is it really my ISP? or is my exchange congested (telkom)

techead

techead

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im reading a number of threads where people are unhappy with their ISP's performance.

firstly, seacom is down... and while backup routes might be in place, you simply cannot expect the same level of service. be realistic. if you issue extends further back than the seacom outage, then consider the below...

more and more telkom exchanges are becoming congested. read this if you dont know what Im talking about

you going to waste a lot of time going back and forth between you and your ISP and you wont resolve the issue.

how do I know if my exchange is congested? do yourself a favour and buy some prepaid from a different ISP, or borrow an account from a mate or something. Ive found that WA prepaid is handy for testing, especially when most of the accounts used these days are uncapped IS accounts.

setup a schedule to ping a handful of local sites, and some int sites at various times of the day. get the ping saved to a log file so you can compare. you typically gonna get a good idea after a couple of days what the average should be for most sites.

when you see pings increasing significantly from 5pm onwards then.... :erm: If by 10pm your pings are even higher, like almost double, then the chances are you have a congested exchange.

to confirm, swap accounts to different ISP's. typically it will differ by 40ms or so, but it will still be waaay out of normal range.

ive been through this for the last 3 weeks. i know its not a guide on how to resolve it, but knowing where your problem lies is the first step to rectifying it....

good luck
 
what good is knowing your exchange is congested when you can do absolutely sweet blue effitol about it?

more and more telkom exchanges are becoming congested.
Click to expand...

So Telkom is in effect marketing a product they cannot fully support any longer, how is that legal?
 
evilstebunny said:
what good is knowing your exchange is congested when you can do absolutely sweet blue effitol about it?
Click to expand...

thats not necessarily true. its a long shot, but there are two ways you can go about getting it resolved. both will require both time, and potentially money... and a LOT of patience :)



evilstebunny said:
So Telkom is in effect marketing a product they cannot fully support any longer, how is that legal?
Click to expand...

im in the same boat as you. Im in the process of chatting to RPM as I would like his thoughts on this issue. Just last week an article on myadsl was published about uncapped ADSL now being sustainable... :erm: Some serious questions need to be asked. Just look at this and you will get an idea of what is brewing behind the scenes...
 
Looking forward to hear RPM's comments.

Surely when you're paying for a monthly service, if the company providing the service cannot maintain the level of service over time they're in effect selling you a diminished or diminishing product?
I know they cover themselves with the 'up to 4meg' clause but if they don't maintain or upgrade the exchanges in correlation with the products they sell surely it amounts to fraud.

Obligatory car analogy: You buy a car with a service plan, six months down the road they tell you sorry it's become too expensive to upgrade our workshops we can't give your car a complete service anymore we can only do oil change and air filter. You've paid in full for something you're not getting.
 
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Telkom Schmelkom. I live in Northwold Randburg, near Sharonlea. The nearest exchange is 6kms away, so that's my only option. The lines are old, my has gone down 4 times in the last month and needed repair, every time it rains the line is noisy and the connection slows down and drops. Telkom do not give customers what they need, my line has just dropped again now, so I must wait to post this. It's ridiculous, ADSL is my only option as 3g is lousy here and iburst is even worse, forget about Neotel. I can't often do speed tests, but when I do, here in Randburg, the report says my speeds are worse then 94% of South Africa. Thanks to Telkom, I will never enjoy a line fast than below 384, even though I am in a major area. If I had another option, Telkom could kiss my @ss but here I sit. I have no doubt that the exchange I am on is congested. Welcome to Africa.
 
what DSL Modems are you using, what are your connection problems?
 
sscholle said:
what DSL Modems are you using, what are your connection problems?
Click to expand...

DSL modem doesnt make a huge difference in this case. I tested with three, and while I got slightly different SNR the issue at hand remained the same.

For examples of what to expect if you are connected to a congested exchange, I suggest you read the thread below

http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php/364262-List-of-congested-exchanges

typically slower speeds and ridiculous pings (both local and int) as the night progresses and people get home from work, finish dinner, logon etc etc
 
I am in the same boat. I used to have an excellent connection, running at full speed, until the last few months that is. I am now running at about half speed for about 80% of the time, and only 20% of the time approaching full speed. Sometimes the speed is < 1kb/s, making normal web-browsing almost impossible, due to time-outs, and requiring continuous reloading pages.

I have an uncapped 384 line rented from Wazzup. I always had excellent service from Wazzup. The problems started a few months ago when Telkom started upgrading their 512 kb/s and 4 Mb/s line speeds to 1Mb/s and 10 Mb/s speeds respectively. The speed problem progressively got worse. Testing the speed with a backup WebAfrica prepaid account revealed that the problem is with my local connection, and not with the ISP.

After running a lot of speed tests, I asked Wazzup to log a line fault on my behalf at Telkom, since at the time I was unable to read my e-mail due to too low speed. The Telkom technician came out the next day. He did not even bother to inspect my connection, and told me right away that the exchange was overloaded, and that the whole town of Kathu is affected. He also said that he heard that certain components in the exchange will be upgraded in 2 to 3 weeks time, and that we will have to live with the problem until then.

A month later I still had the speed problem, again was unable to download an important e-mail, and logged another line fault. This time Telkom did not bother to send out a technician, and telephonically informed Wazzup that the exchange is congested, and that they do not have any upgrade plans that they can share with us.

In my opinion this behaviour of Telkom is totally unacceptable. Due to their actions, I now sit with a sub-standard service, although Telkom still gladly accept the FULL line rental every month. The "reasonable man test" in this case dictates that if Telkom is unable to upgrade the exchange, they should either reverse the changes they made that affected the speed of 384 users, or downgrade the required monthly rental for 384 users (something like R80/month). In this way the current situation would remain fair.

Any suggestions of what can be done next to rectify the situation?
 
Had this issue for more than 8 months. Nothing worse than a congested exchange.

Anyway. After finding a competent techie in my area that took it up with some specialists, yes, after 8 months the issue was resolved.

3 months happy panty Internet. Guess what, it's back again.

Now here is what you do, and believe me, it works.

Log your ping results. Won't hurt to have them in a txt file.

Log a fault report online, don't bother phoning as the call center baboons have no clue what you are talking about and it's a waste of time explaining your issue over and over anyway.

In the fault report you Mention high latency and that it is an exchange issue. Now here is the thing. They will SMS you a ref No after you have logged the fault. Be patient, Tour phone will peep ;)
24-48 hours later you will receive another SMS saying: your issue has been resolved. Has it? Nope. Log another fault. Enter the same. Do this over and over.

Now, If nothing has happened nor changed and you still have that issue (which you will), well, we start disputing the ADSL rental fee. Easy as that. Right?
Log into your account, create a dispute, add all fault ref Numbers from the past. You will be surprised. They will accept the dispute.

Guys, I have disputed 8x adsl line rental in the last 14 months. All 8 disputes got accepted and the credit granted.

Ps. I know this does not help to resolve the issue, but why pay for something that you don't receive in full??

PPS, this is what I am dealing with
http://www.youtube.com/user/telkomchannel?ob=5
 
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Ouch 8 months!!

Then I count myself lucky to have it sorted out in a month (month after I started to actively chase down the problem) looking at my references on my telkom online self service centre. I also know, there are a good chance it will last much longer than 3 months, the new DSLAM I am on, still only peaks at max 15Mbit/sec any time of the day (or evening for that matter).

I however did it different than you, and probably posted too much about it, but it worked. I just ordered a second line, and lucky enough it was connected to the new DSLAM and not the same DSLAM my old line was on. Old line is canceled now and my congestion woes gone with it.
 
DawieS said:
I am in the same boat. I used to have an excellent connection, running at full speed, until the last few months that is. I am now running at about half speed for about 80% of the time, and only 20% of the time approaching full speed. Sometimes the speed is < 1kb/s, making normal web-browsing almost impossible, due to time-outs, and requiring continuous reloading pages.

I have an uncapped 384 line rented from Wazzup. I always had excellent service from Wazzup. The problems started a few months ago when Telkom started upgrading their 512 kb/s and 4 Mb/s line speeds to 1Mb/s and 10 Mb/s speeds respectively. The speed problem progressively got worse. Testing the speed with a backup WebAfrica prepaid account revealed that the problem is with my local connection, and not with the ISP.

After running a lot of speed tests, I asked Wazzup to log a line fault on my behalf at Telkom, since at the time I was unable to read my e-mail due to too low speed. The Telkom technician came out the next day. He did not even bother to inspect my connection, and told me right away that the exchange was overloaded, and that the whole town of Kathu is affected. He also said that he heard that certain components in the exchange will be upgraded in 2 to 3 weeks time, and that we will have to live with the problem until then.

A month later I still had the speed problem, again was unable to download an important e-mail, and logged another line fault. This time Telkom did not bother to send out a technician, and telephonically informed Wazzup that the exchange is congested, and that they do not have any upgrade plans that they can share with us.

In my opinion this behaviour of Telkom is totally unacceptable. Due to their actions, I now sit with a sub-standard service, although Telkom still gladly accept the FULL line rental every month. The "reasonable man test" in this case dictates that if Telkom is unable to upgrade the exchange, they should either reverse the changes they made that affected the speed of 384 users, or downgrade the required monthly rental for 384 users (something like R80/month). In this way the current situation would remain fair.

Any suggestions of what can be done next to rectify the situation?
Click to expand...
Knowing Wazzup as I do, I would test another account first to see if it's the ISP. Wazzup uses Cybersmart, who are intent on downgrading the service. For a start the service is showing distinct signs of daytime shaping and overcontention. Don't complain until you have to or they will offer to stop your service!
 
My story was probably too long for comfy reading, in the second paragraph I mentioned that I tested with another account.

In fact, I have 2 other prepaid accounts, and test all 3 regularly. When the speed is down, there is not much difference between them.
 
DawieS said:
My story was probably too long for comfy reading, in the second paragraph I mentioned that I tested with another account.

In fact, I have 2 other prepaid accounts, and test all 3 regularly. When the speed is down, there is not much difference between them.
Click to expand...
What did you test? Cybersmart is a bit sneeky with speedtest.net.

Wazzup are very very bad at fighting the customer's corner either with Telkom or Cybersmart. They want the business, but not the 'work'.
 
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