Warning about Crystal web throttling HTTP downloads

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Brewmaster said:
I still don't have a problem with you guys having T&Cs, it's just that the way that this particular capped product works is different to any other that I've used. I currently have capped accounts from Axxess and WebAfrica which I use at times to quickly grab Linux distros from Usenet or torrents during the day, and they're always pretty much at full speed. Which is why I've said, I would have expected yours to work the same way so I would have skipped the reading of the FAQ. But in the case of uncapped, I always read the fine print since all uncapped products that I've used were different from each other.

Oh and reading the T&Cs often means nothing really since they all seem to have a clause that they may alter the T&Cs at any time, and I've been through that as well.
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1. Crystal web has stated this specific home capped product is the same as WA home capped.

2. ANY consumer capped or uncapped account contends in south africa. So even if they say you will never be shaped, the network can contend to hell and gone and you will experience a degraded service - which isn't shaping in an ISPs eyes.

- instead, this product shapes torrents and nntp to keep network contention down so you don't experience a degraded service on ALL protocols.
 
The OP wanted a refund and that didn't work.
Now we know that CW will shape downloads during working hours and can plan around that if it isn't severe.
OP move on, you have paid your school fees so don't forget the lesson. I moved on from CW back to Afrihost and this works for me. Choose an ISP that works for you.
 
ghostR said:
If you think about it, No ISP would be able to offer true 1:1 uncontended on Telkom DSL network... As you are contending on an exchange level with other users in the same area.
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Correct. You already contend on the Telkom network. Contention is inevitable. Hence why the term unshaped is a bit of a misnomer, and is really just marketing gobbledygook to hook people in. Until you can get contention levels down to a level where you pretty much never feel them, you'll always have occasional slow-downs in performance, and it will hit certain protocols before others, to preserve the overall network performance. It's also why ISPs label people as "abusers" which we don't like doing. Abuse is simply a factor of not being on the correct account for your needs - it's not always intentional abuse of a network, and often it's simply a case of people being a little naive with respect to the nature of internet in SA. Not everyone who is labeled an abuser is an abuser. In fact quite the contrary. However that doesn't mean that one shouldn't try to address it on the network, because such high level usage in peak hours inevitably results in higher contentions for everyone else on the same product. This is why some ISPs throttle. We prefer to engage directly to address it before taking any punitive action.
 
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Ianf1 said:
Now we know that CW will shape downloads during working hours and can plan around that if it isn't severe.
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On some products we do shape downloads, yes. On others it's only nntp and p2p, and of course we try to address bypassing of shaping as well. And then we also offer "unshaped" capped as well, which is quality bandwidth one could run their business off without hassles.
 
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A couple of pages back Cavedog posted up his theory that back in the day when ADSL wasn't so common, the bandwidth was plentiful and everyone's capped accounts ran well. In comes Mweb with uncapped and all hell breaks loose with people going gaga over the idea of an unrated connection. I can understand the rationale for having a shaped capped account today because of this:

cinx-stats.JPG

And this:

jinx-stats.JPG

If every ISP has to put capped accounts back into an unshaped state permanently, they'd need to buy more bandwidth so that everyone gets their fair share of bandwidth without being affected by the downloading habits of others. Back in the day, the download sizes of game updates, music and movies, of streaming video and the like were also much smaller and the service was much more expensive, so there was less of a chance that someone would hog bandwidth for an entire day, much less an entire month like some people do with torrent downloads.

Even CINX and JINX have to run forecasting models to stay ahead of the curve because more and more people are hopping on to FTTH and VDSL and these kinds of services, in addition to HSDPA and LTE connections, consume loads of bandwidth in a very short period of time. Like CW said elsewhere in this thread, it would only take a few people on a 100Mb/s FTTH connection hogging the bandwidth to affect the experience of the rest of their customers.
 
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ambroseg1 said:
LOL @ the fanbois. People carrying on as if they personally own the company or have major shares :D

OP.....good move. Vote with your wallet.
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+1 That's exactly what it looks like, even if they claim not to be :wtf:. They behave like religious nuts :sick:
 
Ianf1 said:
Choose an ISP that works for you.
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Easier said than done. Uncapped is a lottery and it appears capped is not without its limitations either. There was a time when your capped account would perform fairly consistently across all protocols.

But agree, if grabitjeeves is OP's primary source of material, this account is clearly not for him. Annoying for him, that he is bound for the rest of the month but no ISP's T&C's specifically list 3rd party apps that would be in contravention of their FUP so it's left to the client to do the necessary due diligence to establish if said service will fulfill his/her usage patterns. I'll reiterate, I fall into the category of user that would suggest capped accounts should not be subjected to this level of scrutiny.

Sure, no one should expect max line speed 24/7 across all protocols but certainly between 70%-90%, 90% of the time across all protocols.
 
sand_man said:
Easier said than done. Uncapped is a lottery and it appears capped is not without its limitations either. There was a time when your capped account would perform fairly consistently across all protocols.
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That is were school fees come in. at OP just make sure you cancel before the 19th.
 
sand_man said:
Easier said than done. Uncapped is a lottery and it appears capped is not without its limitations either. There was a time when your capped account would perform fairly consistently across all protocols.

But agree, if grabitjeeves is OP's primary source of material, this account is clearly not for him. Annoying for him, that he is bound for the rest of the month but no ISP's T&C's specifically list 3rd party apps that would be in contravention of their FUP so it's left to the client to do the necessary due diligence to establish if said service will fulfill his/her usage patterns. I'll reiterate, I fall into the category of user that would suggest capped accounts should not be subjected to this level of scrutiny.

Sure, no one should expect max line speed 24/7 across all protocols but certainly between 70%-90%, 90% of the time across all protocols.
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While I agree, unfortunately in south Africa no one can expect any quality of service over adsl.
 
Quick question, CW provides a NNTP service via a third party to their clients 'I think', so this is also verboten on this capped account then I assume?
 
Crystal Web said:
Correct. You already contend on the Telkom network. Contention is inevitable.
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So I'm assuming it's impossible for an ISP to guarantee contention ratios?

If they could, instead of advertising capped/uncapped products with buzz words like home, business, premium, gold, platinum, silver, bronze they should be advertised according to contention ratios. Once contention ratios are explained, it's a lot easier for people to understand.

Consumers would have a better idea of what they buying and why they would pay top dollar for an account with a contention ratio of 1:5 vs 1:20...

There a few ISP's that specify contention ratios on their accounts but it's usually somewhere in the fine print. They should lead with it!

With this in mind what are the contention ratios on these capped WA/CW/IS accounts?

With this in mind what is the difference between contention ratios on the home capped vs business capped accounts?
 
ponder said:
Quick question, CW provides a NNTP service via a third party to their clients 'I think', so this is also verboten on this capped account then I assume?
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It's NNTP, and treated as such as well based on the product subscribed to. It doesn't get special treatment. It's really just a value add we provide for free, so you don't have to go buy a third party usenet account if you want to use a usenet download service. We offer the IS standard news server, as well as our premium news server.
 
sand_man said:
So I'm assuming it's impossible for an ISP to guarantee contention ratios?

If they could, instead of advertising capped/uncapped products with buzz words like home, business, premium, gold, platinum, silver, bronze they should be advertised according to contention ratios. Once contention ratios are explained, it's a lot easier for people to understand.

Consumers would have a better idea of what they buying and why they would pay top dollar for an account with a contention ratio of 1:5 vs 1:20...

There a few ISP's that specify contention ratios on their accounts but it's usually somewhere in the fine print. They should lead with it!

With this in mind what are the contention ratios on these capped WA/CW/IS accounts?

With this in mind what is the difference between contention ratios on the home capped vs business capped accounts?
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The ISP has zero control over (or even visibility of) contention on the Telkom ADSL network. Their responsibility runs from IPC contention to transit contention (and IPC is the more expensive resource).
The ISP can run you 1:1 on the IPC but you'll still get packet loss and 300ms local pings and 2KB/sec because your exchange is congested.
 
sand_man said:
So I'm assuming it's impossible for an ISP to guarantee contention ratios?

If they could, instead of advertising capped/uncapped products with buzz words like home, business, premium, gold, platinum, silver, bronze they should be advertised according to contention ratios. Once contention ratios are explained, it's a lot easier for people to understand.

Consumers would have a better idea of what they buying and why they would pay top dollar for an account with a contention ratio of 1:5 vs 1:20...

There a few ISP's that specify contention ratios on their accounts but it's usually somewhere in the fine print. They should lead with it!

With this in mind what are the contention ratios on these capped WA/CW/IS accounts?

With this in mind what is the difference between contention ratios on the home capped vs business capped accounts?
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Contentions are, by the nature of a network, variable. They're not set in stone necessarily. When a network is quiet, you should be able to fully utilise the available bandwidth for all customers, ergo contention changes. When it's busy, contention can increase depending on the product subscribed to and its priority on the network. So advertising contention ratios is equally irrational in terms of performance of an ADSL account. Also doesn't help advertising a contention ratio then throttling the account later.

In terms of how we work, contentions vary according to network load, and we manage it using priorities. Basic entry level home products get lower priority than premium home, which gets lower priority than business uncapped, which gets lower priority than business capped, which gets lower priority than business premium capped. i.e. the more you are prepared to pay for quality bandwidth, the more quality bandwidth you will be given. Which is fair. If you pay more for a better connection, you should get a better connection.
 
For the record if OP is seeing a constant 200KB/s download speed on grabitjeeves, that's shaping and not contention ratios. If his speeds fluctuate wildly between 2000KB/s - 200KB/s, that's contention no??!
 
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Sinbad said:
The ISP has zero control over (or even visibility of) contention on the Telkom ADSL network. Their responsibility runs from IPC contention to transit contention (and IPC is the more expensive resource).
The ISP can run you 1:1 on the IPC but you'll still get packet loss and 300ms local pings and 2KB/sec because your exchange is congested.
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So contention is 2 fold then?

ISP selling an account with 1:5 contention ratios and an over subscribed exchange resulting in further contention? = best case scenario of 1:5 contention ratio, worse case scenario 1:50 contention ratio of an overly congested exchange??
 
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sand_man said:
For the record is OP is seeing a constant 200KB/s download speed on grabitjeeves, that's shaping and not contention ratios. If his speeds fluctuate wildly between 2000KB/s - 200KB/s, that's contention no??!
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Somewhat, unless demand is fairly consistent, which is when you maximise your network assets properly. The backend is incredibly complex. Explaining how controllers work and what they do, and how they're classed and categorised could take a book's worth of explaining.
 
sand_man said:
So contention is 2 fold then?

ISP selling an account with 1:5 contention ratios and an over subscribed exchange resulting in further contention? = best case scenario of 1:5 contention ratio, worse case scenario 1:50 contention ratio of an overly congested exchange??
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1:5? lol

ISPs in SA are probably in general more like 1:20 or worse.
 
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