1. Proprietary protocol so nobody can write a "free" dialer.
There's loads of free dialers out there: antidialer, supersify, easysify, experiencesify, etc. Their current protocol is closed but the old protocol is open for linux users.
2. The momentary lockout that you said. Well, during it the CC actually told people to switch to windows to continue using their services. They were blissfully unaware of Linux users but as time passed by they came to their senses.
Personally, nobody told me to do that. I had to drill hard to get through to the first CC exec. Once I was on to the tech expert I was through.
3. Their dialer works as root only. Hehe, I dont want any piece of software running on my machine to work as root especially written by Sify psychos. I know there are alternatives available but I dont know if any of them will run as a daemon.
Not true. I understand you're probably saying this from some articles posted on the internet. The truth is that if you delete the sifyconnect.log, readfifo and writefifo files from /tmp/ you can run as any regular user. The first run of sifyd as any regular user will recreate the files with appropriate permissions and you're done. You don't need a daemon based dialer really. The connection stays alive long enough without the "hearbeat" functionality of the stock dialer daemon.
4. No customer support for Linux users. Atleast Reliance powersurfer has _some_ customer support for Linux and they are willing to put your line in "leased line" mode if you have hassles with their 24Online Client. No such issues with MTNL / BSNL or Airtel.
Agreed wholeheartedly. This is truly a major drawback.
Apart from these issues I cant think of anything immediately relating to Linux. I have also had disputes with them in the past. And the CTO charge their own "maintenance" fee over and above the Sify packages. And
The CTO "maintenance fees" are their bread and butter. That is all the money that they get. The tarriff charges all go to sify and they don't give a penny to the CTOs.
perhaps the most serious issue being that people have fried that motherboards, lan cards with Sify connections. Though this can happen to anyone using such cable ISPs. But it seems that Sify is the worst affected one.
I won't comment on that. Again, in all my 3 years with Sify I have never experienced any such problem. And yeah, I don't work for Sify ;-) Regards, Siddhesh -- http://siddhesh.tk -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
