In my suburb some users from a particular ISP are more affected.
Anyone else??
You don’t name names. I was in Centurion yesterday, and Vodacom data on my phone ranged from “no internet connection” to dead slow. Even when I got back to Johannesburg (I had a more difficult time than usual using e-hailing). At home we have Openserve fiber with Telkom as the ISP and that seems to be it’s usual reliable self.
The ISP that’s having the worst of it is Vox but they blame Frogfoot (the fibre company)
Where I live there is only Vumatel and Openserve. When there’s trouble it’s nearly always for people connected to the Vumatel infrastructure, and there’s usually a round finger pointing between Vumatel and ISPs (which I’d think is redundant: If all ISPs are not responding, it’s not the ISPs). Openserve is pretty much bullet proof.
Yes, that would be me. I am with Vox/Frogfoot. They almost always blame Frogfoot, but generally not unfairly. Quite often it is Frogfoot, and the reason we know that is Vox customers on OpenServe are not affected.
On Sunday we had a huge outage, but we could not even get a session started. I had the laptop connected directly to the access concentrator at one point, trying to start a PPPoE connection, but requesting a session (PADR) always timed out (no PADS packets). That was probably also Frogfoot and not Vox… although interestingly Vox customers on OpenServe was again unaffected, while other ISPs using FrogFoot for last mile was also unaffected. The combination was affected, but in a way that very much looked like both of them were involved (probably some issue between radius servers or some such thing… I’m not sure if we still use that).
I noticed very slow fibre connection last night and was wondering if it was only on Evotel,s side, then I heard on the radio this morning that Africa’s sea cable was damaged.
Yesterday I could not get anything more than 1.5Mbps on international, it felt worse than ADSL. Today it seems better.
How do you check the speed of an international connection?
PS: This site sometimes doesn’t open for me…
I used a mikrotik bandwidth test server, but you can use Internet Speed Test | Bandwidth Place or speedtest-cli if you prefer to use the command line.
1 Like
But these speed tests will only measure the speed to a local server??
How do I measure the speed on an overseas connection?
Herewith an update from Mweb received yesterday:
Hi,
As you’re probably aware from recent news reports, South Africans are currently facing significant disruptions to international services due to multiple undersea cable breaks. On February 24th, damage to the SEACOM cable system in the Red Sea region resulted in traffic being rerouted onto other systems, including the WACS network along the west coast of Africa. Unfortunately, due to the volatile situation in the region and delays in obtaining permits from local authorities, there is still no estimated completion date for these repairs.
Adding to the challenges, on March 14th, another major incident occurred affecting the WACS and other cable networks along the West Coast. While details of this incident are still pending, preparations to dispatch a repair ship are currently underway.
Despite these circumstances, rest assured that the Mweb Network team is actively managing the situation. We’ve successfully redirected the bulk of our customers’ international traffic onto alternate routes. However, with more customers now connecting via these alternative routes, streaming and gaming speeds may be slower at times. We want to assure you that our team will continue to monitor the situation closely and make necessary adjustments to ensure you receive the best possible experience throughout these outages.
As the undersea repair work may take some time, we’ll provide regular updates to keep you informed.
If you use speedtest.net, you can select a different test server to test against (click the Change Server link). Testing from my house to New York, for example, I get very close to full speed at the moment.
1 Like
Interesting. There is unhappiness in my area because some folks are unable to stream from Netflix. Once you get past them saying vague things like “the Internet” or “wi-fi”, it always turns out that the ISP is M-Web.
We are on Openserve infrastructure with Telkom as the ISP and we have had zero problems streaming Netflix or live F1 races.
I wasn’t aware of how much African internet traffic is handled by these undersea cables.
It’s difficult to service a cable I gather since it cannot be lifted from the sea bed without having to cut it first. Also the depths of the sea bed must require special unmanned craft.
I wonder, why did the breaks take place?
Techtonic/landslides, etc apparently.
They are laid close together so about 4 were effected…
I was actually wondering that when I posted that question … cause I “pick up stompies” that there are a lot of tectonic movements going in recently.
Yonks ago I asked the question, after reading an article: So, tell me, when the poles melt, billions upon billions of tons are removed from those concentrated areas, could it affect the tectonic plates worldwide?
The first answer I got on my email was: Nope. (email to the USGS)
Then a few months later, an article: Probably. (Smithsonian if memory serves)
The bottom line, IF it is indeed tectonic/landslides … oeps.
The most recent “stompie”: