Why Separate Channels?

From experience as a family of gamers and streamers we have found that at times one or the other will hog the bandwidth leaving the other frustrated. Our bandwidth has been divided into 3 independant "channels" and are as follows:

• International Channel — This data will include browsing, downloading and streaming from international sites such as in the USA, UK, EU, etc.
• National channel — This data will be for browsing, downloading and streaming from National sites and/or servers hosted in South Africa, such as Showmax, YouTube, Origin, Microsoft, Steam, Apple, Facebook, basically anything on any network we can peer with (Seacom, Hurricane Electric Networks, etc.).
• Local Channel — This data would be used between all ECF users, for example, Security Camera's, Voip systems, gaming on-net, servers on the same Channel, etc. Recently, we have become a Netflix Partner. What this means is – Our local Netflix OC servers have been installed earlier, tested and activated on the 15 Dec. Now you can enjoy watching your favorite shows and movies without any buffering issues, unless you have a local problem with your streaming device or TV ;). The Netflix bandwidth will be accounted as LOCAL, and will not affect your International or National downloads. You can measure the speed of your network using Netflix https://fast.com.

As far as we know, there's no other ISP in South Africa that offers such bandwidth separation. Giving you a better internet where you need it all the time!

To make it even more understandable

All ECF customers could potentially download simultaneously from servers/peers on all the different channels above at the same time, totalling bandwidth speed of the package. You could be browsing, downloading or streaming on International Channel at 5Mb/s while streaming a 1440p video from YouTube on the National Channel and watching Netflix or On-Net gaming on the local… ALL AT THE SAME TIME!

How to Speedtest

It is not possible to get a single speedtest to show the full capacity of your connection. You can start 3 tests at the same time using servers international, National and Local and you would then see the full bandwidth that you are receiving. You could also use a bandwidth measurement tool such as Windows "Task Manager / Resource Meter" or  "Networx".
Many speedtest services will give you varying speeds and are not reliable and may lead to false information. We trust the standards of Netflix's Fast.com or Ookla's Speedtest