old Axxess vs new Axxess

techead

techead

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Is everyone happy with the switchover to MTN?

Im finding it to be alot more sluggish and unresponsive. speed for speed (late at night) its on a par, but speed isnt everything.

when you click google, you dont want it resolving for like 2 sec, it should just go in...

ping sucks ass as well. extra 40ms to EU sucks balls. could just be me though.

what has your experience been like?
 
I am not happy with the switch at all. I am an MMO gamer (both USA and EU servers) and my latency has gone through the roof making most of the games unplayable.

Currently, I am playing SWTOR (Star Wars: The Old Republic) on US servers - prior to the changeover I was getting 280 - 360 ms latency, but after the change my latency has shot up to between 450 and 3500ms, with frequent game killing latency spikes. I tried logging onto the EU servers and the latency there is better but not great (340 - 450 ms). In GW2 - unfortunately, there is no ingame latency meter, but the instant ability activation times are visibly and significantly delayed. To verify this I switched to my typically horrible MWEB account, and the latencies drop significantly - still horrible, but vaguely playable and within a reasonable range (300-360 for US SWTOR).

I ran a couple of speed tests via speedtest.net and found that both locally and internationally my latencies were terrible and my download speeds pathetic. To Rosebank 260+ latency with a download speed of 0.63 MBbps on Axxess versus 16ms ping and 5.00MBps on MWEB - THAT is a massive difference on a 10MBps line.

It looks like anyone playing MMO games internationally, and particularly on US servers, will need to investigate a new ISP. Does anyone have any suggestions regarding ISPs that haven't switched to MTNNS excluding MWEB naturally (they just blow)?
 
Your options besides M-Web really are:

Openweb (you can chop and change backbones, but not my favourite idea)
Cybersmart....though I will stay far away from them.
Web Africa, good for those in the WP
Plugg, I think they are a IS reseller, probably your best bet if that is the backbone you enjoyed.
Sainet, resell Neology backbone uncapped, but IPC only in JHB.
ATC, IPC only in JHB, don't know much about them.
BCSnet, IPC only JHB, don't know much about them either.
 
The quality of bandwidth (currently) is amazing. Im very happy with their move to MTN.
 
Thanks, tec and fish, but neither of the comments are particularly useful.

Are any of you guys using AXXESS? If you are, what kind of latencies are you experiencing to US and EU game servers? What are your speedtest results, pings, download speeds etc?

Bandwidth is not my primary concern, latency is...
 
ArchDaemon said:
Thanks, tec and fish, but neither of the comments are particularly useful.

Are any of you guys using AXXESS? If you are, what kind of latencies are you experiencing to US and EU game servers? What are your speedtest results, pings, download speeds etc?

Bandwidth is not my primary concern, latency is...
Click to expand...

Download speeds, pretty good, not the best, its definitely strangely shaped, but definitely pretty good.
Latency, with me being in CT, they are horrible all over. 80-100ms to servers in Cape Town, over 250ms to London...

Currently not at home, haven't done my speedtests, don't need to but here is one:
2267935437.png


Here is a traffic graph of my line for the last day or so:
daily.gif


Hope that helps.

So am I happy with the account? Well yeah, I got it for downloading. It downloads way faster than the other 4mbit uncapped accounts, so I use a Web Africa account for gaming, and this for downloading.

Editing post because I logged in remotely, and latency looks terrible from Cape Town.

Code: 
root@heaven-htpc:~# traceroute www.google.com
traceroute to www.google.com (74.125.233.17), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
 1  router.heaven.za.net (10.0.0.1)  1.514 ms  1.500 ms  1.487 ms
 2  105-236-9-65-esr-lo.mtnbusiness.co.za (105.236.9.65)  7.625 ms  7.712 ms  8.268 ms
 3  ipc-recieve-rb-1a.za.mtnbusiness.net (41.181.178.53)  109.080 ms  109.332 ms  109.323 ms
 4  rb-dca-2.za--rb-cr-1.za-a.mtnns.net (196.44.31.120)  109.028 ms  109.286 ms rb-cr-1.za--rb-dca-1.za-a.mtnns.net (196.44.0.146)  130.062 ms
 5  jh-cr-1.za--rb-cr-2.za.mtnns.net (196.44.0.42)  130.033 ms jh-cr-2.za--rb-cr-1.za-a.mtnns.net (196.44.31.95)  130.033 ms jh-cr-1.za--rb-cr-2.za.mtnns.net (196.44.0.42)  130.939 ms
 6  qux-jh-dca-2.za-b.za.mtnbusiness.net (41.181.165.115)  163.225 ms  165.664 ms  170.665 ms
 7  ct-cr-2.za--ct-cr-1.za-d.mtnns.net (196.44.31.35)  336.789 ms  334.399 ms  313.892 ms
 8  ls-pr-1.uk--ls-cr-2.uk-a.mtn.net (209.212.111.201)  307.455 ms  306.279 ms  294.235 ms
 9  195.66.224.125 (195.66.224.125)  310.691 ms  311.409 ms  314.522 ms
10  209.85.240.63 (209.85.240.63)  314.513 ms  314.504 ms  318.475 ms
11  209.85.252.45 (209.85.252.45)  354.287 ms  355.312 ms  362.802 ms
12  209.85.248.227 (209.85.248.227)  318.659 ms  319.143 ms  319.135 ms
13  64.233.174.105 (64.233.174.105)  357.538 ms  357.529 ms  357.523 ms
14  cpt01s01-in-f17.1e100.net (74.125.233.17)  369.968 ms  338.511 ms  357.653 ms
As you can see, on hop 2, which is the Telkom ESR, latency is great, average of 7ms. Hop 3 is the MTN Router on which the IPC MPLS-VPN terminates, and to that the latency jumps over 100ms, which is far above the usual 20ms to 30ms jump I would expect from Cape Town to Johannesburg.

I can see why gamers are terribly upset with that performance.
 
Last edited:
Tinuva said:
Your options besides M-Web really are:

Openweb (you can chop and change backbones, but not my favourite idea)
Cybersmart....though I will stay far away from them.
Web Africa, good for those in the WP
Plugg, I think they are a IS reseller, probably your best bet if that is the backbone you enjoyed.
Sainet, resell Neology backbone uncapped, but IPC only in JHB.
ATC, IPC only in JHB, don't know much about them.
BCSnet, IPC only JHB, don't know much about them either.
Click to expand...

In my experience with IS based accounts PLUGG is by far the best.

They aren't just an IS reseller, it's the consumer ISP of IS.

From their site:
PLuGG is the consumer division of Internet Solutions (IS).
Click to expand...

https://www.plugg.co.za/?_page=static_page:show&name=About
 
My experience so far has been all over the show.

I was switched over on Friday - the weekend went fine although I wasn't at home much to check on latencies.
Monday during the day was great, my girlfriend managed to do quite a bit of traffic whereas I used to be running at 256kbps during office hours (Axxess Express Fibre 384).
During the night I cloned a repo from github and that went at only 60kb/s/. I struggled watching anything without a considerable time spent buffering and I struggled to watch the JoinDota stream through most of the evening. Dota2 eu latency is around 50-60ms more than usual which really isn't ideal.

This morning at 8 my speeds were back to 256kbps as usual and tonight so far my traffic has been fluctuating between 300-450kb/s whereas before the move I got a constant 700kb/s.

Just joined a dota2 game, ping is around 120 more than it used to be. Will have to cancel my account if this isn't fixed within a week.
 
Last edited:
I cancelled my Axxess today, my experience matched yours. Were also on Express 384. Dunno where I am going yet. But hopefully they get the message not to screw with quality service. They can't match IS 384 express accounts cause this new MTN network sucks, is heavily shaped and got terrible latency. I see Openweb still sell the IS express accounts so maybe I will head over there. Maybe Axxess wants to get rid of us Express account holders cause we tend to download a bit more but then we pay almost double for that benefit.

axisK said:
My experience so far has been all over the show.

I was switched over on Friday - the weekend went fine although I wasn't at home much to check on latencies.
Monday during the day was great, my girlfriend managed to do quite a bit of traffic whereas I used to be running at 256kbps during office hours (Axxess Express Fibre 384).
During the night I cloned a repo from github and that went at only 60kb/s/. I struggled watching anything without a considerable time spent buffering and I struggled to watch the JoinDota stream through most of the evening. Dota2 eu latency is around 50-60ms more than usual which really isn't ideal.

This morning at 8 my speeds were back to 256kbps as usual and tonight so far my traffic has been fluctuating between 300-450kb/s whereas before the move I got a constant 700kb/s.

Just joined a dota2 game, ping is around 120 more than it used to be. Will have to cancel my account if this isn't fixed within a week.
Click to expand...
 
Worst thing they could have done. Axxess have now become the ****test provider. If i could get my money refunded today i would.
 
I agree, unfortunately I just got the SMS that they took R899 from me for another month and deliver a crap service for it. Interesting how such a switch over can topple an ISP. They should have expected this as MTN have a equally bad cellphone network. In the end of the day is the savings worth it? You are loosing customers and potential customers as I cannot reccommend Axxess or Afrihost to anybody anymore.

semaphore said:
Worst thing they could have done. Axxess have now become the ****test provider. If i could get my money refunded today i would.
Click to expand...
 
Fortunately not a gamer but the speeds on all protocols have been exceptional.Definitely no complaints from me.
 
I am honestly fsked off.
2 nights in a row and MW3 on Xbox is unplayable. Constant red line :banghead:
And local hosts.

Called them tonight and am told they are aware of latency problems but no clue when it will be resolved.

This sux.
 
I am on Afrihost which is the same as Axxess and the network sucks.

I tested my connection against SAOL and the difference is huge.

I also got an email that they are aware of the problem but with no date to resolve the problem.

As a gamer and Halo dropping next week I am contemplating going back to Webafrica.
 
No fallback plan for them, customers have to sit it out. So was Seacom that bad? IS must be enjoying this thread.

bokka1 said:
I am on Afrihost which is the same as Axxess and the network sucks.

I tested my connection against SAOL and the difference is huge.

I also got an email that they are aware of the problem but with no date to resolve the problem.

As a gamer and Halo dropping next week I am contemplating going back to Webafrica.
Click to expand...
 
1Mb line, Axxess Uncapped. Usual ping to international 220 - 250ms on a good night.
Average is around 300-320 though. Speeds have been fine, I get almost full use on my 1mb.

Just the latency issue that I'd like sorted out.
Local ping tonight has spiked to 180ms - add the 220 - 280ms to international and I'm not gaming on 500ms tonight.

Youtube is a no-go, 360p will stream if lucky, anything higher, buffer for a minute or so.
Been waiting out these growing pains on the new network, but it's starting to grit my bits.
 
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