My rented apartment has no ethernet cable runs between the rooms (even though the building was only built in 2018), only coax.

After the third MoCA adapter dying within 5 years and with neither WiFi mesh nor powerline cutting it for me I was looking for another solution.

Enter "invisible" bend insensitive fiber (G.657.A2 / G.657.B3).

It's under a millimeter in diameter and basically vanishes into corners and base board crevices. From more than a meter away is't completely unnoticeable.

Together with a pair of bidirectional SFP transceivers this makes an amazing retrofit option for locations where laying new runs is not an option.

Server Specs (Refurbished) [Dell PowerEdge R430]:

2x Intel Xeon E5 2680 v4 [28c 56T]

64GB DDR4 RDIMM [4x16GB]

2x4TB 3.5'' SAS

2x 550W PSUs

Network Devices:

Ubiquiti UCG-Ultra Cloud Gateway

Ubiquiti USW Flex Mini 2.5G 5 Port Switch USW-Flex-2.5G-5

This tiny Raspberry Pi Zero W quietly became the control center of my homelab. It’s tucked behind my setup (yes, the cable mess is real ), but it’s doing all the important work in the background.

I’ve set it up to send Wake-on-LAN packets to both my servers (manager node / worker node), so everything powers up automatically without me touching anything. The real magic is during power outages — I wrote a simple script that detects LAN power loss and safely shuts down the systems before anything gets corrupted.

When electricity comes back, the Pi boots automatically, runs the script again, and wakes both machines back up. Completely hands-free recovery.

No fancy hardware, no expensive controllers — just a low-power Pi Zero W doing reliable automation 24/7. It barely consumes any electricity but keeps the entire setup in sync.

This is probably one of the most satisfying upgrades I’ve done in my homelab. Small, cheap, and insanely useful.

Hp 705 G5

R5 3400G

Without ram/SSD

Got these 2 baboi for 5k each from Nehru place

Is it good?

Just received an email from airtel saying one of my devices is infected by malware. The only devices connected to the wifi at the time of the email were my phone and my laptop server. The email address seems genuine and links are all to government sites, haven't clicked on them though, just manually checked. On my laptop a few apps are running through docker compose and I setup cloudflare runnels to expose over the internet. And setup tailscale for ssh access. Should I be worried? Also the laptop has ubuntu 25.10 installed, if it matters

if you guys want, you can check it out at https://vargoseus.com

Used prometheus & grafana for logs aggregation and visualization. Self hosted the grafana instance too this time. Lemme know how it is!

Hyderabad folks, especially anyone working from home or planning to use Airtel Fiber with a static IP / bridge mode setup: please think twice before choosing Airtel.

I am not writing this because of one random outage.
I am not writing this because my Wi-Fi was weak in one corner of the house.
I am not writing this because Netflix buffered once.

I am writing this because Airtel managed to turn what should have been a straightforward backend provisioning request into a multi-day mess involving field-technician loops, ONT replacement, broken bridge-mode activation, packet loss, missed commitments, useless escalations, and a customer-care system where nobody seems accountable.

This was not one bad day.

This was a chain of failures.

Bridge Mode is an alien concept to Airtel

The original issue started when I requested a proper bridge mode setup.

That should have been a backend provisioning task. In fact I even agreed to taking their tied product - the Static IP to reduce the complexity for Airtel since I needed it for future anyway.

Instead, Airtel treated it like a normal broadband complaint.

For almost a week, the request kept moving through the usual field-support cycle:

• technician visit
• modem check
• cable check
• speed test
• “we will escalate”
• “backend will check”
• “wait 24 hours”
• repeat

But the actual requirement was never a simple field issue.

A normal technician visiting my house cannot magically provision bridge mode correctly from Airtel’s backend. This needed the correct backend/NOC/ACS/OLT team to own the issue from the beginning.

That did not happen.

At one point, the static IP was pushed/activated, but bridge mode was still not properly provisioned. So I had the paid/static-IP part moving forward, but the setup it depended on was still not clean.

Then came the ONT mess.

The earlier ONT path effectively became a dead end because the service profile did not allow clean bridge-mode configuration from the customer side. So instead of Airtel cleanly fixing the provisioning, the situation turned into device-level juggling.

Eventually, Airtel replaced the ONT with a Nokia unit.

That still did not solve the real issue.

It just moved the problem deeper into Airtel’s backend, because the Nokia ONT is even more locked down from the customer side. At that point, if Airtel’s backend provisioning is wrong, the customer cannot fix it. You are completely dependent on Airtel’s internal teams doing the configuration properly.

And after nearly a week of this, Airtel finally “enabled” bridge mode.

Except they downright butchered it.

Backend Team - The synonym for Incompetence

After Airtel enabled bridge mode on the Nokia ONT, the connection started suffering from repeated packet-loss bursts.

The connection does not simply go fully down in an obvious way.

It stays “connected” enough for Airtel to pretend things are fine, but then packet loss hits in bursts.

That means:

• meetings freeze
• calls drop
• VPN/work sessions become unreliable
• real-time usage becomes painful (imagine 1080p video buffering on a 300 Mbps connection)
• normal browsing may look fine for a while, then suddenly break
• gaming - LOL

I tested this directly over Ethernet from a laptop connected to the Airtel Nokia ONT.

Not Wi-Fi.

Not mesh.

Not a repeater.

Direct Ethernet.

I also pinged IP addresses directly, including Cloudflare 1.1.1.1 and Airtel’s own gateway. Both showed failures during the disruption.

At some point the same backend team called me up, escalated it to some Manager and this guys say, "We fixed your issue. We switched to Google's DNS, all should be good now!".

Not even the Backend team knows anything about Networking apart from following some picture book. Heck, even an intern with free version of ChatGPT could do a significantly better job!

So how did they fork it up?

From what I can see in the ONT configuration, Airtel appears to have left multiple Internet WAN profiles active for the same service/VLAN:

• one bridge-mode Internet profile
• one routed/static Internet profile

In plain English: the ONT does not look like it is cleanly handing off the connection in bridge mode.

It looks like Airtel enabled bridge mode without properly removing or isolating the older routed/static Internet profile.

That is exactly the kind of provisioning mistake that can create unstable behavior.

And this is exactly the kind of issue a normal field technician cannot fix by visiting your house and staring at the modem.

This needs Airtel’s backend/NOC/ACS/OLT provisioning team to check the actual ONT/service configuration and confirm that the connection is being handed off cleanly in bridge mode.

But Airtel’s support process seems completely incapable of handling anything beyond the usual script.

So the real story is not “one current complaint”

This is not simply:

>

The actual story is:

>

That is the part people should understand.

The current packet loss is not some random isolated fault.

It is the result of a long, badly handled provisioning chain.

The Nightmare called Customer Support

I raised the current issue.

Airtel again kept treating it like a normal broadband complaint.

Field technicians got involved, but the actual problem is clearly not something that can be solved by changing a cable, rebooting the modem, or asking me to test Wi-Fi speed.

I sent:

• technical details
• screenshots
• packet-loss logs
• explanation of why this looks like backend provisioning
• evidence that the issue occurs even on direct Ethernet

Instead of a proper backend RCA, I got the usual “please wait” loop.

Then came the escalation circus.

The escalation circus

Airtel’s escalation team called and committed that the technical/backend team would call me within 4 hours.

That callback never happened.

After waiting for the promised time, I called customer care again.

The front-line support person could not connect me to the escalation desk and transferred me to a supervisor.

The supervisor acknowledged that the escalation team had indeed promised a backend/technical callback.

He also acknowledged that the complaint was pending with the backend team and that the exact backend issue was not properly reflected in the customer-care notes.

He then committed that he would escalate it internally, get a backend report by the next day, and target resolution by the same afternoon.

That also did not happen.

So I called Airtel again after the next promised timeline was missed.

The next supervisor told me that the regional officers / concerned teams were not picking calls.

Read that again.

Airtel’s own supervisor could not get the concerned internal teams to pick up calls.

I asked to be connected to:

• backend team
• escalation desk
• regional office
• regional manager
• higher officials
• the previous supervisor who had given the commitment

No luck.

At one point, I was told the supervisor desk itself is the “higher level escalation.”

But this so-called higher escalation desk apparently had no effective access to the actual team required to solve the issue.

Then I was given another standard timeline.

Later, the same supervisor called back and said she had managed to contact the regional manager, and that the issue would be resolved by 5 PM.

That 5 PM commitment was also missed.

After that, I called Airtel again.

This time another supervisor came on the line.

I asked a very simple question:

>

The supervisor refused to provide the name or number, saying she could not share it because the call was recorded.

Apparently Airtel can repeatedly miss commitments, fail to connect customers to anyone accountable, internally fail to reach their own teams, and still refuse to identify who is actually responsible.

The best “assurance” I got was basically:

>

The Airtel support loop

This is the pattern:

1. Raise complaint.
2. Explain issue.
3. Get told it will be escalated.
4. Wait.
5. No backend callback.
6. Call again.
7. Explain issue again.
8. Get transferred.
9. Supervisor says they will follow up.
10. Backend/regional team is unreachable.
11. New timeline.
12. Timeline missed.
13. Repeat.

Meanwhile, the connection remains unstable.

Why this is so frustrating

The service may look “connected” on Airtel’s side.

The link may be up.

Speed tests may even look fine when the packet loss is not happening.

But real-world usage becomes unreliable because the packet loss comes in bursts.

For casual browsing, you may not notice immediately.

For work-from-home, it is horrible.

You cannot confidently join meetings.
You cannot rely on video calls.
You cannot trust VPN sessions.
You cannot troubleshoot it like a normal home-networking issue.
You cannot fix it by changing DNS, rebooting, or swapping your own router.

And Airtel’s response is basically to keep pushing you between teams while nobody gives you a written RCA.

What Airtel has not clearly answered

No one has clearly told me:

• Who owned the original static-IP / bridge-mode provisioning request.
• Why that request was treated like a normal field complaint for almost a week.
• Why field technicians were repeatedly involved for what needed backend provisioning.
• Why static IP was activated before bridge mode was cleanly completed.
• Why the original ONT/service profile could not be provisioned cleanly.
• What exactly changed when the replacement ONT was installed.
• Whether the ONT provisioning was corrected properly.
• Whether the static IP binding was verified.
• Whether the routed/static WAN profile was removed or made management-only.
• Whether bridge mode is actually clean now.
• Why packet loss is hitting Airtel’s own gateway.
• Why backend callbacks were missed.
• Why supervisors cannot reach their own regional/backend teams.
• Why there is no transparent customer-facing ticket trail.
• Why I have to explain the same technical issue again and again.

Instead, I get vague timelines and verbal promises.

The bigger problem

Airtel sells services like static IP and bridge mode.

But when something goes wrong with that exact setup, support behaves as if the customer is asking for alien technology.

Bridge mode is not some exotic enterprise-only thing.

Static IP is not magic.

If Airtel offers these services, their backend team should be able to provision them cleanly, and their support team should know how to route such complaints to the correct team.

But in practice, once the issue goes beyond “restart modem”, the entire system collapses.

The customer-care system is built for basic broadband complaints.

It is not built for explaining or resolving a broken backend provisioning chain.

And if you are unlucky enough to hit that kind of issue, you get stuck between field technicians, supervisors, backend teams, regional teams, missed callbacks, and timelines that keep resetting.

What I am documenting now

At this point, I am documenting everything:

• Ping logs showing packet loss.
• Screenshots of ONT configuration.
• Screenshots of WAN profiles.
• Call recordings.
• Call transcripts.
• Email trail.
• Missed callback commitments.
• Missed resolution timelines.
• Supervisor commitments.
• Backend/regional escalation failures.
• The earlier one-week provisioning mess that led to this current issue.

I have already taken this through Airtel’s appellate route and will escalate further through consumer grievance channels if needed.

My warning

Do not choose Airtel in Hyderabad if you need a connection you can actually depend on.

Especially avoid them if you:

• work from home
• need stable video calls
• use VPN
• need low packet loss
• need static IP
• need bridge mode
• do self-hosting
• game online
• care about proper technical support
• expect backend issues to be handled by people who understand backend provisioning

For casual browsing, maybe you will never notice this kind of issue.

But the moment something slightly technical goes wrong, Airtel’s support process becomes a black hole.

They will sell you the connection quickly.

They will sell you static IP.

They will "enable" bridge mode.

But if their backend provisioning gets messed up, good luck finding one accountable person who can actually fix it.

At this point, I would genuinely tell anyone in Hyderabad: choose another ISP if you have a serious dependency on your internet connection.

Airtel is fine only until it breaks.

Once it breaks in a non-basic way, you are on your own.

P.S. I've been an Airtel customer for 15 years for both broadband and mobile network. So this is not me just trying an ISP out of the blue and ranting about it. I've faced the poor customer support before but never this bad.