After two days of installation problems, my 8 Mbit line was installed by Orange.

So how is life with 8 Mbit you must be wondering.

Well..

First of all, Orange told me they need to replace my modem (which is the ancient but very reliable Alcatel Speed Touch Home). I think my current modem is an ADSL1 modem and what I will get is a Livebox ADSL2 modem. So I will hold off from a full review before getting the new modem.

Then, for some reason, my wireless Airport Extreme router stopped working with the modem. After staying up until 3 am the other night it finally worked again, probably after downgrading the Airport Extreme from version 5.7 to 5.5 or something..

Now, to the speed.

Speakeasy’s DSL speed test test keep telling me I have no more than 2 Mbit download and under 500 Kbit upload.

Speed.io tells me I have 4-6 Mbit.

The speed fluctuates a lot, I guess and is very inconsistent.

A download test from Google servers gave me up to 420 KB/sec. This is the fastest download speed I ever saw in my life, but still not 8 Mbit. This is more 4 Mbit.

Testing the download speed of my new 8Mbit DSL connection

Youtube videos load very fast. But browsing is still sluggish.

One thing I am still exploring is DNS settings. I am sure that our Jordanian DNS’s are slow.

I will keep testing. I will also follow up with Orange on that new modem. I might post an update on this if anything interesting happens.

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10 responses to “8 Mbit: ADSL heaven, ADSL hell..”

  1. Jad Avatar
    Jad

    I have been using OpenDNS for about a year and they’ve proven that it is the best DNS solution ever.

    I highly recommend trying them out.

  2. Ammar Ibrahim Avatar
    Ammar Ibrahim

    Congrats Ahmad on the new connection, it would be great if you can write more reviews on this as there are many people interested, but as always skeptical about the quality.

    The thing I always tell to people is that browsing speed (opening web pages) will always be slow in Jordan no matter what connection you have. Blame it high latency due to many factors. Even if you upgrade to 100Mbps it won’t make a significant difference. DNS servers are slow, it takes us a million hops to reach target servers, lousy ISP switching hardware …etc

    I wonder when we will get a decent service. I would rather have a 1Mb quality connection rather than a 8Mb low quality one. But, do we have a choice?

  3. Sasa Avatar
    Sasa

    The speed tends to fluctuate a lot for the first 14 days – it should stabilise after that, once the line testing stage is over.

  4. Nazgyl Avatar
    Nazgyl

    Congratz on the 8mb
    for dns, i use opendns, been using it for a month, kept me online while orange had problems in its DNS, the only thing i noticed is that if i visit a dead website, it redirects me to a custom search page on their website

    i use open dns for preferred dns server, orange for a secondary dns, then i added the other open dns server as a 3rd dns, and a fourth dns from orange

    https://www.opendns.com

    Preferred DNS server address for Open DNS is:

    Alternate DNS server address for Open DNS is:

  5. Hameed Avatar
    Hameed

    That’s not a scientific way of testing download speeds….you need to suck it dry!
    Go to Microsoft or Google for example or any website with huge bandwidth and download something big using Flashget (or whatever download manager you crazy Mac users use) then using DU meter see the actual graph.

    As for DNS I am with the others… OpenDNS FTW!

    I can’t wait for them to cover my house…Even though I am living in Dabouq area apparently my line is connected to the Swaileh exchange :-/

    @Ammar, actually having faster connection does help with browsing even plain old html pages….Setup you browser to open up several connections and things will go smoother even if the very first load takes sometime (shouldn’t be more than a second in the very worst cases)

  6. Samar Hijjawi Avatar
    Samar Hijjawi

    Ahmad, i will keep on wondering, when am i gonna hear good things about Orange from you.

  7. Humeid Avatar
    Humeid

    Hi Samar,

    I have been an Orange customer for a decade Samar. So I am pretty loyal :-) I immediately blogged about the 8 Mbit offer when it came out.

    The problem is the glitches that Orange keeps having. For example: the first ad was a bit misleading about the unlimited download. The installation process caused me to be without internet for 2 days and without a telephone for 1 day.

    To be fair, the company’s follow up was pretty fast. The people who connected the line were polite and cooperative but they were not very technically knowledgeable. Still I think things have gotten better when it comes to installation times.

    I just received a call from an Orange representative who asked me for my feedback as a VIP customer. That was good. And I was able to explain to her my experience exactly.

    When I can’t reach customer support for days (trying in the morning and very late at night) I can’t be positive. Internet is a lifeline for me and my business. It cannot be treated as a luxury product anymore.

    The telecom sector has come a long way in Jordan (and the world). My parents waited for 6 years for a telephone in the 1970’s. I waited for 6 months in the mid 1990’s. Today the challenge is technical excellence and customer service.

    All that I try to do on this blog is offer constructive criticism that will contribute to make things better.

    Thanks for your interest. :-)

  8. Jens Avatar
    Jens

    Hi Ahmad – I wanted to ask you something very different. You write that your wireless Airport Extreme router stopped working with the modem. I also have an Airport Extreme and recently I bought a Time Capsule. But I have not yet managed to make either one of them work as a router. And I have like you stayed up many night till late. If you know the secret pleeease let me know. It really annoys me to have the Tme Capsule standing their without me being able to use it. Thanks in advance. Jens Ole

  9. Humeid Avatar
    Humeid

    Jens

    my problem was suddenly solved with the airport extreme when i downgraded its firmware to 5.51. I say “suddenly” because it felt it happened by mistake. Just as I was about to give up, the Airport Extreme was able to connect to the host and a PPPoE connection was established.

    But even after that I felt that it took the Airport Extreme a long time to “dial into” the host.

    Anyway The Orange Jordan people replaced my good old Alcatel Speed Touch Home modem with a Thomson TG585 v7, which is an integrated broadband modem and wireless router. I wanted to still use my Airport Extreme as router and the Thomson as a bridge modem. This actually worked, still noting that dialing in took time.

    As the wireless signal from the Thomson was conflicting with the Airport Extreme, I decided, for now, to stop using it and jut use the Thomson’s wireless router.

    At one point i need to figure out how to reintegrate the Airport..

  10. Yanal Avatar
    Yanal

    OpenDNS is bad for you if you live in jordan.

    If you ping 208.67.222.222 (OpenDNS server) , you get about 135 ms ping from Orange. I tested both OpenDNS and oranges own DNS server. Of course, with Orange DNS sever loading a webpage was a lot faster because their server is located in jordan and you need less MS to reach it and resolve any address.