# Broadband Speeds



## Toons (Nov 28, 2016)

Hi All,
So i'm researching moving to Dubai and i'm getting very mixed reviews on the broadband speeds and reliability . Alot of whats online are old posts so i'm wondering if it has improved? There are only two companies that provide it and it depends on the building you are living in as to which of the companies can provide you, am i right in saying?
Also would there be a major difference in speeds as to where you where living i.e Are speeds in the marina faster than speeds in sports city/motor city area? Where would the best areas be?
Thanks in advance


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## ThunderCat (Oct 28, 2015)

Most of Dubai's apartments are connected via fiber optics. I have moved around many apartments and I never had problems getting a 100 Mbps connection.


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## UKMS (Jan 9, 2017)

I've recently moved to Arabian Ranches 2 .... I could have connected with either company but chose Etisalat. It's fibre all the way into my villa and I'm getting a rock steady 100mbps down and 25-30 up.


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## XDoodlebugger (Jan 24, 2012)

What do you pay for 100mbs? I'm in the Marina and pay for 20 down and 4 up with TV for 700 or so.


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## The Rascal (Aug 6, 2014)

I get 31 and 4, and pay 350 a month to Du. Still a rip off but hey ho.


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## UKMS (Jan 9, 2017)

XDoodle****** said:


> What do you pay for 100mbs? I'm in the Marina and pay for 20 down and 4 up with TV for 700 or so.


900 a month .... including landline phone and TV package with lots of rugby  ... very expensive but I needed the decent speed for work, particularly the upload speed.


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## twowheelsgood (Feb 21, 2013)

UKMS said:


> but I needed the decent speed for work, particularly the upload speed.


I would say thats rubbish - I run an office full of people (including large scale engineering work) and we dont need that.


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## Byja (Mar 3, 2013)

twowheelsgood said:


> I would say thats rubbish - I run an office full of people (including large scale engineering work) and we dont need that.


I'm also curious about needs for 100 Mbps or more to your home. 

Still, some jobs do require a lot of bandwidth, like image and video processing, etc... Just because your whole office requires less than 10 Mbps doesn't mean that others don't as well.


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## twowheelsgood (Feb 21, 2013)

Image and video processing doesnt need bandwidth, it needs processing power.

If you have huge files to transfer then a residential 100Mb line wont cut it. Unless its just downloads in which case what do you do with all the Gb you download every day ?

Running a large engineering office with massive CAD files is bandwidth intensive and doesnt need 100Mb. I've worked on sites with over 1,000 people running over 16Mb without anyone having problems.

If people want 100Mb then they can of course have it, but they shouldnt try to hide behind the excuse I need it for work'


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## UKMS (Jan 9, 2017)

twowheelsgood said:


> I would say thats rubbish - I run an office full of people (including large scale engineering work) and we dont need that.


With the greatest of respect ..... you have rubbished something that you know absolutely nothing about (my network use and requirements) .... as has already been said just because you don't need something doesn't mean everyone else in Dubai doesn't need it !


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## The Rascal (Aug 6, 2014)

UKMS said:


> With the greatest of respect ..... you have rubbished something that you know absolutely nothing about (my network use and requirements) .... as has already been said just because you don't need something doesn't mean everyone else in Dubai doesn't need it !


So are you a cam-boy/girl - hence why you need it?


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## UKMS (Jan 9, 2017)

twowheelsgood said:


> Image and video processing doesnt need bandwidth, it needs processing power.
> 
> If you have huge files to transfer then a residential 100Mb line wont cut it. Unless its just downloads in which case what do you do with all the Gb you download every day ?
> 
> ...


I'm not hiding behind anything and I certainly don't need to justify myself but if it helps you to understand ..... a small part of my work involves examining large forensic image files, typically anything between 250-500gb a piece ..... I sometimes need to download them, work on them and push them back again in slower time ..... trust me a 100mb residential fibre connection does 'cut it' .....


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## UKMS (Jan 9, 2017)

The Rascal said:


> So are you a cam-boy/girl - hence why you need it?


I'll leave that to you


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## twowheelsgood (Feb 21, 2013)

UKMS said:


> typically anything between 250-500gb a piece


Pardon my doubts but I remain unconvinced. You are completely right that you do not need to justify anything and I don't expect that. My practical experience of 30 years in telecomms says that people who say they need X bandwidth rarely actually do and its part of the 'big boys club' to say you need bigger and better. :eyebrows:

Nobody who works in 500Gb image files works in a residential apartment as simply processing that amount of active image takes a lot more than consumer level computer and probably uses a cluster.

Lets put it this way - my employer get multiple Gb of data every day, 365 days a year, from all over the globe and it is all kept intact for legal reasons (for now anyway). We use Microsoft Cloud and Amazon AWS and frankly nobody downloads it as its a lot of data each event.They get hard drives by FedEx as the transfer time for the multiple Gb of data is slower than downloading even on fast connections. And when we have it, we connect directly to a cluster with fibre, not a home computer to manipulate it.

We certainly dont have people working on it home and we dont even get close to 500gb image files.

And you use these a lot ? Are you Google ?


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## UKMS (Jan 9, 2017)

twowheelsgood said:


> Pardon my doubts but I remain unconvinced. You are completely right that you do not need to justify anything and I don't expect that. My practical experience of 30 years in telecomms says that people who say they need X bandwidth rarely actually do and its part of the 'big boys club' to say you need bigger and better. :eyebrows:
> 
> Nobody who works in 500Gb image files works in a residential apartment as simply processing that amount of active image takes a lot more than consumer level computer and probably uses a cluster.
> 
> ...


You make lots of assumptions and very clearly have no idea what a forensic image is or what's required to examine it (and no I don't use a home computer as you have assumed) ..... an image in your world is very different to an image in mine .... aside of that your explanation about using cloud storage and yet you ship hard drives around by FedEx is slightly confusing but I'm sure it works for you .... how do you upload to the cloud, I take it not from your 16mb connection from your office ?

I'm sure you are an expert in your field as I am considered in mine, perhaps accept that not everyone utilizes networks in the same way and perhaps accept that a fast and stable connection at home enables me to occasionally work from home and occasionally operate out of hours rather than driving to the office.


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## Toons (Nov 28, 2016)

Thanks for the reply's everyone.I will be daytrading futures and furex so i need at least some sort of decent speed. I'm getting about 70 here in Ireland but even if its a bit slower it should be ok to work with. Is it reliable?


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## twowheelsgood (Feb 21, 2013)

UKMS said:


> aside of that your explanation about using cloud storage and yet you ship hard drives around by FedEx is slightly confusing but I'm sure it works for you .... how do you upload to the cloud, I take it not from your 16mb connection from your office ?


Its pretty simple - when you have drives which have content at multiple Tb of storage, its actually quicker and more cost effective to ship the drive via Fedex and mount the drive, than to upload across any commercial internet. It isnt uploaded, it is installed into the cloud. And our users plug into the same machine via fibre, not via a conventional network.

A fast and stable connection would of course allow you to work from anywhere but I've yet to understand what it is you must have a 100Mb connection for, that a 16Mb connection wont give you - but its none of my business. You mentioned a 500Gb image and then tell us you work with them at home and I find that unbelievable, but thats just my opinion.

I just dont believe your need but you have no obligation to explain and I have no right to demand it - we can just agree that I am unconvinced and you can rightly tell me that it dosnt matetr if I disbelieve.

Peace :amen:


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## twowheelsgood (Feb 21, 2013)

Toons said:


> TIs it reliable?


Not as reliable as Europe but its pretty reliable - both operators had bad outages over the last month (one serious, like 24 hours) but I cant recall one that bad in the last 4 years.

Just remember that when you get a residential line, you're sharing it with cable Tv and when the kiddies are off school (like yesterday) the place slows down noticeably in some areas of the city. And you won't get any performance guarantees here.

I recall Bur Dubai being like dial up on Fridays mornings .....


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## UKMS (Jan 9, 2017)

twowheelsgood said:


> Its pretty simple - when you have drives which have content at multiple Tb of storage, its actually quicker and more cost effective to ship the drive via Fedex and mount the drive, than to upload across any commercial internet. It isnt uploaded, it is installed into the cloud. And our users plug into the same machine via fibre, not via a conventional network.
> 
> A fast and stable connection would of course allow you to work from anywhere but I've yet to understand what it is you must have a 100Mb connection for, that a 16Mb connection wont give you - but its none of my business. You mentioned a 500Gb image and then tell us you work with them at home and I find that unbelievable, but thats just my opinion.
> 
> ...


100mb v 16mb is simple .... one downloads quicker than the other likewise with the comparable upload speed .... if I need to download a 500gb forensic image to work on (a forensic image is typically broken down into 1.5 or 2gb evidence files) I will get it quicker .. obviously fully dependent on where it is ... 

Would be interested to know how you 'install' your data into Microsoft data centers (Microsoft Cloud) without something being uploaded .... I guess we may have slightly definitions of what uploading is. 

I can assure you my need for speed is not for bragging rights, As you say let's agree to disagree ..... but good to discuss


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## The Rascal (Aug 6, 2014)

That moment when you realise "The Cloud" is just someone else's computer...


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## Byja (Mar 3, 2013)

twowheelsgood said:


> Image and video processing doesnt need bandwidth, it needs processing power.


Do you know the size of a raw image or video?



> If you have huge files to transfer then a residential 100Mb line wont cut it. Unless its just downloads in which case what do you do with all the Gb you download every day ?


It would. At least my friends in that line of business say so.



> Running a large engineering office with massive CAD files is bandwidth intensive and doesnt need 100Mb. I've worked on sites with over 1,000 people running over 16Mb without anyone having problems.


20 years ago they did it without 'net at all, so I guess it's doable.



Toons said:


> Thanks for the reply's everyone.I will be daytrading futures and furex so i need at least some sort of decent speed. I'm getting about 70 here in Ireland but even if its a bit slower it should be ok to work with. Is it reliable?


The local end is reliable, but ISPs had few major outages in the last 2-3 years due to problems with underwater cable being damaged elsewhere (AFAIK usually off the coast of Egypt).
BTW do you need a fat pipe, or fast connection (two different things)? If you're connecting to machines in Europe bear in mind that latency is quite higher, I hope you're not doing M2M trading.



The Rascal said:


> That moment when you realise "The Cloud" is just someone else's computer...


No it's not. "The Cloud" is much more than that, it's a network. And clouds are in the sky. Sky ... network ... sky ... net...


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## Malbec (Jan 2, 2014)

Having both right now 100Mbps each, they are both fast... locally. In my experience DU is much worse for international traffic as the speeds seem to be capped per single direct connection, whereas Etisalat connection to overseas servers can be maxed out. I would say it does make sense to get 100 Mbps Etisalat if you wish to use this speed, while with DU I never saw anything more than 20-25Mbps on a single direct connection to overseas servers.


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## ThunderCat (Oct 28, 2015)

twowheelsgood said:


> If people want 100Mb then they can of course have it, but they shouldnt try to hide behind the excuse I need it for work'



Why would he (hide behind an excuse) ?

Is your great office full of great engineers paying for his connection ?


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