Power cycle the Modem. This is the most basic step you can take up to try to fix the problem. Rebooting will let Modem re-establish the link with the other end in the exchange and may sometimes work as in my case. If it doesn’t, move on to next step.
Physical Connection – First check the connections to your Modem. Start with the cables between your Modem and the Splitter. Remove the cables at both the ends and connect again. Power cycle the modem and wait for few minutes and then check the connectivity. If it doesn’t help, check the cabling to your splitter and the main line that comes in your house and then to the Splitter. In my case, then main cable that comes into the house had a short point of contact and would occasionally come in contact whenever wind blows outside the house. It was apparently fixed after putting some adhesive tapes on it. Something that I couldn’t imagine!
Link light blinks all the time but doesn’t stay lit. This is a very common problem and you will have to start troubleshooting by first lifting the receiver of your phone and listen for any noise in the line. If there is lot of disturbance in the line, chances are less that you will get connected at all. Wait for some more time and try connecting again. If this is an ongoing problem, report it to the local exchange for further troubleshooting.
What’s next? – If you are through with all the steps above, it will be time to hand over the troubleshooting to the local exchange for inspecting the line. When you lodge a complaint with the exchange, tell them that the light doesn’t stay lit for more than few minutes and you would like them to re-inspect the line from exchange to your Modem. Then sit back and relax, it’s beyond your hands!
Still problems? – Lodge a complaint with the supervisor in the exchange and give him the docket/ticket numbers of previous calls and ask him to look into it. Couple of months ago I had to do that as the exchange guy couldn’t help other than blaming it on the Telecom infrastructure of BSNL. So go ahead and call up the exchange and speak to the person who would be in charge of DataOne related issues in your Zone.

Did I miss some steps? Please do share your steps which I have not covered here already and help others!

At first, I believed it to be an issue with the line. Only after going through some more troubleshooting steps, I realised that it was not the link but something else.

I disconnected and connected back. Then I started to ping the DNS addresses and that was it. None of the DNS servers assigned by DataOne were pingable for more than once [out of 4 ping requests]. This was the problem I guessed. After few hours when things were back to normal, I searched on net and forums for DNS servers from other DataOne zones such as Delhi. I tried the DNS server addresses in my connection and it worked fine for almost a week and then things were back as if it never made any difference by using alternate DNS addresses of BSNL DataOne.

I wanted to give up and throw away the modem out of my window, but then just couldn’t do it. Google came to the rescue and when I finally saw Internet moving, searched for DNS servers and I was glad to find OpenDNS.

OpenDNS is a free DNS solution that lets you use the freely available DNS server addresses from OpenDNS and since last 2 weeks the Internet speed is just getting better. OpenDNS based DNS addresses corrects the mis-spelled URLs and also gives you notices in browser window when you accidently open a phishing site.

Go ahead and give it a try, I am sure you will thank me for this.