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What is Traffic Management all about?

written by admin on December 8, 2011 in ADSL and General with 13 comments

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Confused by terms like prioritisation, shaping and throttling?

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Synchr0nized99

Shaped and Unshaped are a bit misleading.
- http://twitter.com/WAJeff Jeffrey Denning
  
  How so?
fulton17

OK, so I have a 6 meg line and at present am able to download at about 10 to 15 KB’s with a paid news server on my WA capped account. So I am being throttled, lowest priority and totally shaped?? Sorry call it what you like, but at this standard I just think it is a poor service on what is supposed to be from a premium ISP
- http://twitter.com/WAJeff Jeffrey Denning
  
  I believe things have been sorted since you posted here fulton? Same issue as on our forums?
http://wavesailor.myopenid.com/ JJ

Please explain this to me???
Why if I pay per Gig for my bandwith do I get “controlled” in 3 ways: Prioritised, Shaped and Throttled?
I’m not using uncapped etc but rather paying per gig for the data at X speed of the line. Why then all the controlling? It feels like I’m getting screwed three times over????
- http://twitter.com/WAJeff Jeffrey Denning
  
  Nope. You fall on a certain bandwidth priority and don’t get shaped at the same time. Instead of shaping our accounts we prioritise them.
http://twitter.com/scrookson Sean Crookson

To summarise: It is just a method designed to increase customer numbers and revenue without spending more on bandwidth. Cutting up the internet and squeezing in more bodies is just greedy. Then ISP’s have the gall to call it unlimited or unlimited data!
- http://twitter.com/WAJeff Jeffrey Denning
  
  Not at all. See my reply to JJ. Instead of shaping, we prioritise and is easier to manage our network through. It’s got absolutely nothing to do with securing more customers
Neilthiardt

When I started playing online games many years ago my “premium” contract
with our major ISP suffered bad latency, lag spikes and frequent
disconnects. I decided to do a simple experiment: I bought prepaid bandwidth from every ISP who had it
on offer and took turns switching between the different accounts every so often. The experiences ranged from absolutely awful to okay … until I switched to the Webafrica account, rock solid, there’s alot to be said for something that just does what it’s supposed to.

I have come to take it for granted after all these years, but every so often I buy a few Gigs from other ISP’s who offer these amazing prices and each time I am reminded of how you get exactly (or less than) what you pay for. I have switched games since but it’s still Webafrica who supply my gaming bandwidth, at least 100ms (European server) better than any other ISP. I have gone so far as to let an in-game friend use one of my Webafrica accounts, his problems were also solved.

To the negative comments above, all I can say is: You get what you pay for, this is a home package. The reason I have always gotten such a solid connection from Webafrica seems to be due to the way they manage the network. If people were allowed to P2P at full speed with unlimited bandwidth on this network, the rest of us would suffer terribly. **All ISP’s use throttling, port-shaping & prioritization, although they do it poorly and don’t admit to it on their site. If you want unshaped business data, be prepared to pay an average person’s salary for it each month and even then you will be subject to restrictions on the network.

Be realistic.

Thanks for the great service Webafrica.
jacco jansen

Well I am a home user and want to connect to work to download a maximum of 30Mb per day. They tell me to do that I need to upgrade my package or get a capped account and pay per gig for my normal usage or else I can’t download 1Mb to 30Mb per day…

Uncapped indeed.
Appalraju

I’ve gotta agree with Neilthiardt, I’ve used a few ISP’s and often buy into specials from other ISPs. And although they are not cheap, Webafrica has definitely delivered the goods for a long time. Although I have a cheaper account for raw downloading with another ISP, it often goes down, my login magically doesn’t work for a few days ect. Just as I’m doing now, I then switch to my webafrica account to complain to the other ISP and sort it’s nonsense out.

As for gaming latency (the reason I’ve kept my account with webafrica for so long), on WOW I use to get 200ms and for SWTOR I get about 210ms, best I’ve found. And for PVP, even more important than latency is consistency, something webafica can’t be faulted for!
Marlon Van der Linde

Agreeing with Neil too. The common approach of south african users are to abuse, the same logic they have on the roads and in restaurants and holiday resorts “I am paying for it, so Ill use it as hard as I can”. I stream radio almost exclusively, with some browsing, occasional youtube, and tons of normal style downloading (you know how large frequent debian updates are, ati drivers, i keep all my apps updated). And I never have any issues, not with WA, not with some of the others. If you complain, pay more, and get something that is suited to your style. Prioritisation, shaping and throttling is more than fair. But I am wasting my time, because now I’ll get accused of working for WA. Tough luck.
Danie

AfriHost is pretty much awesome!

What is Traffic Management all about?

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