 and 2 meg home packages as they are a lot cheaper than DSTV.
Obviously Mweb cannot go out and block these sites, however they can make it more difficult for customers to enjoy those services, by reducing bandwidth speed they can degrade those services or peoples experiences of them.

What would be interesting to see is how many people who received the warning letters are actually streaming from places like Hulu and Netflix, and not really "heavy downloaders" but rather heavy users of their lines.

 

[douglasl]

I have a house with 2 teenagers a wife who works from home and myself a gamer.
Teenagers love YouTube, wife loves pintrest, I am always downlooading games or patches.
I also download movies and series(from semi legitimate sites e.g. iTunes)
And have been dabbling with Netflix and hula.

While these may not all be 100% legitamate in multichoices version of how things work they are in my view.

What really pissed me off about mwebs mail and even more so their response is that I specifically spoke to their sales guys when upgrading my line 2 months ago about which package I should take. I was told take the premium uncapped package as the only limit is your bandwidth, the standard package you will get throttled.
I was an mweb fan and also thought good riddance in the past when people got booted as I thought it was all just idiot torrent downloaders downloading the Internet onto their hard drives. So to those of you saying good riddance, beware what you wish for.

The worst is I cannot totally cancel my account as my wife has a lot of business related email comming through from her mweb account.

 

[Chevron]

The worst is I cannot totally cancel my account as my wife has a lot of business related email comming through from her mweb account.

You can get an email only account for like 30bucks a month and use that while you get her clients moved over to something more ISP agnostic.

 

[ProfA]

Not greed, to make the product affordable. As was said, most of the public only cares about cheapness, not quality.

Yip. MWEB does it for the benefit of the consumer. Greed/Profit play no part.

 

[Chevron]

Yip. MWEB does it for the benefit of the consumer. Greed/Profit play no part.

I wouldn't so far as to say that, but without high contention ratios, uncapped wouldn't be so cheap. Just look at the business uncapped pricing for more realistic pricing with low contention ratios.

 

[ProfA]

I wouldn't so far as to say that, but without high contention ratios, uncapped wouldn't be so cheap. Just look at the business uncapped pricing for more realistic pricing with low contention ratios.

Listen I hear you. Really I do. But other ISP are getting it right. Let's be honest here. There capacity is for 10. They can do 20 quite easily with a little throttling and shaping to bring down costs and make it cheaper for everyone (and make some profit so dont think otherwise). Still keeping everyones internet at a very usable level. But what do they do? They sign on 1000. They are greedy. Simple as that.

 

[Necuno]

I have a house with 2 teenagers a wife who works from home and myself a gamer.
Teenagers love YouTube, wife loves pintrest, I am always downlooading games or patches.
I also download movies and series(from semi legitimate sites e.g. iTunes)
And have been dabbling with Netflix and hula.

While these may not all be 100% legitamate in multichoices version of how things work they are in my view.

What really pissed me off about mwebs mail and even more so their response is that I specifically spoke to their sales guys when upgrading my line 2 months ago about which package I should take. I was told take the premium uncapped package as the only limit is your bandwidth, the standard package you will get throttled.
I was an mweb fan and also thought good riddance in the past when people got booted as I thought it was all just idiot torrent downloaders downloading the Internet onto their hard drives. So to those of you saying good riddance, beware what you wish for.

The worst is I cannot totally cancel my account as my wife has a lot of business related email comming through from her mweb account.

Mweb logic: If you are more than one person you must be having mweb business.

 

[Jab]

More like consumers don't realize how little bandwidth their money actually gets them.

Yes MWeb won't tell us.

 

[krycor]

I think you guys are missing the a big point or rather ICASA is found wanting yet again.. Telecoms grade service level require certain guarantees on service levels vs actual capacity. Otherwise Telkom may, e.g. contend trunk capacity for 100 users where the true capacity is less than 50% there of.

From what I recall they need to maintain something like 80%(guessing badly, probably 70%?) of the full load irrespective of true utilization(this is for POTs). There are similar utilization/contention raitios with mobile providers to ensure that users get basically what they paid for to a certain degree. Now as i mentioned previously.. 100GB on a 1Mbps line is 1/3 of true capacity one way. So basically they saying they want to have a minimum profit of 60% or better put as what has likely happened, they took on risk with lower prices without factoring in the avg usage > 1/3 capacity.

Should the consumer pay for a screw up on their side? That is highly debatable. In the end, when lines went from 384kbps to 1Mbps they needed to plan strategies in terms of usage costing with avg's going up due to speed increases. I reckon they didn't do this and assumed usage patterns would remain the same which has no led to the brown stuff hitting the fan when user base avg went up as new possibilities on the entry product became norm. Streaming youtube e.g. is now less of a problem than it was for 384kbps.

Technically.. i reckon uncapped 1Mbps current cost is below the actual cost which market kept which is why now we have a sudden demand to limit to 100GB which is essentially 1/3rd of what it would be.. i.e. 341kbps i.e. 384Kbps.

 

[Necuno]

Yes MWeb won't tell us.

If they do then they can't change it on a continuous basis to suit them... simple.

 

[Netar]

Someone once posted a very interesting (and very true) statement/question. I'll repeat it here:

"Why limit an unlimited resource?"

 

[AnonDev]

This is about profit plain and simple.

I used to work for Naspers for a long while, so I know exactly what I'm talking about.

Last I heard, the Naspers building had a dedicated 10gbit Ethernet pipe. Back when I was there, I did an IP check it showed me as an ADSL user. They didn't have a shortage of BW, it is about increasing profits.

Everything with Naspers is about increasing profits. Hell I sat in meetings and products were deprioritized because of massive competition. For example, they had a product out there and it was making a lot of money, sales were increasing. But a large international company was breaking into the market in a massive way.

What happens? All development on the product is shelved. No more money is spent on it. Oh they'll keep selling it as long as they can make a profit. But customers who complain? We jokingly laughed at those customers terrible experience, not officially in meetings of course but around the water cooler, all the time.

Most of the people working there didn't support the company we worked for.

It was hilarious. After I had worked at a company with strong customer focus and values it is amazed me to see the level of company loyalty. Naspers was the kind of backstabbing environment were you didn't respect the company and it doesn't respect you. They sure don't respect the customers.

And before you write me off as an ex disgruntled employee, I left in good stead and would be welcomed back with open arms.

Oh there are PLENTY of excellent skills there and nice people, except HR whom were snakes but I think that is fairly standard for most companies. Still the Naspers environment is about profit above all else. Bad customer experiences were like statistics there, water under the bridge.

 

[Syphonx]

This is about profit plain and simple.

I used to work for Naspers for a long while, so I know exactly what I'm talking about.

Last I heard, the Naspers building had a dedicated 10gbit Ethernet pipe. Back when I was there, I did an IP check it showed me as an ADSL user. They didn't have a shortage of BW, it is about increasing profits.

Everything with Naspers is about increasing profits. Hell I sat in meetings and products were deprioritized because of massive competition. For example, they had a product out there and it was making a lot of money, sales were increasing. But a large international company was breaking into the market in a massive way.

What happens? All development on the product is shelved. No more money is spent on it. Oh they'll keep selling it as long as they can make a profit. But customers who complain? We jokingly laughed at those customers terrible experience, not officially in meetings of course but around the water cooler, all the time.

Most of the people working there didn't support the company we worked for.

It was hilarious. After I had worked at a company with strong customer focus and values it is amazed me to see the level of company loyalty. Naspers was the kind of backstabbing environment were you didn't respect the company and it doesn't respect you. They sure don't respect the customers.

And before you write me off as an ex disgruntled employee, I left in good stead and would be welcomed back with open arms.

Oh there are PLENTY of excellent skills there and nice people, except HR whom were snakes but I think that is fairly standard for most companies. Still the Naspers environment is about profit above all else. Bad customer experiences were like statistics there, water under the bridge.

Sounds about right

 

[TEXTILE GUY]

I have to agree.

I may not be an IT guy, but I do know how to make money. If I were MWEB, I would want a million smaller accounts that give me big returns for the least input of resources ...
All these folks who go on about the technical and ethical reasons for MWBs abuse scam may have a point,
but ...heres the shocker

NASPERS, MWEB EXIST TO MAKE A PROFIT

... they are not a service provided to make general society happy .... And lets be honest, do you HONESTLY think that they loose sleep at night because some arb user in some arb town has congestion problems, slow internet ??? With all this bad press MWEB has barely tried to do anything positive , at best Derick Hershaw has laughed off the opinion of users, and admits its an economic issue. And MWEB has the cheek to use the term ABUSE?

 

[ProfA]

This is about profit plain and simple.

I used to work for Naspers for a long while, so I know exactly what I'm talking about.

Last I heard, the Naspers building had a dedicated 10gbit Ethernet pipe. Back when I was there, I did an IP check it showed me as an ADSL user. They didn't have a shortage of BW, it is about increasing profits.

Everything with Naspers is about increasing profits. Hell I sat in meetings and products were deprioritized because of massive competition. For example, they had a product out there and it was making a lot of money, sales were increasing. But a large international company was breaking into the market in a massive way.

What happens? All development on the product is shelved. No more money is spent on it. Oh they'll keep selling it as long as they can make a profit. But customers who complain? We jokingly laughed at those customers terrible experience, not officially in meetings of course but around the water cooler, all the time.

Most of the people working there didn't support the company we worked for.

It was hilarious. After I had worked at a company with strong customer focus and values it is amazed me to see the level of company loyalty. Naspers was the kind of backstabbing environment were you didn't respect the company and it doesn't respect you. They sure don't respect the customers.

And before you write me off as an ex disgruntled employee, I left in good stead and would be welcomed back with open arms.

Oh there are PLENTY of excellent skills there and nice people, except HR whom were snakes but I think that is fairly standard for most companies. Still the Naspers environment is about profit above all else. Bad customer experiences were like statistics there, water under the bridge.

So you also laughed at customer complaints with your fellow colleagues while there?

 

[Chevron]

So you also laughed at customer complaints with your fellow colleagues while there?

Do you not know what "around the water cooler" means?