LinkDotNet Sucks!!!!

I have been using DSL for 3 almost years so far now. All 3 years have been with LinkDotNet. However, the first year was on the backbone of Egynet the only License A provider at that time. Speed was always consistent (had and still 512Kbps) and the line was down only twice but in the whole area because of problems witht the exchange.

Since LinkDotNet got its own license and moved to its separate backbone service started to deteriorate. For the first ~9 months service was good with some problems. When I used to call them they usually ask me to start a download and see the speed going back to normal. Later on, I knew that they had problems operating the juniper DSLAMs they acquired from Siemens Egypt. However, Khaled Bishara who is a very nice person, the former CEO of the company had a problem with American authority and was detained there for sometime. Since that, service greatly deteriorated. Ping to the gateway was over 70ms, speed was less than even than 256Kbps.

After hoping for the return of Khaled Bishara from the states, a new CEO took over Ashraf Gamal and I thought he should bring things back under control after the absence of Bishara. However, service deteriorated more, waiting time on the customer support line is above one hour and now, in January 2006, I am using Dial up because it is faster than the shitty speed I am getting from LinkDotNet. I have thoroughly tested the line performance many times during the day, night, weekends, and holidays. I used different test speed servers in UK, France, US and Saudi Arabia. In normal times I get a result of >400Kbps which is equivalent to a speed of > 50KB/sec. The last time I reached such a speed was during the summer almost 9 months ago!!!

As a matter of fact, pinging www.google.co.uk used to give me 80 ms. Now I get 400ms!!!!!
Oh, for a more shocking result, I pinged the gateway, located at exactly 1.5 km away from my home, normally it used to be 7-8 ms. Now its more than 200ms. Definitly there something wrong with the server provider. Test for yourself and ping LinkDotNet Gateway, its ip is 82.201.233.254


My friends with TEData who are complaining of speed problems with their ISP have not reached that level of speed yet. Others with Raya Telecom are not complaining at all. I am not sure about those with EgyNet which now offers it service through SofiCom. It was only my first year and a half that had good DSL service. I don't care if the line is shared or not but I should at least get a respectable service. The highest speed I reached in 4 months is 30KB/sec barely that of the 256kbps service.

If you think that the service I get is enough for the price paid, then you are wrong. 512/128 ADSL line costs 250 LE/month or about $42 /year. This is the lowest you can pay in any arab country but looking at country like Israel 2 major providers Bezeq or Barak which has it's website in arabic and english beside hebrew, for a speed liek 750Kbps prices are as low as $25/month or 140LE/month. Bare in mind the huge income gap between Egypt and Israel, but you pay a lower price in Israel for triple the speed and definitly better service than Egypt. Anyways, enough talking about Israeli internet service before some idiot charges me with treason against Egypt.

One more note for those who want to get a domain name, do it through Yahoo! Domains. The offer a domain for as low as $3/year or 17LE/year while LinkDotNet Domains offer it for 150LE/year, 9 times more than Yahoo!

Elections in Egypt Vs. Elections in Canada

I want to keep myself from using bad language in this post after I read the following article but it will be even more harder for those of you who tried to vote in the past elections in Egypt. I deleted some swearing words from that line. Damn... that article filled me with anger when I read it!

The following is posted about the elections in Canada from the Ottawa Sun

- If you don't have a voter information card, and you didn't register earlier, you can register at the polling station but will need satisfactory proof of your identity and residence -- either a document with your name, current address and signature (like a driver's licence), or two documents: One with your name and signature (like a health card) and the other with your name and current address (like a phone bill or a hydro bill).

You can find the article at the following link. I will save it on my computer for future reference.
http://ottsun.canoe.ca/News/Election/2006/01/23/1406906-sun.html

You can compare the easy process you will find in canada with the bullshit that happened in Egypt. I had my own experience with voting in presidential elections which wasn't as hard as what happened to my friends who kept trying for 10 hours with others denied the chance to vote in the parialmentary elections even though they satisfied all necessary conditions. While in Canada, voting can be with the driving license or even the phone bill!!!

But still, its us the Egytians who I blame for that miserable state of affairs that we reached, not only the government. The canadians are set to end the 13 year rule of the liberals while we are rotting in 54 years of corruption and chaotic rule.

Anyways, this is the real difference between a 3rd world country and a civilized country. A followup is coming soon for my last post. Which will include more incidents of proof of how barbaric Egyptians became, both the police and the people.

As a final note, If I had a canadian citizenship, I would have voted to the Bloc Québécois. This would need another post to explain the reason.

Kindness of Egyptian people

All of us know how kind the Egyptian people are and how nice of them to each other and to foreigners. I learnt that from school. I always read about that in the Egyptian media; TV programs, newspapers, silly shows and other forms. Whenever something contrary happens to that, the usual comment is that such incident is an exception and the usual phrase is said "El donia lessa bekheer".

Well this is definitely out of reality. Egyptians are not like that at all. I haven't seen anything of what they are preaching in the media. May be they used to be good-hearted specially the old generation but this does not apply to the new generation at all. Assuming that people were kind in the past, the nature of Egyptians has changed a lot.

Those who make concessions about the change that happened to Egyptians attribute it to the worsening economic conditions. I might agree with them. However, this post is not about the change that happened to Egyptians and the reasons behind it. There is a good book by Egyptian economist professor Galal Amin about titles Iwant to tell some stories that happened in reality lately to a friend of mine and other people.

A friend of mine had a problem with his car and parked it in front of a famous cineplex on the Nile bank in Manial district on the island of Roda on the noon of the New Year's Eve. While he was crossing the street, a speeding vehicle hit him and the driver didn't even stop and continues his/her way. My friend of course suffered great pain and fell on the ground where he fractured his hand and broke his leg. His leg was badly hurt. He had a fracture dislocation in his ankle and his tibia bone, the tough bone between the knee and the foot, was broken. He told me the worst thing other than the pain was the scene of his foot dangling and the bone almost pointing out. He managed to call his mother in the midst of pain and people started to gather around him in a typical Egyptian scene after any accident. He said it was very bothering. The surprise is that his mobile phone got stolen from him!!! This is how good hearted Egyptians are. A helpless guy in the laying down in the middle of a street with a completely damaged foot and bones peaking out and has his mobile phone stolen from him!! Anyways, my friend is paranoid about having his mobile phone stolen and prepared a surprise for the thief. The phone has 2 security codes in addition to the pin code of the sim card which was instantaneously terminated.

Another thing that I have experienced myself are taxi drivers. Here in Egypt, if a taxi driver feels that the client is foreign to the desired destination, he, the driver as we don't have female cab drivers, would take advantage of the client and take longer routes to let the client pay more. They also try to exploit tourists for that. I have tried that myself. To test that, i stopped a cab near my home and asked him to drive me home. I asked him about the area in a way that made him feel that I am not living to the area. He took the longer route in order to make me pay more. At the middle of our way I surprised him with a question asking him why he hadn't taken the other way and he tried to evade that question. In Milan, Italy, I wanted to go to the famous San Siro stadium, the home to famous football rivals Internazionale FC and AC Milan. It was a hot summer afternoon and I didn't know an italian word neither did the Italians know english. I tried to make my way through using the undeground to the nearest station and from which I stopped a cab. The cab driver refused and said in a broken english that it is near and that it's not worth it to take a cab. This is a difference between a person who cares for his country's reputation and another careless one. However, I had to mention that I had an argument with a cab driver in Ottawa, Canada but to my surprise he was Yemeni. He also tried to charge me a hefty sum for a short ride and also had a bad english and we had to argue in arabic. Friends told me after that after all I still paid him more than what he deserved.

One more thing..well I will keep it for a later post.
I have a lot of things to tell but I can't keep it short!!
The fact of Egyptians being kind is a real myth.

New year: 2006..is it?

This is a new year 2006. Shall I say happy new year? No I won't do so.

oh well.., uh Happy new beard.

I don't really care about the new year. I care more about long term plans and short terms plans. If I care about annual plans then most probably I would care about the financial year. I don't know what the idea about a new year. People just want to celebrate anything. I will celebrate it on a different day. Why do I have to go out on that specific day, the 31st of dec and look for a parking space in a crowded area to celebrate for a few hours and come back in the depth of the night to wake up and find out that I have to go to work. Oh damn it, its not an official day off in the governemnt. The governemnet gives all sorts of vacations except the new year. Actually the banks (including governmental) and some multinational companies are closed on January 1st.

Anyways, Happy new year or whatever.