A recent business proposal required me to calculate the time taken to download huge files. Being a BSNL Dataone user, I was comparing it with various plans including the Home unlimited plan for Rs.900.

1 MB = 1024 KB = 1024 * 1024 bytes

= 1048576 bytes

= 1048576*8 = 8388608 bits

BSNL offers 256Kbps guaranteed speed with a maximum of 2Mbps. So you can theoretically download a 1Mb file in …well under 4 seconds. So that’s under ideal conditions. I have seen download progresses for my 256Kbps connections at the range of 200KB/s. A lot depends on the server’s bandwidth too.
So how much does a 1GB file take to download with a 1 Mbps connection ? From the above table, 8 seconds for 1MB = 8 *1024 for 1GB = 8192 seconds = 136.53 minutes = approximately 2 and a half hours..

Update as on 14-3-08
I’m getting a download speed of 312Kb/s on my home 500 plan which means the speeds are crossing the 2Mbps speeds.

Being one of the early adopters of GPRS in Kerala, I thought I knew what’s going on with BSNL GPRS. Time and again I was proved that my knowledge is limited. I wanted to change my GPRS Plan to Plan 199 and had thought that required a letter. I had suggested to BSNL employees and customer care how easy it would be if that was possible through SMS. In fact it was possible for Prepaid customers and I was told Postpaid users are less and the feature is likely not to be implemented. For me to give the letter to customer care I have to travel around 80 kms in total and wait for the activation. Now with my friend in BSNL office I was confident I could get it done fast. To my surprise I was told it can be done by sending an SMS.

So the procedure is as follows.

To deactivate BSNL GPRS on postpaid connection

Send an SMS to 53733 (3733 was the suggested number but with the new numbering an from the reply SMS no that I got it should be 53733) with the following message.

GPRSD

For activating Plan49 send GPRS49 and for Plan 199 send GPRS199 to 53733. You’ll get a reply SMS asking for confirmation to which you got to reply with GPRS49Y and GPRS199Y respectively. The activation seems to take more time than deactivation and it could take upto 24hours.

The important thing about the service was that it was notified by BSNL officially and it will probably work for only customers in the south zone.

A search with google lead to this doc http://www.ap.bsnl.co.in/mmsgprs/Portal%20link%20documents/Manual-Device+Settings.doc Why can’t they summarize the information and present it decently ? Looks like I got to do it, with all major mobile service providers, their data plans, APN names, activation and deactivation procedures etc would make good blog post.

Yesterday I happened to go to Calicut BSNL office. I had an issue with my mobile connection where call forwarding didn’t work. I tried changing the mobile and trying various options, but no luck. Called customer care and they asked to do the usual stuff, turn off the mobile, remove SIM, blah blah. Its really difficult to convey the message that you are technically competent and don’t want to try stupidities ordered by them.

The best part of yesterdays’ trip was that I had a friend, who solved my problem. He made a call and they admitted there was a problem with my no. and after 2 minutes, said it was solved and it just worked. While I was sitting at my friend’s office, I found somebody sitting behind me trying to get GPRS working. Being one of the first customers of BSNL’s GPRS I knew the solution, except for the fact the laptop to be configured was in Vista.

So here’s the important information that you need to know for configuring GPRS on laptop,desktop for BSNL post paid connection.

1. Install and ensure the modem driver for your mobile is installed.
   (Once everything is done, you’ll find an additional COM port in ports of device manage and a mobile under modems)
2. Create a dial up connection entry,
   Username : Mobilenumber (don’t put a 0 before the number)
   Password : Mobilenumber (don’t put a 0 before the number)
   Dialup Number: *99#
   UPDATE: replace the above dialup number with *99***1#
   In the properties of the new connection entry, ensure that the modem selected is the newly created modem.
   (If you try to connect with these two steps, the connection will progress till authentication. After that you’ll get a PPP link error. The next step is important to prevent that)
3. Go to device manager select modems, and right click for options of the mobile modem. Click on Advanced and add this to the extra initialization settings.
   AT+CGDCONT=,”IP”,”bsnlsouth”
   UPDATE: replace the above with AT+CGDCONT=,”IP”,”gprssouth.cellone.in”
   Click OK
4. That’s it, now connect using the new connection and you should be able to browse the net and do whatever.

Side Note : BSNL officially has not acknowledged that it supports EDGE, but it supports EDGE (Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE)) on select towers, mainly in big towns and cities. The speed is dependent on the network traffic and can have high speed, when the network is not busy. The problem is there’s no way in most mobiles to differentiate between normal GPRS (speed less than 44kbps) and EDGE (can be as high as 236Kbps).
Go in for the unlimited plan if

1) Your area has EDGE.
2) You are using Internet from a laptop or desktop.

Feel free to ask and comment on your success or failure with the above steps.

BSNL with its stupid scheme of having the first 3 letters of the username followed by 123. With my delphi skills and couple of hours I could harvest around 20 working passwords from just 4 or 5 google pages. Whose was the stupid idea I don’t know, but if u haven’t changed it yet, don’t delay any more. Most have not changed it as bsnl has configured ppoe on the modem and dialout is automatic. Most people have no clue on configuring the modem via telnet or browser.

I’m stuck, I made a mistake of not disconnecting before starting the session of the free period from 2am. Now the free period bw is calculated as charged and I have used up almost my complete free limit.

On another note they seem to have a problem in which the wan users appear on the LAN. My office computer got virus infected.

Quick Usage Finder for DAtaone is now usable, more features to be added. Looks like I’ll use pandela for my new updated website. The tool which is in pre alpha testing stage is available for download at http://sunish.pandela.org/downloads/DataOne.rar

I was digging around the net for a solution to have shared net access on my Haweui MT841 modem (ADSL Gateway). It has 4 ethernet ports (that can be used as a switch), 1 USB and WIFI (which apparantly requires a separate PCMCIA card to get it working). My laptop doesn’t have an ethernet interface (I know its high time to upgrade) but it has an USB interface and I wanted the ADSL modem to act as a switch and also wanted ICS. Microsoft ICS(Internet Connection Sharing) will not work as the ethernet interface of the PC is used to connect using bsnl broadband and the same interface is used by PPPoe (PPP over ethernet). I serached the forums of http://vinuthomas.com, and found about wireless configuration of MT841. With that info and after saving the present configuration, I deleted all the PVCs and added a new PVC0 with PPPoe, gave the username and password. The BSNL DNS ip address for DNS was given and I also enabled DHCP on the modem. After saving the settings and rebooting the modem, it automatically connected to the net and I could access the net from my laptop and desktop.

Lessons learnt.
ADSL modem configuration in a bridged as well as PPPoe configuration is not all that difficult.
The USB port is just like a USB to ethernet converter
The initial configuration that BSNL used to give was in a bridged fashion without PPPoe from the PC but later installations used PPoe from the PC.

Apparantly RASPPPoe lets you do Microsoft ICS and is more efficient than Microsoft version of PPPoe.

Took another bsnl broadband connection. This time the modem came with a USB connection. It can act as a switch too. Too good an offer since I wanted both. There’s support for wireless too, but the pcmcia card that was supposed to be there was not in the carton.So now there’s 800 MB of download, all for free.

Yesterday went through the skype developer zone. It reminded me of the old VOIP thingie I used to do @ Telematics in Dubai. It was so exciting, but the major difference was the call quality.Found some interesting DIY projects including one for skype at http://www.grynx.com/. Lots of nice projects.

Thanks to BSNL its possible to have 2 simultaneous logins and logging in different place with same username for broadband. Life’s good. I can use my friends’ night unlimited connection and download service packs in the morning till 8am. And now the good news is that there’s the unlimited plan for Rs900. It would turn out cheaper if my brother in law in UAE takes broadband and does skype.

Work on the IE datone logger and ip mailer is going on without much progress as I get carried away, like a kid with a new toy, being broadband.

Technorati : bsnl broadband

I finally got BSNL broadband after the long wait.Can you believe that I have 256kbps bandwidth in Perambra, a small town in Kerala. I must say, so far things are excellent. The best part is its free for 2 months. Ofcourse the data is limited to 400mb. It doesn’t matter I have found ways to solve that problem.