Rejoice!
Yesterday, Mauritius Telecom announced that my Internet speed will be doubled from 512kbit/s to 1Mbit/s without an increase in subscription fee by tomorrow, 1 December 2010, exactly 20 months after another similar doubling in speed.
Naturally, I am happy. And getting 1Mbit/s is definitely going to be an important milestone for me and, I guess, a lot of Mauritian friends. We’ll leave the world of the kilobit to join the one of the megabit per second!
Or, will we?
I have some doubts.
You see, I like YouTube. I watch videos on my MacBook, on my Nexus One and on my LCD TV using my PlayStation 3. And videos are sometimes slow to stream and sometimes do not even start. Google has setup some YouTube mirrors locally but I understand that those servers contain a subset of the most popular videos… (I guess mostly Lady Gaga clips and porn…) So bad luck for those with a less predictable taste.
I have also noticed that I regularly get the infamous YouTube spinner after dinner and during the week-end. I suppose that a lot of us like to watch videos at the same time. And I understand that the slowdown happens throughout the island.
The technical explanation for this slowdown is simple:Â Internet bandwidth from Mauritius to elsewhere (more specifically the USA) is not large enough for all of us to watch different YouTube videos at the same time.
And we need to watch different YouTube videos. Or, else, how are young people going to be inspired to change their world? This is the only way to become part of history.
I sincerely hope that Mauritius Telecom is going to increase the international bandwidth tomorrow. But, to be frank, I have some doubts.
Guess no one till date has been able to break my record. Some few days back(at night) I break the most slowest speed possible. I had a 0.10 mbps speed for a myT 512kbps. It’s like that almost every evening and weekends. Surfing during those time period is a pain.
Less than 24 hours before our speed gets “doubled”. It won’t be of shock if the speed drops as low as 200kbps(for a mb connection) during weekends and between 17.00 to 22.00). .Ops, even during weekdays the speed will suffer now. (School holidays).
I don’t think, there will be much in terms of service. They shut the people’ mouth by doubling the speed.
Increase international bandwidth? That’s Eassy.
The problem seems to be with the local infrastructure. The pipes get clogged far too easily.
Good news is that the bigger pipes are being laid (FTTC).
This ‘spinner’ can indeed be damn annoying!
Coming back to the internet connectivity, yes, an increase in the speed has always been the most welcomed, especially for mass downloaders.
I always fail to understand how can some people can download GBs or TBs of data monthly and still, it seems that they are not affected by the famous FUP. Perhaps the ISPs should think about offering some special packages to those guys eating the bandwidth, thus occasioning serious lags during peak time to a normal “facebook-msn-blogs” user like me.
@carrotmadman6 Sure about that? I always thought that the local infrastructure is fine (fiber optics and all.)
@Yashvin Interesting perspective. I am a “normal” user too. Sure, I download a movie from time to time but, most of the time, I’m browsing or indulging in some YouTube videos with the kids and Christina. It is always painful to have to stare at the spinner…
@Neelesh Especially with the “best effort” concept.
@Tushal I have to be frank. I practically always get good bandwidth. I live in vieux Quatre-Bornes by the way. Ceci explique peut être cela…
@Tushal : You can’t complain about having low speeds. You download the whole of internet all day long and people like me can’t load a single page at a decent speed.
In my previous comment, I refer to users like you. You are not to be blamed. ISPs should have special packages for you.
@Yashvin Great find: “download the whole of Internet” :-)
I have a 100 Mbps connection here :P I download a 3 Gb DVD in 20 minutes on average :D
@Bruno Not bad. But that’s not 100Mbit/s. With that kind of connection, you would have downloaded your DVD in 4 minutes :-)
Some random information I gathered on Twitter.
1. There is no more FUP. All My.T internet connections are unlimited.
2. There is a limited promotion for My.T right now. Users won’t have to pay for the installation and configuration fees, which amount to Rs. 3000. ADSL users switching to My.T will only have to pay for the conversion fee of Rs. 1000.
3. Not necessary but … The email capacity for My.T is not 100 MB.
4. My.T is available in more regions. Earlier, it was not available at Fond du Sac.
Speed doubled? But it wont benefit mass downloaders since the Fair usage policy is still the same… so we gonna reach the limit set more quickly and then the speed will automatically decrease. So it’ the same thing … ^^
But I’m not happy! Because I’ve got ADSL 512 at my place, the price has decreased but the speed is the same! But when compared to the MyT package,I’m actually paying more for the same speed!!!! AND I don’t get a free wireless network like MyT subscribers… So where’s value for money???
For the record, I didn’t opt for ADSL, it was the only option I was given by Orange at that time…
@Bruno: Theoretical speeds strike again!
About the Youtube spinner, I get that very often. I’ve noticed that if I try to download the video via some Firefox addon, I get very good speeds, even maxing out my connection. Agreed, the point of streaming is defeated, but at least I can watch my video without lags! :)
Still getting 512kbit/s here. Aren’t we on the 1?
What about you?
Since very early morning am getting 1 mb at Pamplemousses. The download speed is around 85mb and upload is abt 30mb from a server at Antananarivo.
@Harrish
Nice to know. I am at work right now. I’ll check when I go back home later. (I would love to have MyT at work…)
Hi, a question how about us ancient clients who don’t have the TV package and still paying Rs848+vat monthly for MyT 512kbps. Will we get 1mb as i’ve tested the connection and still getting 512kbps???????
typical telecom , got a story for you guys .
well after a long day at work and being in a hurry to get home to check out if it was true
that our bandwidth would increase i got a lovely surprise to find out that my connection
was still the same as yesterday .
anyway i reset my router and same thing , anyway i called telco and waited for a good 20 mins .Finally some dude picked up and i expressed my issue , he asked the normal question like name and number etc , the only thing different this time is he asked “do you have the 15 myt channels ” obviously im not interested in the myt channels as i have the sat channels that takes up most of my tv time.
Anyway my answer was no . The guys answer was simply if you want the 1mb all you have to do is take the myt channels and that would change your actual price 800 and something to 999 rs . I said to him that is not what it says on orange.mu . he just simply replied you are only eligiable if you got all the myt PAID channels .
What do you guys think of that !!!!@!!!!!!
one thing which should be clarified and which is not mentioned practically anywhere, the people who were using myt before the last upgrade are not concerned. i.e, people like myself who are paying the original price for myt i think Rs780 some thing for their 512kbps. Only the people who upgraded to Myt + their new channels (consequently paying Rs999) are the one who will have 1mbps as from 1 december. The only way for the original myt users to get full 1mbps is to change their package to Myt + their shit new channels and pay Rs999 or change to an ADSl 512kps subscription.
In the end we can say, this is a masterstroke marketing strategy.
@$SPY @dan @avinash
What the hell? I’ll call them tomorrow for confirmation. Like you, I am a long time MyT subscriber and I don’t have the extra TV channels (and I don’t need them…)
@dan – I c,
stupid m*&^*% f^&*% @ MT.
so in otherwords oldtimes subscribers will beneficiate 13% discount in their december billing hopefully.
It’s confirmed. Our “no TV” subscriptions won’t be upgraded…
Que faire? :(
Only those paying Rs999 for MyT have had their speed doubled!
BTW, I’m going to change my ADSL to the MyT 1M today… I’ve heard there’s no conversion fee until 10/01/11!
@carrotmadman6 Que faire? I don’t know…
I currently pay MyT 512 without the crappy channels Rs 847.50 per month (Rs 750.00 + 15% VAT – Rs 15.00 VAT Refund.) MyT with the 18 crappy channels is Rs 999.00 per month (including VAT.) Let’s assume there is the same Rs 15.00 VAT Refund, this means that the actual price per month is Rs 984.00. The difference between MyT without the crappy channels and with is therefore Rs 136.50 per month.
So the 18 channels are “sold” at Rs 136.50 per month. Which is Rs 7.58 per channel per month…
The 18 TV channels are: Boing, Boomerang, CCTV, CNN, Fashion TV, France 2, France 24, France 5, France Ô, Gulli, Hungama, Liberty TV, MCM Top, NDTV Good Times, NDTV Profit, Orange Sport Info and TCM.
What do you think of the channels? Are they as crappy as we believe? What about the video and audio quality? Are they comparable with the quality you get on CanalSat? Can Mauritius Telecom “tie” the 1Mbit/s offer with those 18 channels?
@ Avinash
i know that its not much to pay for an upgrade , but surely it aint a fair thing for the old myt users .
oh And trust me the channels are really crap.
Myt cant be compared to canal sat as its a different ball game
Among those channels , i only concern with Boing , Boomerang & Gulli as my child like these channels. The rest are absolutely rubbish. I have the bollywood bouquet which i like and must pay Rs 250 for it. Overall i pay about Rs1200.
But when you see the price and quality of canal sat or parabole bouquet(min abt Rs 500/-) which have drop to half with many additional channels and the reduced price of adsl (min abt Rs500/-) , the one chosing the private channel & adsl will be more advantages.
Well the channels are not ‘bad’, but it depends on your taste… CNN is a good news channel, I’ve heard there are some good ‘ticomiks’ on Boomerang, and France 2 is quite good… But @ Rs 7.58 per channel per month and double internet speed, I think it’s a good package…
I think we have no choice as MT has used a “masterstroke marketing strategy” like Avinash said, so lets get in the net, who will not accept to pay Rs150 more for twice the connection he is using? I was so happy at start because I was among the first to know that MyT is upgrading its connection as friend working in a printing house show me a magazine which will be publish in the coming days from orange which is “supposed” to be in 3D and with which is”supposed” to supply 3D glasses but unfortunately it is not applicable for “us” old times subscribers!!!!!
@Avinash the channels is simply shit!!!! I have canalsat at home and to be frank I don’t even know where is the MyT receiver at home…lol so don’t even think to watch those crappy channels, the picture and sound is acceptable I said “acceptable” but not to compare with canalsat…to conclude in other words we are oblige to upgrade to MyT+ and pay the extra Rs150 monthly, I think I’ll give them Rs151 to make it round Rs1000 lol…cheers
What to do with thoz channels!!!
I dont even have times to look at most of the canalsat subscription but spend most of my times on the net! What will I do with more channels!
Your cost here must include the cost of all media subscription we all pay:
MBC TV, local NewsPrint, Canal Sat/Parabol, Internet.
Rs 136.50 per month for thoz channels is not worth it for me. but may be for some others.
http://www.meshandstir.net
internet sux in Mauritius!
i have never had this kinda problem with youtube though my connection is a really high one.. i had 2 mega and now its been double to 4 mega.. The youtube spinner is something normal for slow conection as the website itself send you java enable codes that are saved in your temp files hidden that throttle your conection at a certain moment, i mean only for windows users!!.. You dont believe me !!! copy this in your adresse bar in my computer window : C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5 , this file is never visible even if hidden files is disabled.. you just need to copy it like i told you in the my computer adresse bar.. you will find a file name index.dat, right click on it and open it with notepad.. if you are a little in programming you will understand what does : “algorithm-throttle-factor” means. This index.dat lets youtube have a record on every url you clicks or you type in.. Sorry windows users!!
if you wanna confirmation what does “algorithm-throttle-factor” means ask avinash himself!!
i myself am a Networking geek and i tried a few tricks to find the truth about youtube, i installed windows xp on a computer and installed a packet sniffer and ran a high quality video on youtube and i just ran a network sniffer( wireshark) and i do see quiet alot of 7933 00:01:26.384945 74.125.165.87 192.168.1.100 HTTP [TCP Previous segment lost] Continuation or non-HTTP traffic
followed by a bunch of 7936 00:01:26.390956 192.168.1.100 197.225.6.194 TCP [TCP Dup ACK 7931#2] 44079 > http [ACK] Seq=1 Ack=7225541 Win=46902 Len=0 SLE=7227001 SRE=7229921
by comparison i watched traffic coming from video on gametrailers.com and it had virtually no such errors, maybe one every 50-100 pages of packets, by comparison youtube had a bunch every ~5-10 pages.
Meaning that YOUTUBE IS Actually Throttling your bandwidth with there shitty scripts!! and that the packets are dropped continously to 25 % to 27 % causing you having the spinner!!
Quit windows! Use linux and you will see the complete difference, fast streaming no throttle at all. Click and play youtube videos or any streaming online videos.
If you need more info regarding whatever topic concerning internet, networking, OS techniques and tricks,dont hesitate to contact me.
Till then see ya all
Regards
Darkhorse
the world is one big family, share knowledge freely!!
What i noted and it works each time (myt users only, 2mb/s), whenever a video is buffering at a very low rate, do a hard refresh ctrl+f5 and the buffering is much better. I suspect the minute you start viewing the video, the local mirror starts caching the video.
As usual MT’s crafty way of screwing its subscribers is appalling!
@Avinash–> Are you still on the 512 kbps speed?
Well, I am.
I’m so so reluctant to pay additional fees for ubber rubbish channels which I will never watch.
@Tushal
Having given a deep thought about the whole issue, I think I’ll get the 18 “crap” channels. To comfort myself, I’m trying to believe that I’ll watch (or ask my kids to watch) at least a few of them…
laï mort dans lalampe!!!
dont do that, we are all in a bad posture and what you are doing is like taking your pants down yourself instead of letting the guy behind you try desperately to take it down!!!
Just sharing:
Not worth it for 512 more kbs!
Also consider the price we are all paying for our MYT subscription. When we make calls on normal lines, we pay also a seperate fee for these calls which should have been included in our package for all local calls!!
Do you still want to add nuggets to the burger & pizza already being paid to Mtius Telcom everyday?
Oh well guys I just could not help it I went in on Saturday morning to do the upgrade , I gave it a good thought before I went in to do it , I mean the channels are crap and certainly not worth it half of the channels I dont understand (no offense guys ) . Well anyway I signed the papers and guess what they said it would be up in 48 hrs max guess what I’m still waiting ……..!!!!!! Sigh !!!!!! :(
@Avinash
Good decision me too going to upgrade package…we have no choice!!!!:(
@$PÂ¥
To be fair, we decided to upgrade for two reasons:
(1) To get 1Mbit/s and hopefully manage to watch YouTube videos without the spinner.
(2) To get the Boomerang channel which shows cartoons in English. As CanalSat subscribers, we do have two dedicated channels for kids but they are in French and we were keen to expose them to more English…
Hi Avinash – seems like boomerang TV likes you much!!
we have no choice other than pay for the channels to get 1mbps. that sucks. abuse of power in a monopoly translated into a marketing strategy. it was already too expensive, now have to pay rs151 more every month for something i will not use! They said MyT512 will get double speed, then just double the damn thing. Is that even legal?
wish some journalist would have printed some bad publicity as a xmas gift for them, publish articles in newspapers exposing the “evil stratagem” so that everyone knows the hidden lines under the MyT double speed promotion… and realise that they don’t deserve all the cheers.
You’re right. Mauritius Telecom, once again, communicated very badly.
We were led to believe that all of us would get the speed boost while, in reality, only those with TV channels had it. In fact, I went to one Teleshop the other day and the guys there told me that EVERYONE would get 2x speed (so, even internally, information wasn’t being propagated correctly.)
Christina and I thought a lot about “upgrading” to the 18 channels and, at the end, we did it. And, to be fair, we’re pretty much satisfied. We now have additional channels (I’m satisfied with the audio / video quality) and Internet is quicker.
Of course, I would have preferred not to have to “upgrade” but, then, Mauritius Telecom is a commercial entity and, at the end of the day, they are just doing business…
I Just my connection upgraded after 96 hours , when I called customer service they said 48 WORKING hours,nice one telecom I’ll use that in my dept next time an angry cust calls
Yeah. I had to call them too. And the technicians had to fight with the setup for 2 hours before managing to get the 1Mbit/s… Mais bon, cela fonctionne correctement maintenant.
HI Avinash its not that they had to fight with the setup, they just needed to change the packages and it takes just 10 seconds, but the Back Office itself are lazy chaps, so you cant do anything.. After all its MYT service, (Mauritius Telecom Bonjour, pena nom a votre service) shit man!! no customer service nothing! i fink there’s no customer care in this CALL CENTER!! Bravo MT for your Customer Service.. Last time i called Myt for an assistance you wont believe what they told me: “Sorry Missier, mais pour linux nous pas donne assistance”. I think there are not much qualified people working there or they dont know what linux means!! lol
I tend to agree. They do not seem to be particularly well trained. I nearly had a verbal fight with one the other day on the difference among byte, bit, megabyte and megabit :-)
Hi, just received a letter from MT during the week dated 1st Dec 2010 telling that there are offering old MyT users currently paying Rs 848 vat Inc for 512k the opportunity to double our internet speed to 1mb and in addition enjoy 18 TV channels for “ONLY” Rs 999 vat Inc per month as we are a valued Orange customer, the first 3 months is free…Got some questions, Will they upgrade it and then call me back after the 3 months or I have to go there and ask them to upgrade it? Anyone received this letter?
I got that letter too…
me too received this letter, ve just ignored it, will stay on the 512
@those who had problem with myt upgrade…
so what was the problem?
To-day i got my.T 2mb, however i’m getting only speed of 1mpbs like my old adsl 1mb connection on international servers.
I getting the full 2mbps speed on local sites and videos on youtube are download @ ~240KB/s.
It seems that they messed on my line settings.
Seems so…
Mine is working well enough… except, around 8-9pm, when watching YouTube. I still get the infamous spinner.
@ jens
thats normal, myt users are served with ips from a pool possessing many gateways. at time to time myt users are being served with ips with gateways not on the local 2mb bandwidth. in such case you must renew your connection until you get a 41. ip.
if you are on mac here an applescript for help before log into the modem:
set {Ext_IP} to {word 25} of (do shell script “curl checkip.dyndns.org”)
and a userfriendly tool here for a better understanding of what happening out there:
http://www.intermapper.com/
Thanks Vince.
So, can we conclude that we need to get 41.x.x.x in order to enjoy maximum bandwidth? Do you know what policy MT uses to allocate IPs? Is it random?
Avinash
Do not know policy, buy by observation it seems to be random.
Speed is going downhill.. Everyday except sometimes on week ends I get abysmal speeds between about 6pm – midnight. Then past midnight miraculously speeds get to where they should be (on MyT 1Mbps)
Even worse is latency is horrendous, I like to play games online and even using a tunneling service, pinging those servers I get big spikes in latency + timeouts even.
Now MT/Orange will be quick to say that it’s the target servers that are the issue or that our internet is saturated at peak time. What a load of crap, I connect to 2 servers at work, 1 connects through ADSL Business the other through Wimax and both get pings as low as can be with nearly no jitter.
What gives…