Introduction
If you work for Afrihost:
Thank you so much for reading this right now! I hope that this will have the desired results. Before I carry on and explain the issue, I just want to clarify that the reason I decided to do this as a blog, is not to make Afrihost look bad or anything like that. I am doing this so that I have a record of events as they happen, and so that I don't have to tell my story (and the history of it) over-and-over every time I make contact with you. (Everything in brackets are either my opinion or a few sarcastic/comical remarks to obscure my actual frustration - please feel free to correct me if I made the wrong assumptions and please try to see the more sarcastic comments from my perspective and don't take them too seriously).
If you don't work for Afrihost:
Right now, all you would be able to do is probably sympathize with me, but until my issue is resolved, I will try to post as much information as possible to enable you to ask the right questions in order to get the desired results, if you have the same issue as myself. If you have any suggestions or positive comments then feel free to comment, but if you want to bitch and moan about your troubles; start your own blog or talk to someone... preferably a professional!
PS. I started writing this on Sunday, 23 June 2013, but only managed to finish on Monday. Any mention of "today" or only specific times without any date mentioned, should be interpreted as having occurred on Sunday.
History
I used to have a MWeb 384 unshaped uncapped un-throttled account until May and I managed my own ADSL portion with Telkom...
The last weekend of April I created and tested a 1GB free Afrihost account on my 1MB ADSL line (which got upgraded last year from 384kbps as part of Telkom's automatic upgrades)... I was so impressed with the speed I got while testing the Thursday night/Friday early morning and I started the process to transfer my line to Afrihost. I upgraded it to a 2MB line at the same time so that I would be ready to move completely over to Afrihost after my calendar month's notice from MWeb was over. It was however for some time the last I saw the great speed...
The line transfer happened smoothly a day or two after making the request and not wan ting to wait another month, I topped up my free account once or twice the following week, but got such bad speeds that I assumed it was throttled/prioritised (being free and all), so I got a paid 2MB home account, but with even worse speeds... again thinking it was limited (being a "home" account), I paid once again and got an additional "Business" 2MB account and canceled the (already paid in advance) home 2mb account... Guess what? I sti ll got an average speed worse than the 384mb line I had with MWeb....
A call was logged with the Afrihost help desk after I phoned and tested the line with the Telkom test account and then got about 800kbps speed to Rosebank on the Saix test server. A Telkom field technician came twice to my home, 2 days in a row around mid-day while I was at work, without making an appointment with me, and after I asked the complex security to tell him he should come before 9:30 the first time he just pitched up unannounced... The second ti me he came around, he at least called me and said he apparently had a look at my line at the exchange and that there is nothing wrong with the actual line. He apparently saw that I was getting below 1MB download speeds even though the signal/noise levels are great and better than the average acceptable limits. (I think he said the fastest download speed on the line for the day was very briefly something like 900kbps [maximum not average]). There was however nothing he could do from his side apparently, and said he needs to escalate the problem to hell-kom-knows-what-department (something like a development department??)...
So there I was, after I payed for a top-up and for 2 x 2MB connections while I got speeds worse than a 384kbps connec tion, but at least I thought my problem would now get escalated. How wrong could I have been!
After about 2 -3 weeks since the Telkom technician phoned me, while still getting speeds slower than evolution itself and without any word from Telkom (or anyone else) regarding the matter I phoned the Afrihost help desk again to get an update. After I briefly explained the current situation to the help desk agent, she looked at my ticket on Afrihost's support system as well on Telkom's side and informed me that the ticket was still open on Afrihost's side, but that the Telkom reference just showed "not found" and according to her, it meant the ticket was closed. (To me its a bit odd that a support system would just delete/archive a reference number as opposed to providing details and whether the outcome was positive or negative??). It was also suggested by the agent that we close the current ticket on Afrihost's side and create a new ticket as it is the only way she could report the issue to Telkom again. I was opposed to this because creating everything from scratch, means no one see the history of my problems or how long this had been going on for already (except if someone bothered to look at old closed tickets, but who does?). The ticket was still closed non the less and so I started doing all the speed tests and explaining that normal internet usage is still much worse than the bad speed results etc etc etc... To further prove my point, I even bypassed my Linus firewall, switched the ADSL router from bridge mode to standard NAT router mode, cutting out the firewall entirely and did all the tests again. I also logged into the router and gave the signal strength and noise levels. I even had to open/refresh YouTube's website a few times and count out loud until the page loaded completely. (Maybe she thought that I will forget everything or be satisfied if the page opened immediately from cache after I refreshed it a few times... Unfortunately not even that happened.) After counting very slowly to about 12 the page without images would appear instead of the white background of a new blank tab and only after counting still to 18-20+ did the images show. (Hope I passed the test and that it was positively determined that I can actually count). During this test of my counting abilities and the time it took to open/refresh YouTube I made a crucial mistake by asking the agent what the UPLOAD speed of a 2MB Business ADSL account should be because she never bothered with the upload speeds of the speed tests when I read them back. As explained by the agent, the line speed is like a water pipe (I know! I also went: "WTF?!"). Apparently, when the pipe is bigger, more water can go through (duh!) and the upload speed is actually determined by how big "the pipe" is, so it is not possible for her to tell me the upload speed because the pipe's size is not always the same. (WTF?!) I told her that I understand that, but I want to know what the "maximum" upload speed is for the 2MB accounts to which she just responded by again saying that it's difficult to say, it depends on my pipe! (I promise my pipes are all fine, thank you very much!). I was so shocked by this, that I immediately told the agent that she should stop creating the new ticket because I want to do more tests myself and I will send an email containing all my test results. The thinking was to either phone again later or send an email stating that I had done all the tests before and that this should be escalated in some way. My biggest concern/fear was that the new ticket would not reflect my problem; re-iterate that it is not a new issue for a first-line field technician from Telkom or how long I have already been struggling with this - there is no way that someone could effectively relay a message/problem containing technical details when they themselves know nothing about it.
Present day (23/06/2013 23:30)
It is again 2-4 weeks since I talked to the agent (/plumber). I wanted to do this much sooner, but I have been working almost daily into the early hours of the following morning. As far as I know, there is no open tickets at Afrihost or Telkom. My connection's condition is still literally non-existent and I below you will see my situation as it is today (and as it were since whenever). The screenshots below should be in chronological and was taken between around 13:00 and 16:30 today when I set out to finally start this blog. (I would've been done a few hours ago if pages loaded faster while I was setting up and testing, but then again it wouldn't have been necessary to do this at all :) ).
My Problem
Below shows the download of a Printer Driver from HP's main website which I tried to download today.
The inlay is of what the current time was when I did the screenshot - I cropped the original screenshot that contained the window and my PC's taskbar and moved the date/time to the bottom left to save space and for better presentation only. The speeds in the screenshot are in KBytes/s and not KBits/s (thankfully) so the average speed translates to 72Kbits/s (out of a theoretical maximum of 2048 Kbits/s or the other way around: 0.0703125Mbits/s out of an absolute maximum of 2 Mbits/s). This download was even done by making 4 concurrent connections to the server where each connection requested a different part of the file to maximize throughput!
As per below, I started the download shortly before 1pm and after already running for 3 hours, 19 minutes and 38 seconds only 183.04MB (57%) were downloaded. This is ridiculous/pathetic, even for a throttled account.
Below is a screenshot of my Billion 7300 Router.
From what I gather, my line quality is quite admirable and more than just average?
Below is a screenshot of a live traffic monitor application which shows all traffic on my network card.
The graph spans over 2 minutes and I made the screenshot directly after pausing the HP driver download to show there was nothing else downloading at the same time.
Screenshots from www.speedtest.net.
Below are a few tests I did using different Jhb test servers as well as 2 Cpt servers. The tests were done between 16:30 and 17:30.
Additional Information
- I haven't done the Telkom Guest account again, but can do this if again required. In the past the result was however the same: At it's worst, using the Telkom Guest account and Saix test server in Rosebank, I would get about 0.6 - 0.9 Mbps. The two times that I spoke to the help desk however, it would start at about 1.2 Mbps, but after doing it two or three times, the download speed would reach about 1.4 - 1.7 Mbps average (Can you say "Traffic Prioritisation" fast three times in a row?). As soon as I switch back to a normal account, I am back to speeds simmilar to the ones in the above screenshots.
- I have however noticed that especially Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights between 1am and around 4-5am, I do however get average speeds of about 1.6Mbps. I do however have a normal daytime job which makes the connection totally useless if I only get anything done over weekends in the early morning hours.
- As mentioned above, I have a Billion 7300 series router with the latest firmware updates from Billion SA's website. What are the actual chances of my router being the cause (keeping in mind that I do get the occasional 3-4 hour, early morning, ability to use the connection.)
Conclusion
- Right now, I would like to know the exact cause of my speed problem because up to now, Afrihost only forward faults to Telkom, but I'm left with chasing and trying to follow up while Telkom says there is nothing wrong, but they will escalate the issue - only to find out later that they just closed the fault reports and then the whole cycle starts from the top. By identifying the actual problem (hopefully with Afrihost's assistance), it will be easier to pressure Telkom for answers.
- Without exaggerating - my ADSL connection is totally useless most of the time. You are welcome to spend a day with me and see for yourself. My biggest problem is that I don't have the time to follow up and chase everyone very effectively and I also have no inside contact at Telkom either and this is the main reason why I transferred my line to Afrihost to begin with.
- Once I know the cause (and hopefully know there is a POA to resolve the issue), I know at least where to go from here, but right now, I keep hoping for a miracle and that I don't need to downgrade my line or switch ISP's.
- I am really even prepared to sign any Non-Disclosure Agreements or anything similar to a gag-order; I just want to know the truth without someone blaming my pipes.
Way forward
Currently I am open for suggestions... What can be done? Can someone (more technically inclined) at Afrihost take charge of this, follow up on this and help me until this gets resolved?
Update: 30/06/2013
Speeds are still as terrible as last week - again only had nice download speeds very early on Saturday morning as well as this morning (around 2am to 6am).Below is a random shot of the network traffic while I was downloading 2 random files from 2 unrelated random locations. This is the typical average speed experienced throughout the day reagrdless of download location (International or local) or even content type - even email downloading and YouTube streaming takes forever.
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