BSNL Broadband Happy Hour Scheduler

Posted by 7sins|.NET, Mixed-Up, Programming, Techie, Windows|44 Comments

Having used BSNL Home 500 plan at one point of my stint with BSNL DataOne I have also faced the usual dilemma; i.e. when to start the downloads during the Happy Hours (aka time period when the downloads are not counted) and then stop it so that i don’t get billed for excessive use and can stay with the limit of 1GB(or was it 1.5GB ?).

It involved using getting up at nights around 2.30AM and starting the downloads. Later that shifted to Task Scheduler of Windows XP then to a scheduler plugin of Azureus and then to the default scheduler of uTorrent.

But after having shifted to UL plans (firstly BSNL UL 256kbps, then upgraded to BSNL UL 512kbps and then finally shifted to Reliance UL 400kbps) i had almost forgotten the problem until one friend of mine made me aware of the problem again.

So i went down to work and then made a small windows application so that you can sleep in peace at night and forget about crossing your monthly limits and running a huge bill.

The application is coded in C# using the .NET 2.0 framework.

So what all is to be done?

Just follow the following steps

What you need:
1. .NET Framework v2.0.
2. The name of the RASDialer(the desktop link) that you use to connect to BSNL/MTNL.
3. User Name.
4. Password.

What you need to do:
1. Set the time as per your choice ( Happy Hours Start and End Disconnect and Re-connect time)
2. Browse for your favourite Bit-Torrent Application and select the check box.
3. Give a dry run of the app initially and set the firewall rules. Since this app uses the “ping” command and many other command line options so your firewall will most likely block those. Just make sure you allow those requests to be accessed by the firewall.

How to do:
1. Provide the dialer name,user name and password. Tick save details if you want to retain those.
2. Set the Happy Hours start and end times.
i. Start Happy Hours :
i. Disconnect at : Set this time to switch off the connection before Happy Hour Starts so that you don’t get billed.
ii. Re-connect at : Set this time to the Happy Hour start time.
ii. End Happy Hours :
i. Disconnect at : Set this time to switch off the connection before Happy Hour Ends so that you don’t get billed after that .
ii. Re-connect at : Set this time to re-connect after the Happy Hours.
3. Browse for your favourite Bit-Torrent App and Tick “Launch this Bit-Torrent App” to start it at the Happy hours start time.
4. Click the “Schedule Happy Hours” button and be Happy.
5. The “Out Of My Sight” button minimizes the application to your System Tray.

Screenshot:

Salient Features:
1. When the Happy Hour starts this app checks whether your connection is active or not every 5 minutes . If not it redials your connection to start the Happy Hours again.
2. When the Happy Hour ends it checks again every 5 minute whether the connection has been canceled to not. If not it disconnects the connection again.
3. This app uses the ping feature to verify the state of the connection.
4. This app makes no attempt to steal your User Name, Password, Phone Number or any other relevant details. I would never code such a thing. This app is solely made to help others who are troubled by the time scheduling and fearing a high phone bill.
5. This app contains no virus or trojans to destroy your PC.


Disclaimer:
Use this app at your own risk. Since this app will be synchronized with your local PC time on which it is running and not with the Broadband login server time so i do not take any responsibility as to how/why your telephone bills are so high. So set the time responsibly taking into account the time difference between your PC and the server times.

Hope you find the application handy.

Happy downloading ….