My days and thoughts....

Blog covering some selected happenings in my life.

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

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!

22 Comments:

Blogger Lasto-adri *Blue* said...

yeah! i hat elink... it sucks bgad
i am thinking deeply to change to any isp since it is ruining my life w ith the slow speeds i am having now...
we'r supposed to be 512 but we mostly have less than 128 !!!

January 24, 2006 8:55 PM  
Blogger Eman M said...

I have Soficom (based on Egynet)
The speed is nice, but the connection is bad!
Whenever the bandwidth increases somehow, the connection gets lame, so it disconnects kol shweya :S

I really want to know which is the best DSL? Have heard about TeData
hmm?

January 24, 2006 9:46 PM  
Blogger Lasto-adri *Blue* said...

i've heard from my friends that tedata is going down... the connection is dc for days back to back..
i dont know really.. i wish to find the best isp in egypt...

January 25, 2006 10:44 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...

I have a friend who is using LinkdotNet not and he is not satisfied with the traffic latency too. I am using TEData here and it is fine. I think Link may be good in SDSL but not ADSL. This may be due to the high over subscription on their DSLAM's or whatever.
By the way, Juniper doesn't have DSLAMs. Link have Juniper Routers and may be BRAS's (ERX) just like most of the other ISPs (TEData, Raya, ..etc). The DSLAM vendors are Paradyne, Alcatel, Zhone, etc.

January 25, 2006 11:04 AM  
Blogger Lazarus said...

yeah, i missed that. LinkDotNet uses alcatel DSLAMs

January 25, 2006 3:57 PM  
Blogger Lazarus said...

I think there are 6 main DSL providers, Link, TEData, Egynet, Raya, Nileonline and NOOR. These companies have their own backbones.

January 25, 2006 7:07 PM  
Blogger Little Sesame said...

DSL really sucks I used to switch to telephone, beleive me it is better

March 13, 2006 2:57 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I am using LinkDSL over 2 years, i have no complains i am utilizing the Bandwidth like i am a leased line user performance is very good maybe i had 1 or 2 problems but it was from Telecom Egypt not LinkdotNet but the support from Link was very fast It's really the best ISP in Egypt and the middle east.

April 01, 2006 2:06 PM  
Blogger Lazarus said...

Well, this is reality. After all, Linkdotshit is the best of the worst. Speed and latency with other ISPs are much lower however, link lacks consistency

April 01, 2006 5:53 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Dears,How are you all,I'm working in LINKdotNET Customer Services,and i read your comments,and i'm just want to talk about our service

For ADSL: I think we don't have problems now in speeds with customers except the customer that they are having a problems in thier telephones line,but our support team always working with the xentral to solve this kind of prolems,Plus we will have an upgare in our bandwidth soon in sha2 allah to raise our customers satisfaction with our services,anybody using LDN now or in the upcoming days will see the difference In Sha2 Allah,Plus you know that our ADSL give you the ability to use the services featured on more than website,something like masrawy,link0777,Arabfinance careermideast,etc)for free,i think that we are the only company in Egypt that have all of those contents or Web Services.

For the Domains, Yahoo don't sell the (.com.eg) domains,this domains is more expensive than the regular (.com) domains,we offer those domain names in a good prices

Finally,i would like to thank you all for your comments and for LINKdotNET customers please if you are facing any problems please contact our call center on 16333 and they will handle your Issues ISA

Thanks for you all

May 04, 2006 12:38 AM  
Blogger Lazarus said...

well, the line quality is superb now. Line is only down now because of power outage. Speed is still a bit crappy except in the early morning.

May 04, 2006 9:02 AM  
Blogger Mountaineer™ said...

"TEData" and "Linkt.net" are the 2 major DSL companies and they are the ones who are keen to upgrade their bandwidth as they have more customers.

You may think "TEData" is better or "Link" is better based on your personal experience. But the truth is "TEData" might be better in some exchanges and "Link" might be better in some other exchanges.

July 11, 2006 4:14 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

d00d TEdata kiss ass... i'm having a 512kbps adsl with no dsl line down problems and i get around 52KB/s download with torrent and 55 KB/s with normal downaload..i upload up to 12 KB/s.
fa simple its the best in market since some on linkDOTnet customer complain bas no TEdata customer 2alo 7aga ever.. fa move to TEdata since now they install ADSL lines in 2~5 days :)

August 05, 2006 6:12 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

First of all, I wish to find more comments and opinions about our services and products in Egypt. This will give more awareness and basic to pro. Knowledge for others.

For, Link or TeData or whatever ISP, they need to be more transparent with users. If they have a problem they should admit and to lie or to hide. and they should post this by emails to inform users all the time about the status of the service.

When I have a problem and I post a mail, I NEVER get a mail back from Link to tell me anything. they may call (maybe in the past they did) and no after too much customers, they just ignore you and work on the problem or who knows.
just try to ask them I need a statement of my payments for the last period. they print it and show you, but NEVER give you!
As if they don't to be obliged by any means in front of anyone. So they have the right to take your money, and give you bad service, and when you complain they suspend the line and keep on putting on you receipts, and if you tried to cancel they don't allow you or cause you huge problems till you get your so called cancellation code.

I was happy with LinkDSL till the moment they started to treat me bad. the customer service people are nice - like the nice person from link customer service above - but it is not about how nice the people are. It is about what can they do, and the time they take to do it.

I just remember when I got a problem and visited dokki support office, and when I waited hours and they drove me mad by all means, I in another day to maadi office to solve it, they said fine solved. After 1 days the account was suspended again. a 3rd day was lost to go again to maadi to solve the problem this time I waited till everyone in the company sent mails to each other and solved my problem at last!

Now I'm asking those companies and I'm asking the ministry of communication maybe also NTRA? Whoever responsible on those companies and whoever monitor them. Should we as customers have ANY place to care about our complaints against those companies?
Anyone have an answer? Or should we keep on being silent and accept deterioration in all kind of services in Egypt?

August 28, 2006 3:57 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

By the way, anyone know a website like a community of technology in Egypt? or maybe a blog dedicated to all IT and network people who are interested in giving analysis and logs and evaluation of IT companies in Egypt?

August 28, 2006 3:59 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hello

linkawy, can u tell us the EXACT DATE of the upgrade rather than "a few days" ?? I have been with link.net for yeaaaars. since intouch. and 3 years dsl. yes it used to be very fast. but now it's slow, very slow. and i am really thinking of changing isp. problem is appearantly they all suck.

September 16, 2006 12:29 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I joined LINK.net and cancelled after 3 months, then joined RAYA and cancelled after 6 months...1st 3 months were great, getting 106kb/s then everything gone to hell and got 20kb/s.

then i joined NOOR (SHERKA WESKHA!) yeah good people but speed zay el khara. 5kb/s!?!?!

then i joined TEData and now i've been with them for 1 year, kollo tamama. 100kb/s steady in everything.

i highly recommend TEData, it doesn't matter the shitty support, but the speed is great.

February 14, 2007 4:06 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yep ,LinkDotNet does suck , i've tried'em for a month and that was it , i couldn't take it anymore , but you can't have it all in one package :) , i mean TeData is good but their Customer services is like sh** !! , sorry , but they are , whenever you call to ask or check for something someone sleepy answers the phone and it's like this :

You : Hi , good morning , can you please tell me how to divid the speed equally between me and the other user , we are two users sharing the same router.........................
...............................
...............................
.........(long period of silence).
.................................
................................
................................
Customer services: huh??

and it's always like that , guys i swear , but if the connection is good , who needs the C.S.:)?

March 14, 2007 8:21 PM  
Blogger Khaled Abu Bakr said...

for the very sneaky, sleek, guy from Link who posted that piece of sh** above: YOU SUCK. I've been having crappy speeds from them since I first subscribed over a year and a half ago and every time I call I get the weirdest answer ever "your download speed of 25-28 k bps for a 512 line is within acceptable range". WHAT SH** IS THAT? who are you fooling you bunch of M**** F***** crooks!!!!

March 14, 2008 6:31 PM  
Blogger Kh. Usman Sarfraz said...

This is Usman Khawaja from Sialkot-Pakistan and I am using broadband DSL connection – 1Mbps of Link Dot Net. I had a very poor experience of Link Dot Net’s DSL connection. Currently they are suffering by “recurrent internet disconnection and speed issues”. Now one month has passed but the issues still persist. So I will recommend everyone not to buy pain of using LinkDotNet.
Anyways, I have written a blog post where I have shared my thoughts about poor services by Link Dot Net. You can read this blog at http://linkdotnet.wordpress.com/2008/04/26/link-dot-net-linknet-disconnection-problems/

Thanks for your attention.

May 02, 2008 2:04 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

i was on TeData for a about a year, it was good, the 512kbps i was having had a 55-57 kb/sec download speed.
But when i moved from my old house i started tryin' the Wireless ISP ( 3G carriers )..

I am on Etisalat internet now, and it seems pretty good, having a 180 ping to europe. and getting the full speed i wanted, Which didn't happen with MobiNil.

you can vote here on the quality of service you get http://egyptisp.blogspot.com

March 26, 2009 1:58 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

te-data de sherka wes5a after they have upgraded the internet speed their services became shitt i donot care about download or browsing all i care for is the traffic latency and ping cuz i only use the internet to play online gtames and each time i call their customer shitt thingy they say its not our problem to provide u good ping all we car about is download rate and browsing well i can only say one thing this is damn EGYPT

July 15, 2009 2:49 AM  

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