As reported on MyBroadband, MWEB has announced that it will be reconfiguring its peering system via local transit routes, starting today.
MWEB CEO Rudi Jansen was quoted as saying that free and open peering between South African ISPs is essential for improved competition in the telecoms market.
As things currently stand, various ISPs charge each other to access one another’s networks. For instance, MTN will charge MWEB for traffic which runs between their network and MWEB users. In a bid to change this, MWEB has declared that it will no longer pay or charge other ISPs for networking peering. “So if you don’t want to peer with us, that is it! We will not pay you one single cent anymore,” said Jansen.
MWEB today announced that it will immediately begin making good on this promise and will start cutting off direct access to ISP’s which refuse to drop peering fees. Today the move started with MTN and Vodacom.
MWEB ISP CEO Derek Hershaw explained that MWEB will not ‘black hole’ any local ISP’s traffic. “We will simply be rerouting traffic away from congested and very expensive local transit links to our international bandwidth, which is significantly cheaper and not congested,” said Hershaw.
MWEB users will still be able to connect to the relevant networks, but they will not be able to connect locally. This means that users will notice slower connection speeds when browsing certain local websites.
What it means for gamers
Gamers can expect to be particularly badly affected by the change. MTN and Vodacom are being effectively cut off from the MWEB network today. MWEB users connect to iGame server via their peered connection with MTN and Vodacom. This means that MWEB users should notice an extreme increase in latencies when playing on iGame servers.
MWEB plans to cut off peering with the SAIX (Telkom) network next week. This will have dire consequences for MWEB subscribers who game on the SAIX gaming network (SGS). Instead of connecting directly to the local servers via South African cable networks, they will probably connect to the servers via London, or other international destinations. Essentially, latencies will shoot up from current local times to international times.
By cutting its peering agreement with Vodacom and SAIX, MWEB is essentially ruining online gaming for its customers on the majority of local servers. MWEB already has a free peering agreement with IS, so IS servers are likely to be the best bet for MWEB users. Web Africa’s WAGE servers may also be unaffected.
To make matters worse, the effects will be just as bad for console gamers, who rely mostly on peer-to-peer networking. Gamers using Telkom, iBurst, Vodacom and MTN broadband will experience a noticeable increase in latency when playing with gamers using MWEB.
Make peering free
The reason MWEB is cutting off various ISPs is because it does not want to pay to connect to other local networks. It also does not charge other ISP’s to connect to their network.
In the meantime, gamers using MWEB ADSL should start noticing higher latencies on various gaming servers from this afternoon onwards.
Have you experienced greater latency across SA gaming servers? Discuss on the MyGaming forum.
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