# How do home internet connections work here in Dubai?



## Emanef (Dec 19, 2012)

Hi guys

Sorry, another Dubai newbie question....!

We've looked at a number of apartments and a lot of them have a lot of ethernet connections installed. When I've asked the agents how you connect when you get broadband in but they don't really understand and usually give the "you just plug it in and it works" reply. 

Do these buildings that tend to have ethernet connections in every room just go through a switch somewhere in the building that gets activated when you sign up and each one is a direct connection out? Or are they all networked together line individual networks and each apartment have its own gateway out? Presumably if they're all individual connections there must be a master device in the building that does DHCP? 

We're looking at moving into one on the palm and there are ethernet cables everywhere (even in the kitchen!) and I'm just trying to think ahead for setting up. I usually have all my TV's networked up to a centralised home server, but if they're all just separate connections out I'll need to either connect them by wireless, homeplugs (if they work on the mains here) or run additional CAT cable for any wired devices. 

I think it's Du in the area if that's any help....!


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## QOFE (Apr 28, 2013)

Yes, Palm is covered by DU. Unfortunately the max speed you can get is only 16Mb but it's been working ok for us. We brought our own wireless modem (D-link) and have 3-6 devises running off it without any problems. 

"you just plug it in and it works" doesn't sound right. We had a DU engineer coming over and connecting the TV, landline and internet. In the standard price you get only two connection points for the internet connected but you get to choose which ones.


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## Chocoholic (Oct 29, 2012)

Well I think what he means by 'it just works' is once it's connected and switched on, you can just plug your pc/laptop in using an ethernet cable and be connected.

Normally DU come round and ask you which sockets you want activated and they do that from a box located somewhere in the apartment and the main box with all the lines is located outside somewhere.

We have 4 of our sockets working and use wireless routers on 2 of them.


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## Emanef (Dec 19, 2012)

Ah, ok, so they come in and activate one or two ports and you need to select which then? So presumably they're independent then? That might be useful then - I have a second router on its way so could use that for a second separate connection. 

I've got one router with me anyway so that's ok, it's just for HD streaming my media player struggles on wireless. I'll test the homeplugs when they arrive with the rest of the stuff being shipped over!

Disappointing it's only 16mb (especially after having 60meg in the UK!) but I guess that should be fine for most things. Glad I didn't plump for the 100meg at their prices if you don't get what's touted! I thought optical usually gave you pretty much the rated speeds. Clearly not over here....!

Thanks for the reply!


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## Chocoholic (Oct 29, 2012)

Sadly I think it's actually shared bandwidth. We're in a villa so need the second router upstairs.

The socket downstairs has a wireless router with Apple tv hardlined into it and a connection for our German/Polish satellite box. The other socket (it's a dual one) is the connection for our local tv.

Honestly we have so much stuff connected up in our house, I lose track of it all.


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## QOFE (Apr 28, 2013)

It depends on where you live. Some areas get faster speeds. We were told that 16 Mb is the max speed on the Palm. And it is expensive enough... I wouldn't say it's fast enough to stream HD over wireless. The cheapest option was to go for the TV/landline/internet package.


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## Emanef (Dec 19, 2012)

Sorry, probably misleading the way I said it. I tend to stream wirelessly from my home server so the internet connection won't affect that, it'll just affect how quickly (or not!) it takes to download TV shows in the first place. I usually schedule them for overnight anyway though so hopefully there won't be too much contention at that time (unless lots of other people do the same....!)


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## vantage (May 10, 2012)

life does get overly complicated, doesn't it?!

we have one incoming line (etisalat)
One wifi thingy
One TV (the day i get two TV's in the house will be very sad indeed!)
desktop, laptop, ipad and phone all run happily off the wifi.
we get by fine with 8MB.


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## Emanef (Dec 19, 2012)

[pedant mode]8mb, you mean.... I'd be very happy with 8MBps![/pedant mode]


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## Emanef (Dec 19, 2012)

OK, so we got ours installed by Du at the beginning of the week. It's supposed to be up to 16mpbs (the max we can get here apparently) - when I run a speedtest (with speedtest.net) at the start of the week it was around 15mpbs down and 1 up - that's a really crap upload speed but the guy said that's the max I can get here, so nothing I can do about that. 

It's now been five days, but for the last two days the connection has been shocking. The ping times are often around 1000ms, the download less than 1mpbs and upload about half. Do they cap/throttle the speeds or have any limits? I did download a handful of TV shows from Usenet (SSL connected) but I didn't think there were usage caps. 

It looks like a really basic set up in these places as well. A router in the service hatch connected up to the main switches, so my router is effectively tagged onto that one, so it looks like there's a few layers before the connection actually gets out. 

What's even stranger is that I can download from usenet at around 1.7MBps (so around 13mbps), but then if I stop the download and do a speed test it's back to 1mbps, and if I try to stream something from the ITV player (not using a VPN, just a DNS redirection service) it's constantly buffering or stopping. Even Spotify was unable to stream music last night, and audio uses much less bandwidth than video. 

Should I be getting more consistent speeds? Or is the so called 16mpbs connection shared between other apartments?
It's really a disappointing connection, general browsing is sluggish as well, not what I expected from reasonably modern buildings!


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## de Mexicaan (Apr 16, 2012)

We have Du in JBR, a subscription for 16 down and 4 up. In general the connection works well, but not always.

Just did a speedtest, the result was 1800 kilobyte download speed, 470 kilobyte upload and the ping was 23 ms. Not too bad.


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## Byja (Mar 3, 2013)

And when you did ST.net test, which server did you choose to run the test? The closest one (suggested one)? Try something in USA or EU and compare the results, cause you probably won't download much from locally hosted servers.
Anyway, when using popular P2P sw, I can monitor traffic usage, and there's always a sharp increase at 2:00 AM and decrease at 7:00 AM, so there's bandwidth throttling.


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## de Mexicaan (Apr 16, 2012)

Byja said:


> And when you did ST.net test, which server did you choose to run the test? The closest one (suggested one)? Try something in USA or EU and compare the results, cause you probably won't download much from locally hosted servers.
> Anyway, when using popular P2P sw, I can monitor traffic usage, and there's always a sharp increase at 2:00 AM and decrease at 7:00 AM, so there's bandwidth throttling.


Yes, indeed used a nearby server. Choosing an overseas server is indeed much slower, thats why it is probably not worth it to choose a faster connection. I am not an expert in this however.


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## Emanef (Dec 19, 2012)

I've been up into the hatch and reset the modem in the service hatch and that seems to have fixed it. I'm back up to 16 down and 1 up. Ping time is now around 30 ms so that's much more like how it should be. 1 up is still pants (especially when I use Dropbox to sync large PDFs to various devices!) but it's better than nothing so I'll make do and be glad it's not 1 down still! 

Cheers!


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## Korscho (Apr 17, 2013)

Emanef said:


> [pedant mode]8mb, you mean.... I'd be very happy with 8MBps![/pedant mode]


Now I feel obligated to re-pedant you.

mb is actually quite wrong.

m = milli = 1/1000 (1 mbps would be equivalent to getting 1 bit of data every 16.7 minutes)
M = mega = 1000

b = bit
B = byte = 8 bits

speed is usually reported as b for bits since companies like it to sound higher but reporting it in B is still technically ok...

Mbps - good

MBps - ok but likely meant Mbps

mbps - lazy shift finger or very wrong.


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## Emanef (Dec 19, 2012)

Yes, touché....! lol


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## IzzyBella (Mar 11, 2013)

I'm with du, we're in Marina (just on the fringe of Media City) and we also have the 16Mbps download and 4Mbps upload package, here are our results and it's pretty consistent.

In fact, we usually get a higher upload -around 50MBps (no idea how/why).


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## Emanef (Dec 19, 2012)

That's a pretty awesome upload speed if it stays fairly constant! We were in the Dusit for a while and that was similar, around 16 down but often 50+ upload. Maybe it's a shared business spec line with only download limits for each apartment limited to 16meg and the upload a free for all?

We're on the Palm, Marina Residencies. I was told by the engineer that 1 meg upload is the most we can get, although he thought we could get 100meg initially until his colleague corrected him, so he may be wrong. Don't suppose if anyone knows otherwise do they? Not overkeen on trialling Du's support line if I can avoid it! lol


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## mwoboyle (Sep 15, 2010)

Although Du indicates that 100MB is available, it depends on the infrastructure in the area where you live. I also live in the Palm and when I asked Du to upgrade me they said their mains cabling in the Palm area could go up to 64, but the infrastructure in the building where I live (Marina Residences) can only handle 16.

I find 16MB is adequate for most purposes, although you do get some buffering when streaming video at peak times. Also, you should note that if you need to use a VPN, e.g. to access UK TV stations like Sky or BBC Player, the bandwidth drops dramatically and occasionally goes completely. There are rumours that the local ISPs use bandwidth throttling, especially when they can detect VPNs. While VPNs are not illegal, they are not encouraged by the authorities as they can be used to cover illegal activity.


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## Emanef (Dec 19, 2012)

AH, ok, yes, I'm in the same buildings and our connection really is all over the place. My ping times on a speedtest can be 30 or so ms or over 1000ms. When I've done a tracert to Google DNS it looks like there's a lot of delay getting through the Du network. 

It was awful last night, and this was the result at around 9.30;









And I've just done this now at 6pm, which is better;









So presumably it's not fibre up to the building either then otherwise it shouldn't be too difficult to upgrade it? 

I've been using a DNS redirection service on my iPad to get iPlayer, etc as it can be too slow through a VPN and that's generally worked well so long as my general connection stays fairly consistent.


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## mwoboyle (Sep 15, 2010)

Yes, it's very inconsistent. I think the issue is that the apartment buildings are run by Nakheel, so things only happen when they decide it is in their interests to spend money. My guess is that they are getting their revenue without doing any work here and they are now investing in other developments. As you might have heard, they struggle to get all the owners to pay their service charges, so the tenants get punished


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## Emanef (Dec 19, 2012)

Blimey, ok! Wish I knew that before we signed up to a year!


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## xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxStewartC (Mar 3, 2012)

Same issues for me at Marina Residences. Never, ever rent an apartment in a building managed by Nakheel. We have had a fire alarm going off 30+ times day for over a year and they don't do a thing about it. We're leaving this month.


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## xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxStewartC (Mar 3, 2012)

Emanef said:


> AH, ok, yes, I'm in the same buildings and our connection really is all over the place. My ping times on a speedtest can be 30 or so ms or over 1000ms. When I've done a tracert to Google DNS it looks like there's a lot of delay getting through the Du network.
> 
> It was awful last night, and this was the result at around 9.30;
> 
> ...


How does the dns redirection service work and can you recommend one please?


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## Emanef (Dec 19, 2012)

Yeah, the fire alarm goes off in ours a lot too. Pretty annoying. 

The Du service seems to be pretty poor in general, especially after having stable high speed broadband and having used Sky and Virgin until recently. The TV over IP setup is pretty ropey. The HD is a HD image but it's not very smooth and action (especially football) suffers from lag, and the EPG is all over the place. Hardly any of the sports channels have the correct programs listed! It really is second rate!


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