One of the prices paid when I moved out to rural India last year was loss of connectivity.

For many months, there was no reliable way for people to call and reach me. As for internet access, I used to go to the nearby town (20km away) to an internet parlour from where I would access the ‘Net—if there was power in the town to do so. Keeping my FreeBSD CVSup repository in sync used to be a interesting challenge, as was keeping up the communication flow with my two GSoC’07 mentees.

Connectivity options began to improve about a month ago: AirTel’s cell service started up in the area so I could get online using GPRS. And then, last week, BSNL started offering DSL service in this area.

In the past year I explored various options for getting online as a FreeBSD user; I will describe these here by and by. Stay tuned!