For the past few days, there are quite a lot of discussions going on in
ILUGC mailing list about various broadband services. Yesterday I got
Sify broadband for my home PC. I thought that it would be of some use to
share my experience with Sify.
I am residing at Chinmaya Nagar, Virugambakkam. The main reason that I
went for Sify is that there was no other service provider in my area
(ignoring dial-up). Touchtel is not having copper in this area. No Hathway.
The installation charge was INR. 3000. Since I had my own ehternet card
(nVidia nForce MCP), I haven't paid that extra INR.500 for the ethernet
adapter. The way the wire the PC is through RJ45 cable. The nearest
switch from my home was about 130m. They used CAT 5E cable. My PC runs
Fedora Core 2 and Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional. The dealer said
that he will configure the Windows network setup for me so that I can
use the same thing for Linux as well. He was having no idea of Linux. My
PC was given 10.x.x.x IP address and he gave me a couple of nameservers
to use. Once the Windows network setup was completed, he went to one of
the Sify login servers and downloaded the Sify login tool for Windows.
While starting the setup, it asked to uninstall the Norton Antivirus
2004 that I had on my system. It forced me to use McAfee virus scanner.
I said to the dealer that I don't want to use McAfee, instead I would
like to stay with the exisiting NAV 2004. He called up some technical
guys mananging the firewall (sify's) sitting at Tidel park to change the
policy for my IP address. Once they did it I installed the Sify login
tool without any problem.
The dealer then logged in using his account and created a user name for
me. I bought the package "9pm to 9am, 128kbps, unlimited bandwidth". It
costs INR. 360. The dealer left once everything was working fine.
Then I rebooted into Fedora Core 2. Once I got up the prompt, I was
shocked to see the ethernet link status as disconnected. I was wondering
why it is so. Again I rebooted into Windows and found that it was
working. I struggled for more than 15 minutes and later I found that the
problem was because that the speed setting of the card was in
"Autonegotiate" mode. Then I changed it to "10BaseT-HD" using 'mii-tool'
after which the link was up. I downloaded the login tool for Linux from
their login server. Tried once under Fedora, suceeded and rebooted. I
have tested the speed both in Windows and Fedora. It was ranging from
120-128kbps. So far so good.
Then I inserted my Debian 3.0r1 installation CD, installed the core
system and immediately upgraded to the Sarge with my local Sarge CD set
which is almost one year old. After which, I pointed apt to the
Singapore Debian mirror and did a dist-upgrade. Then I installed Gnome
(2.6) and KDE over Internet. Throughout the installation, the speed was
ranging from 15.8 kBps to 16kBps. Absolutely good. Last night itself, I
downloaded around 600 MB without any problem. Not even a single
disconnection.
I am more than happy with this product. True value for INR. 360.
Just my 2 cents.
Praveen.