On March 1st I requested Airtel to switch my current 256kbps unlimited plant to 2Mbmps limited (3GB) plan. (For more details on Airtel new plans, check this post)
After making multiple calls to Airtel customer service, the plan switch is finally done today.
Nice to see downloads happening at 1.5-1.8Mb/second and nice to watch YouTube videos without any “buffering” 🙂
However access to my blog is still hopeless !! I guess I should switch to a better hosting !!
By the way anybody knows about a good bandwidth tracking tool ? With my previous unlimited bandwidth plan, I didn’t have to worry about usage, but with the current 3GB limitation I have to think before downloading something !
Hoping for a unlimited plan from Airtel soon 🙂
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And how much more are u having to shell out for the 2Mbps plan?
Hehe…Venu, I dont think the 3GB limit is going to go away anytime soon!
Or atleast until BSNL takes away their limit on their 2Mbps plans 🙂
BTW, thanks for reminding…am getting mine upgraded.
Vedu
Did you pay anything extra for the upgrade?
Even if there is nothing extra, I would not go for an upgrade. With the 256 kbps itself, I am downloading at least 500 mb per day. If I upgrade, I would finish my 3 GB quota in a single day. To me, 256 kbps is a decent speed, where I can download 15-20 GB per month!
congrats venu, i think you should check out this post of mine. . .it will get you and idea why Airtel is not seriously pushing its 2 mbps plans. . .and btw make sure you are fore-warned before you start using this plan full fledged. . .WARNING!!!!! read my claculations on how fast your 3GB limit can get over. . .
vedu, this for you too…
“Hehe…Venu, I dont think the 3GB limit is going to go away anytime soon!”
http://www.theanand.com/blog/index.php/life-living-it/airtel-2mbps-plans-warning/
Suraj, There is no need to shell out more money, only that you need to compromise on the download limit !
Vedu, 3GB might be little less, I often download SUSE releases and its around 3GB !!
By the way the customer representative was saying that they will introduce unlimited download plan as well !!!
Vasu, nothing extra for the upgrade and I am just trying it out for one month and then I will rollback, I also need unlimited download limit 🙂 Also check with airtel, if they can upgrade your 256kbps to 512kbps unlimited. Airtel is offering free 512kbps upgrade for 12 months !!
Anand, you do have an intersting view, but my point would be that what would take 1hr on a 256kbps connection would probably take 1/8th of the same 1hour.
Venu,
Here is what TRAI says on unlimited broadband usage in India . Hope this makes some sense on the tariff calculation for unlimited broadband usage. 🙂
You may try the freemeter from Sourceforge.net for tracking bandwidth. I have not tried it as I never needed it. I did not want to give out the link as I am afraid that my comment may go into spam filter if you have any for reaching the threshold for number of links in a comment. 😉 Hope you can google out for the freemeter.
You are hosting it in India or abroad? If you are looking for a good host, I will suggest you dreamhost.com. They have better and cheap hosting plans. I am speaking about shared hosting and not dedicated ones. I am a happy customer with them for more than a year now.
Oops! freemeter is for windows and I assume (looking at the FF snapshot) that you are using MAC OSX. If that is the case, Surplusmeter should help you. 🙂
Hi Karthick,
Thanks for the info, I will try out Freemeter and nope I am not using a Mac, its the theme thats fooling you 🙂
Oh good! I would not say that I thought so. 😉 What happened to my first comment? Caught under spam filter?
Yes indeed, your comment was caught by Akismet inspite of you not including the link 🙂
I am currently on GoDaddy and I am not so happy with the hosting, especially the MySQL access is very slow I believe.
I am up for renew in April; should decide on a new hosting by then 🙂
hey ,
i stay in delhi jus got the airtel 2mbps 699 combo plan activated…
however im getting download speeds of only 55 kB/s which is nearly the same as a 512k connection…
browsing speeds are also the same…
i dont know whether to stay with this plan or not.
dont know how u guys are getting 1.7 mbps!!!!!! 🙁
Hi Rohan,
I am not sure whether this is intentional, but this seems to be a common problem with everyone who is upgrading to 2Mbps and this happened to me also.
When I requested for upgrade to 2mpbs, I was given a call the next day and told that its upgraded
I run a test at http://speedtest.touchtelindia.net and the max speed is somewhere near to 512kbps
I had to call up Airtel atleast 5 times and finally I got it upgraded to 2mbps
Many of my friends who upgraded faced the same situation. Airtel upgrades only to 512. I hope its not intentional from Airtel.
So do a speed check and if its still around 512kbps, you are not upgraded to 2mbps. Call airtel and get it corrected soon 🙂
I don’t think this is intentional at all, try calling up the c.care, i think ther is some limitation in the modem that causes this….our dsl guys can do that! . . .hope it gets corrected. . . . .all the best rohan!
hey ,
yeah when i called up airtel ysterday and they sent an engineer the same day and he opened up some ports and now its 2 mbps 🙂
speeds are awesome!!
thanks
aha! see what i mean. . .hope you read my article at my site abt the 2mbps plan ka danger….
http://www.theanand.com/blog/index.php/life-living-it/airtel-2mbps-plans-warning/
comments invited…..browse on!
Nice, although what good is a ferrari if its got no fuel in it? 🙂 These speeds increase temptation to download , game online and stream more videos. Therefore 3gb is practically nothing for an average user.
yeah thats right…
but the 2 mbps plans r only meant for the rich guy who wants d best of evrything or for comp. geeks to try n all.. but practically speaking u can only use it for all ur surfing and max 1 movie a mnth (or ocassionally videos on youtube n songs) or sumthing..
i tried the 3 gb limit plan for a cple of mths and hav switched bac to 256 unlmtd…
gona wait for sum interesting night top up plan with 2 mbps which mite jus be on its way…
Hi Venu,
You may use PRTG (Paessler Router Traffic Grapher) for monitoring your bandwidth usage. It’s one of the best for this purpose – it can not only monitor the usage continuously, since it runs as a service once you have enabled snmp on your pc, it can also give you alerts when bandwidth limits (or even system parameter limits) are crossed – it can execute a batch file or even send you mail if you so configure it. The program is free for individual use, which differs from its commercial cousin by the number of sensors it can monitor at a time – the free version can monitor 3 sensors simultaneously, which is more than sufficient. You can monitor net usage by 2 independent means – snmp and packet sniffing.
heard that tata is providing that 2mbps @ about 2500 or so….they do provide the speeds they claim for sure…
Arun, Thats a pretty cool tool. Looks like a very professional tool. will use it and see how it goes. Thanks for pointing it out.
Yes Venu, it certainly is one damn good piece of software, meant for managers of very large networks, including cisco routers, but can also be used by home users. The difference between snmp and packet switching is that while the former creates the minimal load on the cpu, it gives the basic data in, data out info and their sum, which is what we essentially require. While snmp can be used to monitor memory usage, cpu load etc, packet sniffing can analyse and give information about data that has been transmitted through various ports – pop, smtp, http, https, netbios, ftp, irc, etc. This does put additional load on the cpu though and data packets may not be monitored when cpu load exceeds 70 %. The other good thing I found with prtg is that it can create reports about bandwidth usage, among other things, based on the time of the day too. This comes in extremely handy when you have unlimited usage during certain hours of the day and you’d like to keep a track of data transfers at other times. I switched over from Airtel to bsnl as the latter allows unlimited downloads from 0200 to 0800 hrs. at blazing fast speeds – 1.8 mbps actual – I have downloaded about 4.5 gb in 6 hrs (800 mb/hour). Server down time has been few and far in between for the last 3 months that I have been using bsnl.
hi venu
what are the charge for 2 mbps (3gb) plan. in from lucknow (Up) and there is know info about this
Sunny, the 2mbps plan with 3GB download limit costs 900RS here in Bangalore (Karnataka)
I think its around much the same here too. . .rates have changed a lot since I left. speaking of this, hows your billing with this plan venu? Normal or anything extra large as I warned? 😀
Anand, Actually I am within the limit of 3GB 🙂 Most of the times its around 2.5 – 2.7.