Is it month-end blues? Slow speeds

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8321

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My connection is usually in the 850kbps range (iBust speed test download). Now it is less than 200kbps. Some of my friends have complained to me about slow speeds in the past day or two as well (one is considering cancelling). There have been other posts here as well. See also the General ADSL dscussion.

Is it just abusers trying to max their packages or is there a network problem?

RPM, maybe you can get a story for us out of this.

If speeds are back to normal tomorrow, we will have part of the answer.
 
Speeds are probably more to do with people using up the remainder of their paid for data bundle at the uncapped speed. More network strain less speed.
Though I would not class them as abusers.

I'd say an "abuser" would be one one who makes huge downloads at the capped 64k speed? Not that downloading at that speed could really make a difference. It takes days to download a gig at the capped speed. Not exactly straining the network is it?

Actually there have been a few posts around recently talking about a degraded service. Not sure how that is going, take a look.
 
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Well with the 64kb people, the problem is that they take up a "slot" on the tower, and are permanently connected and downloading.

Its not that they use up much bandwidth but they contribute to tower load afaik. Still not really abusers..

But I think speeds might drop on the last day, actually talking about that, I have about 30mb left and I need to go waste those and try get some more speed out of it...
 
EKV you're right about the slow speeds. Alotta people is having slower speeds and much worse latency, including me. It started 3 days ago, probably on the weekend somewhere. Quite terrible that the WHOLE network is degraded but no incident report or degraded towers on their site!

I doubt that the few people that a) has not reached their cap b) is trying to use up all their cap, is downloading these past 3 days and causing the degration. Considering a) how much gig can they still have left? and b) this has not happened previous months, and c) on sunday it was fine in the morning but the problem was returned/continued from the afternoon, I really don't think this is the case.
 
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Ekhaatvensters said:
Well with the 64kb people, the problem is that they take up a "slot" on the tower, and are permanently connected and downloading.
Click to expand...

By my calculation, at 20Mbps you need 320 users downloading at 64kb for a tower to be running at full capacity.

The idea that throttled users are clogging up the network is pretty ludicrous.

And what is a "slot". Isn't everyone logged on 24/7 anyway?
 
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Um.. not so sure about this, but Ive heard, on here, that the tower work by allocating every user a "slot". Alot of people aren't actually on 24/7, they use the Ethernet or USB connection and are therefore off whenever there PC is turned off, or if they log out.

Thats why night times give better signal besides just better speed.

But I also said, the capped users usage wont do much to the system, but it might affect tower load, just a thought.

About the whole network being degraded, cape Town is totally fine. Infact for the last two days its been better than usual, maby it has to do with all of you using almost no bandwidth?
 
Ekhaatvensters said:
Um.. not so sure about this, but Ive heard, on here, that the tower work by allocating every user a "slot". Alot of people aren't actually on 24/7, they use the Ethernet or USB connection and are therefore off whenever there PC is turned off, or if they log out.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure about the iBurst technology but with GSM cellphones you can be registered on the network but until you actually make a connection i.e. a call, sms, data connection etc. you don't use a channel on the tower. Maybe iBurst works in a similar way, where if you're idle for a certain period you remain registered on the network but aren't allocated a slot/channel on the tower until you start using it again.
 
Well even if it works that way, the point is that guys who stay on 64kb all month will be using a slot all the time as opposed to normal people who would disconnect or be inactive alot of the time.
 
"normal people"!!!:p I guess that makes alot of us "abnormal people" then:eek: :D
 
MrH said:
"normal people"!!!:p I guess that makes alot of us "abnormal people" then:eek: :D
Click to expand...

Oh, lol. I didnt even notice that I typed that. If I could be an abnormal person I would! But 3 PC's on one connection means 64kb cant cut it till the last few days :(
 
Cape Town access is good...

Hi there EHV

Quite true what you said about Cape Town iBurst access, been brilliant since last Wednesday, we are having a good run, with far less frequent disconnections and brilliant speed, just gotta watch that IP64 of death creeping up. Only had two and got rid of them quickly.

Whoever was hogging Cape Town’s bandwidth is on holiday.
 
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lol, iBurst is full of these "death" names isnt it..

Death by Cap
IP64 of Death
Basestation-hopping of Damnation anyone?

We're a morbid bunch..
 
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I think there is a bottleneck in the pipes. I have a decent connection on a load 1 tower and there is definately a slowdown over the past couple of days.

At the end of the day though, as far as I am concerned it's all Telkoms fault. They hold us back to keep their profit margins up. I wish their entire senior management gets fired. It's a shame what they are doing to this country.
 
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