GRRR Squad Forum

10MB line Telkom
100GB Afrihost capped.
Synced at 8MB.

Had some problems during the day before I upgraded from a 4MB line to 10MB but seems better.
Afrihost has done some major upgrades recently and during the maintenance time their quality went down considerably. There are many users on the mybb forums who used to sing their praises now denouncing them. For those having problems on Afrihost, things 'should' be better now. As someone who only has a minimal grasp of networking I find it hard to distinguish between ISP issues and local exchange congestion.

Megageth wrote:As someone who only has a minimal grasp of networking I find it hard to distinguish between ISP issues and local exchange congestion.

Its Easy...
ISP Issues - The line that Telkom uses when they don't want to look into your issue
Exchange Congestion - The line that your ISP uses when they don't want to look into your issue

Here is the rundown:

Two potential areas of congestion;

1. Telkom, your ADSL line provider - your line, plus your neighbors and others in the surrounding are all have lines that connect to an exchange where the ADSL cards live that turn your ADSL signal into DATA for the network. The Link/Lines between that exchange and core network is where you have your first potential problem with congestion. Normally telkom will add many more users than the capacity of that line between your exchange and the core network.
eg. 100 X 4Mb ADSL lines should add up to 400Mb needed for the Line between the Exchange and the core network. Typically however, there will only be 200Mb or even 100Mb there, based on return on investment and contention ratio calculations. --- This is without even considering Exchange path to core network where additional congestion points likely exist.
BOTTOM LINE: OVER SUBSCRIBED LOCAL EXCHANGE = ERRATIC HIGH PINGS AND POOR PERFORMANCE - BEFORE YOU HAVE EVEN USED YOUR ISP

2. ISP, your MB/month provider - Once your poor little bits have survived the journey across the ADSL and core network, they reach your ISP. At your ISP they have connections/lines at the Internet Exchanges in JHB/DBN and CPT, all via their OWN privately owned network. They also then have connections/Lines via the SAFE/SAT3/SEACOM/WACS paths out of South Africa to various Internet exchanges across the globe.
Congestion can be at the Internet Exchange points, the lines between cities and the Internationals.
Your ISP can have a certain IP Range (assigned when your ADSL Authenticates) use one set of Internation connections eg. SEACOM whilst others use SAT3, etc. This means that some users on say SAT3 international start experiencing slowness as their SAT3 cable is congested, is not felt by users who are on the SEACOM cable or the SAFE/WACS etc. Usually ISPs have more Bandwidth than their customer count, but not the guys that sell for Cheap (afrihost, webafrica, etc.)
BOTTOM LINE: POTENTIAL CONGESTION HAS MANY FACTORS HERE, GENERALLY YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR - CHEAPER IS NOT BETTER IN SOUTH AFRICA AS CHEAP MEANS "OVERSUBSCRIBE ALL THE USERS"

See some of the replies didnt give a price breakdown. would also be nice to know usage and when you are getting soft capped.

I still have a 1mb premium uncapped mweb account which is 199pm. I normally get soft capped before the 10th of the month.(I am a bit of a bandwidth hog I know) My usage is close to 100gig per month normally. During working hours my line speed is up to crap even in the begining of the month.

Been considering moving/upgrading my ISP somewhere with better prices depending on when I can expect to get soft capped in the month.

Jarred, what are you paying?

How is the telkom accounts being soft capped?

I'm paying ~R500 a month for 2Mb uncapped. It's a business account, there's no shaping, and I've never been throttled. I don't do huge amounts of downloading, because of CTWUG, but I have been known to download 50GB in one go.

thanks J, sounds good. will have a look at their pricing