I am a prepaid user and one thing that really irritate me is that every month i have to recharge my mobile. So i usually opt for Rs 5000/- of the BSNL excel recharge during festive season which gives me 7500 talktime and that too for full one year. This is better than the postpaid connection, where the charges are comparable but you still have to pay the bills monthly.
Another option i found was recharge through internet. One was the ICICI site through the internet banking portal. I tried recharging Rs 60/- for a vodafone connection in Kerala. To my horror i find the talktime got by the vodafone customer at the other end is just Rs15.40/-. So be careful. I will update this blog once i get into the details. It was mentioned that ICICI does not charge anything for the service.
Another site was FastRecharge which allow quite a wide range of recharge even for BSNL (but restricted to chennai). This though i have not transferred any mobile currency through it looks promising, except for the long process involved in transfer. Here again i have to see if there are any catches like in the ICICI case. I will update this blog further based on my further research about this site.
Now BSNL has also started a new online service for pre-paid recharge at their website. This is free of cost though sometimes their server is down, so have patience!! You need to register in their website initially. Also the password you select has to be all CAPITAL letter and can contain number. You should have exactly 8 character. Once you register you can use it and is instantaneous. I have done it twice both for recharge and top-up. So enjoy another good service from BSNL.
Monday, December 31, 2007
Friday, December 28, 2007
Bittorrent Principle
Over the last few days i have been downloading quite a bit using bittorrent and optimally using my Home 500 plan of BSNL. Now i was rather intrigued by how this whole thing works. They have various parameters which are displayed but what constitute the fundamental means of co-operation in torrent. Though i did not see any one paper on that, i have run through lot of comments and opinions in different discussion sites. So this is my finding.
Bittorrent works on tit-for-tat scheme. That is, the more willing you are to upload the more download is allowed. It has an inbuilt mechanism for randomizing the selection so that there is no one congested seed or peer. Another concept which is in vogue in bittorrent is the concept of upload to download ratio. Ideally this should be one. But this is just a parameter to find how altruistic you are nothing to do with how much you can download or what the average download speed is. If it was that way, then all the ADSL2+ guys like BSNL Home 500 plan.
In actual scenario, depending on the distance of your DSL modem to the central DSLAM (DSL access multiplexer), technology allows for 24 Mbps download and 8 Mbps upload. So even the best altruistic guy in a unlimited plan with no restriction of upload, download speeds can best achieve a ratio of 25%. So ratio cannot be a means of the altruistic nature.
So if you do not restrict your upload speed you can get a better download speed. And all other parameters in bit torrent is useless as far as you download rate are concerned.
Tit-for-Tat- Is it the best strategy?
As a foot note i would like to add how this strategy is considered best by Nature.
Is this the best strategy? It is seen that nature also have converged on a tit-for-tat strategy for many of the natural phenomena. For example, how many times you have seen two dogs screaming at each other but never attacking, as an attack can hurt both. On the other hand, there can be some other advantages like getting a finite amount of food (if shared then both will die) or getting a mate. So if there is a clash in aspirational values compared to survival value, nature have hardwired all the living being to select the latter. So it may be fine to fight for food but may not be for mate. Also through your experience (which is seeing the opponent in action over a period of time) you can just repeat the strategy your opponent did last time and that can be a optimal strategy. This is also hard wired as an optimal strategy else the poor mate would be alone!!
So this assumes my strategy is dependent on the opponent and vice versa, but then this is a chicken and egg problem!! How do you break it? Randomly!! and the one who breaks this vicious circle is a leader (up to the leader to decide if he has to be good or bad) and then the opponent is a follower. As leader randomizes the algorithm, his strategy is always risky and hence there are very few leaders and lots of followers (all the peers and leachers in torrent)!! Followers are nature configured, leader is the randomizer in that. So leader (as in the original seed in bittorrent) is the initiator and then based on his start the whole cycle may end up in a good or bad state.
For more on this may be spend some time with the fascinating world of game theory!!
Bittorrent works on tit-for-tat scheme. That is, the more willing you are to upload the more download is allowed. It has an inbuilt mechanism for randomizing the selection so that there is no one congested seed or peer. Another concept which is in vogue in bittorrent is the concept of upload to download ratio. Ideally this should be one. But this is just a parameter to find how altruistic you are nothing to do with how much you can download or what the average download speed is. If it was that way, then all the ADSL2+ guys like BSNL Home 500 plan.
In actual scenario, depending on the distance of your DSL modem to the central DSLAM (DSL access multiplexer), technology allows for 24 Mbps download and 8 Mbps upload. So even the best altruistic guy in a unlimited plan with no restriction of upload, download speeds can best achieve a ratio of 25%. So ratio cannot be a means of the altruistic nature.
So if you do not restrict your upload speed you can get a better download speed. And all other parameters in bit torrent is useless as far as you download rate are concerned.
Tit-for-Tat- Is it the best strategy?
As a foot note i would like to add how this strategy is considered best by Nature.
Is this the best strategy? It is seen that nature also have converged on a tit-for-tat strategy for many of the natural phenomena. For example, how many times you have seen two dogs screaming at each other but never attacking, as an attack can hurt both. On the other hand, there can be some other advantages like getting a finite amount of food (if shared then both will die) or getting a mate. So if there is a clash in aspirational values compared to survival value, nature have hardwired all the living being to select the latter. So it may be fine to fight for food but may not be for mate. Also through your experience (which is seeing the opponent in action over a period of time) you can just repeat the strategy your opponent did last time and that can be a optimal strategy. This is also hard wired as an optimal strategy else the poor mate would be alone!!
So this assumes my strategy is dependent on the opponent and vice versa, but then this is a chicken and egg problem!! How do you break it? Randomly!! and the one who breaks this vicious circle is a leader (up to the leader to decide if he has to be good or bad) and then the opponent is a follower. As leader randomizes the algorithm, his strategy is always risky and hence there are very few leaders and lots of followers (all the peers and leachers in torrent)!! Followers are nature configured, leader is the randomizer in that. So leader (as in the original seed in bittorrent) is the initiator and then based on his start the whole cycle may end up in a good or bad state.
For more on this may be spend some time with the fascinating world of game theory!!
Friday, December 14, 2007
Bit torrent and BSNL dataone
As per the statistics peer-to-peer constitute 52% of all the traffic on Internet. What is driving all this and how can a Home 500 dataone connection guy use maximum out of it?
1. You can download and install bit torrent. There are multiple other torrent and the most used and the smallest size torrent tool is utorrent, which is a stripped down version of the bit torrent.
2. In case you want to know more about the concept of torrent read from wikipedia.
3. Now in case you want to download some e-books or some other stuff, search " torrent".
4. download the torrent file and execute it with bit torrent and it starts downloading.
5. Follow the instruction in options->speed guide else download rates will be low especially the one regarding port forwarding.
6. There is a scheduler (cntrl+P), for home 500 uses schedule it for 0200 to 0800 AM. Pl note that you can get a speed of as high as 200KBps or 60MB per 5 min (or Rs 48/-)!! so in case your clock is not synchronized do it to the standard time. Else keep the corner points like 2 Am and 8 Am in limited download mode.
7. Keep more than 2-3 downloads in torrent at one time to maximize the downloads. Keep number of active downloads at 3.
8. Be altruistic to get good speed. If the seed and peer are in India then you can get a good speed else it depends, so dont get frustrated if you do not get the speed you had expected. I am able to get more than 100KBps with three downloads happening simultaneously.
9. In Parallel use FlashGet with flashgot as i had mentioned in my earlier blog to squeeze out all the maximum data rate.
I heard of some cribs that they are not getting good speed and in most of the case i found they had bought the DSL CPE themselves. I was involved in some way with the planning phase of broadband architecture in BSNL through my company. My advice never try to buy third party modem esp for BSNL. It may be ok for Bharti and others, so even if you have to pay slightly large buy CPE modem from BSNL.
Enjoy surfing.. Enjoy DataOne..
1. You can download and install bit torrent. There are multiple other torrent and the most used and the smallest size torrent tool is utorrent, which is a stripped down version of the bit torrent.
2. In case you want to know more about the concept of torrent read from wikipedia.
3. Now in case you want to download some e-books or some other stuff, search "
4. download the torrent file and execute it with bit torrent and it starts downloading.
5. Follow the instruction in options->speed guide else download rates will be low especially the one regarding port forwarding.
6. There is a scheduler (cntrl+P), for home 500 uses schedule it for 0200 to 0800 AM. Pl note that you can get a speed of as high as 200KBps or 60MB per 5 min (or Rs 48/-)!! so in case your clock is not synchronized do it to the standard time. Else keep the corner points like 2 Am and 8 Am in limited download mode.
7. Keep more than 2-3 downloads in torrent at one time to maximize the downloads. Keep number of active downloads at 3.
8. Be altruistic to get good speed. If the seed and peer are in India then you can get a good speed else it depends, so dont get frustrated if you do not get the speed you had expected. I am able to get more than 100KBps with three downloads happening simultaneously.
9. In Parallel use FlashGet with flashgot as i had mentioned in my earlier blog to squeeze out all the maximum data rate.
I heard of some cribs that they are not getting good speed and in most of the case i found they had bought the DSL CPE themselves. I was involved in some way with the planning phase of broadband architecture in BSNL through my company. My advice never try to buy third party modem esp for BSNL. It may be ok for Bharti and others, so even if you have to pay slightly large buy CPE modem from BSNL.
Enjoy surfing.. Enjoy DataOne..
Monday, December 10, 2007
DataOne Connection
In continuing with my adventures with BSNL connection, now finally i can see my usage stats. And indeed in Home 500 plan 2AM to 8 AM is free!! So enjoy the power of speed!!
Few more findings..
- One consume 20MB/hr for browsing (on an average and depends on the site you visit) excl youtube etc..
- Now a new link has come up for at least bangalore users which indicates "Broadband Customers Please Click Here to Login". This allow to see billed and unbilled statistics in a detailed manner
Get some Flashget and then run this download manager to tweak out max speed from your connection. If you are a firefox browser user like me install FlashGot add-on which allows you a single mechanism to download the entire set of links.. Enjoy speed!!
Few more findings..
- One consume 20MB/hr for browsing (on an average and depends on the site you visit) excl youtube etc..
- Now a new link has come up for at least bangalore users which indicates "Broadband Customers Please Click Here to Login". This allow to see billed and unbilled statistics in a detailed manner
- Once in a while it does not work.. so try try try again!!
- Somehow even though i have not crossed 2.5GB it is indicated some charges. Not sure of that. I hope finally they will reduce this.. else i will be bankrupt!!
- This can be cut and pasted into a excel and then use your excel skill to figure how much exact download you did in the non-peak hour. For me it still is far below 2.5GB but only the first bill can tell me if my calculations are right :)
Get some Flashget and then run this download manager to tweak out max speed from your connection. If you are a firefox browser user like me install FlashGot add-on which allows you a single mechanism to download the entire set of links.. Enjoy speed!!
Site statistics and tracking
If you had ever wondered how to track the number of people who are coming on to any website and of them how many returning visitors, check out statcounter. Register yourself and through a series of steps it will allow you to get a java code which you would need to get installed in the source code of your website.
It is a very user friendly website, except for the impatient like me it is rather a torturous set of questions before you can get your code generated by these guys. Once the code is installed, you can login to their site and see some real details of your website viewers. It can even filter you out (as u will be going to that site to change it or update it..) provided you have a static IP. else all you have to do is reduce the count they display by one!!
Also recently i got introduced to Google Analytics which provide excellent view of all you need to know about the site visitors and their location, speed of connection and host of other things. So now i would recommend this rather than statcounter, as this is closely linked with your Google ecosystem. One problem with Google statistics is the data is 24 hrs old and does not give instantaneous statistics like statcounter.
So keep a stat of your site..
It is a very user friendly website, except for the impatient like me it is rather a torturous set of questions before you can get your code generated by these guys. Once the code is installed, you can login to their site and see some real details of your website viewers. It can even filter you out (as u will be going to that site to change it or update it..) provided you have a static IP. else all you have to do is reduce the count they display by one!!
Also recently i got introduced to Google Analytics which provide excellent view of all you need to know about the site visitors and their location, speed of connection and host of other things. So now i would recommend this rather than statcounter, as this is closely linked with your Google ecosystem. One problem with Google statistics is the data is 24 hrs old and does not give instantaneous statistics like statcounter.
So keep a stat of your site..
Friday, December 07, 2007
DataOne Connection
After a long wait i got a dataone connection from BSNL. Now i am not able to see how much i consumed and then we had animated discussion on the various options.
I have a Home 500 scheme and which has unlimited download from 2AM to 8AM and during this period u can get excess rate of 2Mbps. Is this better than Rs 900/- unlimited plan but rate limited to 256Kbps. So in the latter you can download around 2.5GB/day while in the former (assuming all downloads happen only in the free period at 1.5Mbps) we get 4GB/day. So it makes sense to go for the Home 500 scheme, as the charge is less. The only drawback seems to be it needs planning to keep all ur high download things for night.
Most downloads are peer to peer downloads using Bit Torrent. This allows to schedule your download for the night and hence planning is not so painful. now i heard a rumor that we need to reboot at 2 to get this free download. I checked with the BSNL call center and they confirmed no such intricacies are there. There is some problem and i have not been able to verify how much is my data usage.
As expected from BSNL they are not helpful in this aspect and i itself would have to figure out. i got some freeware exclusively for dataone connections but does not seem to work for me.
I will spend a whole blog on bit torrent and tell you how to optimize it, the dos and donts with dataone connection.
I have a Home 500 scheme and which has unlimited download from 2AM to 8AM and during this period u can get excess rate of 2Mbps. Is this better than Rs 900/- unlimited plan but rate limited to 256Kbps. So in the latter you can download around 2.5GB/day while in the former (assuming all downloads happen only in the free period at 1.5Mbps) we get 4GB/day. So it makes sense to go for the Home 500 scheme, as the charge is less. The only drawback seems to be it needs planning to keep all ur high download things for night.
Most downloads are peer to peer downloads using Bit Torrent. This allows to schedule your download for the night and hence planning is not so painful. now i heard a rumor that we need to reboot at 2 to get this free download. I checked with the BSNL call center and they confirmed no such intricacies are there. There is some problem and i have not been able to verify how much is my data usage.
As expected from BSNL they are not helpful in this aspect and i itself would have to figure out. i got some freeware exclusively for dataone connections but does not seem to work for me.
I will spend a whole blog on bit torrent and tell you how to optimize it, the dos and donts with dataone connection.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)