Pls help fix internet (before I murder telkom employees)

2

21stcn

Well-Known Member
Joined
May 5, 2010
Messages
109
Reaction score
1
So I have a 1Mb line with bandwidth from mweb. Everything has been working just fine (about 0.9Mbps) for the whole year. I am a web designer by night so I NEED the inets to !@#$ing work.

Then suddenly on Monday, at about 5pm, my browsing becomes super slow and I can forget about ftp sessions or jamming Diablo 3. I run some speed tests and my ping to all local (CT) servers is over 1500ms. My download speed ranges from between 0.01 Mbps and 0.3 Mbps. This continues until about 2am. Same thing the whole week including today. So from about 5pm my internet becomes worse than a 56K.

Here are the symptomns: when doing speedtests, the speed spikes up and down so that the graph looks like: WWWWWW (but the top of the graph is never above 50KBps). It goes at 50KBps then drops to 0.1KBps and so on very rapidly, spiking like crazy.

Here is what I have troubleshot:
  • Tried another router - no difference
  • Tried another ISP (guest1@telkom speedtesting on saix.net) - no difference
  • Made 100% sure there are no background processes using bandwidth with Netbalancer. There is 0 network activity when I speedtest
  • Recreated port with telkom

The reason I need your advice is that telkom are being !@#$ing useless for a change. I logged a fault but they haven't pitched up for 3 days. The problem is also that it only starts in the evening, when all the techies are already off, so all I have for them (if they eventually come) are some speedtest results. If they charge me for false callout after I have described that it only starts at 5 I am going to go postal and burn down telkom.

It sounds like an overloaded exchange except for the suddeness of the degradation. To go from fine to 0.05Mbps in a day doesn't sound like gradual overload.

In any case, I need advice so I can try fix this. telkom obviously won't move me to another exchange or upgrade the exchange so I need to know what is happening before I get them to perform some customer service by telling them exactly what to do.

If you have any suggestions please pitch in. Once (if, please God) it is sorted I will post details here so any poor soul can get help.

Thanks!
 
21stcn said:
So I have a 1Mb line with bandwidth from mweb.
Click to expand...

I've been having this problem on and off for a while now - also a 1mb line; Last month it hung around for 2 weeks (degraded performance for 2-3 days, then on a friday night it just got glacial), Telkom could not see a problem with the line, they sent a tech to check it - nothing wrong... besides that it would sync at 1mb and everything was fine until he tried to download something, which then crawled. Upload was full speed.

Now, two weeks later... and once again a Friday night. I'm getting 0.26 down, 0.46 up - as well as some packet loss. On a SAIX account everything is perfect, IS(Openweb/friends mweb) is just insanely slow; So it's not the line(stats look fine too). For the past few days it's been extremely slow during the day, picking up at night but still not being 'right'.

I'm on one the race course/Wynberg exchange; In the past I've had trouble on Friday nights and they've reset the port and it's been resolved. They seemed to have closed early this evening, but I have a feeling its going to degrade even more and end up the same as last month.

Going to get my yagi out and connect from a friends house with my account in a little bit, but it's a 10mb line and I'm willing to take bets that it will be perfect.
 
coralsea said:
Going to get my yagi out and connect from a friends house with my account in a little bit, but it's a 10mb line and I'm willing to take bets that it will be perfect.
Click to expand...
Surprise, it's fine :/

I just don't understand why the problem shows up on mweb and is accounts, with this specific line.
 
Sounds like we have the same type of problem. I also have a 1meg line, uncapped data from Mweb. Have been having issues with line speed from about 18:00 in the evenings ever since January. The faults that I log are just closed by Telkom without my consent. I'm now on my 4th logged fault for the year, and this one has been open since the 9th of May, even though I believe ICASA guidelines states that complaints should be attended to within 6 days, with a possible extension of another 6 days - this appears to be why Telkom likes closing faults so readily.

Last Friday a teccie called and said there is nothing he can really do, but he will change my DSLAM port. From that evening, my line has been even worse. Have been trying to get him back to reverse whatever he did. I'm studying through Unisa, so I really need my line in the evenings, not just from 23:30 or so... Some teccie did, however, call while I was writing an exam today. He left a message which said I should "make another appointment with 10210". Stupid #$^&!@%.

The call center is useless and the operators don't even understand what a congested exchange is, or why I say it is a problem if I can access the internet in the day. They just make me turn my router on and off - surprise, it hasn't worked any of the 10 previous times this year, why would it now work?

I #@!$% hate Telkom.
 
I feel your pain. What area are you in DvD? Maybe enough people on an exchange complaining will lead to an upgrade. I'm in claremont region cape town. All I know is this can't go on for months for me. Seriously I will flood hellopeter ever day. You should too. Carte !@#$ing Blanche

The most frustrating thing is that if the problem can't be solved by a router reset or a port recreate, if it is something sinister that only shows up after-hours, the telkom call centre can't help and don't give a !@#$. What can you do? The bill arrives every month. Half a grand a month for a disfunctional 1Mbps line and they can't fix the !@#$ and they make you pay for a voice line even if you dont use it. It is disgraceful. I am on the verge of giving up and going wireless.

We should mount a class action law suit.

Has anyone had any success sorting out these sorts of exchange problems?
 
21stcn said:
Maybe enough people on an exchange complaining will lead to an upgrade. I'm in claremont region cape town.
Click to expand...
I'm extremely close to Claremont (i.e 30m on the other side of the division), and iirc quite a few of the Claremont residential lines are on the Wynberg exchange? So its entirely possible that the problem is quite narrow in that regard.

I've also noticed that the issue seems to be related to 1mb on IS/mweb, a lot of complaints around the same time last month, when I started having issues. At first when it started, SAIX was full speed, then about two days later it was as slow as my IS (OpenWeb) account.

At the moment I can get full speed on SAIX, but on IS it's unusable for pretty much anything other than browsing. Last month it dropped to 2k/s and 10% packet loss... so I'm just hoping that it doesn't end up like that again.

Are you getting full upload speeds? atm I get about 43k/s to my euro server.
The max down speed is about 15k/s, but it drops to 1-2k every other second, 15/2/10/2/8/1/16 etc - so the average speed is terrible. Speedtest.net showed 26k/s average an hour ago, I'm now at 51k according to that (after 11, surprise it magically doubled). But in reality it's the 15k odd.

And have you tested with a SAIX account? I know you said 'another isp', but for me SAIX is fine, its just IS which is broken at the moment, but a friend on the same exchange and 10mb, perfectly fine.

I also had Telkom closing the tickets, they would call at times that they knew I would not be around or busy, usually 8am or when I told them not to call (We'll call you tomorrow, 'ok, just not between 2 and 4', ok I've made a note, Missed Calls -> 2:30pm). The only time that I had any contact was when I phoned in. Whenever a tech called he'd come up with some excuse about not being able to call me back soon, or that he tested the line and it was perfect :/ I'd call back a day later, and they would say that the ticket was closed. Happened twice that it was closed, and the last one when it started working, they didn't even close it - I've had no confirmation/sms/nothing.
 
Thanks for the info coralsea. Know how I can check which exchange I'm on?

When I say I tested another isp, I just used the telkom login guest1@telkomsa in router settings which only give you access to the telkom and saix sites. I don't know if this counts, but the speeds were just as awful. I think I'll ask a friend for his login details and test another telkom isp when the issue is happening.

My upload speeds average about 0.2Mbps when the line is bad. It doesn't seem as affected as the dl speed.

1990165844.png
 
I'm on the Welgemoed exchange (021 913 ****). Even getting high latency now, at around 11 on a Saturday morning... Called 10210 again and explained how the technician called once and never again. I asked the operator to tell the teccie to leave his number so I can call him and was told "You don't call the technician, you call us". Well, #$^& whoop whoop, clearly this does not help.

The operator got upset at me getting upset due to the technician not calling and arranging a meeting beforehand. Who is available on their phone 24 hours a day? Who sits at home all day waiting for the guy to pitch up? Last week's teccie called with the famous line "I'm at the premises now, sir". Do I need to magically appear "at the premises" as well? I don't pitch up at a client's front door, ring the bell, and act surprised when he is not there! @!#%%^ useless.

A couple of weeks ago I got a call from Telkom at around 13:00 on a Sunday to hear "if the line is working now". I bet if I had not answered, they would just have closed the fault again.

By the way, last nights speed tests gave results as bad as this to CT - DL 0.27 Mb/s, UL 0.16 Mb/s, Ping 893 ms. And that was at 23:29.
 
Im in the Claremont area , since the 4th I can barely browse T_T , isp is telkom , logged 4 faults just gets closed - " call has been resolved " no reasons nothing , then the next day I try to browse etc same thing then I log the call again , "please reset your router" OMFGEDEFE , I asked if this was the technical deparment "yes it is " , Well my latency to local gaming servers are 600+ from about 30+- ,then I just get the response please reset your router @!#@! , there seems to be a lot of people complaining about claremont and wynberg , they must of changed something =_=
 
Last edited:
21stcn said:
So I have a 1Mb line with bandwidth from mweb. Everything has been working just fine (about 0.9Mbps) for the whole year. I am a web designer by night so I NEED the inets to !@#$ing work.

Then suddenly on Monday, at about 5pm, my browsing becomes super slow and I can forget about ftp sessions or jamming Diablo 3. I run some speed tests and my ping to all local (CT) servers is over 1500ms. My download speed ranges from between 0.01 Mbps and 0.3 Mbps. This continues until about 2am. Same thing the whole week including today. So from about 5pm my internet becomes worse than a 56K.

Here are the symptomns: when doing speedtests, the speed spikes up and down so that the graph looks like: WWWWWW (but the top of the graph is never above 50KBps). It goes at 50KBps then drops to 0.1KBps and so on very rapidly, spiking like crazy.

Here is what I have troubleshot:
  • Tried another router - no difference
  • Tried another ISP (guest1@telkom speedtesting on saix.net) - no difference
  • Made 100% sure there are no background processes using bandwidth with Netbalancer. There is 0 network activity when I speedtest
  • Recreated port with telkom

The reason I need your advice is that telkom are being !@#$ing useless for a change. I logged a fault but they haven't pitched up for 3 days. The problem is also that it only starts in the evening, when all the techies are already off, so all I have for them (if they eventually come) are some speedtest results. If they charge me for false callout after I have described that it only starts at 5 I am going to go postal and burn down telkom.

It sounds like an overloaded exchange except for the suddeness of the degradation. To go from fine to 0.05Mbps in a day doesn't sound like gradual overload.

In any case, I need advice so I can try fix this. telkom obviously won't move me to another exchange or upgrade the exchange so I need to know what is happening before I get them to perform some customer service by telling them exactly what to do.

If you have any suggestions please pitch in. Once (if, please God) it is sorted I will post details here so any poor soul can get help.

Thanks!
Click to expand...



Shame took them 5months to fix mine, similar to ur issue!

Good luck buddy, Telkom for me didn't do anything so I got MWEBS GM to sort it out
 
That's unfortunate but I am not putting up with it for 5 months. Right now speed is 0.06 Mbps (saturday 2pm).

Look, we all know the telkom horror stories. Go to hellopeter.com and search telkom. Thousands of people have dud lines, a million unresolved faults etc etc. But we can't just say, "there is nothing I can do, because no one else can do anything" and accept this bull****. I'm not saying we should protest in front of parliment although that is probably exactly what we should do.

But if they can't fix it in a resonable time period (2-3 weeks) go wireless or refuse to pay or sue them or contact the consumer complaints commision or start an online petition or whatever you can. Seriously this is extortion.
 
Last edited:
If you have one of the supported routers/modems you can use dslstats or dmt tools to see what your modem is doing.
 
LOL! For a second there I thought "Wait... I didn't write this, did I?", because it's EXACTLY how I feel!

So glad to see that I'm not the only person with these issues. I've been fighting with them for about three years now to get my connection to stay stable for longer than a couple of weeks. It's been broken for two weeks now and despite the fact that I have spent 3.5 hours on the phone with them over the last two weeks, my connection is nowhere near fixed.

The sheer incompetence of this company would be hysterically funny if it wasn't for the fact that it's ruining my life.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X