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!