@Kareem
I have no knowledge about the subject but I have a question.
According to you the limiting factor is the optical cable. Is that an infrastructure thing or a per ISP thing ? If it's an ISP thing shouldn't they upgrade it as well ? (or adopt another system)

My concern lies with the supposed ability of other ISPs to continue giving the unlimited night option. If others can it's the responsibility of Sodetel to match them.

The ideal solution for me is for them (every one) to cheapen the charge per extra GB. That way we can buy the amount of bandwidth we need. 6000LL/GB is still expensive for a heavy downloader.
Hitman6267 wrote@Kareem
I have no knowledge about the subject but I have a question.
According to you the limiting factor is the optical cable. Is that an infrastructure thing or a per ISP thing ? If it's an ISP thing shouldn't they upgrade it as well ? (or adopt another system)

My concern lies with the supposed ability of other ISPs to continue giving the unlimited night option. If others can it's the responsibility of Sodetel to match them.

The ideal solution for me is for them (every one) to cheapen the charge per extra GB. That way we can buy the amount of bandwidth we need. 6000LL/GB is still expensive for a heavy downloader.
Well unfortunately I don't have accurate data as said above about the network topology, but I'd say infrastructure thing from CO to DSLAM. Upgrading everything needs time and effort + money.

I believe our infrastructure was not prepared to handle such mediocre bandwidth.

IMHO, 10Gbps is still below the country needs.

-The number of ADSL subscribers is increasing day by day
-Blackberry has been introduced couple of years ago
-GPRS upgraded to EDGE and now 3G
-Facebook users increasing rapidly ( even my mom who I never thought would sit behind a screen, checks her FB daily ) and now most companies/firms are advertising on it.
-Youtube offers now 720HD and 1080HD
- Internet TV /HDTV capable TVs in the market
- Websites loaded with high quality pics and Ads ( ie flv ads opposed to gif in the past )
- New social Internet services ( Whatsapp, Viber, Facetime etc.. getting popular day by day)
- Online gaming ( Xbox, PS etc.. )

Long story short, everything about internet services being developed and coded is taking into consideration the bandwidth capacity and technology used nowaday in most countries, the reason why we are having hard time to catch up and why people find that 20GB/month is still insufficient for residential use.

Let's be rational, 4Mbps, the maximum bandwidth they are going to provide for some supported line is fairly 3.5mbps over ADSL which is still not enough to stream a 1080HD clip without buffering...

What I am worried about is that if we have 8+ ISPs and 2 network operators how are they going to distribute the national bandwidth ?

1Gbps to MTC , 1Gbps to Alfa and the rest to Ogero, VISP, Terranet, IDM, Cyberia, Sodetel, Lynx, Cedarcom group Mobi/WiSE/Wigo etc.. )... ?

Im saying 1Gbps to MTC because if they have 1.5Million subscribers and only 2000 3G subscriber ( not mentioning the 15,000 Blackberry and Edge service subscriber ) they already have that 1gbps dead.

I am just estimating numbers and the above is only my thoughts... but 10Gbps has only improved our position from 15 years to 7 years behind the technology
I don't know why i have a feeling that ISPs (especially Sodetel) will offer unlimited night traffic yet the speed of 4Mb or 2Mb will drop to 512 from 11pm to 7am (during the unlimited period). It's just a feeling i have especially since we got used to getting screwed in various ways.
Kareem wrote
Hitman6267 wrote@Kareem
I have no knowledge about the subject but I have a question.
According to you the limiting factor is the optical cable. Is that an infrastructure thing or a per ISP thing ? If it's an ISP thing shouldn't they upgrade it as well ? (or adopt another system)

My concern lies with the supposed ability of other ISPs to continue giving the unlimited night option. If others can it's the responsibility of Sodetel to match them.

The ideal solution for me is for them (every one) to cheapen the charge per extra GB. That way we can buy the amount of bandwidth we need. 6000LL/GB is still expensive for a heavy downloader.
Well unfortunately I don't have accurate data as said above about the network topology, but I'd say infrastructure thing from CO to DSLAM. Upgrading everything needs time and effort + money.

I believe our infrastructure was not prepared to handle such mediocre bandwidth.

IMHO, 10Gbps is still below the country needs.

-The number of ADSL subscribers is increasing day by day
-Blackberry has been introduced couple of years ago
-GPRS upgraded to EDGE and now 3G
-Facebook users increasing rapidly ( even my mom who I never thought would sit behind a screen, checks her FB daily ) and now most companies/firms are advertising on it.
-Youtube offers now 720HD and 1080HD
- Internet TV /HDTV capable TVs in the market
- Websites loaded with high quality pics and Ads ( ie flv ads opposed to gif in the past )
- New social Internet services ( Whatsapp, Viber, Facetime etc.. getting popular day by day)
- Online gaming ( Xbox, PS etc.. )

Long story short, everything about internet services being developed and coded is taking into consideration the bandwidth capacity and technology used nowaday in most countries, the reason why we are having hard time to catch up and why people find that 20GB/month is still insufficient for residential use.

Let's be rational, 4Mbps, the maximum bandwidth they are going to provide for some supported line is fairly 3.5mbps over ADSL which is still not enough to stream a 1080HD clip without buffering...

What I am worried about is that if we have 8+ ISPs and 2 network operators how are they going to distribute the national bandwidth ?

1Gbps to MTC , 1Gbps to Alfa and the rest to Ogero, VISP, Terranet, IDM, Cyberia, Sodetel, Lynx, Cedarcom group Mobi/WiSE/Wigo etc.. )... ?

Im saying 1Gbps to MTC because if they have 1.5Million subscribers and only 2000 3G subscriber ( not mentioning the 15,000 Blackberry and Edge service subscriber ) they already have that 1gbps dead.

I am just estimating numbers and the above is only my thoughts... but 10Gbps has only improved our position from 15 years to 7 years behind the technology
Priceless.
Sodetel Increased Qoutas :)
Really ? what's your quota now ? my speed was upgraded to 4095 Kbps (on Modem) and now reaching 2 -2.5 Mbps but my quota is still 4GB (512k account).
i have 256 plan and got upgraded to the 1M plan since sunday i think
but few minutes ago my quota got upgraded to 6 gb up 6 gb down
Well my speed is 4Mb, hence i should be getting 12Gb of quota, but instead its showing more like 8Gb. Anyone with 4Mb having the same quota problem?
I have the 1 Mbps prepaid plan and now it's showing 10 GB (for download) of quota. However my speeds are always around 2 Mbps and not 4 Mbps.
A.L wrotei have 256 plan and got upgraded to the 1M plan since sunday i think
but few minutes ago my quota got upgraded to 6 gb up 6 gb down
Did you get a message that your quota has been upgraded ? I didnt but my speed increased from 25 kb/s to 85kb/s and i too have 256kb/s old connection.
Ruroken wroteI don't know why i have a feeling that ISPs (especially Sodetel) will offer unlimited night traffic yet the speed of 4Mb or 2Mb will drop to 512 from 11pm to 7am (during the unlimited period). It's just a feeling i have especially since we got used to getting screwed in various ways.
That will inevitably happen if they do offer unlimited night traffic, and not only that, but its the gaming (static IP) accounts that have been suffering most. It took them like 2 years to find a way to stop the unlimited downloads at 11pm from completely killing the ping and causing lagspikes, and it hasn't been over 5 months that we have had this luxury, and now the problem has risen again; I don't dare touch an online game after 10:30. So personally I do not give a crap, I can download 28 gigs already with my 512 unlimited night traffic, but all the 4mbit has achieved is put a 28 gig limit (or something close) oh but we can download more than that already, and killed our pings (I even get higher pings in the morning and afternoon).
Was a 512 plan user, speed test are mostly around the 2mbps region so I'm guessing I got upgraded to the 2mb plan. My quota has been upgraded to 8,192KB. That is 8GB down and another 8GB up.
GeorgeN wrote
Ruroken wroteI don't know why i have a feeling that ISPs (especially Sodetel) will offer unlimited night traffic yet the speed of 4Mb or 2Mb will drop to 512 from 11pm to 7am (during the unlimited period). It's just a feeling i have especially since we got used to getting screwed in various ways.
That will inevitably happen if they do offer unlimited night traffic, and not only that, but its the gaming (static IP) accounts that have been suffering most. It took them like 2 years to find a way to stop the unlimited downloads at 11pm from completely killing the ping and causing lagspikes, and it hasn't been over 5 months that we have had this luxury, and now the problem has risen again; I don't dare touch an online game after 10:30. So personally I do not give a crap, I can download 28 gigs already with my 512 unlimited night traffic, but all the 4mbit has achieved is put a 28 gig limit (or something close) oh but we can download more than that already, and killed our pings (I even get higher pings in the morning and afternoon).
Me and you are in the same situation. I've switched to gaming pack around 4 months ago and loved it. Stable ping and even at 11 it stays the same. Sadly, i'm suffering just like you, around 11 it goes crazy, severe lag spikes and even the speed of my internet drops from 4Mb to 512 or lower. If it persists then i guess there is no other way but to search for a better ISP. Yet i hope it doesn't get to this cz Sodetel's service so far has been quite amazing.
After the upgrade exactly on Friday 7th of October something bad happened for me, my SNR dropped the exact same day they increased the cap on my modem from 1024 to 4095, this was my modem's statistics before:
SNR Margin (0.1 dB Down/UP):	302	310
Attenuation (0.1 dB Down/UP):	290	175
Output Power (0.1 dBm):	89	118
Attainable Rate (Kbps):	11360	1376
After:
SNR Margin (0.1 dB Down/UP):	221	303
Attenuation (0.1 dB Down/UP):	320	172
Output Power (0.1 dBm):	195	126
Attainable Rate (Kbps):	15696	945
As you notice, SNR dropped from 30 to 22 and the attainable speed increased ??

Now this is the bad part, my latency between me and Sodetel was 15-16 ms day and night, no matter any time I ping sodetel it is always low and stable but now things changed during the day it is 37-40 ms, and after 11:00 PM it starts to become really unstable between 70-90 ms, that's only between me to Sodetel not to an international website, check this:

Before: 
Tracing route to sodetel.net.lb [89.108.129.77]
over a maximum of 30 hops:


  1    24 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.1.1
  2    17 ms    14 ms    12 ms  DSL-pool1.sodetel.net.lb [93.126.160.1]
  3    25 ms    27 ms    13 ms  89.108.149.117
  4    14 ms    14 ms    14 ms  89.108.128.225
  5    16 ms    15 ms    13 ms  89.108.129.1
  6    15 ms    14 ms    14 ms  ns2.sodetel.net.lb [89.108.129.77]

Trace complete.
After:
Tracing route to sodetel.net.lb [89.108.129.77]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    13 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.1.1
  2    37 ms    36 ms    36 ms  DSL-pool1.sodetel.net.lb [93.126.160.1]
  3    37 ms    36 ms    36 ms  89.108.149.117
  4    39 ms    39 ms    40 ms  89.108.128.245
  5    39 ms    39 ms    37 ms  89.108.129.1
  6    96 ms    40 ms    39 ms  ns2.sodetel.net.lb [89.108.129.77]

Trace complete.
Ping After 11:00 PM: 
C:\Users\Aly>ping sodetel.net.lb -t

Pinging sodetel.net.lb [89.108.129.77] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 89.108.129.77: bytes=32 time=75ms TTL=59
Reply from 89.108.129.77: bytes=32 time=70ms TTL=59
Reply from 89.108.129.77: bytes=32 time=76ms TTL=59
Reply from 89.108.129.77: bytes=32 time=69ms TTL=59
Reply from 89.108.129.77: bytes=32 time=76ms TTL=59
Reply from 89.108.129.77: bytes=32 time=70ms TTL=59
Reply from 89.108.129.77: bytes=32 time=74ms TTL=59
Reply from 89.108.129.77: bytes=32 time=69ms TTL=59
Reply from 89.108.129.77: bytes=32 time=74ms TTL=59
Reply from 89.108.129.77: bytes=32 time=76ms TTL=59
Reply from 89.108.129.77: bytes=32 time=71ms TTL=59
Reply from 89.108.129.77: bytes=32 time=74ms TTL=59
Request timed out.
Reply from 89.108.129.77: bytes=32 time=76ms TTL=59
Reply from 89.108.129.77: bytes=32 time=73ms TTL=59
Reply from 89.108.129.77: bytes=32 time=76ms TTL=59
Reply from 89.108.129.77: bytes=32 time=69ms TTL=59

Ping statistics for 89.108.129.77:
    Packets: Sent = 17, Received = 16, Lost = 1 (5% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 69ms, Maximum = 76ms, Average = 73ms
Control-C
Please can any sodetel user check ? did you know what was your ping (to sodetel) before the upgrade and after and share please ? if it will stay like that I wont stay with Sodetel, in the past the bottleneck was on the backbones, now that international capacity is not "the issue" anymore, local links saturation is bullsh*t :S
cool my quota increase from 4gb to 8gb but my speed is still the same 512k
Yesterday 4 mbit, today checked settings, and this is what I got:

Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 509 / 1.523 <-- what's with this thing

Anyone else just got a sudden downgrade?
Just got upgraded to 1Mbps and 6GB limit. So guys I need your advice, I have 2 connections :

1) DSL - sodetel : 1Mbps / 6GB limit per month ($21).
2) Wireless : 512Kb/s unlimited ($40).

I have 2 laptops, I use the DSL to browse the internet and the Wireless to download (an average of 1.5GB a day).

Do you think i should keep it? or move to Sodetel 4Mbps?

Thanks :)