I'm having tonnes of issues deploying games to Steam, Google Play, Desura and others due to my ISP's horrid download vs upload ratios. Can anyone recommend an ISP and/or provider where I'm actually able to deploy games at a decent speed?
Sorry, the best I can do is say keep trying... We had big problems as well.
Ideally you'd want to head to somewhere that's got a dedicated line set up - even then it's not so much line speed, it's the packet loss that nukes you. Line quality trumps bandwidth.
@clive What kind of speeds are you currently getting?
Do you know if it's a limitation on the line itself (like @Dislekcia mentions)? You can organize for a Telkom technician to come out and check the line.
What area are you in? There might be fibre options available.
All the ISP's are kind of rubbish, for ADSL they all go through Telkom. Afrihost used to promise to deal with Telkom for you, but since rescinded that offer, so going with an ISP like Afrihost means dealing with both Afrihost AND Telkom, and whenever something goes wrong they tend to blame each other and both refuse to take action.
Neotel in some areas is an option. But the highest Neotel reception I've ever seen is 2Mbits. I imagine there are places where Neotel beats ADSL (where there is great Neotel reception and shitty old Telkom infrastructure), but I have no idea whether you're in one of those areas.
Neotel at least are quite pleasant to deal with.
There is a secondary fibre backbone being set up that avoids Telkom altogether. You can find out more from Dark Fibre Africa. Last I heard they had a 3 month waiting list, but maybe worth a call.
@blackshipsfillthesky So I've been doing some reading. Looks like I'm getting as fast as I can get which is 1mb up. A 6GB game upload takes a damned long time though. Previous update took 16 hours -- and I dare any one of you to try ensure you have a 16 hour long upload that runs without any interruption. It's near impossible.
I'm starting to think it might be wise investing in an upstream host of my own that I can resume uploads to and then in turn script actual deploys from there. Will save a lot of the hair on my head I've been pulling out.
@clive: You might want to try reaching Desmond Kurz (@bosbvok on Twitter) to see if there's a chance you can do large uploads from the Mweb offices here in CT. He mentioned that they would be open to supporting the local scene with streaming if they could, so maybe this is a thing they could help you with?
Fibre is the boss for uploads. The line isn't asymmetric like ADSL, also you can avoid Telkom. The only downside is the cost. But if upload is important to you even a 5Mb/s line will make a world of difference.
As @TheFuntastic said. We have pretty fantastic speeds at UCT, but while students are on campus the speeds and reliability can vary wildly. On weekends/study breaks its really stable and fast. If you're near UCT and desperate I could try help.
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Ideally you'd want to head to somewhere that's got a dedicated line set up - even then it's not so much line speed, it's the packet loss that nukes you. Line quality trumps bandwidth.
Do you know if it's a limitation on the line itself (like @Dislekcia mentions)? You can organize for a Telkom technician to come out and check the line.
What area are you in? There might be fibre options available.
All the ISP's are kind of rubbish, for ADSL they all go through Telkom. Afrihost used to promise to deal with Telkom for you, but since rescinded that offer, so going with an ISP like Afrihost means dealing with both Afrihost AND Telkom, and whenever something goes wrong they tend to blame each other and both refuse to take action.
Neotel in some areas is an option. But the highest Neotel reception I've ever seen is 2Mbits. I imagine there are places where Neotel beats ADSL (where there is great Neotel reception and shitty old Telkom infrastructure), but I have no idea whether you're in one of those areas.
Neotel at least are quite pleasant to deal with.
There is a secondary fibre backbone being set up that avoids Telkom altogether. You can find out more from Dark Fibre Africa. Last I heard they had a 3 month waiting list, but maybe worth a call.
I'm starting to think it might be wise investing in an upstream host of my own that I can resume uploads to and then in turn script actual deploys from there. Will save a lot of the hair on my head I've been pulling out.
At work we've got theoretically 4000kbps upload (I havent tested it fully yet) on our fibre line.