Broadband has arrived in India not so long ago. But it has already reached the desks of almost all the internet users. Sadly though, the broadband service has not improved considering its exponentially growing popularity. This time my eye is on the premium Broadband Internet Service Providers in India and how they fair or fail to impress us in individual segments. So without much ado let us go there directly. Full article (892 words) »

I currently have 1Mbps connection from Tata Indicom & 256Kbps connection from BSNL, both broadband connections are load balanced with fail-over for reliability and greater effective bandwidth. I am planning to add a third connection, preferably Airtel Broadband.

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Leased Lines historically have been used as reliable, resilient internet and site-to-site data connections. The main benefits have been security, reliability, SLAs, private network and flexible speeds. Leased Lines were also known for high installation charges, long installation times, hefty monthly fees and unreasonable contracts. With the advent of cheap ADSL connections, Leased Lines have become as relevant as dinosaurs except for the most demanding businesses, especially when you can bond multiple ADSL lines to get reliable broadband at a fraction of the cost.

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Tata Indicom announced revised pricing for Infinity 1 Mbps broadband plan, applicable to new and existing customers (like us).

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That's about the best you can say about the 8 Mbps plans from Airtel. The starter Combo 1299 plan provides 8 mbps @ only Rs. 1299 per month. If you think that is good, think again. There is a big catch.

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I learned it the hard way. Our gateway machine with firewall (shorewall) has multiple ADSL connections configured with load balancing for more bandwidth and transparent fail-over. Today I faced an unenviable problem where one or other of the ADSL connections were going down sometime after a network restart. It was unique because the ADSL modems (configured as router) were accessible via telnet or ping and displayed perfect connectivity. However I was unable to use them as gateway to connect to a server on the internet. They were working fine before. With our non-trivial setup there were many suspects including the shorewall firewall and iptables (dropping certain packets?), network adapter, routing issue etc.

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Shorewall is an excellent free linux firewall which provides unparalleled level of fine grained control. It not only acts as a firewall and Gateway, it also supports DMZ, IP Masquerading (NAT & SNAT), Proxy ARP and more. In short Shorewall is your one stop solution for complex networking routing needs, flexible & controllable internet connectivity options.

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While comparing broadband packages from Tata Indicom and BSNL Dataone, I came across the revised pricing of another provider with whom I have a love-hate relationship. My last experience with them was ok.

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Modern DSL modems by default allows you to establish a DSL link through them to provide internet connectivity. The actual connection is handled by software running on your computer. The downside is that the client side software consumes your precious CPU cycles. Also the internet connectivity of your internal network is now dependent on a particular computer being up all the time. The good news is that most (A)DSL modems can be configured to do much more to make your life easier and solve all the above problems. Modern DSL modems are like a mini-computer. They can act as a router, a gateway with NAT support, Firewall, DHCP server and also as a DSL modem. Once you connect a properly configured ADSL modem to your hub or switch, all your computers will be automatically and transparently connected to the internet with firewall protection.

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The single biggest difference between Tata Indicom Broadband & BSNL Dataone Broadband is the upload speed. With BSNL your upload speed is limited to 5-7 KBPS. With Tata Indicom Broadband / VSNL your upload speed is limited to 512 KBPS.

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