Afrihost and international speed issues

Venom Rush

Venom Rush

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Originally posted this in the Fixed Broadband section.

Short version: I want to move to another ISP and need suggestions.

Long version: I've had my 2mbps adsl since moving into my flat on 1 May this year and have had to deal with terrible international speeds (average of 0.6mbps - 0.8mbps) since.

I've had Telkom technicians come test the line more times than I can count because I initially thought it was a line issue, but all speed tests done to servers within South Africa give me 1.8mbps downstream. The minute I start doing tests to international servers the speeds drop drastically.

I then thought that perhaps it had something to do with being on an uncapped account, but Afrihost's AUP states that streaming videos on youtube.com is unshaped (which is a good portion of what I do) so I eventually got given a capped account to test with and I got the same results from it. After more calls with Telkom I managed to get a telkom technicians account to test with and this gave me the speeds I was supposed to be getting (ie. 1.8mbps).

It's been 4 months of back and forth support calls and I'm at the point where I want to move to another ISP. Can anyone give me suggestions of someone better?

Update: I sent an email to Gian with Support cc'd in on the email. Gian is seems to be unavailable till next week (autoresponder). I received an email from Imrisch at Afrihost at 3:20am this morning asking me to sms 32451. I have no idea what I was meant to say in the sms because he didn't specify so I simply put "support". I haven't had any call since sending the sms.
 
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have you tried an ISP other than Telkom and Afrihost because it seems really odd that Afrihost is giving you really bad international when most customers are getting decent international - at this stage you have an idiopathic fault that really isn't well isolated - and my gut says that somewhere with the getting traffic from the Telkom network to the Afrihost network there is a problem which could be latency sensitive (hence local traffic not being affected as much) so a tracert would be helpful - and it is probably a good idea to test on an IS or (alas) MWEB account.

If Telkom Internet is able to give you good internet speeds then why not go over to TI - they are after all SAs number two ISP (after Afrihost)?
 
Paul Hjul said:
have you tried an ISP other than Telkom and Afrihost because it seems really odd that Afrihost is giving you really bad international when most customers are getting decent international - at this stage you have an idiopathic fault that really isn't well isolated - and my gut says that somewhere with the getting traffic from the Telkom network to the Afrihost network there is a problem which could be latency sensitive (hence local traffic not being affected as much) so a tracert would be helpful - and it is probably a good idea to test on an IS or (alas) MWEB account.

If Telkom Internet is able to give you good internet speeds then why not go over to TI - they are after all SAs number two ISP (after Afrihost)?
Click to expand...

Latency isn't the issue. Every speed test done to different servers in the UK gives me the expected result of between 100ms and 250ms. I've done numerous tracert tests because this is part of what Afrihost keep asking me for with every complaint I send in about this same issue.

The problem lies with international download speeds. Local download speeds are always fine. If I knew someone with an account that wasn't with Afrihost or Telkom I would gladly test with it.
 
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Venom Rush said:
Originally posted this in the Fixed Broadband section.

Short version: I want to move to another ISP and need suggestions.

Long version: I've had my 2mbps adsl since moving into my flat on 1 May this year and have had to deal with terrible international speeds (average of 0.6mbps - 0.8mbps) since.

I've had Telkom technicians come test the line more times than I can count because I initially thought it was a line issue, but all speed tests done to servers within South Africa give me 1.8mbps downstream. The minute I start doing tests to international servers the speeds drop drastically.

I then thought that perhaps it had something to do with being on an uncapped account, but Afrihost's AUP states that streaming videos on youtube.com is unshaped (which is a good portion of what I do) so I eventually got given a capped account to test with and I got the same results from it. After more calls with Telkom I managed to get a telkom technicians account to test with and this gave me the speeds I was supposed to be getting (ie. 1.8mbps).

It's been 4 months of back and forth support calls and I'm at the point where I want to move to another ISP. Can anyone give me suggestions of someone better?

Update: I sent an email to Gian with Support cc'd in on the email. Gian is seems to be unavailable till next week (autoresponder). I received an email from Imrisch at Afrihost at 3:20am this morning asking me to sms 32451. I have no idea what I was meant to say in the sms because he didn't specify so I simply put "support". I haven't had any call since sending the sms.
Click to expand...

Sincerely sad to read this post, and I just want to apologise straight off that we haven't assisted you as well as we could have. Four months is just too long to be in limbo about your services, and it's definitely not how we want our clients to feel about being with us.

Please drop me a PM as soon as you can, let's get our best guys on this immediately and find out exactly what is happening here. As far as I can see we don't have any international issues on the network, and if there are no line issues, you should not be having such a poor experience at all :(
 
So it's been almost a month and this still hasn't been fixed. I keep having to email Kyle from their "Critical Care" staff and when I do I just get asked for info and don't get any updates on what's going on despite asking numerous times in my emails.

No attempt has been made to make me feel at ease and that something is being done to resolve this issue. Instead I feel like Afrihost is hoping I eventually give up and forget about this.
 
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This is what my connection looks like trying to stream a 2:30 minute video which continuously had to buffer because my downstream is so bad.

dtI8BP1.jpg
 
Venom Rush said:
So it's been almost a month and this still hasn't been fixed. I keep having to email Kyle from their "Critical Care" staff and when I do I just get asked for info and don't get any updates on what's going on despite asking numerous times in my emails.

No attempt has been made to make me feel at ease and that something is being done to resolve this issue. Instead I feel like Afrihost is hoping I eventually give up and forget about this.
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Not great to hear at all :( I'll make an urgent follow up with our Critical Care team to see if there are any further updates/ resolutions on this.
 
This still isn't resolved and I've had no feedback on what's going on. What do I need to do to get information on the problem? I'm in the dark here and I still have to deal with these terrible speeds. I'm not giving you anymore IP addresses, tests, screenshots because it just seems like you're trying to tailor my internet speeds to my use. Stop f***ing around and tell me why I'm getting such s**t speeds (yes I'm resorting to swearing because clearly being civil doesn't get my frustrations across as well).
 
I have used (in order) : Telkom, Axxess, OpenWeb, Mweb and now Afrihost. They are pretty much all the same, just depends who's crap you are willing to take more?

For example, I have been struggling with my Afrihost uncapped for the past 3 weeks. Getting speeds of 655b/s down of a 10MB line that was running at a minimum of 800kb/s down. Tried everything and all I got from Afrihost is "it could be our shaping policy" even when I try to explain that there is no shaping applied or when shaping is applied and I run my turboboost minutes.

Then the idiot walk through begins of a traceroute, being told to reset my router etc etc, and when I ask if then can just recreate the port to see, I got told they can't do that anymore, and then you get the old "send me your number and username" so I can stare at it blankly for 20mins and tell you it's probably your exchange charade. Even though when I use Telkom or Mweb I get the full line speeds and a ping under 500ms locally. Frustrates the hell out of me.

I think all ISP's bill themselves as the "great liberators" of the internet in this country, but actually only deliver 35% of the time and we are so used to crappy service we rejoice in that 35% of mediocrity.
 
Venom Rush said:
This still isn't resolved and I've had no feedback on what's going on. What do I need to do to get information on the problem? I'm in the dark here and I still have to deal with these terrible speeds. I'm not giving you anymore IP addresses, tests, screenshots because it just seems like you're trying to tailor my internet speeds to my use. Stop f***ing around and tell me why I'm getting such s**t speeds (yes I'm resorting to swearing because clearly being civil doesn't get my frustrations across as well).
Click to expand...

Sorry that we haven't got this sorted out :(
I've run through my inbox quickly and can't seem to find a PM from you - please confirm your details for me and any history of this issue and I'll jump on it for you.
 
HoOdeh said:
I have used (in order) : Telkom, Axxess, OpenWeb, Mweb and now Afrihost. They are pretty much all the same, just depends who's crap you are willing to take more?

For example, I have been struggling with my Afrihost uncapped for the past 3 weeks. Getting speeds of 655b/s down of a 10MB line that was running at a minimum of 800kb/s down. Tried everything and all I got from Afrihost is "it could be our shaping policy" even when I try to explain that there is no shaping applied or when shaping is applied and I run my turboboost minutes.

Then the idiot walk through begins of a traceroute, being told to reset my router etc etc, and when I ask if then can just recreate the port to see, I got told they can't do that anymore, and then you get the old "send me your number and username" so I can stare at it blankly for 20mins and tell you it's probably your exchange charade. Even though when I use Telkom or Mweb I get the full line speeds and a ping under 500ms locally. Frustrates the hell out of me.

I think all ISP's bill themselves as the "great liberators" of the internet in this country, but actually only deliver 35% of the time and we are so used to crappy service we rejoice in that 35% of mediocrity.
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I'm really sorry that we've let you down :( We definitely want to provide the best experience to all of our clients, and seeing that your speeds aren't up to scratch is concerning.
Please send me through a PM with your account info and any history you have of the issue and I'll do my best to have this sorted out for you.
 
I'd love to AfriGuy, but I have been playing "send me your account details" tag, with you guys via twitter, email and phone calls for the past 3-4 weeks. The consensus is, either the line is being shaped (when it's not), the NZB isn't cached (which it is) or old (which it isn't), the torrent is not shared (which it is since it's a private torrent from my work) or it's the exchange/line (which it's not since I get full speeds on all other ISP's), my ping is high because of network traffic or any other issues on my side, but hey, I'll send it to you anyways.
 
I'm in the exact same boat as you, except I get even lower speeds than you do. Local speeds are fine (when Afrihost aren't throttling me to 6.5%), but international speeds are always completely useless. This problem has persisted for me at least since June-July, and at this point I doubt it will ever be resolved. In the end I've decided to just say '**** it' and come up with a couple of alternative solutions for when I need more than 40kB/s on international downloads.
 
Oh, BTW, Afrihost... What's up with your latency to (some/many) European servers these days? About a month ago some of your routing went completely haywire, and it was never again fixed. Here's an example:

traceroute 5.153.21.120
traceroute to 5.153.21.120 (5.153.21.120), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 105-236-3-193-esr-lo.mtnbusiness.co.za (105.236.3.193) 7.056 ms 8.526 ms 9.835 ms
2 ipc-recieve-rb-1a.za.mtnbusiness.net (41.181.178.53) 44.022 ms 45.231 ms 47.423 ms
3 rb-dca-2.za--rb-cr-1.za-a.mtnns.net (196.44.31.120) 41.525 ms 43.685 ms *
4 jh-cr-1.za--rb-cr-2.za.mtnns.net (196.44.0.42) 39.192 ms * 42.076 ms
5 qux-jh-dca-2.za-b.za.mtnbusiness.net (41.181.165.115) 50.668 ms 51.757 ms 53.169 ms
6 bbr01.lon01.networklayer.com (195.66.225.183) 383.846 ms 375.772 ms 378.305 ms
7 ae7.bbr02.tg01.lon01.networklayer.com (50.97.18.207) 382.081 ms 363.539 ms 364.055 ms
8 ae0.bbr02.eq01.ams02.networklayer.com (50.97.18.211) 343.163 ms 342.995 ms 344.309 ms
Click to expand...

Notice how it takes you 375ms to get to London. That's roughly 200ms more than normal, and it makes (my) games completely unplayable.
 
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