There are new and advanced ways which Omantel are keeping from us lowly customers who pay them lots of money.
1) 56K (in usa, europe and asia) is now obsolete and virtually free. Or you pay a one time fee of 15 rials and its free from 6pm-8am, or u pay 5 rials a month and its free from 6pm-12am)
2) ISDN 128k (or two 64k lines linked together or one for the phone/fax machine and one for the net). ISDN too is almost obsolete and very cheap only expensive to install. Its so obselete i can't even remember what ISDN stand for! But its faster than 56 k
3) xDSL technology recently (almost a year and half now) made available to the public. High cost to setup about 50-80 rials) and then about 10-30 rials a month for 512k/bps connection speed upto 4mb (thats MB not K!!)depending which country you are in. There are 3 or 4 different kinds of xDSL around all with different specifications.
a) ADSL (the standard very very fast download and fast upload) Asymetric Dedicated Subscriber Line
b) SDSL (the super super fast download and upload) Symetric Dedicated Subscriber Line
c) HBDSL (not sure but i think this is ultra fast everything) High-Bit Dedicated Subscriber Line
(the emirates have this and bahrain and Q8)
4) Cable Modem - This is provided through cable tv company
There is a competition between cable modems and xDSL. Apparently cable modem has the capability to go to unlimited connection speeds but its not proven yet
5) T1 THE MACDADDY OF CONNECTION. IF I HAD one of these i could start my own internet company! Super fast and its what Omantel probably uses. T1 is very expensive, very very very expensive
6) T3 lets just not even talk about T3= T1 x 3
there are other types of connections but these are the standard ones around
There are rumours of linking up two 56k modems to get more bandwith to run servers and things not to get faster download and upload. When i find out how to do it, i'll tell you all

u will be when DSL comes to Oman next week!!! no just kidding- almost had you going eh?

Guys , try to get hands on Some other ISP's DNS , Gateway and Network Settings if they are using a 56K or a 64K Connection. If you get hold of them , then modify your network settings with the Other ISP's settings and then try recennecting with it. You will be dialing to Omantel , but your network will be not of Omantel's. That way you can increase your Net speed a bit ( If the Other ISP is more advanced than Omantel ).

IF you get hold of any other ISP's settings , pls post them for the benefit of all

hi, i'm very interested in this topic..actually in anything to do with network communications, however, i am not familiar with all this. I did a few courses in comms but u knows, its noting like the real life.
I'll graduate soon inshallah, so, where do u think are the places to work and REALLY develop my knowledge.

I know about:
MAN, WAN, LAN, routers, microwaves, optical engineering, ANN's, packages and data corruption, signal processing....anything along these lines.
i feel its useful...but not that useful? now i'm worried. Am i right to be so?
als, ISP settings?
what do u mean by settings....plz elaborate.

every ISP has its own Network Settings. for example Omantel's DNS Settings are 206.49.101.6 and 206.49.101.5 .............. they help you log on to that gateway. if these settings are changed you log on to a diff gateway

Seems i am not that bad with my MIS backround.....thankx fishfood for explaing the different network connection. I knew there was DSl <which i had in the states> but i never knew that there were other types of DSL.. as for a T1 and T3 don't we all just dream about it. LOL...i think it would cost a fortune to create the right room for that almost fridgr size machine and all the cooling...WOW.
As for cable i think it is the second best thing we can settle for....wish we had at least DSL in 3man...it would make our life much more easier. I mean who uses dail-up that thing is lost/ extinct in the states....there is no such thing...Come on ppl in 3man..>GTO/ Omantel get with it.....
yallah bye

The best connecton in the World is T3 . next comes T1. then comes DSL and Cable. and after that the 64k , 56 k and so on

actually there is major heat as to whether dsl is better than cable, they sald DSL is limited speed upgrades wheras cable can be upgraded in speed infintely. Dont forget ISDN too which is going extinct too but it is very very stable

ISDN may be extinct to the world , but to oman it is the next generation................ OMANTEL......... try to improve..

No matter what or how and what you complain, Omantel will never change its policy just because of a few private users, it has to be something official. Many countries in the world have superoir services in telecom, internet etc. For example I am in Texas, US I see and use many free ISPs, free GSM, free airtime, very very low telephone rates. And talking about low rates imagine calling Oman from the US as if you call your next door neighbour, well this is true. I can call Oman from the US for 12 minutes duration for the price of one minute to the US charged by Omantel.
Monopoly is the name of the game. Thats it you like it or you don't thats the way its and they way is gonna be.

well what do you mean if i change my dns settings to say bt internets, how on earth would that improve my connection or uptime downtime ? cuz then i would log on to the net with omantel, then my data packets would be re routed thru omantel to say BT for example then back thru omantel then back to me and so on and son, hows that work then? i will try this 2morrow night

I use DSL and of course its faster about 40 times than 56k and even the cable modem connection. Sometimes the cable modem is faster where there not many users in your say area because you get more bandwidth but in a city DSL is the answer because there is no need for seperate cabling, existing telephone line is used and very simple to setup/install but sorry not available in Oman. The monthly cost is about $40 approx 15 OMR and you have 100% availabilty of both telephone and internet.

There is one other method of connecting to the internet didnt see mentioned here and thats using Sat dish, some people use it for download and for up load they use normal modem its proven faster than cable modem of course. Again, don't think is available in Oman.

Just wonder whats Cable&wireless/GTO/Omantel/or whatever is gonna be called next offers that's unique?? !! maybe.....





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yeah i hear this satellite dish is available in kuwait for about 1500 rials. As its a tiny dish u can just sneak it in and no one will notice.