I cancelled my uncapped ADSL account at Afrihost today (ADSL in South Africa)

I'm being throttled so badly (down to +-7KBps on a 512kbps=80KBps line) that I had to turn on my prepaid account so I could view some web pages while downloading a couple of megs. I had to stop bittorrent too :( I only downloaded 40.9GB so far this month and I don't know why they need to throttle me after hours..



Some other user experiences:
http://handshake.co.za/2011/uncapped-adsl-in-south-africa/
http://www.carforums.co.za/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=36411&sid=4bfbaa0a65133fdee40f95c062a3208b
http://mygaming.co.za/forum/showthread.php/13410-Axxess-vs-Afrihost
http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php/222441-Afrihost-Uncapped-Subscribers-Feedback/page82
http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php/264071-Afrihost-uncapped-ADSL-account-move-why-it-was-done
http://www.bblounge.co.za/showthread.php?t=1563
http://forums.icreatehosting.co.za/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=63
http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php/315785-so-far-Which-ISP-uncapped-is-the-best?p=5678667#post5678667

That settled it, now I just had to decide: mweb or openweb?
http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php/316473-Mweb-or-Openweb
In the end I'm going for mweb because it is cheaper.

Compare prices:
http://pcbunny.co.za/adsl/uncapped-data-only/

I see mweb throttles bittorrent quite badly :(
http://outsourcehouse.co.za/afrihost-vs-gamco-vs-mweb-vs-openweb-uncapped-adsl-south-africa/

MWEB Uncapped ADSL claims questioned
http://mybroadband.co.za/news/adsl/20086-MWEB-Uncapped-ADSL-claims-questioned.html

I don't see much difference between the throttling of p2p stuff between mweb and afrihost:
http://wiki.vuze.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Bad_ISPs#South_Africa

Bonus 1: You get 2 months free when signing up for 6 months at mweb:
http://www.mweb.co.za/productspricing/Get2MonthsFreeAdsl.aspx

Bonus 2: Telkom are upgrading their 512kbps lines to 1024kbps lines for free:
http://mybroadband.co.za/news/adsl/20112-Telkom-ADSL-speed-upgrades-begin.html
...mmmm maybe I should get the faster isp account too for an additional R70...
(will need to double check that my line is in deed 1024kbps...)

Uncapped 512 kbps ADSL...so liberating

Last week I decided I want faster internet so I upgraded my Telkom line to 512kbps (from 384kps) after a quick phone call and waiting a couple of days for the activation. In general my surfing experience didn't improve much but the odd download does come down much quicker, and concurrent downloads doesn't interfere that much with each other any more. I know people in other countries probably laugh at these oxwagon speeds in 2011, but c'mon this is Africa.

I finally took the plunge last night and went over to uncapped internet. Afrihost makes for a great impulse buy since they charge pro-rata for the first month and have instant activation for existing customers. I don't think I'll ever  be able to go back. I'm already torrenting and and downloading big stuff like the latest ubuntu and XP service packs (for family m'kay you can't choose them..) that I usually would avoind or get through other means.

Split local/international network traffic between different adsl accounts on kubuntu.

I was able to setup my internet on my laptop so that my local internet traffic gets charged at local rates (1/4 of the price for me).
This page helped me but it's a bit old and a little different to what I needed, so I thought I'll write down my steps (mostly copied and adjusted from said page).

My setup:
os = kubuntu 9.04 jaunty
isp = webafrica and I'm very happy with them
router = Mega 105 WR

• Some tutorials say you need to change your router mode to be bridged, but I found out that mine is automatically in semi-bridge mode: I setup my main account on the router which can be used by all the computers in the house, but on my laptop I can setup an additional connection which gets bridged through the router.
• sudo apt-get install ppp pppoeconf
  (ppp includes rp-pppoe.so, which is installed manually by the original instructions, but I didn't have to since its in ppp)
  
• Run pppoeconf
  
  • Accept the defaults provided by pppoeconf and say yes to the start at boot option.
  • I just answered yes to the "'noauth' and 'defaultroute'" question, since I changed it later in any case.
  • It asks you for a username/password, this is your local adsl account authentication parameters as provided by your ISP.
  • Now test the connection with sudo pon dsl-provider
  • If you list the interfaces with ifconfig you should see ppp0 listed (and it should get an ip address).
  • Disconnect ppp0 before continuing. sudo poff dsl-provider
• Edit /etc/ppp/peers/dsl-provider by hand.
  Only the parameters that you need to check are listed.
  A hash before the line means the line is commented out.
  sudo kate /etc/ppp/peers/dsl-provider

  noipdefault
  # defaultroute
  # replacedefaultroute
  # usepeerdns
  

  So be sure that the above 3 parameters are commented out.
  (We only want to use the DNS servers provided from the ISP from the international traffic.)
• sudo kate /etc/network/interfaces
  At the bottom of it you should have something like this:

  
  manual ppp0
  iface ppp0 inet ppp
  provider dsl-provider
  pre-up /sbin/ifconfig wlan0 up # line maintained by pppoeconf
  
  #auto wlan0
  #iface wlan0 inet manual
  

  
  
  • I make ppp0 manual since I need to wait for my wireless lan to connect before I can connect to the local internet. With this I can have full control, which is good since I don't want to leave it on too long because you are directly on the internet now and you're router's firewall isn't protecting you from local traffic.
    
  
  
  • I comment out the wlan0 section so that the network manager won't ignore it. You can remove it completely.
  
  
  • Test the connections to make sure there are no problems.
    sudo ifup ppp0
    ifconfig should list ppp0
    sudo ifdown ppp0
    
  
  
  
  
• Static routing
  Now the fun part where we actually get the traffic flowing.
  We need to tell the system to route all the South African traffic through the ppp0 interface instead of the wlan0 or eth0 interface.
  We'll use static routing to do this.
  
  Download Armin's list of local routes from http://alm.za.net/ip/localroutes4.txt
  The list is updated every 24 hours and we'll use it instead of duplicating his work.
  It contains all the network addresses that are specific to South Africa.
  Save the file in /tmp and then move it to /etc/ppp/ :
  sudo mv /tmp/localroutes4.txt /etc/ppp
  
  We need to create a small script that tells the system to add the routes to the interface when if comes up.
  Create a file in /etc/ppp/ip-up.d/ called "zanet".
  sudo kate /etc/ppp/ip-up.d/zanet
  
  Paste the following in the file :
  

  
  #!/bin/sh -e
  # Called when a new interface comes up
  
  # add custom routing for zanet (local South Africa) on ppp0 device
  if [ "$PPP_IFACE" = "ppp0" ]
  then
  cat /etc/ppp/localroutes4.txt | sed s/'\$LOCAL'/$PPP_IFACE/ | while read localroute
  do
  # Change net to host for /32 addresses
  # This is a bug workaround - Armin must fix his list script.
  if [[ $localroute =~ "/32" ]]
  then
  localroute=`echo $localroute | sed s/net/host/`
  $localroute
  else
  $localroute
  fi
  done
  fi
  
  # We need to route DNS lookups via ppp0 (SAIX) instead of ppp1 (IS)
  # The static routing will cause the DNS lookups to be made through the local IS
  # connection and the SAIX network will block the lookups because they don't originate
  # from their network.
  
  #uncomment the following if you are using different isps:
  
  #if [ "$PPP_IFACE" = "wlan0" ]
  #then
  #cat /etc/resolv.conf | sed s/nameserver// | sed s/' '// | while read nameserver
  #do
  #route add -host $nameserver $PPP_IFACE
  #done
  #fi
  

  
  Make sure you can execute it:

  
  sudo chmod a+x /etc/ppp/ip-up.d/zanet

  
  
  Static routing should now work unless you made a mistake or I forgot something.
  Test it by starting ppp0. (sudo ifup ppp0)
  If you run route -n you should see huge list of static routes for the ppp0 interface and only a few when it is not started.
  
  


• Automatic localroute updates
  You could get wget to retrieve a new list of local routes every so often manually or with a cronjob. You can stick the following script in a executable file in /etc/cron.monthly/ eg. /etc/cron.monthly/update-local-routes:
  

  
  #!/bin/bash
  
   cd /etc/ppp
   wget http://alm.za.net/ip/localroutes4.txt
  
   # If there is already a localroutes file replace it with the new one.
   if [ -f /etc/ppp/localroutes4.txt.1 ]
   then
   # Make sure that we didn't get an empty or nearly empty list
   # More than 1000 characters will qualify as a valid amount of local routes
   # Rather keep the old list if the new one is too small
   if [ `cat /etc/ppp/localroutes4.txt | wc -c` -gt 1000 ]
   then
   mv localroutes4.txt.1 localroutes4.txt
   fi
   fi
  

  
  Make sure its executable:
  

  sudo chmod a+x /etc/cron.monthly/update-local-routes

  
  


• Lastly I use iftop -i ppp0 to monitor and make 100% sure where my traffic is being routed.