Your options will be either to pay through the nose to get crappy service, or not to have any internet. Welcome to Dubai

Seriously, even though you do pay stupid money to get paltry speeds (with added censorship), du does at least seem to be a bit more reliable than Etisalat. During the last couple of extended net outages here, du wasn't really affected, while many Etisalat customers got no connection at all for days on end.

Mind you, that doesn't make having to pay about fifty quid a month to get 2Mb broadband (which doesn't actually come close to being 2Mb in real terms) any easier to swallow

Right it looks like I need to du myself up, don't suppose anyone has any experience of using an apple airport express as a wirless router with du do they?

Ha ha I said du do!!

Thanks

Dale

I got wireless through etisalat, I have one of the new iMacs (well 6 months old) and they came and installed it, then PING it just appeared on my networks, so piece of piss really for macs, you shouldn't have any problems.

You don't have any choice - it's du or nothing. Remember, the competitive market doesn't rule in Dubai

Yep, using one right now

Your apartment will have a couple of Ethernet ports in every room - this is how you get your phone, broadband and TV. When the du technician comes to connect you, you just have to tell him which ports you want enabled (IIRC you get one phone, one internet and one TV port enabled as part of the standard connection fee, if you want more than that you have to pay for each additional port).

Then, just plug one end of an Ethernet cable (I think du throw one in if you don't already have one) into your internet port, the other end into the AirPort Express. And that's it, you're online. There are no passwords to enter and nothing to configure. It just works.

Yet again customer service in Dubai drives me frickin' mad.

I am trying to connect a belkin N wireless Router I bought at plug ins and the setup is asking me for the VCP and VCI numbers which the ISP (du) are supposed to provide.

I ring Du and they won't help saying they do not provide wireless support. End of story. So I'm screwed....but I can't believe everyone on DU is using wires into the phone jack from their laptops etc are they?!

Anyone had this before and got round it?

I got someone else to install my wireless for me but I am with DU

VCI and VCP are used for ADSL, not for direct ethernet connectivity. You need a wireless router, not a wireless modem. I think you bought the wrong thing

Jeeper, does your wireless thing have an Ethernet port on the back? If so, just connect that to the internet port in your wall, and you should be all set. It should auto-detect everything it needs, and the only thing you'll have to configure is your wireless security.

As typical says, du isn't ADSL, it's direct Ethernet, so you don't use a modem. If your Belkin doesn't have an Ethernet port on it, then I'm afraid you're going to have to try and exchange it...

It says it's a 'modem router'. I know I don't need a the modem part but the salesman told me this was what I needed.
Implied it was a modem AND a router.....So it won't work then?

It has no connectioconnections on the back other than ADSL and 4 ports for wired connection to pc's...and the power plug of course.

Supplier is calling me tomorrow....but i'm advised i've 7 days to exchange it.

As Eeyore says, you need an Ethernet port on the back specifically to connect to the network - it's usually marked "WAN". The problem is that ADSL modem+router boxes generally only connect through the ADSL connection - which you don't have.

Personally, I have a Linksys WRT54GL, and I swear by it. (Mine runs the Tomato firmware, but even out of the box it's great.)

Then you should be fine. Those four ports are Ethernet ports. Plug one of them into the wall, fire up the wireless on your computer, and open your web browser - there's every chance that it'll just work.

I used to have a wireless modem/router, which I bought with me from the UK. Like yours, it had the ADSL connection (which I didn't need any more), plus four Ethernet ports. I just plugged the cable from the wall into one of those ports, and it just worked straight off.

As I recall Du was blown out of the water, it was Etisalat that was relatively unscathed.

My business has a Du connection, we were offline for a full 48 hrs. At the same time, a friend's company on SZR that connected with Etisalat had slower service, but not a total loss.

The service from Du is pretty lousy if you ever have to deal with people for account problems etc. Probably Etisalat is just as bad.

Having the nanny-state proxy is not great either, especially if you want to read proper news and blogs about the UAE and not just the sugar-coated UAE newspapers (wow - Sheikh so and so is meeting the Syrian ambassador today and XYZ investments is putting several squillion Dirhams into building a gawdy apartment block). I would recommend a VPN service like www.strongvpn.com as a must. It will improve your web access speed even if you are not looking at anything dodgy (and I mean dodgy by UAE standards which is pretty much everything). Once connected, you don't have the painful wait as each URL is run against the ISP's 'banned list' to see if it should prevent you seeing it or not. And you will be able to use VOIP like Skype (which both UAE ISPs ban to protect their income from fixed line international calls, the price of which will make your hair stand on end).

I find du easier to deal with since they opened a shop in Ibn Battuta, with real people in it. Ironically for a phone company they are useless on the phone and the only way to get anything done is to talk to somebody face to face. Previously that meant a trip down to Media City and inevitably parking miles away but it is easier at the mall. After many, many billing mistakes I refuse to let them have my credit card details now for direct billing so I go in every month and pay. The less chance you give them to screw up the better.

We've been with du for three and a half years, and we've never had a service outage of more than an hour or so (unless it happened while we were away). When the first major marine cable problem happened, in August 2005, Etisalat had serious problems for the best part of two weeks, while du carried on as normal.

Brilliant.

I called the supplier and he gave me VPI and VCI numbers to use etc.....did that and still it would not work. Probably because the instructions ask you to connect the adsl to the wall.....which means DU won't work but the setup CD doesn't work either if you don't follow the instructions so you are screw.ed.

Plugged the RJ45 direct from ethernet port to the wall as per Mr Eeyore's advice and presto....works fine...(although no way of securing the network).

Will investigate an exchange but i'm up and running now....cheers.