DUF 2 released.
So, the inevitable change to the BSNL site happened.Nothing major. Just a few words changed here and there and DUF started complaining yet again.
The last version lasted only a couple of months as compared to the earlier version which kept on going for nearly an year.
The relation between DUF and BSNL appears to be too fragile for comfort, and I guess we will have to live with it.
To make things a little easier for myself and also for the users who have to download and setup a brand new version of DUF every time the Chinese out there at BSNL decide to brush up their English,
I have made some changes to the way DUF is deployed.
Now on, modifications made as a result of the structural changes to BSNL site will not require the download of the entire setup.
Small patches will be released.
Whenever a previously working DUF starts whining, user can ask DUF itself to find if a patch to the problem is available.
If it is, the user can choose to ask DUF to download and apply it without any hassle.
Of course, user can also download the patches from this site manually.
This is still experimental.
Suggestions, bug reports, comments , please email me at
kksid@users.sourceforge.net
I am sorry for the delay in fixing the current problem.
And thanks to all who emailed me expressing their appreciation for DUF.
What is DUF?
Dataone is a broadband Internet service (www.bsnl.co.in/service/dataone.htm) offered by BSNL, a major ISP of India.. This service imposes an upload/download usage limit on its users. Usage between 2am and 8am is free, under certain schemes.This makes it imperative for the users to keep an eye on their usage statistics. However, the BSNL website which provides these usage figures is not very useful, as any Dataone user will vouch.
Only the monthly total of the bandwidth used is provided. There is no provision for knowing the daily total. Also there is no demarcation between free time usage and paid time usage. These are the very figures a user would be most intersted in.
DUF (Dataone Usage Finder) is a very simple screen scraper program coded in VB6 (Yes guys, VB is still used!) which uses IE5 or higher, to fetch pages from the BSNL site, and after parsing out the required records, presents them in a manner which is more helpful. This data can also be saved as html files.
Hope you find it useful. Please send in your comments and suggestions to make DUF better.
duf_v2.0_setup.exe (Updated July 22nd 2007)
duf_v1.5a_setup.exe (Updated May 4th 2007)
duf_v1.5_setup.exe (Updated Jan 2nd 2007)
duf_1.4beta_setup.exe (Updated Feb 19th 2006)
duf_1.3_setup.exe (Updated Jan 12th 2006)
duf_1.3_src.zip
Fixed the error caused by the changes in BSNL site.
1. A major overhaul of the updation technique.
Modifications needed in response to changes in BSNL site will be released in patches form.
2. DUF itself will be capable of downloading and applying the new changes.
The user may choose to download and apply patch manually.
3. The Tax rate can also be now added to the "Tariff.txt" file.
Okay, so the chinese developers at BSNL finally made some changes to their site. They changed a column heading from "Excluding Night Unlimited" to "Fee"! Wow.
Anyways since DUF is a duffer screen scraper, it failed.
Here is the patched version.
It will last only as long as there are no further changes in the BSNL site.
I am beginning to hope that is never ;-)
Version 1.5 released (Jan 2nd 2007)
Guess what folks, DUF ran into its very own version of Y2K problem!
Came 2007 and the option to check usage for the new year was nowhere to be seen.
When I first coded DUF in Dec. 2005, it was simply meant to be a "stop gap" measure to get around the mess BSNL dished up as our usage logs.
I thought it would be only a matter of months, if not weeks, before BSNL would get its act right and give us a decent portal.
More than an year has gone by and the staus quo remains.
Anyways, here is the slightly modified "2007 conscious" version of DUF with a few new features.
1. Has the latest tariff plans.
The plans are contained in a plain text file "Tariff.txt" found in the same folder as DUF.
The records are Tab delimited and can be modified if there are any further changes in the tariff structure.
2. The IP addresses or URLs of the various BSNL servers are now contained in another text file "Servers.txt". This also can be modified as new servers are "discovered".