Andy Fletcher

Today I closed my account with QNB. I opened the account when I came over to Qatar a year ago. Since then I’ve had nothing but trouble with them.

On the face of it they offer an attractive package including online banking, good interest rates on deposits and a Credit card after 3 months.

Unfortunately they did not live up to expectations. The ATM card they issued did not work outside Qatar despite repeated assurance that it was working – every time I went to their branch I ended up waiting for an hour before being able to see anyone and then didn’t get any practical assistance. I never got a Credit card from them either.

Eventually I requested an ATM card with my name on it rather than a default name – its hard getting retailers to accept a debit card with the name “Speed” apparently this new card was guaranteed to work abroad. Well I never got chance to find out. The replacement card which I paid QAR50 for never arrived in my post box and they cancelled my old card within a week of me asking for a new card leaving me with no way of accessing my money. After checking my post for two weeks I went to the branch again to sort it out they said that they could issue me an unnamed “Speed” card for QAR50 straight away only I would have to come back the next day because they didn’t have one.

I pointed out that I was going to be travelling in three days time and I didn’t have time to spend another hour waiting the next day for a card which might be there (she couldn’t guarantee that they would have them the next day) and therefore would they please arrange to transfer the balance of my account to another person I was travelling with. Her response was that they couldn’t do transfers that day (it was Saturday) or even schedule a transfer for the next day – I would have to come in again.

At that point I had had enough, with the non existent service and requested that they paid me the balance of my account and immediately close the account. She was unable to do that too. I had to go to the reception counter and get them to write me a cheque for cash and then wait 90 minutes for my turn at the cashier to convert it to cash. However during this 90 minutes they decided to close the branch for an hour and threw everyone who was waiting for service out until they reopened it.

There were also had problems with their Internet security and reliability. About half the time I tried to use the online banking service to make a transfer it came up with service unavailable. The method for adding payees for transfers was laughable. You added a new payee to the system and entered a telephone number for them to confirm it with you. They then phoned you within a day or so and asked you to confirm your identity number to authenticate yourself and permit transfers to the payee. Just in case you forgot your identity number they helpfully displayed it at the top of the page where you entered the telephone number. Anyone see the basic flaw?

At least I got my money back. Its now been paid into a non-QNB bank account of a friend ready for my next trip.

I’ve now got to find another bank. Maybe I’ll try IBQ this time.

Things keep changing in Qatar. Just before Christmas the local ISP (QTEL) decided to start blocking inbound port 25 connections to the DSL line I use for work. This posed a problem for me as I run a mail server on it using Dynamic DNS for about 80 users. What was particularly irksome was they blocked incoming connections only for locations outside Qatar, not other DSL connections in country.

I don’t have a problem with ISPs blocking outbound port 25 other than their own mail servers – that is a sensible anti-spam precaution. However blocking inbound connections can only be used to prevent the running of mail servers and the only reason I can think of for them preventing this is to force people to use their MPLS based Internet leased line which cost over USD 1500/month for 512K last time I looked at the price.

Using nmap on a server in Amsterdam I quickly discovered it was only port 25 which was blocked. Other ports remained unaffected.

So my problem was to find a way of getting mail into my server using a port other than 25 (SMTP). Internet mail requires access to port 25 so I had to find another machine to forward mail into my ADSL line in Qatar. Fortunately I have access to such machines running Debian and postfix in Amsterdam.

The solution turned out to be surprisingly easy:

1. Arrange for the ADSL link gateway to port forward traffic from a free port (I chose 200) to port 25 on the internal mail server. I used IPTABLES to do this but the same can be done with almost any ADSL gateway – look for “Application Sharing”. This can be tested by using netcat (nc) to the gateway from a machine in the outside world (some names obscured):

ams1:~# nc www.mydomain.com 200
220 www.mydomain.com ESMTP Postfix (Debian/GNU)
helo www.x31.com
250 www.mydomain.com
quit
221 2.0.0 Bye

2. Configure the relay machine (mine is in Amsterdam) to accept mail for the ADSL connected system (my system in Qatar). To do this edit /etc/postfix/main.cf and add the domain to the end of the line (note the use of the comma ‘,’):

relay_domains = $mydestination, mydomain.com

3. Setup a special delivery transport for mydomain.com. To do this edit /etc/postfix/transport and add the following lines (myddnshost.dyndns.org is the dynamic dns hostname for my system in Qatar and the 200 is the port number I am using):

mydomain.com smtp:[myddnshost.dyndns.org]:200
.mydomain.com smtp:[myddnshost.dyndns.org]:200


Now rebuild the map file:
$ postmap /etc/postfix/transport


and edit /etc/postfix/main.cf again. Ensure the following line is present:
transport_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/transport

Finally restart postfix:
$ /etc/init.d/postfix restart

4. Now update your DNS and point the MX record at the relay machine. Wait for things to settle down (can take a few hours) and your mail will start to be delivered into your ADSL connected server.

I run Debian Etch and Lenny systems with a mostly standard postfix configuration which uses hash tables. If your system is different then you may need to specify a different format. The /etc/postfix/transport file is extremely powerful and I recommend you look at “man transport” before making changes.

Winter has arrived in Doha. About 10 days ago we had rain which caused serious flooding all over the city. This is because Qatar is basically a thin rock covering over an impervious rock base so the water just sits there and goes nowhere for a long time. There are a few drains which quickly fill with sand and assorted crap thereby becoming useless for anything other than as a man trap.

Today is National Day when they parade through the city, wave flags everywhere and generally drive in a more reckless manner than normal. Yes, you guessed right, it rained most of the day causing more flooding and general chaos on the roads.

The place I live in is on a small compound. The compound is surrounded by an road which loops in an oval about 300m on its long axis. The compound is at one end within the enclosed land the rest being wasteland.

When it last rained water drained into the road converting the compound into an island surrounded by dirty water about 30cm deep. After a couple of days the municipality sent a stream of water tankers to pump the water off the road and take it away.

As I am writing this the water has flooded about 30% of the road loop and the municipality has just sent a large tanker to pump out the water again.

However the locals are not to be outdone. In a burst of imagination someone has arranged to get a portable pump and pump the water off the road onto the wasteland in the centre. This would be fine if it wasn’t for the fact that the water promptly runs back onto the road off the wasteland bringing even more mud and associated crap with it. Of course the locals are not the ones doing the pumping that has been left to some guys from the Indian subcontinent who work for them and will carry out the job unquestioningly.

When the tanker driver arrived he waved madly at them pointing out where the water was running back onto the road about 15m from where they were standing and they have finally shut off the pump as they evidently decided it was getting just too silly. They are now loading it up back onto their pickup before they go back to the villa about 100m away.

The really stupid thing is there is a good land drain in the flooded area. I have seen tankers discharging into it in the past. The only problem is it is blocked with crap. They would have been much better digging the mud off it then using the pump to excavate the silt from the hole. Once the water starts flowing it would clear itself in seconds.

Oh such fun

Yahoo will be shutting down Geocities later today. Geocities started up in 1994, was purchased by Yahoo in 1999 for USD 2 billion and will finally die today.

When I formed an Internet company in 1995 with a partner Geocities was very popular and full of simple websites. The creators of these sites used simple HTML markup and usually an excessive amount of blinking and flashing text. I hated the <blink> HTML tag and was always scared of getting an epileptic attack when visiting anything on Geocities. Most of the websites also lacked any sense of good taste when it came to using colours too.

Yet the closure of Geocities leaves me feeling more than a little saddened. At its height the site reflected the vibrant Internet of the 1990s as people came to terms with how to design websites and express themselves – some of my early attempts at website design were just as bad. The 1990s were a great time of change for me when my children were young and the world/Internet seemed an awfully interesting place. Now everything seems so much more organised with big commercial interests controlling things.

I don’t remember the last time I went to a Geocities hosted website but it is probably unimportant now.

Looking back 15 years I wish I had changed some things but mostly I’m happy with what I’ve done. The closure of Geocities has brought back many memories – for that I thank Yahoo. I just wish they could keep it running a bit longer.

Its been an interesting week in Qatar. On Tuesday I came across a blog which reported that there had been a failed coup attempt in Qatar. Apparently several Arabic websites had been reporting the story.

As this was a story of interest to the expat community in Qatar I posted a link to it on the popular website Qatar Living. Within a few minutes the entire thread had been deleted from the Qatar Living website without any message to me from the person who did it, there wasn’t even a marker stating that the thread had been deleted.

I then posted a complaint on the forum about the manner of the deletion and got a response from another site user. Within minutes of this that thread was also deleted without trace. I then followed this up with a message exchange with the ‘Moderator’ in which I was advised that the subject was ’sensitive’ and there were concerns about the site being blocked by the ISP in Qatar. This was despite the fact that the original site and an extremely interesting Stratfor report on the same story were passing unopposed through the ISP (Q-Tel) firewall. I assume the Arabic websites were also unaffected.

The prospect of being blocked by Q-Tel isn’t something to be taken lightly out here. The administrators of the firewall seem to randomly block websites and it is near to impossible to get in contact with them. The email address posted on the block message appears to be a joke in that I have yet to hear of someone getting a response from it when they have complained. At the moment http://www.google.com is completely broken – any and all queries result in the original Google page being redisplayed and a search on any Google website including the word ‘Canal’ results in the response being blocked (I was searching for ‘Corinth Canal’ at the time).

At the time of writing this there is at least one extremely active forum on Qatar living where many users are letting off steam about the issue and the way that threads and messages are being deleted. I estimate that about 10% of new threads in the forum area of the website are being deleted at present.

There are several issues with all this. Qatar Living is a website based on a server in the USA and is probably in the top 20 of websites visited from Qatar. It has a large and extremely vocal userbase who use it for everything from discussing the weather (its hot and dusty) to selling unwanted furniture.

Whilst the users don’t pay for the service of the website (it is financed by advertising) – without them the site is worthless and quite a lot of the most active users are extremely unhappy at the moment.

The site does not have a clear policy of what topics are acceptable to the administrators and which are not. This results in a clash in expectations and some extremely public arguments on its forums.

Deleting threads without notice or explanation is extremely upsetting to users who feel protective about what they are writing and strongly object to censorship being applied to them by an unknown party.

The story in this case of a coup plot is extremly relevant to the users of Qatar Living and has been published in the press outside Qatar. The story is in the public domain and a much better way to handle the entire situation would have been to put a short note in the News section of the site referring to the stories in the foreign press and containing a request that it is not discussed in the forums because of concerns about the Q-Tel firewall. This would at a single stroke have defused the situation and would have put the entire userbase of the site on the same side as the site admins.

The problem with self censorship is the fear factor results in the press and other organisations being overcautious in what they publish and they do not challenge the ‘official censor’ in their interpretation of the regulations.

I do feel sympathetic for the administrators of Qatar Living in that they have spent a long time building up the site to its current position and they don’t wish to risk their investment. However I feel they have made a big mistake in the way that they handled this situation and the site has lost a lot of credibility as a result. If enough people become disillusioned then there is a danger of them moving to another site which would compete with Qatar Living.

One message I got from the unknown ‘Moderator’ on Qatar Living was “Why don’t you publish it in your own blog?”. Well Mr Moderator, I have

Doha is in the midst of a late season dust storm at the moment. There has been dryer than usual weather recently in the gulf and this combined with Northerly winds has covered Qatar in dust. The dust is made up of tiny particles which cannot be seen without magnification and has reduced visibility to less than 1Km. The sun is pure white in colour due to the light scattering from the dust.

I woke up early this morning in a cold sweat and aching in every joint. It turns out I have an allergy to the dust which has covered the entire region, I’ve noticed I’m not at my best during a dust storm in the past but not like this. So I paid a visit to the pharmacy this morning and got some antihistamine capsules. It’s now 2 hours later and I’m beginning to feel human again, if a bit sleepy.

I went digging on the net about the dust storms and came up with the following story in the Gulf News from the UAE, it made me feel better knowing I’m not unusual with some strange disease.

I’ve been stuck in a hotel in Doha for almost four months now whilst the wheels in the Ministry of Interior slowly turned. Well, they have now found me a nice place to live near Landmark in Doha. Its a bit far out of town but anything is better than living in a hotel.

I’ve been staying in the Rejaj Al Rayyan hotel. Its a reasonable place but the rooms lack the essentials for a long term stay (a serviced apartment would be much better) and they sometimes have problems in thinking things through.

• One afternoon I had stuck the “Do not disturb” sign on my door so they decided to telephone me and ask if I wanted the room cleaning, at least they didn’t knock on the door.
• Another night I had to change room at 00:15 because of a leak in the bathroom (these things happen) and one of staff members decided to wake me up in my new room by hammering on he door at 01:45 to enquire about a discrepancy in the minibar in the old room (I had never touched it). As if the question couldn’t have waited to the morning.

They have a few silly problems too, two of the three rooms I was in over the period had water leaks in the bathrooms, in the second case I complained three times before I ended up dragging a member of staff into the room to see the water dripping from the ceiling. At that point things finally happened. Also all the bathrooms have shaver points but none of them work in the entire place (whats the betting they failed to put the wiring in place).

That said, the staff were friendly and I’ll kinda miss them.

Previous posting: Original Posting

True to form I got another email from Suzanne Martin in which she reasserted her previous claims.

The thing which amused me was she had attached an email from the solicitors of xxxxx Limited. This wasn’t a good idea considering she was trying to bully me into taking down the site.

So by this point I was getting fed up with her and composed the following reply…

Its now 10 hours later and I’ve not had any more emails. Maybe she has finally given up on harassing me.

This evening I received an unwelcome email from a Suzanne Martin. She runs a company called “Suzanne Martin and Associates” based out of London. The organisation offers PR services for businesses.

I show the letter below. I’m reproducing it in accordance with the X31 policy on Email which has been on the website since 2000. I’ve not agreed to any confidentiality in regard to correspondence with her so anything goes.

My understanding is as follows:
Company X arranged for Suzanne Martin to develop promotional materials for their website, this was done and paid for. When company X decided that there wasn’t any need for further work they advised Suzanne Martin accordingly. At that point Suzanne Martin objected and a dispute arose about the duration of ongoing work. As far as I know this is proceeding towards a court hearing. Now Suzanne Martin has decided that work previously done and paid for is no longer to be used by X and she is trying to drag me into the fray by sending me a takedown notice without specifying what is to be taken down!

Of course company X is of a different opinion to Suzanne Martin and maintain that they have the right to the materials etc. This leaves me in the impossible position of being told to take down unspecified materials by one party and to keep them up by the other. As I am unable to determine the validity of either argument as I don’t have access to the contracts etc I have to make a decision based on “Least Harm”.

If I take down the website company X will lose a lot of revenue and it will damage their image. If I leave it up then Suzanne Martin may have her materials used for a bit longer but I cannot see what the lasting damage to her would be. I’m sure whatever settlement they eventually arrive at (probably through a court hearing) will take account of the duration of the materials on the site.

I have therefore taken the decision to leave the website up as requested by company X.

It all seems bizarre to me that I as a uninvolved party is being dragged into this mess and I feel that Suzanne Martin is trying to frighten me into doing what she wants even though I am not in a position to determine the rights and wrongs of the case.

It seems even stranger to me that she could produce publicity materials for a company and then attempt to prevent them using the materials they have already paid for. Thank God I am an engineer and not in the publicity industry. I guess this all serves as a warning to anyone commissioning documents – make sure the contract is clearly worded (I don’t know if it is or not in this case).

When I conveyed my response to Suzanne Martin I just received another threatening email below:

The address she refers to is my X31 NIC Handle and used for domain issues. I don’t live in the UK and haven’t done so for quite a while. She is welcome to send anything she likes there but it probably wont get to me for many months if at all.

Again she didn’t identify the “Offending Materials”

I’ll post an update on this as things happen.

First update: Update 1

Introduction

For communications systems to operate reliably a good signal needs to be received. Too weak a signal will cause loss of data and too strong a signal can result in overloading of the receiver or interference to other communications systems. Environmental factors will (normally) reduce the received signal below the level resulting from a simple line of sight computation. Note that this posting only considers propagation in the far field – antennas more than a few wavelengths apart and in an uncluttered environment.

The transmitting isotropic antenna

This is an antenna which radiates equally in all directions, in effect distributing the power over the surface of a sphere with the antenna at the centre. This is an important definition because all antennas are characterised in comparison with an isotropic antenna. A high gain antenna concentrates the power in a preferred direction at the expense of power being radiated in other directions. A useful analogy is squeezing a balloon where it shrinks where it is squeezed and pops out further in other areas.

Antenna gains are usually expressed in dB referenced to an isotropic antenna and these figures are denoted as dBi (dB relative to an isotropic antenna). An example of this is a dipole antenna which shows a gain of 2.2dBi in its preferred radiation directions.

An isotropic antenna is defined as being 100% efficient. This means all the power which is put into the antenna is transmitted onto its coverage area. This is known as radiation efficiency and all antennas are less than 100% efficient. Factors which can impact radiation efficiency include the impedance matching to the signal source (mismatches result in power being reflected to the source) and resistive losses of the surfaces of the antenna.

As the surface area of a sphere is equal to

the power density at a distance r from the antenna can be computed as

where Pt is the transmitted power.

From this it can be seen that the power density reduces by the square of the distance.

The receiving isotropic antenna.

Antennas receive as well as transmit and the amount of power they receive is a function of the area of the signal they intercept. The effective area of an isotropic antenna is defined as

where Λ is the wavelength of the signal being received.

Isotropic antennas receive equally well in all directions and are defined as being 100% efficient. Real world antennas have efficiency losses and can increase their sensitivity in some directions at the expense of others. This figure is exactly the same as the transmit case as antennas are reciprocal in nature.

Path loss

Knowing the power density of a transmitting isotropic antenna and the effective area of a receiving antenna it is possible to work out the power transferred by two antennas.

and the path loss is

As wavelength isn’t normally used we convert to frequency

where c is the speed of light (300,000,000 m/s)

Converting everything to dB and separating the terms we end up with

As antenna gains are expressed in dBi and we can easily add the effect of them to the pathloss computation:

This is a useful result as it allows us to quickly work out the loss between two antennas under optimal conditions. If you only have the natural logs rather than base 10 then you can convert the base using the substitution below: