IS vs. SAIX: The Facts

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matt156

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There's been a lot of confusion between IS and SAIX ADSL accounts, etc. Hopefully this will help clarify (admins, perhaps this thread will be worth sticky)

There are ONLY two wholesale providers of ADSL, namely IS and SAIX (UUNET hasn't got anything just yet so we'll ignore them). All ISPs are reselling bandwidth from one of these two providers.

1. IS account advantages:
- Once you hit your cap, you still get full speed local bandwidth, up to a combined total of 30gb (per month). International is cut off.
- Local bandwidth is generally quicker than SAIX, as IS have 80% of the content on their network. There is congestion between IS and SAIX at the moment, and the link between them is saturated. Being on IS' network puts you on the right side of the link. Peering between IS and UUNET is excellent.

2. IS account disadvantages:
- IS's international ADSL bandwidth goes via satellite. Therefore their latency is higher than SAIX's.

3. SAIX account advantages
- Lower international latency

4. SAIX account disadvantages (from 1st November)
- Hardcapping. After you hit your cap, all traffic will stop.
- Wrong side of the peering link. Access to IS' content (70% of total) is slower.
- SAIX is owned by Telkom
 
Interesting.

Latency isn't that important for most people, so it would seem IS is where it's at. But you left out the price. IS seems to be a lot more expensive than SAIX
 
IS pricing from a reseller such as ourselves is:

1: "2GB ADSL @ R165.30 (incl VAT per month) with up to 30GB local bandwidth"
2: "3GB ADSL @ R199.50 (incl VAT per month) with up to 30GB local bandwidth"
2: "5GB ADSL @ R359.10 (incl VAT per month) with up to 30GB local bandwidth"
2: "10GB ADSL @ R763.80 (incl VAT per month) with up to 30GB local bandwidth"

We are still waiting on the new SAIX pricing come 1st November, but it is widely expecting that the pricing per gb will increase 5 times on the "30gb" accounts, etc.
 
Another disadvantage for IS is that funnily enough, the SAIX Games servers are hosted on the Saix network. The one bloody thing Telkom ever did right. Now if only we can convince IS to do something similar. Or if Axxess would finaly do something with the button on their site that says "Online Games".
 
GougedEye said:
Another disadvantage for IS is that funnily enough, the SAIX Games servers are hosted on the Saix network. The one bloody thing Telkom ever did right. Now if only we can convince IS to do something similar. Or if Axxess would finaly do something with the button on their site that says "Online Games".
Click to expand...

1. The peering link saturation occurs going FROM IS to SAIX, not the other way around. This is because IS have all the content, and SAIX have all the ADSL users. Going the other way (eg, sitting on an IS ADSL account and accessing SAIX) isn't nearly as bad.

2. The peering link issue will hopefully resolve itself come 1st Nov, as SAIX will be capping local.

3. MWEB hosts with IS, so all their gaming servers are on the same backbone.

4. IS are indeed going to be adding significant gaming content to their backbone, including gaming-only ADSL accounts. Watch this space.

5. We are launching our own gaming servers soon.

P.S. Axxess host with SAIX, so wouldn't help.
 
matt156 said:
4. IS are indeed going to be adding significant gaming content to their backbone, including gaming-only ADSL accounts. Watch this space.

5. We are launching our own gaming servers soon.
Click to expand...

I'd buy these for a Dollar. Several probably.

Especially if there is some sort of low latency international option I can use for playing MMORPGs.
 
Last edited:
mccrack said:
@GougedEye - MWEB sits on I.S and they have Game Servers .......
Click to expand...

Yeah but the only people who subscribe to Mweb are middle aged businessmen who don't know better. True gamers buy their own accounts elsewhere.

;)


Dunno, Mweb's servers have never really seemed all there. Haven't looked in ages, but it is basically Cs isn't it? Oh and lots of l33t 12 year olds.
 
GougedEye said:
Yeah but the only people who subscribe to Mweb are middle aged businessmen who don't know better. True gamers buy their own accounts elsewhere.

;)


Dunno, Mweb's servers have never really seemed all there. Haven't looked in ages, but it is basically Cs isn't it? Oh and lots of l33t 12 year olds.
Click to expand...

Doesn't matter, their gaming servers still sit on the IS backbone so you can use 'em with IS accounts for low latency gaming.
 
mat156 : Why is there such a big jump in prices? i.e
2gb to 3gb = R34
3gb to 5gb = R160

Otherwise sounds great. Hope webafrica starts using IS, dont really feel like changing ISP's again (But I will if neccessary)
 
matt156 said:
IS pricing from a reseller such as ourselves is:

1: "2GB ADSL @ R165.30 (incl VAT per month) with up to 30GB local bandwidth"
2: "3GB ADSL @ R199.50 (incl VAT per month) with up to 30GB local bandwidth"
2: "5GB ADSL @ R359.10 (incl VAT per month) with up to 30GB local bandwidth"
2: "10GB ADSL @ R763.80 (incl VAT per month) with up to 30GB local bandwidth"
Click to expand...

Shouldn't the higher cap accounts have a lower per gig price?

It is cheaper to pay for two 5GB accounts than a 10GB account and you then have twice as much local bandwidth. Doesn't make sense to me!!

Also for the exact same price as a 10GB account you could have 3 x 3GB accounts plus a 2GB account giving you 11GB and a whopping 120GB local bandwidth!!!

Cost per GB:

2GB: R82.65 per GB
3GB: R66.50 per GB
5GB: R71.82 per GB
10GB: R76.38 per GB

Surely the more GB's you buy upfront the less you should pay per GB.
 
GougedEye said:
Yeah but the only people who subscribe to Mweb are middle aged businessmen who don't know better. True gamers buy their own accounts elsewhere.

;)


Dunno, Mweb's servers have never really seemed all there. Haven't looked in ages, but it is basically Cs isn't it? Oh and lots of l33t 12 year olds.
Click to expand...

LOL if you want to play with adults, play on Mweb.. I think the average age on Mweb servers have been 20+ for a long time now haha.

Play on SGS if you want to play with 1337 kids :)
 
While we're dealing with facts here, I have to sound some notes of caution to all those getting excited about IS's ADSL accounts ...

1. IS is predominantly a business ISP, so their network is heavily loaded during the day.

2. From my experience this results in their international throughput being roughly 3 times slower than SAIX's (100-120 Kbps vs. 350-400 Kbps) during office hours.

3. Since I dont use IS at home I'm not sure what its like after hours ... some re-sellers have indicated here that its fine ~ 400 Kbps.

4. Although you will have 30Gigs of local traffic at full speed (i.e you wont be intentionally throttled), once your capped, your local traffic is put in a lower priority queue.

5. This means during times of congestion (probably more likely during office hours) capped user's local performance (latency & throughput) will be sacrificed at the expense of uncapped user's.

6. Surprisingly even though international latency is high (750-800ms), VoIP speech quality on both Skype & SIP are actually better on IS then SAIX as their latency is quite steady (little jitter). Again this is during the day.

Not trying to rain on anyone's parade, but I think people deserve to know what they're in for.
 
Does this mean anyone on an MWEB account is already on IS? If so wouldn't an IS account be pretty decent (besides for the mind numbingly stupid prices MWEB charges and think the customers are generally happy? haven't heard any complaints...)
 
Nope, MWEB Adsl is saix based, mweb hosting and servers is IS based.

MWEB is confusing.
 
mccrack said:
@GougedEye - MWEB sits on I.S and they have Game Servers .......
Click to expand...

Well MWEB kinda use both, there dsl and main content is SAIX, there Dial-up and ISDN accs are IS. Just take that into account when deciding
 
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