Internet in India : Reliance 4G and more by a Network Enthusiast

Hi folks. I hope everyone out there is doing well. Half of our friends have been standing out in the line outside Reliance stores from quite a few days in the hopes of a bright free internet. I still remember the day I got my Jio 4G sim some months ago. I could literally feel the speed in my hands. I was like The Flash beating my Tikona and You Broadband connections of more than 4 and 12 Mbps respectively. Today I pull my hair everyday while I depend on Jio 4G for my internet usage. Well for instance, I am writing this post from my Azure Windows Virtual Machine from East Europe while I am sitting in Ahmedabad, India. For those who don’t know what a virtual machine is, consider me sitting on a different computer with better internet speeds and CPU power which I am accessing remotely. Why do I need to do that? Why cant I simply use my internet connection to write a story on medium rather than writing it from a whole different continent. Let me put it this way : Because medium didn’t open on my normal internet connection.

Now you think this guy is completely insane. Internet is fast enough to access a remote computer but not fast enough to load a simple website. That can't be true. I am gonna give you enough reasons for that today along with deep insights of Indian Internet Industry.

You can check my background at the end of this post so we can establish the fact that I know what I am talking.

Let me talk about the normal ISPs in India aka Broadband Providers and the big players Airtel, TATA, BSNL, Vodafone, etc. Giving you a brief idea about how internet works, you can imagine internet as a city with different houses which are your computers. Now the GPS Location of these houses are IP Addresses. When you open google.com, you go through a wide range of routers which participate in your connection. If you experience low latency it will give you a smoother internet experience even if you are on 2Mbps connection. Long story short less latency is the key to a better internet connection.

TATA and their reseller ISPs give one of the best latency in India as they have a large list of announced routes (http://bgp.he.net/AS4755) when compared to Jio its like still a baby infant (http://bgp.he.net/AS55836). We can't blame Jio for that because it has just started. But Reliance Jio has a very interesting internet infrastructure.

One of the most interesting things I observed is that during day times speed variate from 0.5 Mbps to 2.5 Mbps. We all know thats not 4G. Even at 2.5 Mbps, the network is not able to stream my Soundcloud playlist. Even a BSNL connection of 512 Kbps did that better. This really drove my crazy. Let me tell you something more interesting. During evening time at 6, my roommate was able to stream a Youtube Music Video at 1080p but after 6 minutes when I tried to stream the same song through my Gaana app it started giving me drops again. The funniest part is when we download torrents. I downloaded a Ubuntu Server copy which got downloaded at speed of 16 Mbps. Also I have observed that during night time especially around 2:30 to 3:00 am the speed jumps upto 30 Mbps. This could be a issue of bandwidth limits but when you are able to download things at 16Mbps in torrent but cant stream simple music, there is something definitely wrong. Below are screenshot of my both WiFi and Mobile connection which are both working on Jio Networks.

One of the major reason why Youtube and Google are working fast enough is because of the IPv6 picture here. Generally we have been using IPv4 IPs and India is still very behind when it comes to deployment of IPv6. Although major networks has done even Jio joining the list. If your APN settings are changed to IPv4/IPv6 you will be able to stream Youtube faster and also operate better when you try to access something at Google and Microsoft. But this is not a primary issue here. And it also does not really explain the complex network situation here. This is the issue which can be solved by Network Operations Centre of Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited. There network is no doubt Jio is great when it comes to free internet but it is still not ready for public use. There tech is no doubt great but they clearly need to work better on their deployments and networks. The NOC team needs to get more people on this so that the end issue is served. Torrents can be downloaded faster as it is peer-to-peer networking which means if there are more seeders on same network it will be generally be faster. With a wide Jio 4G adaptation I think its more better for torrents and p2p downloads. This is the picture below of my tracert to Google’s DNS Server.

If you are kind of the person, who is like always on the move you cant expect Jio 4G to work with you. On the move, Jio is almost pathetic. It drops a lot and drains the battery a lot. It is also because of Indian network bands and the tech we use is still not at par with Class A networks like Verizon. But if you crave for free internet then Jio 4G is a great deal until December 31st. I hope things get better until then.

One of the minor issue I would like to highlight is also the Port Forwarding issue. Jio MiFi device also provide Port Forwarding option but the thing is not working. Jio MiFi is on a NAT and I also believe the whole network operates with the same topology. I need to use a VPN to get my forwarding traffic but the thing is really slow as Jio 4G is not operating as it should be. We expect the betterment faster and I am sitting with all hopes. The Internet picture in India is still very hazy which cant be ignored. Internet is a necessity these days and the Digital India picture can't take even a step ahead until internet gets better.

Let me know what's your experience on the Jio 4G network in the comments.

Little bit about my background : I am a 20 year old tech enthusiast pursuing a B.Tech in Computer Science in a university in Anand, Gujarat. I have worked enough on Network Security and have hands on dealing with cyber attacks especially at the network level. I specialize in mitigation of DDoS attacks and their prevention. We deployed our own share of huge networks at ISP Level. I started a Network Infrastructure company when I was 16 took care of network deployment for servers which served 10,000 simultaneous game users. We took care about their latency and optimized our network accordingly, everyday so that people can reach our network more faster and efficiently. I am currently also an active trader in international Indices and Futures and Stock Market. One of my best interest lies on how forex markets and their direct effects on the trading picture. Machine learning has always been a interesting picture for me so I am exploring its execution in the trading markets with automated trading algorithms.