Many years ago, dial-up internet was a cool thing. You dialed-in via the POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) twisted-pair line that terminated at your home and were greeted
with the modem static noise & then you got connected to the Web at a measly bitrate
of say max. 56kbps. And you were happy, because there was nothing else available.
Ofcourse, even in India where simple things take years to happen, broadband came in,
offered by the Govt. behemoth BSNL and other private operators and quickly the whole
world had jumped in to enjoy hi-speed internet.
Except ofcourse yours truly, who had various reasons to not go the broadband way :
i) I am anyway spending my non-sleeping hours at office where we have a leased line
with much better speed.
ii) I am anyway going to move to Kerala (yeah, long time dream) - so why bother ?
iii) etc etc
So, on the very rare occasions that I needed to check something on the net, I would
still go dial-up. Ofcourse after clicking on a link, I had enough time to put a pot of tea
on the cooking range and by the time I was back, the page would be just loading.
And then last month I decided enough was enough & summoned the courage to land up
at a BSNL customer service centre for a broadband connection. After about a week of
applying, some souls from BSNL landed up at my place & put a broadband connection
in place.
I assumed that all my worries of net connectivity were over. Ofcourse, that was not the
case. Over the last month, I saw that the modem takes its own sweet time to come up
and get connected. And as soon as I heave a sigh of relief and get online, the connection
is disrupted.
This becomes doubly irritating because of the additional effort and time involved in
connecting to my office network via VPN using a SoftToken key, which is a process in
itself. So everytime net connectivity is lost, the VPN connection also breaks and I need
to start all over again.
Yesterday, after reaching home around 10:30 PM, I realised that I forgot to send out
some details that my manager had asked for. So, I decide to get online and send off the
email. I switch on the modem and after a few minutes, all the relevant lights on the
front-panel are on, indicating that everything is fine.
Wireless connectivity indicates strength to be 80% and shows 'connected', which means
I am ready to surf. But No, I can't get on the internet. I try a few things - check settings,
try wired-connectivity, reset modem etc, but still no connectivity.
As I curse BSNL and am about to give up, I see another available wireless connection in
the list. It just says "Senthil", which I assume must be the name of one of my neighbours
in the adjoining flats and whose net connection has been configured with his name.
The signal strength is only 20%, but what surprises me is that my laptop has locked-on
to and connected to that connection. And guess what I am online. I VPN into my office
network, send out the email, check my mails, reply to some urgent ones and inspite of
the 20% strength, it was not slow by any means. Work done, I log off the connection.
If I knew that inspite of having my own broadband connection, I would need to rely
on someone else's net account, I would not have opted for a connection of my own.
So, Senthil, thanks for helping me out, albeit unknowingly. And sorry for adding a few
hundred KB to your data usage.
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