Web Africa ADSL general feedback

Could someone please comment on what your experience is with the capped accounts from WA? Do they run full line speed during the day no matter what? Does video stream smoothly? Does NNTP get shaped/throtled at all during the day? I don't normally download a lot during the day but if I need to download something I would like it to go at my full line speed (10m) I also do a fair amount of gaming to EU servers. Are these accounts completely unshaped?

Currently I am looking at the home capped 400gb package (200 during day and 200 from 12:00 to 6:00am)

Any info would be appreciated!
 
Last edited:
Rohan said:
Could someone please comment on what your experience is with the capped accounts from WA? Do they run full line speed during the day no matter what? Does video stream smoothly? Does NNTP get shaped/throtled at all during the day? I don't normally download a lot during the day but if I need to download something I would like it to go at my full line speed (10m) I also do a fair amount of gaming to EU servers. Are these accounts completely unshaped?

Currently I am looking at the home capped 400gb package (200 during day and 200 from 12:00 to 6:00am)

Any info would be appreciated!
Click to expand...

If you ever need to do anything international like streaming or gaming Web Africa is probably the best account you can have.
 
My star rating will take a huge hit this weekend as my son is streaming PSP paintball the entire weekend (when they are awake that is) :(
 
Rohan said:
Could someone please comment on what your experience is with the capped accounts from WA? Do they run full line speed during the day no matter what? Does video stream smoothly? Does NNTP get shaped/throtled at all during the day? I don't normally download a lot during the day but if I need to download something I would like it to go at my full line speed (10m) I also do a fair amount of gaming to EU servers. Are these accounts completely unshaped?

Currently I am looking at the home capped 400gb package (200 during day and 200 from 12:00 to 6:00am)

Any info would be appreciated!
Click to expand...

I am on one of their legacy accounts and have 30 gigs during the day and 100 gigs during DL+ hours and have to say that for a good while now it has been spot on. I don't DL much during the day so hard to make a meaningful comment on that but when I have it has gone full pace (also on 10 meg line). Not sure if volume would impact this at all.

Am very happy with the product
 
What the hell is going on with the capped accounts the last few days? Everything is slow, but especially streaming. I can't even stream youtube in 720p this morning, with nothing else happening on a 10mbps line. Streaming is instant on an afrihost account, and they're actually having capacity problems in the Cape. I've had to switch over to a prepaid AH account in the evenings too just to be able to stream World Cup games.
 
Chevron said:
If you ever need to do anything international like streaming or gaming Web Africa is probably the best account you can have.
Click to expand...
Unless you use Webafrica game servers which are very poorly managed and overrun by hackers with no admins online ever.
 
Some general feedback:

I am on 4Mb Uncapped with Webafrica, it is the 21st of the month and I my usage says 109Gb, which is about 5Gb per day. There are several computers on my network but it is only my son that uses uTorrent for downloads, when he started downloading stuff I warned him about the Star system, so we set the downloads to queue and run only between 12 and 6 in the morning.
Unsure how the whole system works, I am on 3 Stars at this stage of the month, browsing is generally OK except sometimes during the day and now and then YouTube seems a bit slow. I get a steady ping of about 30 to 40 on a local gaming server.

So all in all not too bad, I used to be on a 50Gb capped account but it wasn't enough and buying more data each time was costly, so opted for the uncapped account about a year ago.
 
WA, i would like to enquire and get confirmation that the downloads between 12 and 6 DOES NOT count towards your star rating? ALl my downloads run between this time but for some reason, this month i am down to 2 stars! my download speeds have been severly effected to a point where I moved to afrihost. Please eloborate

4mbs uncapped account
10mb Line with telkom
 
SIlvRav said:
WA, i would like to enquire and get confirmation that the downloads between 12 and 6 DOES NOT count towards your star rating? ALl my downloads run between this time but for some reason, this month i am down to 2 stars! my download speeds have been severly effected to a point where I moved to afrihost. Please eloborate

4mbs uncapped account
10mb Line with telkom
Click to expand...

Their (WA's) reporting of your usage around DL+ hours is quite shocking...95+% of my usage is done during download plus with everything using schedulers and yet I also find myself dropping star ratings...I'm just glad I don't have a capped account with DL+ data "included" as I could find my regular cap being used instead!

I've complained of this on their forums too on more than one occasion. There was a stretch of 3 weeks where nobody was home but I would login during the day, schedule some stuff to go off during the next DL+ session...when I got home I found myself on 3 or 4 stars?!? The only usage was the 16-bit RDP connection for like 15mins to schedule the stuff.
 
cAv said:
Their (WA's) reporting of your usage around DL+ hours is quite shocking...95+% of my usage is done during download plus with everything using schedulers and yet I also find myself dropping star ratings...I'm just glad I don't have a capped account with DL+ data "included" as I could find my regular cap being used instead!

I've complained of this on their forums too on more than one occasion. There was a stretch of 3 weeks where nobody was home but I would login during the day, schedule some stuff to go off during the next DL+ session...when I got home I found myself on 3 or 4 stars?!? The only usage was the 16-bit RDP connection for like 15mins to schedule the stuff.
Click to expand...

I have no problems whatsoever with my capped account's DL+. Downloads start at exactly midnight and stop at 6:00AM.
 
SIlvRav said:
WA, i would like to enquire and get confirmation that the downloads between 12 and 6 DOES NOT count towards your star rating? ALl my downloads run between this time but for some reason, this month i am down to 2 stars! my download speeds have been severly effected to a point where I moved to afrihost. Please eloborate

4mbs uncapped account
10mb Line with telkom
Click to expand...

You should maybe make sure that:
Only your line is accessing your account - check the control panel
Make sure your wifi is secured (no default username and password for the router and SSID, minimum WPA2+ security)

I'm sure WA helper will have a look at your usage to see when the downloads are happening.
 
WebAfrica has one of the worst support I've ever experienced from an ISP. I received an update to my ticket on Friday, stating:
Hi efitol

Thank you for your email.

This issue has been escalated over to our upstream provider, we will have feedback within 48 hours.

Kind Regards,
Click to expand...
And then today I get this gem in my email:
This message concerns your ticket #1988393. We have not heard back from you in 48 hours and would like to know if you consider this issue to be resolved. If you have any further questions, simply respond to this email.

Ticket ID: 1988393
Subject: 3 stars after average of 2.12GB per day usage
Department: ADSL
Type: General
Status: In Progress
Priority: Normal

Please note that the ticket will automatically be closed within 24 hours if we don't hear back. You can check the status of or reply to this ticket online at: http://support.webafrica.co.za/index.php?/Tickets/Ticket/View/1988393

Kind regards,
Click to expand...
So I have to constantly respond to a ticket to make sure that it doesn't get automatically closed even if I'm awaiting feedback. How shady is that?

Speaking of shady, I looked at my usage stats after downloading a bunch of Steam games on Saturday and according to their spreadsheet I managed to download a cool 3GB in one hour during the Steam downloads. Bear in mind that I'm on a 4Mb account and line speed so the most I can download in an hour (taking overheads into account) is about 1.5GB. Can't wait to see how they explain that one.

I regret moving to WebAfrica.
 
Last edited:
Rohan said:
Could someone please comment on what your experience is with the capped accounts from WA? Do they run full line speed during the day no matter what? Does video stream smoothly? Does NNTP get shaped/throtled at all during the day? I don't normally download a lot during the day but if I need to download something I would like it to go at my full line speed (10m) I also do a fair amount of gaming to EU servers. Are these accounts completely unshaped?

Currently I am looking at the home capped 400gb package (200 during day and 200 from 12:00 to 6:00am)

Any info would be appreciated!
Click to expand...

Our capped accounts perform very well. On a Home based account non essential protocols like P2P/NNTP, etc are shaped during the day but not by much and will return to normal after hrs.

I would suggest you sign up for our free 2gb for life account and see how it performs. It is on the same bandwidth profile as our normal capped accounts.


SIlvRav said:
WA, i would like to enquire and get confirmation that the downloads between 12 and 6 DOES NOT count towards your star rating? ALl my downloads run between this time but for some reason, this month i am down to 2 stars! my download speeds have been severly effected to a point where I moved to afrihost. Please eloborate

4mbs uncapped account
10mb Line with telkom
Click to expand...

Could you PM me your account details so I can take a look into this.
 
efitol said:
WebAfrica has one of the worst support I've ever experienced from an ISP. I received an update to my ticket on Friday, stating:

And then today I get this gem in my email:

So I have to constantly respond to a ticket to make sure that it doesn't get automatically closed even if I'm awaiting feedback. How shady is that?

Speaking of shady, I looked at my usage stats after downloading a bunch of Steam games on Saturday and according to their spreadsheet I managed to download a cool 3GB in one hour during the Steam downloads. Bear in mind that I'm on a 4Mb account and line speed so the most I can download in an hour (taking overheads into account) is about 1.5GB. Can't wait to see how they explain that one.

I regret moving to WebAfrica.
Click to expand...

Hi Efitol,

We are still investigating your usage stats and as per my PM to you I will update you as soon as I get feedback.
 
Here's one of those issues that is hard to describe and probably impossible to debug.

I sometimes find that my Gmail windows get unresponsive or slow. By this I mean that clicking the Gmail action buttons (like refresh) or just clicking to open an email just doesn't do anything. I get the "Still working..." popup at the top after a while, but it really looks like some ajax call just keep failing and you either have to wait a minute or reload the page. I only experience this in Gmail and only on WebAfrica. It's not really disruptive, but I'm just wondering if anyone else notice this?

I have not yet noticed any kind of correlation for this, it just happens once a day or two days at a random time. While the gmail page is trying to wake itself up again, all other internet connections are still fast and functioning.
 
efitol said:
WebAfrica has one of the worst support I've ever experienced from an ISP. I received an update to my ticket on Friday, stating:

And then today I get this gem in my email:

So I have to constantly respond to a ticket to make sure that it doesn't get automatically closed even if I'm awaiting feedback. How shady is that?

Speaking of shady, I looked at my usage stats after downloading a bunch of Steam games on Saturday and according to their spreadsheet I managed to download a cool 3GB in one hour during the Steam downloads. Bear in mind that I'm on a 4Mb account and line speed so the most I can download in an hour (taking overheads into account) is about 1.5GB. Can't wait to see how they explain that one.

I regret moving to WebAfrica.
Click to expand...

Hi efitol,

I have replied to your PM with feedback. Please let me know if your account is performing correctly now.
 
Aessa said:
Here's one of those issues that is hard to describe and probably impossible to debug.

I sometimes find that my Gmail windows get unresponsive or slow. By this I mean that clicking the Gmail action buttons (like refresh) or just clicking to open an email just doesn't do anything. I get the "Still working..." popup at the top after a while, but it really looks like some ajax call just keep failing and you either have to wait a minute or reload the page. I only experience this in Gmail and only on WebAfrica. It's not really disruptive, but I'm just wondering if anyone else notice this?

I have not yet noticed any kind of correlation for this, it just happens once a day or two days at a random time. While the gmail page is trying to wake itself up again, all other internet connections are still fast and functioning.
Click to expand...

Very Strange issue. Could you PM me your ADSL account details so I can get our team to see if we can find a problem.

If there is anyone else having a similar issue please PM your account details so I can assist.
 
WebAfrica Helper said:
Hi efitol,

I have replied to your PM with feedback. Please let me know if your account is performing correctly now.
Click to expand...

I see that my account was corrected and put back on 5 stars (despite my average usage increasing) :). Thank you for the help, now just clone yourself and make sure that only you and your clones may respond to support tickets ;).

From now on I'll just PM you directly when I have issues. I advise everyone else to do the same.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X