Best ISP for gamers?

Assume you’re still on DSL then? Cool, thanks for the insight.

Yep, DSL at home and LTE at work.

I am on Vumatel f8bre, and used to be with iConnect, who got bought out by CellC. Comewhere along the transfer they stopped doing debit orders and I had free internet for about 6 months. The problem was the service… Absolutely horrible. So had to get the account working properly before I could cancel. I was 3 months of hell.

Now with Afrihost and very happy. Great service, no hassles at all. 6 months with them now and just perfect.

I am in the process of switching from Vox to Mind The Speed (on Frogfoot). There’ll be an article on MyBroadband about what drove me to switch, hopefully next week.

It’s a roll of the dice as Mind The Speed is brand new to the industry, but their price for a 100Mbps symmetrical service is incredible. They advertise that they include a VoIP line with the base subscription (others charge extra for it), and a router to the value of ±R845.

If you cancel within 12 months, you need to pay them your fibre provider’s installation fee, and either pay them for the router, or return the router.

They have a recommended router they provide, but you can also elect to “choose your own router” — they then source it and send it to you. At first I was dubious about the prices they would charge for “non-standard” routers, but it’s actually been pretty reasonable.

So far the customer experience has been incredible. I filled in the form to request the line migration and was quickly contacted by a rep called Warwick.

I requested a MikroTiK hAP Lite for my router, rather than their standard one, because that’s what was included with my current fibre package.

Warwick’s first e-mail asked whether I wouldn’t rather want to upgrade to the MikroTiK hAP AC2 for a pay-in of R143 and some change. It has 1Gbps ports, while the hAP Lite only has 100Mbps ports. I slapped my forehead and said, “Of course I’d actually want the hAP AC and not the Lite. I was a dumbass. Thanks for catching that!”

Mind The Speed takes over as my ISP on 1 October. I’ll be able to report more on my experience then.

i use Wifibre have had any long time issue’s. just one Saterday where the inet wasn’t working tried to call them and released they only do support on emails. at least on the email got response in like an hour. There was something wrong in there data-center and they were in process of fixing it

Vox is an option for me. What was your experience with them?

Vox runs a great network, but I dislike its billing practices.

Just reiterating — I’ve had very few issues with the performance of Vox’s network. All my gripes with them have got to do with their billing practices, and the way they configure their MikroTiK routers.

Here’s my story:

Right when I started out with Vox on FTTH, I asked if I could do 1Gbps for one month, just to feel what it is like, and then downgrade to 100Mbps from then on.

“Sure, no problem,” my sales rep said.

Come my invoice for month two, and I get billed for 1Gbps. They point-blank refused to change my account to 100Mbps and I had to pay the full fee for a Gbps service. The sales rep that was so helpful to get me signed up just washed his hands. Suddenly everyone was an expert in Vox’s T&Cs. Pity they couldn’t warn me about what I needed to do when it was timely to do so.

1.5 years on, and Vox announces a “line realignment” due to Frogfoot changing the fees on its asymmetric services, and introducing symmetric services.

I find this very confusing, because I’ve been receiving a symmetric service for as long as I’ve been with them. The disputed 1Gbps service was symmetric, and the 100Mbps service I’ve had for, like, 18 months has been symmetric.

So I check how much I’m paying, and how much Vox’s 100Mbps/100Mbps service on Frogfoot is going to cost. I’m paying about that much (R1275 per month), so I don’t think much more about it.

The big change-over happens and suddenly I’m downgraded to 10Mbps upload speed. It turns out I was technically subscribed to the 100/50Mbps asymmetric service which was downgraded to 100/10Mbps allegedly due to Frogfoot’s changes.

When I call Vox to ask why I’m paying the fee for a 100Mbps upload but only receiving 10Mbps, they say it’s because of standard annual price increases. They also say it’ll take 10 days to process my request to “upgrade” my account.

In other words, Vox works like an insurance company. You need to call them or log into the portal every year to make sure you aren’t getting shafted on price due to “annual CPI price increases”.

And the saddest thing of all— Do you know what the difference is in price between the 100Mbps Vox Uncapped PRO symmetric and assyemtric services? Like R35 per month. They could’ve avoided all this and made me a happy customer by just giving me what I asked.

This is why I’m migrating from Vox to Mind The Speed.

Good to know. I don’t have time for that kind of nonsense, so maybe I’ll give Vox a miss then. Looking forward to that article.

I think in general we should be more vocal about calling companies out for shoddy business practices. We are their bread an butter, and yet they treat us like even answering a simple question is a massive inconvenience. I’m boycotting Evetech already for similar reasons.

I am on cool ideas. Been with them for 2 years. Only had at most 30 mins of down time.

Their support desk isn’t great but you can get support from one of the co-founders at mybroadband , he is very efficient.

Did have an international download issue for some time, was a frogfoot issue but CI did eventually solved. Would have been quicker if ff would actually have acknowledge the issue…

Overall I give CI a 9/10 for the overall experience.

I am very happy with Cool Ideas. used ISP Afrika for years, and their client service just deteriorated to utter rubbish

My brief experience with Vox also involved billing issues where I downgraded and cancelled my account, and somehow the account got reactivated and I had to cancel again. I refused to pay for that last month (it was a small amount but it was more about the principle). Seeing your post prompted me to go have a look if they still have me owing them but it seems something must have got sorted out as the statement reflects a zero balance.

All good feedback. Keep it coming folks.

I used to be with Smart Village/MTN Fibre/Supersonic (they changed names often) and I felt they were the best I had gaming-wise. When we moved to Cape Town, I used Sonic Telecoms for 3 months while we searched for longer-term lodging and they were decent as well.

Then I got Afrihost (via Octatel) when we moved into our new house. I must say I’m terribly disappointed. I seldom get consistent speeds and ping is all over the show. It’s not the router either, as I have a fancy big Asus ROG spider-like router connected via mesh Wifi to another decent Asus router to extend the range.

Just a heads up @Sweepslag - Cool Ideas had another big DDoS attack this weekend. Didn’t impact me personally too much - was too nice a weekend to be indoors and online - but the MyBB thread and their Twitter stream is full of very upset users, many who are claiming that they’ll be canceling today.

Twice in as many weeks is not good. Not at all. Like all things SA ISP related, buyer beware, I guess.

Check @PsychoFish’s comment here: Beating Off 3.0. It’s something he’s said before and again this morning, and @SIGSTART talks about it in depth in the linked article.

This is what worries me, I wasnt home this weekend so didnt use my pc, but I agree, if it wasnt such a hassle to switch isp’s in my house I would.

See, here’s my bugbear. Most ISPs I’ve dealt with in a professional capacity and most (except a handful of them who deal only with corporate clients) tend to use Consumer-grade and/or enterprise-grade network equipment.

Now, on a technical level any equipment than can do Layer 3 (https://www.computerworld.com/article/2469896/network-hardware-solutions-the-network-layer-understanding-layer-3-of-the-osi-model.html) will suffice. Where the differences come in is the Route Switch Processor (RSP) of these devices. Most Carrier grade (and the top-tier enterprise grade) equipment will have active/active redundant RSPs. Carrier grade equipment also provide lower latency and throughput (generally referred to as “near line speed”) and tends to be rated from 2 Tbps to 1Pbps (that’s 1 Petabits per second). The best you’ll get from Enterprise grade equipment is around 160 Tbps.

tbf to them the attack was 4x the size of previous attack. They go completely of the net at any stage for me. Speed was an issue during the attack but that is to be expected.

They are putting more measures in place to deal with it more effectively. Long statement was emailed to customers today.

Statement:https://help.coolideas.co.za/announcements/article/cool-ideas-statement

I went through this but a month ago and also did the research on MEW and MyBB and hellopeters and everywhere, even messaged a few folk directly. In the end I decided on Cool Ideas, mainly for the price, their total uncapped policy, and that they are a fibre only provider. I’ve been with them a month and super happy. Might even be upgrading for more speed. “That speed is enough for what I need”…heh

Thanks for all your feedback folks, it’s way more than I could have asked for. I wish I could say I was in two minds about this, but I’m probably in several

Luckily there’s no hurry to make a decision just yet, so I’ll be patient for a bit longer and do some more homework. Please keep posting your experiences, I think it’s helpful to everyone.