You should be in India if you have got anything at all to do with hosting. There is not one single web hosting company in the US that doesnt have something to do with India. Be it backend support, server monitoring, billing assitance or anything at all, companies would have tied up with someone in India for help.

So, if you happen to be running such a company in India, what is most suitable for you for internet connectivity? One major problem in India are frequent powercuts. The Electricity department is not good anywhere throughout the country. Corruption, and non maintenance of cables are the only reason. But this situation is changing in several parts of the country. Then again you have got UPS systems installed, if you are in serious business. So power is not something that we  should be worrying about.

BSNL provides you with the worst of services Never go for them. Airtel has got their own trans oceanic cable laid from Chennai to Singapore, so their service is supposed to be very good. Tata Indicom, formerly VSNL too has a good line that is connecting directly somewhere, but there are disruptions in the service. Never make the mistake of getting a connection from Relianc, Hathway is good, but DNS problems occur often.

You need to choose between a leased line and a broad band connection and the data transfer volume that you would require, which would depend on the number of PCs that you might be having at your facility. Instead of getting 1 single 2 Mbps line, you could go for 10×256 kbps lines, which might cost you a bit more, but you will have consistency of data flow to systems without any breakage.

Remember that you would be using a lot of server software to connect to and to monitor remote servers. You need lots and lots of data transfer limit, and a limited 2 Mbps connection would never suffice.

I have been using the same modem for about a year now, and for the past few days since I got my unlimited data transfer internet connection, I am surprised at the work that it is doing. Im downloading all sorts of stuff, and my computer is plugged to a 2 hour backup power supply as well, and Pondicherry not being a very bad place wehre power goes down for over 2 hours at a streatch, the computer and the modem have literally been running for over 2 months at a streatch now since july 1st when my plan changed to unlimited 512 kbps from 2 Mbps limited.

If you are outside India, you might laugh at this cos probably you might be on a 10 Mbps connection while reading this, but in India owning a 512 Kbps connection is like owning a Rolls Royce. I sit before this computer for about 6 hours a day, and therefore the AC runs here for 6 hours a day, and for the remaining 18 hours, the door is locked, and so are all windows, and the heat is almost unbearable when I enter the room in the evening after office. No AC, no ventilation, and all the heat that is released by the cpu and the modem have no means of getting out of the room.

Well, anyways, I am quite happy with the performance of the modem, as I know that the computer has to perform, after all it is a server quality cpu that I have got, and the monitor is always turned off, as I use it only when I am working on the PC. The modem is working in its full effecienty round the clock for the past 2 months, during which time it has not been turned off even once, and BSNL too has been able to supply data all this while (i think i am sure that there has been no downtime or anything), though at the office it is a different story.

Unfortunately enough for me, I have never been able to connect to a better broadband from my home in Pondicherry than a BSNL connection. The operators who are available in my area are SIFY, Tata Indicom and BSNL, out of which BSNL is the best. The other two are even worse.

Sify goes down very often, and when you call their helpline, they just tell you that the problem will be fixed in 24 to 48 hours, and when your line goes down for 15 times a month, you will be left for a month without internet. TATA is horrible. I have written a lot about my experiences with them at the office and at home. So all that I am left with is BSNL.

The only good ISP in Pondihcerry is Airtel, and out of sheer bad luck, they dont operate in my area of residence, and at the office. The first office that I had taken in Pondicherry was in an area where Airtel served, and I was quite happy wiht the service, but now, I am stuck to BSNL.

What is so bad about bsnl? Well, there is absolutely no customer service to start with, though the lines do not go down for more than a few hours together at a streatch. I am supposed to have a 2 Mbps connection, but the speed never crosses that of a 256 kbps connection, and I dont understand why I have to pay for the limited line if I dont get the promised 2 Mbps, and why not go for an unlimited 256 Kbps. Well, thats the plan that I had in the beginning, and in that connection, no data is ever transfered, and if you download a torrent file or something with quite a number of data connections, meaning if your computer connects with more than say about 50 ips at a time, and still download data at around 8 kbps or something, you will never be able to access any other website though there will be a good amount of bandwidth that is open for your use.

Airtel was really good, and I miss the service, and for this if you ask me to relocate my home for the sake of gothic art, it would be quite difficult. Why dont Airtel expand here?

Doesnt make a big different actually. Many datacentres make a big fuzz about offering 100 Mbps uplink over 10 Mbps for an additional fee. But all servers on a datacenter are on shared internet lines, and unless you are doing some heavy ftp or file transfers during server migration, from server to server on the same data center, it will not make much difference at all.

Any regular user who wishes to view a website on your server will not take more than 1 KB of traffic at any given time. So even if there are 5000 visitors on your server viewing all the sites, you need a bandwidth of only 5 MB. And that kind of traffic a single server cannot handle, as you will hear the hard disk exploding if 5000 requests are given at a time to the hard disk.

It is not really necessary that you go for the 100 Mbps connection. If you think it is required for a migration or something, you could get it temporarily for a month or so, and roll back to 10 Mbps while your servers are in regular operations.