Broadband?? Lets talk about “band” first…

So, when we had (alleged) 4Mbps connection for internet in the college, the most useful thing I ever did was to go to the imdb site to read the reviews. I never had to use internet in the college because the LAN was more than whatever I needed. LAN is one of the biggest thing I miss after my Room No:91 (and now now… I miss my friends too, but let us be very honest here you don’t even come close to my room and LAN okey? And ya truth hurts ;) shoo shoo).

But once you leave the cozy insulated realms of your college, the most important thing you have to bother about is – checking your mails and to have something so that we don’t die of boredom in the house. And its kinda given that being a lazy person as I am, I don’t like to cross the road to go to a cyber café. So, like any other normal person, I conspired to burn my dad’s hard-earned money by taking an internet connection.

But there was again one problem. I (ya me i.e.) had to go and search for the providers in our area. Baah, sounded like too much work so I did what every elder brother does. I called my younger brother and asked him to scamp around and get a good ISP provider. I did have to reason with him on why HE should go and search for the internet. A great manipulist that I am, it took me little time to brainwash him into doing all the dirty ground work. Now there was another ulterior motive. If the connection sucks, I will have somebody to pin the blame on J. Now that is quite a motive haan?

So after some time on a very fateful day we got the guys from “Sify Broadband” to set up an installation. Ok, everything was fine. Now after the installation I asked them what is their proxy’s IP. Those people were looking at me with eyes and mouth wide open. It gave me a kick imagining that those people thought that I am some kind of a bond. So, I decided to push further…

Moi : “Does your facility support Linux fedora core 3 and above?”
Stupid Sify Man(SSM): (Eyes wide open and so is his mouth)
Moi: “Ok ok you might not know that. So what Network topology did you use for giving this connection?”
SSM: (same expression as above with a little more animation)
Moi: “Ok, do you atleast know what routing algorithm you are using to direct the traffic coming from all the nodes you installed in this area?”
SSM: (his expression remained the same… but now I could hear a distant wolf howling and frogs croaking… in other words, there was a dead silence… like in a grave yard…no.. not the ones in a horror movie with all the “action”.. the normal grave yards…sheeesh.. you guys don’t know anything!)
Moi : “Ok now please tell me that you atleast know what the “tunneling” and “Socket programming” is and what is on the page no. 1691 of the “Networks for Bonds” text book”
SSM: “Saab aap hamare saab se baat karo… unka number yeh hai”

[I take that number and dial up… come to know that he calls himself the CTO of sify (lol)]

Moi : “Aapke bande ko proxy nahin pata… ab bina proxy ke main apne conf set kaise karronga haan? Chalo ab aap proxy address bataiye”

[The so called CTO turned out to be a more dumb than the SSM after all he is his boss right]

CTO: “haan..? praisiey?”
Moi : "Proxy … Proxy….!!"
CTO: “mujhe nahin pata saab aap yeh number le lo aur unse baat karo…”

Now you must note that I wasn’t using a toll free number and with each passing minute, Mr. Hutch was smirking at my expense. So, I cut the line and wait for the chips to fall in their place.

After a day or two after initial installation of the wires, I finally get the internet. This is where the real story starts. Never in my life have I seen anything more pathetic than this (maybe MyCrowSoft products… but I must accept the fact that it won by the slightest of margins for taking the crown of “THE WORST THING EVER”).

In the first 10 days of installation, the net was down for atleast a week. Even when it did come, the connection was something like this…

Now, I really wondered if these Sify people used coaxial cable or some ropes of bad quality. Then I thought that ropes if wet can atleast conduct some voltage and the proverbial binary “sunnas” and “ohns”. But the thingis that the Sify people used was just plain anti-conductor. There wasn’t a vestige of signal transfer in their network. The slightest of wind or god forbid rain could cause the whole network to collapse as reason does before a nincompoop. They expected their network to run in some test tube or in some vacuum…because, they didn’t give a damn to their customers anyway. So no oxygen for them, after all it is the customers’ fault to breathe oxygen and for being incapable of living in vacuum for their network’s sake!

I saw their ad on television and it had some sweet nothings like “reliability”, “high speed”, “customer service”and what nots and I almost puked in disgust.

Well it is against my code to use any names on my blog for the anonymity of my esteemed readers and the coterie of distinguished people surrounding me. But I had to take this “Sify Broadband”s name because I am of the opinion that I am “saving lives” here… hope you appreciate my integrity :).

So, owing to their abysmal service, I put up a big fight with the sify fellows and reprimand them for their stupid ISP. I ask them to refund the entire sum including the installation charges or get their asses kicked. So they decide to give me some local connection provided by some local vendor. But I have to tell you, it has been almost 2 days since the new connection and it is working great (there goes my inclination and trust in a "brand name"… these “Nobodies” delivered where an established bigwig in “broadband” failed miserably). So let me hope that this nice connection continues and lasts the innumerable downloads and BC or did I just praise these new guys too much prematurely?