Considering buying Spectra. Need some advice

[Deleted member 73255]

That's pretty cool. Did some messing with the port forwarding myself, was able to get a SeedBox running at home, accessible outside the network as well .
-- dead tinypic image removed --

 

[varkey]

^ Nice! I just hope their config remains this way.

I have a dynamic DNS client (ddclient) which checks and updates the DNS records (runs every 5 min) in case there is a change in the IP address (after a restart or power failure mostly). And have setup nginx with a TLS cert from Letsencrypt.

@Absinthe -- It might be a good idea to setup a reverse proxy with HTTPS to access Deluge and other exposed services.

 

[varkey]

So sometime this evening, Spectra seem to have made some changes and I am not able to access my web server on port 443 (80 was blocked couple of days prior itself). I tried couple of other ports (8080, 9090 etc) and all seem to be blocked, except for ports above 10000 which seem to be OK.


Not sure if its just temporary, have to wait and see. This isn't an issue for Plex etc as it dynamically uses an available port above 20000 or so.

 

[varkey]

Also, few days back, some sites were routed very badly. It went all the way to Europe only to come back to Mumbai to go to Singapore 🙄

I noticed the issue when some of these sites failed to even load properly or were extremely slow. I raised a ticket and although it took a day or two, they fixed them all. I had to email them the trace routes etc.

 

[Sushubh]

I guess I would stick to Excitel ?

 

[Deleted member 73255]

Also, few days back, some sites were routed very badly. It went all the way to Europe only to come back to Mumbai to go to Singapore 🙄

I noticed the issue when some of these sites failed to even load properly or were extremely slow. I raised a ticket and although it took a day or two, they fixed them all. I had to email them the trace routes etc.

Had the same issue, my buddy's Plex Server (hosted in Europe) was buffering excessively, I suspected it had something to do with Spectra, didn't get a chance to run a tracert. However, weirdly turning on my VPN seemed to have fixed the problem.
Honestly, I'm completely fine with it provided my plan remains UL.

In other news, I think they've altered their plans in Bangalore :

Not sure why the 1Gbps/500Mbps/250Mbps plans have got knocked out but when searching other locations in Bangalore they show up, could possibly be because they haven't updated the info on their site.

 

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[varkey]

^ Yep, do look at the route and open a ticket. They seemed pretty responsive in getting it fixed.

Regarding the plans, from what I understand, those are the old plans specifically for apartments / townships. This is mostly for the Marathahalli / Whitefield area from what I can see. The other areas still have the higher speeds.

In other news, in Kasturi Nagar / OMBR layout, they are waiving the security deposit now 🙄 but they never waived it for me even though I took the connection during the initial days.

 

[Deleted member 73255]

Haha, I live extremely close to OMBR Layout. Was kinda pissed myself after I saw they're waiving the security deposit, but hey we still got UL at monthly/quarterly payment 🙂

 

[chandrama Kushwaha]

Hi,

Company says it will offer 1 GB but does not mention that they give router which does not support 1 GBPS speed.

They don't take permission from Municipality and when their cable are cut it is called outage issue.
Every Weekends there will be outage issue and you will get response that some unknown person has taken away there fibre. In 40 Days of my connection i had outage for 10 days in Bangalore.

They are running scam by taking 3 months advance so that customer sticks for atleast 3 month. Also they take 30 days to refund your security deposit. Who does that. Are we in stone age.

You tweet to there CEO, escalate to Appellate, nobody will reply. Total waste company

 

[varkey]

^ In which area are you staying? I have so far had two major fiber cut related outages which lasted around 6-8 hours. But otherwise its pretty alright.

The router can do 1 gbps on a wired network (900 Mbps or so), wireless of course expecting 1 gbps on a relatively cheap consumer grade device isn't reasonable. Plus you'd need a triple chain (3x3) supported client and router to even reach higher speeds over wireless.

 

[varkey]

So I came across a nice feature today on the DIR-825AC router (just thought I'd post it, cause I didn't see it mentioned anywhere) for WAN failover. You can connect a 4G/LTE modem and configure the router to failover the internet to this backup connection incase the primary WAN link fails.

What I have done is, connected a JioFi JMR1040 hotspot device to the USB port, and using that as the backup connection. You can configure the health probe interval and if the primary link (ie Spectra in this case) fails, all requests would get automatically routed through your backup connection. Once the primary link is back online, backup link is deactivated and internet gets routed through the primary link.

Btw if anyone else is planning on using the JioFi, you would need to run the below command (over telnet or SSH, I am yet to find a way to automate this) to get the JioFi to work.

/usr/sbin/usb_modeswitch -v 1c9e -p f030 -V 1c9e -P f101 -M "55534243123456780000000000000606f50402527000000000000000000000"

The above basically switches the mode of the device to enable the USB-Ethernet interface.

 

[varkey]

Found a way to trigger usb_modeswitch automatically. I have a linux based mini pc which is powered on 24/7 same as the router, so I added a script which runs when the mini pc starts which will SSH into the D-Link router and runs the command.

#!/bin/bash
# Triggers usb_modswitch to switch JioFi to the correct mode

log_file="/var/log/remote-usb_modeswitch.log"

date | tee -a ${log_file}
sleep 60
sshpass -p "<password>" ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no admin@192.168.0.1 '/usr/sbin/usb_modeswitch -v 1c9e -p f030 -V 1c9e -P f101 -M "55534243123456780000000000000606f50402527000000000000000000000"' | tee -a ${log_file}

So in case of any power failure, the correct mode gets set on reboot and failover setup works. I understand it isn't that efficient, but since the router filesystem is read-only, can't really modify the configuration or scripts within the device.

 

[subhramani]

@varkey - I am moving to Kasturi Nagar in the next 2 weeks. I currently live in Kalyan Nagar. So, Spectra is worth going for, no? Because the only other option for me there is Hathway because ACT isnt available at that place for some reason.
Tried to DM you, but didn't find an option to do that anywhere.

 

[varkey]

I wouldn't recommend Hathway definitely, I had used it in Kasturi Nagar a year or so back and was super frustrated. (I am referring to the Cable internet service, not sure if they have started the FTTH service in the area or whether its any good.)

ACT is pretty much available in most of Kasturi Nagar, you sure its not available?

Coming to Spectra, it's pretty alright for me. The last week of July, there was a lot of issues with connectivity, they said there were major fibre cuts due to some construction or something and there were 2-3 major outages where internet was down or slow for most of the day. Now its pretty stable.

There is also the security deposit waiver promo going on the area, so you could use that as well.

 

[subhramani]

I've used Hathway before and I don't like it either. They apparently offer FTTH, but not available at my current location.

ACT isn't available. I spoke to them, provided them my new address and got an SMS confirming there is no feasibility. Spectra is my only option (considering it really is available in that location). I do see their flex banners very close to my building, so just hoping it happens and I dont end up with Hathway.

Though I don't torrent, I use a lot of Kodi and IPTV addons, so I'm not sure how good or bad Spectra is going to be.