Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Internet in the UAE

One of my former Directors of IT said the UAE only has 3 class C Internet licenses. That means only 765 people can be connected to the Internet at one time. I thought he didn't know what he was talking about.

When the Internet started, every computer connected to the Internet needed a unique 12 digit number, called an IP address. Those who have visited Lamcy Plaza should have seen the confident prediction that the world would never have more than six computers. It soon had more than six, but most people believed the jist of the six computer argument, so no one thought there would ever be more than 10,000 computers on the Internet.

In the early days of the Internet, most companies only put one computer on the Internet and let everyone in the company share it.

But the people who designed the Internet had quite a bit of foresight, and created more than 4 billion Internet addresses.

Which were soon all used up as the PC (and then the Internet phone) became ubiquitous. Initially, each PC needed it's own IP address. And, since the US invented the Internet, most IP addresses were given to US companies.

Around 1999, a new technology called Network Address Translation (NAT) became common. A company need only pay for one IP address, then they could share it among all the computers in the company using NAT. In setting up the standards for IP addresses, it was agreed that internal, fake IP addresses must start with 10.xxx or with 192.168.xxx These addresses cannot be real IP addresses. The NAT translates all the 10. or 192.168. addresses into a real IP address, like 83.124.221.105 (or anything else that doesn't start with 10. or 192.168.)

This means that an address that does not start with 10. or 192.168. should normally be 'real.' Only, in the Gulf, they usually aren't.

When I ask my computer, my address is 83.124.221.105. Since this isn't a 10.xxx or a 192.168.xxx, it should be a real address, but it isn't. When I use an Internet test site, my address is 213.42.21.58. The 83.124.221.105 is a fake address, sent to a TRA NAT and then shared with thousands of other UAE users as 213.42.21.58. And some of the people sharing 213.42.21.58 are not very nice.

Google said I was a virus, and would not let me conduct a search. Wikipedia said I was a vandal and would not let me edit a badly worded article.

So the UAE assigns IP addresses that look real, that do not use the standard fake addresses 10.xxx and 192.168.xxx.

However, almost all the IP addresses assigned in the UAE are 'fake', sharing a different, real IP address with botnets and vandals. Which means legitimate Internet users are perceived as bots and vandals.

And it looks like my former IT director may have been telling the truth.

13 Comments:

Blogger vagabondblogger said...

I got my IP Address on the web, just so I could discount my blog in my stats. I'm not sure it's real either. But before I left Egypt in June for a 2 week stay in the USA, I ordered some clothing over the internet. I waited and waited and nothing arrived, so I called customer service who looked up the order and transfered me over to conflict resolution, or something of that nature.

Some young girl who sounded like a Valley Girl teen answered, and I got into it with her. They said they couldn't verify my info and when I asked they refused to tell me what steps they had taken, and then evntually admitted they didn't even bother. The billing and shipping address are the same and the credit card company authorizes my orders - no problemo.

The shop noticed my IP was from Egypt and automatically threw my order out the window. Arguing with idiots like this is just fun for me and, needless to say, this clothing shop no longer gets my business. They started using new rules after 9-11, which we noticed as we were living in the U.A.E. and were regularly discriminated against. I guess you can never be too careful, a terrorist could be placing an order for ladies clothing!

Let me add, I haven't had this problem with any other vendor, just this one.

11:56 am  
Blogger secretdubai said...

Vagablond: you need to use a tunnel that will give you a different IP. It also allows one to avoid censorship ;)

Another frustrating example of the UAE IP address situation is file download sites. Nearly always when I visit them I am told that I have already downloaded x gigabytes that day, and must come back tomorrow. Of course I haven't downloaded a thing, but they can't distinguish between me and the several hundred thousand other internet users in the UAE.

7:38 pm  
Blogger vagabondblogger said...

Thanks.

I haven't had a problem with censorship. Egypt just shuts down sites (mostly political, anti-government) that they don't like; or they jail the bloggers. Since I don't deal with Egyptian politics that much, I'm not worried about it. At least I can log into Victoria's Secrets, which I had problems with when we lived in the U.A.E.

I have experienced a loss of Chinese viewers, but from what I've heard, that's pretty much China blocking all of blogger.

11:42 am  
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Wow never knew that! But I guess it kinda makes sense.

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