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Finally I switched over from HFCL Connect broadband to HFCL Connect Always On to BSNL Dataone broadband. It has been some journey, starting with some love and hate relationship with HFCL Connect over an online bill payment, that the company (HFCL) claims they dont know about, but my Credit Card company says otherwise, and then Consumer Forum coming to my rescue.

After a settlement, and switch over to a fixed cost plan of Always On service @ 800/- per month. That ended within the first month itself, when I received an extreme bill for Rs. 3000/- for a fixed cost service with promised cost of no more than Rs. 800/- per month + tax. I guess its time to go to Consumer Forum again. Leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. Get some life HFCL, dont be a leech.

The deal from BSNl seems sweeter, with two months of free trial and comparatively lower bandwidth rates. I sincerely hope BSNL will not behave like the no so customer centric HFCL Connect (maybe HFCL wants to connect to my wallet only), and this new relation would be as good as the broadband speed they offer.

Now something about the BSNL Dataone:
Unlike HFCL Connect, BSNL Dataone seems to be favorite of Cracker Wannabe Ankle Biter Script Kiddies, who would keep on scanning your machines irrespective of what you do what you wont. I am getting on an average 20 port scans per minute from all over the world. Never mind, I just hope these kiddies wont use too much of my precious bandwidth.

NOTE:
BSNL does not know about GNU/ Linux and does not support Linux, atleast this was told by the customer support people, when I told them I use GNU/ Linux as my primary operating system. But you need not worry BSNL dataone work perfectly with GNU/ Linux. There are two ways to configure dataone on GN U/ Linux.

1. PPPoE: Please install and configure roaring penguins PPPoE package, as per instructions provided here.
   
2. The other way is to configure the built in PPPoE dialer of your ADSL modem. Instructins may vary from model to model. For some Huawei ADSL modems, you can find the instructions here.

I use roaring penguins PPPoE dialer. My procedure for configurations:

• yum install rp-pppoe
  
• adsl-setup

To dialout
/sbin/ifup ppp0

To disconnect
/sbin/ifdown ppp0

PS: This switchover means the graphs and information on where I am page will be incorrect for sometime.