MWEB Uncapped ADSL - Official Q & A Part 2

bwana

bwana

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MWEB said:
Hi All,

As it is impossible to keep track of the questions posed within the main News thread due to the flood of other views, opinions & comments, I'm starting this thread to answer specific questions you may have about the newly launched MWEB Uncapped ADSL offerings.

So fire away ...

MWB.
Click to expand...

This threads predecessor was spiralling out of control. Please keep it civil.
 
Thanks Bwana, much appreciated. Comeon guys , lets be civil, we finally get companies to actually talk to us on the forum and its the members who degenerate the thread.

@Mweb, is there anything you can tell us about Eassy and your service?

  • What are we looking at redundancy wise?
  • Are you currently testing on that cable and how is it performing in comparison to Sat3/Seacom?
  • Will you run traffic through both cables or will the uncapped accounts only be across one?
  • If one offers better latency than the other, will subscribers have a choice over which cable to be their main backbone and if a cost is involved, how much?
 
@Mweb,
  • When line speeds increase, will the packages scale with the speed increases (my interest is with the lowest speed package), meaning if I have the 384 account and a 384 line is upgraded to a 1mb line will I get a 1mb uncapped account or even a 512 uncapped account?
  • Is 50GB of data usage considered reasonable on a shaped 384 account?
  • Is Mweb likely to release cheaper per GB data bundles soon?
  • Will browsing always go at full package speed?
  • Are locally hosted web services shaped?
Apologies if these were covered in the previous thread
 
scathe said:
@Mweb,
  • When line speeds increase, will the packages scale with the speed increases (my interest is with the lowest speed package), meaning if I have the 384 account and a 384 line is upgraded to a 1mb line will I get a 1mb uncapped account or even a 512 uncapped account?
  • Is 50GB of data usage considered reasonable on a shaped 384 account?
  • Is Mweb likely to release cheaper per GB data bundles soon?
  • Will browsing always go at full package speed?
  • Are locally hosted web services shaped?
Apologies if these were covered in the previous thread
Click to expand...

Hi Scathe,

1. Once Telkom have launched their new line speeds, we will inform our client's of any changes happening on our side
2. We don't look at the amount you download but more at HOW you download. Bypassing our shapers is in breach of our T & C's
3. Our clients will be informed of all changes to products or new products
4. Browsing will be at the maximum speed that your line can handle at any given time
5. Any service, be it local or international is subject to our shaping rules

Regards
Mweb Ops
 
i've sent quite a lengthy pm to you MWEB Operations, please have a look.
 
Evening

Am I to understand that abuse would be classified as being the inhibition of other users experience through usage of large amount of bandwidth, especially at peak times.
Would downloading content during after business hours be considered abuse?
Conversely, would downloading large amounts of data during business times, even via http, be considered abuse?

Many thanks
scathe
 
scathe said:
Evening

Am I to understand that abuse would be classified as being the inhibition of other users experience through usage of large amount of bandwidth, especially at peak times.
Would downloading content during after business hours be considered abuse?
Conversely, would downloading large amounts of data during business times, even via http, be considered abuse?

Many thanks
scathe
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I believe this has been covered in detail in other threads. Look here and here particularly. Search for posts by the two MWeb reps for more information.
 
SabreWolfy said:
I believe this has been covered in detail in other threads. Look here and here particularly. Search for posts by the two MWeb reps for more information.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I'm going to make reference to this post for the whingers.

My question is regarding your ADSL logs, is it possible to move to a system which gives you day-by-day totals rather than one that gives you the sum total of the month?
 
Fudzy said:
<snip>
My question is regarding your ADSL logs, is it possible to move to a system which gives you day-by-day totals rather than one that gives you the sum total of the month?
Click to expand...

The logs which are available via the MWeb MyADSL pages? Selecting a month provides a breakdown by day. Each day can be selected, although the note at the bottom indicates that usage is reported per session, not per day.
 
SabreWolfy said:
The logs which are available via the MWeb MyADSL pages? Selecting a month provides a breakdown by day. Each day can be selected, although the note at the bottom indicates that usage is reported per session, not per day.
Click to expand...

Doh! :o

I assumed that drop down only gave totals of the previous months.

Consider previous question answered. :D
 
well itsa quite clear now. download in anyway that makes the shaper not shaping you including use of ssl/proxy/vpn/seedbox and you will get the boot. just bit curious now how do you obfuscate your torrent traffic without that and not get the letters ?

edit:
so i tried the nude test to see what the shaper is like at 10pm not sure if i should laugh or cry getting 50kB/s-80kB/s on both news server and torrents. i guess R200 more for openweb gold not so bad any more...

...about now we should return das pie from webafrica as seems they were right after all and it's only matter of time before we get to implosion point.
 
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Necuno said:
well itsa quite clear now. download in anyway that makes the shaper not shaping you including use of ssl/proxy/vpn/sexbox and you will get the boot. just bit curious now how do you obfuscate your torrent traffic without that and not get the letters ?
Click to expand...

Don't expect that question to be considered or answered here.
 
Necuno said:
well itsa quite clear now. download in anyway that makes the shaper not shaping you including use of ssl/proxy/vpn/seedbox and you will get the boot. just bit curious now how do you obfuscate your torrent traffic without that and not get the letters ?
Click to expand...

The only 99% sure way is to use ftp, http or nntp downloads that are subject to Mweb shaping.

Torrent and p2p encryption and obfuscation are meant to disguise your traffic from the scrutiny of your own ISP, which in Mweb's case is a pointless exercise because it will be shaped anyway, unless you also try to bypass the shaping (and get yourself banned in the process.)

Even if you encrypt or obfuscate p2p traffic, it does not hide your IP address from the copyright police.

Some think apps like Peerblock will protect them, and they may do to some superficial extent, but the biggest impact they have is to drastically reduce the number of potential peers and your transfer speeds. And, let's face it, if you were a copyright cop looking for copyright infringers, you would have to be pretty stupid to do so from an IP on the Peerblock list.
 
Gatecrasher said:
<snip>
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lol no i have not received the call, but i guess few people out there that think i want to mirror the internet at my current rate of questions. bit daft to use ns since one i tested was clearly limited to massive 50kB/s, i redid a torrent test now for interest sake and see it's now at 12:13am around 80-124kB/s for very well seeded one.

mweb's answer was quite clear. using vpn/ssl/proxy/seedbox to even get 1 meg off which are not "normal use" (such as work, tube and so on) is not in-line with their t&c, they will have your skin for it even if it only amounts to 50 megs. which i guess is unfortunately the draconian way to follow since some <insert insult> can't just use something normally as it would have been by say rational users.

look i do get the shaping and why one should not by pass it however i still don't see any harm done if you use for example a seed box rationally without damaging the user pool ecology. i'd take good bet that this would be less of a problem outside RSA's borders with less greedy people holding the isp's hostage. why no option (bit irrational as it defeats the point) to declare our boxes so that they too can be shaped ?

imho it would be decent of mweb to give us target usage ranges to adhere to rather than to go all cloak and dagger however they and few posters here candy coat it. still that has a problem in it's own with some people's mentality of getting each byte for their paid rands who now would seek to literally each month do exactly the max of the given range; maybe the pricing is to blame in part for this.

was uncapped unsustainable ? probably yes with all the <insert insult> doing 500gigs plus and now all of a sudden, those that use a 5th or less of that are punished with them at any means possible.
 
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@Necuno. I get what you mean. I was using nntp on port 80 and the speeds were sweet. But I was just downloading the usual volume of goodies, which I can download just as easily without bypassing the shaping, so I stopped doing it when the AUP was clarified.

One thing that does speed up nntp, though, is to use premium and Mweb servers in conjunction.

I wonder what Mweb's attitude would be to someone using ssl/proxy/vpn/seedbox et al but rather than maxing their line speed, limiting their download speeds to something in line with Mweb's non-priority shaped speed. I ain't going to risk it though...
 
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Gatecrasher said:
I wonder what Mweb's attitude would be to someone using ssl/proxy/vpn/seedbox et al but rather than maxing their line speed, limiting their download speeds to something in line with Mweb's non-priority shaped speed. I ain't going to risk it though...
Click to expand...

as i've said i've asked and got the answer that even 1 meg in such a fashion is wrong. which makes me wonder how bad it really could be for person A doing 100 gig in such a way VS person B doing 500+ gig, surely person B costs mweb more. the thing is as i see it that they don't want to setup they shaper a bit finer to include other things, "abuse group" or they just can't and now just slap on template X to just blindly shape and detect which i find bit hard to believe.
 
It's because with person B they still have control of their own network. With person A they lose that control.
 
Qwikslver said:
It's because with person B they still have control of their own network. With person A they lose that control.
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so we have 3 persons who downloads for 2 hours
a) doing vpn/proxy/ssl/seedbox at 50% of line speed. gets say 100 gigs
b) doing max line speed via "by pasing". gets 200 gigs.
c) doing close to max line speed by using say RS gets around 170 gigs.

clearly B and C is more of a cost, more of stress to the user pool and they are worried about A ?

i would like to say that that's bit false perception as they can easily add person A to a special group which includes certain protocols and earmarked ips in the shaper. it's not like you take away 100% control, if that is in fact what happens then i would suggest a new shaper/network and or person(s) responsible for it because that would not make sense to start off with.

it would be same as to say that if i drive more than 60 in in a 60 i take away the control of metro police, where in fact they are able to at any given time either limit the car's speed with adding traffic cooling devices or...wait for...a warning in way of tickets. how would we drive rationally if they were to take away all the speed limits and say we are allowed to drive as long as we don't go too fast ?

i still say that this is more case of one brush for all because it fits the real target being heavy users.

imho what is needed is
1) proper clarity.
2) more options such as in-between uncapped accounts.
3) high usage cap accounts.

because of this we have 4 choices for 'uncapped'
1) openweb - use us, we don't care how.
2) mweb - use us, but adhere to our vague terms which adapts as we go.
3) afrihost - we will shape you based on hourly t&c and usage.
4) is/axxess - we shape top X% for usage over 10 days.
 
Necuno said:
so we have 3 persons who downloads for 2 hours
a) doing vpn/proxy/ssl/seedbox at 50% of line speed. gets say 100 gigs
b) doing max line speed via "by pasing". gets 200 gigs.
c) doing close to max line speed by using say RS gets around 170 gigs.

clearly B and C is more of a cost, more of stress to the user pool and they are worried about A ?

i would like to say that that's bit false perception as they can easily add person A to a special group which includes certain protocols and earmarked ips in the shaper. it's not like you take away 100% control, if that is in fact what happens then i would suggest a new shaper/network and or person(s) responsible for it because that would not make sense to start off with.

it would be same as to say that if i drive more than 60 in in a 60 i take away the control of metro police, where in fact they are able to at any given time either limit the car's speed with adding traffic cooling devices or...wait for...a warning in way of tickets. how would we drive rationally if they were to take away all the speed limits and say we are allowed to drive as long as we don't go too fast ?

i still say that this is more case of one brush for all because it fits the real target being heavy users.

imho what is needed is
1) proper clarity.
2) more options such as in-between uncapped accounts.
3) high usage cap accounts.

because of this we have 4 choices for 'uncapped'
1) openweb - use us, we don't care how.
2) mweb - use us, but adhere to our vague terms which adapts as we go.
3) afrihost - we will shape you based on hourly t&c and usage.
4) is/axxess - we shape top X% for usage over 10 days.
Click to expand...

You must remember that MWEB does not buy per GB, but they buy a pipe with a fixed size say 1GB/s. Thus, in the quite times they let people go mad and download to their wishes, but as soon as this pipe fills up, they need to shape, so that the high priority traffic flows fast.

Now if you during this peak download via "bypassing shapers", then you will have a very negative impact on all the other users, while if you download 24/7 via the "shapers" they can shape you so that all users still have a good experience.
 
zamicro said:
You must remember that MWEB does not buy per GB, but they buy a pipe with a fixed size say 1GB/s. Thus, in the quite times they let people go mad and download to their wishes, but as soon as this pipe fills up, they need to shape, so that the high priority traffic flows fast.

Now if you during this peak download via "bypassing shapers", then you will have a very negative impact on all the other users, while if you download 24/7 via the "shapers" they can shape you so that all users still have a good experience.
Click to expand...

Exactly.
 
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