@KALSTER
Let me share some of my experience with you. Let me know your thoughts on this.
When I bought my account last year, I logged into
http://users.isdsl.net/. I saw that my account had already been logged into and used one day before I had purchased it. This raised my suspicions about the rumours of account sharing. I noted that I was unable to change my simplistic '1122' password thought the CP so I sent a PM to MrBEEP a few days later. Once my password was changed and messaged back to me in plain-text, I monitored the IS user stats. Guess what happened? After the other session timed-out, it did not appear for a few days.
I felt a little bad about having caused someone else to lose Internet connection for a few days. Because I also did not have any performance issues with my account, I let the issue slide. That was until a few months later when the daytime issues started. That's when the troubleshooting started with OW support and I got given various new accounts. I discovered that the IS-based accounts would be heavily shaped from 08:00-17:00 preventing any sort of browsing. On the other hand the MTN-based accounts allowed browsing at all times, but NNTP would not get past 30KB/s in the evenings.
This is when I tried to question what had changed with the shaper. I was lied to by being told that nothing had changed since before I joined. I was told that if I download during the day, my browsing would be shaped. My usage pattern had not changed, but I humoured them and scheduled my downloads for the evening. Needless to say, this had no effect on the crippling daytime shaping. I settled on the tedious task of switching between the IS-based and MTN-based account to be able to browse during the day and download at night.
I should mention that it is quite frustrating waiting 3-5 minutes for the OW support page to load, and then being told that nothing is wrong on when they test the account. Also, there has not been one case where they have found and fixed a problem on an account. The 'solution' has always been to give a new account. At any rate, my solution of using two accounts was cumbersome and eventually the other account stopped working.
I recently decided to do some investigating since I was now on an account with a single session. I shared my account details
*gasp* with a friend and uncovered some facts.
- We were both able to connect to the same account. (two concurrent connections allowed)
- When I made two simultaneous connections to the account, my friend would be unable to connect to the account. When we were both connected, I was unable to establish a second connection. (account limited to two concurrent connections)
- When a new connection was made it would immediately display on IS user stats. When a PPPOE connection was disconnected it would immediately disappear from IS user stats. When a router was reset, the session would take +-30min to timeout before it would disappear. This is because the router dis not properly disconnect before resetting. (stats show correct current sessions to within thirty minutes; the locations for the sessions were also pretty close)
- When a new connection was made, followed by a download, followed by a disconnect: the correct usage for that session would be displayed on IS user stats. When a new connection was made, followed by a download, and NOT followed by a disconnect: the correct usage would be displayed after about an hour. (stats show correct usage to within an hour; numbers larger compared to self-maintained stats indicate other session's usage)
- When we downloaded at the same time, we both got full speeds. After about a day, the download speeds reduced dramatically and it seems that this was regardless of how much the other was currently downloading. This was rectified after the other session disconnected. (account sharing does reduce speeds, as janitor said, but this speed reduction is not immediate)
By the way the SAIX stats for my account are the same as the IS stats. They just do not show the current sessions, nor which regions the sessions originated from.
After all this testing, I asked to have the password change ability enabled since it was finally "available". This ability had the added effect of showing me my stats. The stats that OW said they did not track by default so they could not throttle you. Big surprise, I could see the stats for the entire month even though the ability was activated near the end of the month.
(OW does know you usage and probably does not want to show it to you due the other session on your account)
With all this deception and terrible speeds, I am glad that I already cancelled. I should have cancelled sooner. Too bad my cancellation (or maybe the request for the password change ability) appears to have enable the newest version of the shaper. That is during weekdays, no browsing (or gaming) possible from 08:00-17:00, very slow downloads from 08:00-17:00 and slow downloads from 17:00-23:00.
