Gaurish Sharma Live » Bsnl Broadband

Bsnl Broadband: New Plans,2mbps for Rs1100/-

gaurish — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 09:18:56 +0000

BSNL has issued an advertisement in Prominent national Daily Times of India dated 23 march informing new broadband plans for old and new customers. The prices:

256Kbps Unlimited Plan = Rs750/per momth
512Kbps Unlimited Plan = Rs900/ per month (earlier was 1350/-)
1Mbps Unlimited Plan = Rs1000/ per month ( New Plan)
2Mbps Unlimited Plan = Rs1100 / per month (New Plan)

Here the copy of Ad:

However, At this point its not known that its applicable all over India or valid only in Chennai telecom circle.also, it does not say if Fair-Usage-Policy is applicable or not. so readers are advised to confirm it.

[Update]

This plan has a fair usage limit applied on all plans, once you cross that data usage your speed would be reduced to 256kbps, which bad. So I would advise you against these plans

[BSNL Broadband] New crappy Plans

gaurish — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 03:27:31 +0000

BSNL Broadband has released new broadband plans on occasion of Deepavali.They are bunch of new crap which is filled with FUP . I don’t get a point behind rolling out unlimited plans with xxGB limit. It does not make sense other than fooling innocent customers.Bsnl, if you really want to put limits then don’t call Unlimited. this was started by Airtel . now it seems other ISP incl bsnl is following.

Further, Downloading during Night Unlimited (200-800hrs) is no longer free on new plans. I sincerely hope that bsnl does not remove free night unlimited feature from its current plans.

And if you still want to see those “crappy plans”. see below :

High Tariffs + Limited Unlimited Plan + Slow speeds = Sad State of Broadband in India Desperately hoping for some Change

Airtel screws unlimited plan users

gaurish — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 10:16:07 +0000

Last night i was following this discussion over at Broadbandforum.in. And it seems Airtel has put download caps on their supposedly unlimited connections. After you are finished with your quota, they throttle your speeds This is absolutely ridiculous! And before people try to defend by saying that speed caps are there internationally too, i say first match the kind of speeds they provide at the rates they provide it at, then talk about caps.

The restrictions are as follows
128 kbps = download limit 10 gb
256 kbps = 15 gb
384 kbps = 20 gb
512 kbps = 25 gb

Actually Airtel has withdrawn all their unlimited plans except 256kbps and 384kbps. So, now there is no way to get 512kbps or 1mbps unlimited plan.

That too these 256kbps and 384kbps unlimited plans cost Rs 100 and Rs 200 more than their earlier price respectively..

Earlier 256kbps plan was available at Rs 799 and now the same plan costs Rs 899, whereas the 384kbps plan was available for 999Rs earlier, now costs Rs1199.

let’s get this to the mainstream media and tell them how Airtel is out to screw their own customers. They won’t even flinch till someone starts talking bad about them and till the shareholders take notice.

So here are some suggestions:

* If you have a blog, then blog about this
* Join the Facebook group (there may be some issues for now about the Join link but they’ll get fixed)
* Write to all the India specific tech blogs and sites that you know of about this – Tech 2.0, Chip, TechTree, TechShout, PC World etc
* Log complaints with customer care about this and tell them that the customers were not apprised. If they use the word “TRAI” ask them for the specifics – Article, clause, URL etc of the TRAI ruling if any – just don’t let them use the word TRAI and get away with it

Some points to remember:

* We need “bandwidth huggers” who can get the best from the internet to spurn the economy in India by sharing the ideas that they find on the internet – if you can’t experience the best, how do you spread the word?
* Take the example of Miro HD Video Player | Free internet tv and video podcast player. which promotes free Internet TV with an abundance of useful information for Indian audiences
* Take the example of a household with 2-4 users of broadband on 1 Wifi connection who would use their unlimited connection for completely legitimate purposes and still hit the cap in 10-15 days
* Take the example of people who download various Linux distros via torrents to distribute them to people who don’t want to pirate a Windows and yet get a working operating system like Ubuntu for free
* Take the examples of Indian tech startups like Rajshri.com and In.com who are providing free video content on their sites to increase demand for their products and hence churn the economy

What Airtel is doing goes against all of the above. Yes, we might have alternatives but before that we need to know whether the culprit here is TRAI or Airtel or both. Till then, this needs an open debate before the TRAI implements something without consulting the consumers and sleeping with devils like Airtel.

We we don’t act now, other ISP like BSNL will follow

[Update]
This is a Confirmed news! There is a Official Letter from Airtel
Official Confirmation from Airtel

Bsnl Quietly Slashes Broadband Modem Charges

gaurish — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 21:01:07 +0000

BSNL has once again reduced charges for broadband modems which it gives to its customers for using broadband service. this reduction is done on all modem types, with charges for rental & outright purchase being reduced.what’s surprising is, that this rate cut came without any formal announcement from Bsnl. the telecom giant has simply updated its broadband tariff page with reduced rates. Here are new rates:

BSNL Broadband – Initial and other Charges

Modem Sale Price (One time charges)

Modem Type Price

Type-I                         Rs.1000
Type-II                        Rs.1600
Type-III                       Rs.1000
Type-IV                       Rs.1600

Monthly Rental

Modem Type        Price
Type-I                         Rs.50
Type-II                        Rs.80
Type-III                       Rs.50
Type-IV                       Rs.80

Earlier type-I & type-III modem’s sale price was Rs.1200/-, which is now Rs.1000/- and Price of Type-II & Type-IV was Rs.1800/-, which is now Rs.1600/-. so there is about Rs200 decrease .

We don’t know exactly when this charges are being reduced. But people tell me, this is done long time back, so it won’t be a new thing for many. Any rate cut from BSNL is welcome, so posting it here. Now I am Looking forward for more, cuts in future!

Link:Modem and Other INITIAL CHARGES

[BSNL Broadband] Double Broadband usage offer for November,2008

gaurish — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 04:37:00 +0000

All Bsnl Broadband users Rejoice!, Bsnl has come up with a nice way to say Happy Diwali to its subscribers with special scheme under which All broadband users would be double of their monthly free download limit during month of November 2008 without any extra charge.

This offer is applicable to subscribers who have have BSNL Broadband subscription
continuously for past six months as on 01.11.2008. The scheme shall be available for all
Broadband plans.However after November08, all customers would get back to their usual free download limit.

Overview of Download/Upload Limit

Name of Plan	Normal Usage limit	Usage limit during November
Home 125	150 MB	300 MB
Home 250	1.0 GB	2.0 GB
Home 500	2.5 GB	5.0 GB
Home 500 C	1.5GB	3.0 GB
Home 500 C+	2.5GB	5.0GB
Home 1000	5.0GB	10.0GB

Subscribers of Unlimited plan would be disappointed, as there no double bandwidth offer for them. This offer is is applicable all over india, however your local exchange might deny this as they must not received “official communication” regarding this. For the record, here is the official Letter that BSNL Head office, Delhi is sending to all its circle offices. This letter is signed by P.K.Shah,DGM (Broadband Service,BSNL.Corporate Office. so this is should be enough proof.

If Bsnl still denies your free usage, take Print-out of below letter and show it to concerned officials. Surely, they can’t deny a official Letter

Broadband Cell Second Floor
Bharat Sanchar Bhawan
Janpath New Delhi ? 110001
Tel: 91-11-23710183
Fax: 91-11-23734052
__________________________________________________ ___________________
No: 64-03/08 Broadband Dated: 22.10.2008
To.
1.All Head of Circles/Metro District
2.GM (CMTS/Mktg) BSNL.CO.
Sub: Promotional Scheme for Broadband Customers as Dipawali Bonus.

Approval of competent authority is here by conveyed for extending Dipawali
scheme for BSNL Broadband customers who have BSNL Broadband subscription
continuously for past six months as on 01.11.2008. The scheme shall be available for all
Broadband plans.

1)In the month of November, the subscribers shall be permitted to avail double usage
of free download i.e. twice of what is available in the plan normally. The scheme shall
be applicable for all Broadband Plans?.

2)All plan change requests received in the month of November shall be made effective
from 1 st of December?.

3) The scheme benefits shall be available only for customers who remain active
throughout November 2008.

You are requested to kindly give wide spread publicity to this scheme through
messages in SMS, IVRS etc, in addition to other print and electronic media.

The message for mobile customers is furnished below.

* Dear customers, Avail double usage of free download for all BSNL Broadband
plans in the month of November 2008 as one time Dipawali Bonus.

(P.K.Shah)
DGM (Broadband Service)
BSNL.Corporate Office.

Happy Diwali & Enjoy Downloading……

[Update] The Offer is now over as it was valid only during november month, hope you enjoyed doubled Usage.

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Dummies Guide to Scheduling Downloads(Linux Version)

gaurish — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 17:41:00 +0000

Linux is a stable OpenSource Operating system.It has a ability to run for long hours and crashes are rarely seen.On top of it, it has a inbuilt scheduler which is robust and it never misses tasks. All this Characteristics make Linux a perfect choice for downloading. Yeah almost perfect choice (discussed later).
In This Guide we would learn how to smartly schedule downloads. This way files would be automatically downloaded while you sleep. This Guide is mainly for BSNL/MTNL broadband subscribers. I have Tried to prescribe a general procedure which is applicable on all major Distributions.so distribution specific goodies are not discussed here.

Mainly there are two mode of this, you need to pick a method which applies to you.

Router Reboot method: Suitable when your connection is configured as always-on and router is PPPoE mode. so you don’t need to dial your connection every time you connect to Internet. it works with selected routers which supports telnet connectivity.Dependant upon routers.
Bridge Mode: Suitable when you dial to connect to Internet using a Dialer program on your PC. in this setting your PC is in Bridge mode.it works with every router.

Understanding Cron Daemon
Before we begin we should know how about cron – default linux scheduler
Cron Daemon is a default scheduler for Linux based systems.Cron Daemon is responsible for scanning the crontab files and running the commands at the appropriate time. It always runs in background, wakes up every minute to check for any scheduled taks pending for execution. then it executes them and goes back to sleep.

Crond reads tasks from crontab, anything you write in your crontab with proper syntax will be read & excuted by crond. Crontab as name suggests, is basically a file where sheduled tasks are arranged in tabular forum.The syntax of crontab is fairly simple.

Minutes	Hours	Day	Month	Day of the month	command
enter the minutes part of time, legal values 0-60	Enter the hours, in 24hr format. legal values 0-24	Enter the Day number starting from Monday, legal values 0-7	Enter the month,legal values 1-12	Enter a Date, legal values 1-31	Command you want to execute at scheduled time

use command “visudo” to edit crontab.it would load a editor depending upon your $EDITOR variable. on Ubuntu you would get nano
how to use nano(easy)
how to use vi (advanced)

Things Which are common among both methods

1) Create a simple text file in your home folder and name it “downloads.txt” & notedown its full path. Insert the *Direct* links of files you want to download into this newly created file. The files given in this would be downloaded by wget automactically.wget can handle http & ftp downloads. After download completes remove the link and enter new ones. insert one link per line. Remember to add direct link only.

2) If you use torrents, install your torrent client and notedown its full path to its binary. you can use “whereis” command to find its exact location. generally its /usr/share/sbin. If you are looking for worthy torrent clients, look for deluge or azurus now vuze

Router Reboot Method

1) I wrote a simple Shell script for rebooting router. it works nicely on D-link GLB 502T. although you may need to change userid,password & command values.copy paste this script in a file and save it as router-reboot.sh. make it excutable by

chmod a+x router-reboot.sh

#!/bin/sh
#############################################
#Script Written By Gaurish Sharma
#change the password,userid & command values with your own set
#the default password & username
# in most cased is 'admin'
#use it in terminal as sh router-reboot.sh | telnet
#(C) GaurishSharma.com
#############################################
add='open 192.168.1.1'
userid='root'
password='your_passoword'
command='reboot'
echo $add
sleep 1
echo $userid
sleep 1
echo $password
sleep 1
echo $command
sleep 1

2) Open Terminal and enter “crontab -e”. enter the following in your crontab and save it

# m h  dom mon dow   command
# Reboot Entry, please replace with correct path
10 2 * * * cd /home/gaurish/scripts && sh router-reboot.sh | telnet
# Start Torrent client, please replace with correct path of your router
12 2 * * * DISPLAY=:0.0 /opt/azureus/azureus
# Downloads via wget, Please replace with corrent path
13 2 * * * wget -ci /home/gaurish/downloads.txt
# Reboot Entry, please replace with correct path
50 7 * * * cd /home/gaurish/scripts && sh router-reboot.sh | telnet

3) Now we need to enter command to shutdown computer everyday at 7.51AM.this only can be done via root user. so now the enter command as “sudo crontab -e” and Insert this line.

50 7 * * * /sbin/shutdown -h 0

4) (Optional) you can install mailx package to see the log of what happened while you were sleeping

Bridge Mode

1) we would be using default command which you use to dial to internet. on most cases its pon dsl-provider for connectinig and poff for disconnection . in case the command are diffrent on your machine please replace them.

2) Open Terminal and enter “crontab -e” now paste the following in it

# m h  dom mon dow   command
# Start Torrent client, please replace with correct path of your torrent program
10 2 * * * DISPLAY=:0.0 /opt/azureus/azureus
# please replace with correct path of download.txt
13 2 * * * wget -ci /home/gaurish/downloads.txt

3) Now we need to use root crontab, use “sudo crontab -e” to access it.

10 2 * * *  /usr/bin/pon dsl-provider
49 7 * * * /usr/bin/poff
50 7 * * * /sbin/shutdown -h 0

4) (Optional) you can install mailx package to see the log of what happened while you were sleeping.

What you are missing in Linux, comparing to windows?
In starting of this post i said, almost perfect choice for downloading. so you gotta missing something. which is ability to power on your PC automatically.
I am still searching for a method to start a Linux box automatically at a specific time.
As a workaround you can do the same thing via your BIOS, but a limited no of BIOS support this. so either leave your machine running with monitor turn off or use the BIOS trick.

Related Posts:

Dummies Guide to Scheduling Downloads

gaurish — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 12:35:00 +0000

Since state owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) launched its broadband services under the brand name DataOne through out the country on 14th January 2005 , its users have one complaint lack of unlimited plans. Due to this users were forced to download their “stuff” in odd time of 200hrs to 800hrs(IST). some smart people used to schedule download and sleep cool. others have been branded night watchman by folks around them. now lot of things have changed, speeds have in upgraded upto 2mbps and new Unlimited plans have been introduced.
Still there are many users who still stuck with plans with data caps and Night Unlimited facility despite of Unlimited Plans being available. Mainly because of monthly rentals of data capped plans is lower and speeds are higher.
In This post we would try to intellectually schedule our downloads. so that we can have a sound sleep while download finishes. Already their are guides available for this on Internet but this is for Anshul Jain & Rachit Atolia who forced me to write this post. Damn, both of you !.

What you would be able to do at end of this guide?

Your computer would automatically power-on(if supported) & connect to predestined time, your download would be automatically started. And at a predetermined time your PC would turn off. Best part is that all this occur when you are in deep sleep.

Requirements Tools:-

BSNL Internet Connection in Bridge mode(dial-up mode). Bridge mode is that when you use dialer in connect Internet. Internet is not not always on.
Tested on Windows XP 32bit, may or maybe not work on Vista
Any Download manager which supports scheduling, I recommend Free Download Manager(FDM). Download FDM
Torrent Client like utorrent. required only is you regularly download via torrents, else FDM has inbuilt bittorrent support.

Procedure:-

1. Click on Start menu and Open Notepad from All Programs>Accessories>Notepad
2. Type the following text and save the file as connect.bat
rasdial
where:
Connection name have to be replaced with the name of dialer you created in xp. to find your connection name . Open Start menu > Control Panel > Network and Internet Connections > Network Connections. here you should find connection name. example for mine it is
rasdial Bsnl jp2555355 Hari-om

3. now create a similar file with following text and save it as disconnect.bat
rasdial /disconnect
4. C~~reate another file similar to first two with following text and save as~~
~~shutdown -S -T 0~~ See The [Update] at end of the post

5. Enable Hibernation by Start control > Run. type powercfg.cpl and check enable hibernation. ensure there is necessary free space available.

6.Open Scheduled tasks by tying “control scheduled” in run dialog box.
7. Add a new schedule task by clicking on “Add schedule task“. you would be presented with Scheduled task Wizard. please click next to continue.

8. Now in Select applications window, Click on Browse and navigate to the location where you have saved connect.bat and click on Open

9.In perform this task, select Daily and click on next to continue.

10. In Select Time & date screen, choose Start time as 2:10 AM and Perform this task daily. Click Next to Continue.

11. Enter the password you use to logon, leave blank if there is no password. Click Next to Continue

12. you will get a confirmation screen. Click on Check box “Open Advanced properties for this task when I click Finish.” and now finally click on Finish.if you didn’t enter a password you get a access it denied error. please ignore and proceed to next step.

13. In Advanced properties check “Run Only If Logged on” and click Apply.

14. Click on Settings tab and check “Wake computer” to run this task. Click okay

15. Now you can add any other task like FDM or utorrent, in exact same procedure to be run at 2:11 AM Daily. but just choose desired program from Application Window in place of connect.bat in Step 7
16. Now add disconnect.bat task to be run at 7:50 AM Daily
17. Lastly, Shutdown.bat task to be run at 7:
18. If you have done everything correctly,your scheduled task should be similar to to screenshot given below.

How To Use

1. Set your downloads in FDM or utorrent in such a way that whenever they are started downloading begins.
2. Put your Computer to Hibernate Mode. Hold down Shift key in Shut Down menu to see Hibernate option.
3) Don’t Turn off main AC power. if you have a UPS, please keep it on. also router needs to need on. you can turn off your monitor Only.

Congrats!, you can now sleep cool which you download “Stuff”. Incase of any problems, please ask them here

[Update]
You need a separate Utility like Poweroff to be able to shutdown computer.
1) Download Poweroff
2) Schedule to power off automatically at 7.50 AM daily.
3) Create a Service by Service>Create Service
4) Then Save Settings to the service

Dummies Guide to Scheduling Downloads(Linux Version)

Solution:Some Random sites do not open with BSNL Broadband

gaurish — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 13:56:00 +0000

BSNL Broadband is a broadband internet service from state owned BSNL in India. during Past few weeks many Bsnl Broadband customers are complaining that they can’t open some sites like Google.com,Microsoft.com. MSN.com, Hotmail.com but can connect to mail.com,orkut.com. the sites which are not opening are random – it can be any site which does not open.If you a similar problem and can’t open some sites then read on……
There are mainly two Reasons to this Problem:-

Bad DNS: Bsnl’s DNS sometimes due to overload fails to resolve queries. sometimes this is a temporary problem. if it occurs often then change to third party DNS server like Opendns. changing DNS server is very simple process, there is no software to install. you just need to specify IP address of alternate DNS servers. Opendns also has other features like filtering of adult sites etc. detailed instructions on how to setup can be found on Opendns website.

Large MTU: MTU stands for Maximum transmission Unit. it is max size of each data packet which travels across a Internet. each interface has it own MTU value. Larger MTU ensures bandwidth efficiency but it can also choke interfaces. if you have problems with your network a conservative MTU value of 1454 is recommended.to change MTU. The third party Dr. TCP software can be used to change the MTU setting.

Download this tiny utility from here. choose exe file type
Run the utility you just downloaded.
In the Adapter Settings, select the Ethernet driver and adapter used to connect with BSNL broadband.
In the MTU box, type the 1454.
Click in any other box, without changing the data there.
Click Save.
Click Exit.
Restart the computer.

Hopefully you be able to solve your network problems. Enjoy High-speed enabled Internet!!