Reliance BroadNet: My experiments with ISPs

I must confess I'm a media junkie. The last shutdown my poor souped up PC had was months back when the electricity fluctuated!

Reliance has put its ruddy foot in every aspect of my life. My own personal RIM (RIM to RIM free, which sustains my romantic life), the power (as you might have guessed) is also Reliance aka Reliance Energy, recently Reliance trapped me further with a bloody Fixed Wireless Phone (FWP) that has serious psychological issues with itself. All in all everything but my soul (I think) belongs to the Holy ‘R’.

I have a fetish for bandwidth; I’d rather download than play a game. I want all the games and software before my buddies even know they exist (cuz I love the look on their faces). With the miracle that is Torrents all that and more is just a few clicks (right clicks, saves, OKs, cancels etc. etc.) away.
I hereby furnish without prejudice my experience with ISPs:

Mantra Online : PSTN, was fun while 3.2 kB/s was exciting.Fast forward the broadband age!!Powersurfer : Dubious claimant to the broadband throne, should have been named ‘octogenarian surfer in comatose’ i.e., it sucked harder that Karan Johar on a lollypop.My local ISP donned the white suit of armor and rode to me on a silver stallion with:Sify : Who gave me, hold your breath, 5.4 kB/s !!! Man now I was happenin’ I could put a mp3 album for download and sit back for a week and hope that none of the other schmucks were using the net so I could sample the proverbial 64 kbps. Sify (The Sequel): I squealed like that pig in that movie when my ISP walla took pity me and hooked me up to a 64 kbps dedicated line. Is there a catch you ask? Of course yaar, the damn thing was missing 5 days out of the week! I paid for a month then used it for a week if the connection was in a friggin mood to stay on that much.Then I tried out nothing short of 7-10 different ISPs and 3 providers. None of them could sustain their connections long enough to justify the money I was paying them for unlimited connectivity. BTW I shot, stabbed, kicked and punched my Internetwalla for giving me false hope, and I shot him again in the head to make sure.

Along came TATA Broadband, and I was ever so excited, finally a bunch of guys who technically ran the internet gateway to our great nation.Two words, ‘failed promises’, it was running good for a while and surprisingly TATA was peddling connections at rates higher than what was being charged by local providers who were actually piggy backing off them in the first place. Oh yeah, the ‘but’, it klonked off one fine day and remained off for a good two weeks. Goodbye TATA.

Reliance sent this happy confused Sardar home to me one day to explain their rates, by now I was known by almost every internet walla guy in the area as the unhappiest dude ever. He talked and I listened, chalo, abhi no-one should say I didn’t give the Ambani’s a shot! 48 hrs and Rs. 500 later another likeable bunch of guys started yanking at wires around my house, plugged me up with a DSL modem and put my IP via DHCP. Logged me in and asked me to give it a shot. Fine but they all seem nice the first couple of days. Few days passed and I was actually able to download files at the actual calculated speed. Wow, I never felt that I would live to see that day. But it came and it stayed for good.

BroadNet has the following advantages:- Stable, has never ditched me.- Dedicated, the speed never fluctuates- DHCP, automatic configuration so n00bs don’t screw up
BroadNet has the following issues:- Customer support, they suck, plain and simple, those twits need your ‘subscriber id’ without which they can do diddly nothing for you, and they are useless even if you happen to reach them.- Login, I think Reliance could do better than having their subscribers’ login every 4 hours. The connection automatically logs you out after 4 hours. Then you got to go to http://www.reliancebroadband.co.in to login all over again.- Clueless employees, the ‘engineers’ who end up assisting you are newbies and panic the moment you say you know how to get to ‘Network Settings’

I have tasked ‘Automate 4’ to automatically log me in every 4 hours so that even if I’m not at the desk my downloads continue uninterrupted.

Software I recommend you use:1. Automate 4.2. Zonealarm Pro Suite.3. BitComet.4. Proxomitron.5. Getright.6. Opera.

It’s the best ISP I have had and I totally recommend it to everyone who has access to it.

I have downloaded 26 GB this month, trust me Torrents + Reliance BroadNet = One Happy Camper.

Lemme know guys of any dev. from your side! Cheers!