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Comment by thebenedict | Hacker News Reader

Sure. I'm on Smile Tanzania atm, a 4G carrier (though slower than 4G in the US or Europe). This isn't the carrier I'll use for web app tests.

http://dpaste.com/129AKD2 http://dpaste.com/37YE2VY

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Tanzanian here writing this from dar es salaam,Tanzania.

I have never hear of this "smile" company so i looked them up and their prices[1] seem ridiculous.

I use vodacom and i pay 20,000 shillings a month for unlimited internet.This company charges 17,500 a month for 1GB.

vodacom,like other companies also have more options[2].

Why do you use this company?

ps: 1USD is equivalent to about 1500 shillings so 20000 shillings is about 13USD

[1] http://smile.co.tz/products-services/

[2] https://www.vodacom.co.tz/internetservices/prepaid_packages/...

Looks like smile has 4G LTE, so is probably significantly faster.

How fast is it? To my NZ ears these prices sound fantastic, as we usually pay about 5-6 times that for unlimited internet (if unlimited is even an option; it only is in certain urban areas). But presumably it's quite slow?

i just updated by linux box using apt-get and it reported: "Fetched 47.0MB in 2m3s (381kB/s)".

Thats 3Mbps. This kind of speeds happen from time to time but long downloads or streams are usually capped at around 300kbps( around 40kBps).

The speed is decent enough during normal web surfing.

You should come to the Debian conference in Cape Town next year :)

https://jonathancarter.org/2015/02/13/debconf-2016-to-be-hos...

Hi! I use Smile because it's a little faster and significantly more reliable than the others. Most of my business and personal communication abroad happens via video Skype. Voda and Airtel are sometimes fast enough, but often aren't especially during peak times. I hate having to tell clients that my connection isn't good enough for a scheduled call.

For an idea of what I'm talking about, here's 70 second pings to google.com from an especially frustrating morning in January on Vodacom TZ: http://i.imgur.com/5urJcd7.png. This isn't typical but happens often enough to be a problem.

With Smile I'm paying rates comparable to 4G service in the US, e.g. TMobile[1]. The service isn't nearly as fast (peak I've seen is ~3.5 Megabytes/sec download) but the reliability makes it worth it. I suspect I'm paying as much for lower contention ratios on the towers as for "4G" infrastructure, but the end result is the same.

[1] (http://www.t-mobile.com/cell-phone-plans/mobile-internet.htm...)

here's 70 second pings to google.com

Wow. I wonder where on the link a packet can get stuck for so long without being dropped.

RFC 1149 comes to mind... (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers)

Looks like your provider is traversing through TATA Communications (AS6453) on both of those.

Wonder what your latency would be with a SEACOM(AS37100) traversal, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_in_Tanzania

Here are your downstream carrier options : http://www.cidr-report.org/cgi-bin/as-report?as=AS37100&v=4&...

Neat. My rough understanding is that carriers here route traffic through SEACOM, EASSy (and likely others) to minimize cost and traffic. I don't think I can choose SEACOM specifically -- but I'm always up to test Cunningham's Law.

Your traffic traversed through SMILE>Zantel>Tata .. You may not be able to influence the best path to reach Google through Smile even though Zantel might be multihomed (unless the best path changes). I'd recommend testing from other providers such as SPICE-NET-TZ, TZ or simbanet-tz,TZ etc. [ Look above at the Seacom's downstream adjacent AS link I provided to find if you can use any of those carrier instead ]

  # whois -h whois.cymru.com 41.138.222.196
  AS      | IP               | AS Name
  327692  | 41.138.222.196   | SMILECOMMS,UG
  # whois -h whois.cymru.com 41.73.194.97
  AS      | IP               | AS Name
  36930   | 41.73.194.97     | Zantel-AS,TZ

HI MIKE!

I think you're the only other person I know who reads HN.

Neat idea.

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