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Fibre optic cables own coaxials. Although they are preyy expensive at times...

OMG !

the number of wires and cables in the street is simply amazing

it was just like that in France in the 80's and the national electricity company decided to have every cable installed underground

I was wondering if they didn't do it in Japan because of the risk of earthquakes (?) or simply because it is too costly

Living in the countryside makes fiber optic a no-no for quite a while I'd imagine >_>
I'm guessing you'd only really need the bandwidth for hosting though. Can any download sites for video etc take full advantage of so much bandwidth?

Nice article Danny, as for my internet connection, i pay around 35€ for 18 Mbits, and my folks pay around 50€ for 16 Mbits (althought in includes iptv and phone) ^^;

Wow so many wires running through. I wonder if you can see wires in the picture when you take pictures of figures on the balcony or not ^^; I ought to backtrack to see your outdoor pics.

The workers remind me of Tomoya in Clannad ~After Story.

Wow that's fast o_o Internet where I'm at is reasonably fast but it gets really slow sometimes... not too reliable :/

In central Tokyo and main built-up areas the wires are underground. Out in the suburbs they are all up on telegraph poles. It is convenient for maintenance and hooking up new connections because you don't have to dig up the road.

I don't think it's anything to do with earthquakes. A big earthquake would probably snap all the telegraph poles at ground level and drop everything on top of the nearby houses.

It's very interesting to see all the wires and equipment up in the air. Each poll has a collection of power and comms cables and some kind of transformer equipment on it.

I pay something like 90~100 USD (230 BRL) for my 12mb cable connection and 40 USD for a crap 4mb ADSL service. 12mb is the best we can have here in Rio but they are already testing Optic Fiber in some neighborhoods in São Paulo but the price is just abusive.. T_T

Supposedly my school has some of the fastest internets in the country; I just did a speed test and got 118.9 Mbps down (and our connections are limited by the way). However upload is only 1.4 Mbps haha (they don't want us wasting all the bandwidth on teh torrentz).

For a home connection though, 6730 yen a month for 100 Mbps... holy crap that is cheap! In fact, no service 'round here even offers more than 16 Mbps for a home connection! (16 Mbps is around $54 too.)

And one last thing, that is a RIDICULOUS amount of wires outside!

Fibre Optic is pretty expensive in UK.
Even if you can afford it there is no garantee it's available in your area, and more than likley it won't be. Everyone in the UK in generally on a shitty connection and no where neaar as good as Japan, we are years behind.

I got lucky, in my neighbourhood they started this fibreconnection pilot last year. First 6 months were free, now I pay €32,50/month for my 50mbit fibre line. Which is pretty much a bargain if you ask me.
My first ADSL (512kbps) connection back in 2001 cost me 3 times as much XD

I don't have a home server as no need for one. About 45 bucks a month I get 5.00 Mbps download speeds and 800.00kbps up load speeds. In the past I might have had use for what I got now it is just a shame I waited so long to get a cable modem.

Before I got the cable modem I had that dsl thing. it only did a truthful 3.15 kbs maybe 3 x faster than a 56 k modem which isn't saying much. For example, you won't be a healer or a main tank in ANY online MMO game since the player is already dead before you see they need healing or the Monster you are attacking already hit and disarmed you before you even saw him coming.

So theres no way to afford fiber optics here currently.

I can see there in Japan it would be bad to be a Skydiver and get blown off course.

Congratulations on hooking up the server with the new fiber optics thats quite and accomplishment for someones home.

So thats why their cables look so complicated and twisted! It looks so wired and messy like a net of wires that I wondered why wouldn't they short circuit when I was young.

Manuals again.. lulz. The smiley faces reminds me of Nico. ^^;

I has no optic fiber. Not avail here ^^; Pay about 18 USD/ 66MYR for a month of 60KBPS DL.

I'm currently paying £35 or 4377 yen a month for 20mb cable here in the uk, going on the trials for 50mb soon though ^_^. The download speeds / lack of limits are nice, but the upload speed is pants, which means i can't host at home.... something i've always wanted to do.

About the second network, i've done it before with 2 ethernet ports on a Vista machine so it should be possible on leopard. If you lack a second port grab a usb to ethernet adaptor(cheap as chips!!)

So jealous of your net speed T__T
I'm happy when I get 3Mbit!

I've always thought that the numbers of wires/cables in the streets of Japan is amazing, lol.

Well it's easy to understand why there aren't many ground cables in Japan and they are up in the air, just think a little and you'll know why :P (hint... sometimes it shakes), it would cost Japan millions to restore ground communications.

Some months ago I used to pay for internet around 46€ for 8mb and no traffic limit, then I changed to a new one which has cable TV, internet 16mb with no traffic limit and phone for 44€, it's a great deal and the connections are above normal for here, I'm happy with it

THIS
THIS IS WHAT MAKES JAPAN AWESOME

The internet here in Aust is downright crap. I'm on a cable connection that's 'supposed' to give me 12mbps. And all it ever dumps is <1mbps. Heck, the other week, i lost the net for 15hrs - Apparently my house is the last on the line and there was 'not enough power on the signal' - the hell...

Not to mention we're now the laughing stock of the the world with our government trying to 'filter' everything. And the absence of our 'promised' FTTH that we were supposed to get LAST YEAR - Even if we do get FTTH, the filter will crap it down back to the speeds we have currently

Seriously, this is one of the major reasons im trying to move out of the country and find a job internationally. To all people who want to come here - STAY AWAY DO NOT COME HERE

100 Mbps! I'm seriously jealous and at such a low price too. I still only have low grade DSL. Fortunately, it's cheap, but I've been considering upgrading for quite some time.

Shocked that fiber cables are above ground in Japan. It's pretty much all below ground in my neck of the woods, though they put power cables above ground. That makes little sense too.

Seeing those guys with all the wall plates and cables reminded me of my early IT careers. I'm still pretty handy around wiring closets, can probably still do punch lines and do basic telco setups. I should go work for the Japanese telco companies.

You have a pretty nice server, networking setup for home. The only thing you're missing is a storage area network and perhaps some virtualization. Not sure Macs have the equivalent of VMWare...but being able to create a virtual host in seconds would probably be helpful to you.

Thats a pretty clever idea to keep your cables above the ground to reduce work and cost.The Downside to that is that they are exposed to alot of enviromental dangers.Danny do you have connection issues from time to time?I can imagine that those cables can be damaged quite fast through storms or birds that think its a wise idea to land on em.

Charging a Dolphin? XD

Im Paying 35€ for my 16000 Internet,Telephone and DigitalTV Flat. :/

Danny, what camera did you use to take these pictures? I love all the pictures looking at the overhead cables.

Excellent article, Danny-sama! It was almost a connect the dot type article because of all the photos you gave. I followed the entire process without the slightest confusion. Haha. And it was very informative, so thank you for teaching us, Sensei.

I found all those wires up there to be horrendously unpleasant to look at. But, I suppose it's bearable when taking to consideration the nice stuff you get to look at at ground level, such as gardens, plants, and of course Japanese women. Also looked very confusing and yes, potentially very dangerous, come earthquake time. I will think safe thoughts for you.

I haven't paid for my internet in a bit over three years (school and then multi-renter housing, where I am not the one paying the internet) so I am a bit vague about prices, but certainly what you stated sounds very nice and cheap. I envy the net connection speed, as occasionally we get a bit slow in connecting to web sites, etc. (only to be expected with a house of six geeks all with multiple computers).

Danny-sama, you stated "No its not running dannychoo.com ^^:", and I am wondering why not? I certainly don't want to lose the dannychoo.com site, but wouldn't it save you big bucks to host it yourself, even if you had to buy a dedicated severer for this site alone? I know we Japan Otaku mob your site in high numbers so it must be expensive to store it on an ISP server.

Thanks again for the article, and I for one would be interested in your promised upcoming article on customer service in Japan.

That's the lovely thing about living in Las Vegas... Because the climate is so dry and we have minimal rain and flooding, most of our power, cable, internet, etc. lines run underground. There's about two central power lines running through my area of town. It's quite nice, makes everything seem more peaceful and not so cluttered.

I never noticed all the cable lines; I need to look up more =X
I'm paying $60 bucks for a 10Mb

the adventures of getting a super fast internet connection at home in Japan. great pictures and commentary.

Wow. What I would give to get that speed.
Here in Bolehland, we're stuck in the Middle Ages (1 Mbps ToT)

Btw Danny, on accessing two networks at the same time, found this on Google:
http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=94559
Not sure if this is what you're looking for, but post #7 seems relevant

Want... :|

Congratz on the new toy though! ;)

Being an ex telecomms guy and currently in IT this is a really interesting post. Congrats on setting up your hosting, something I'm starting to play with. Are you using OS X Server on the mini?

Wow, with the cables dangling up there on the streets, is it safe and tough? I mean Japan has storms and quakes.
I like the cute minivan, kind of rare over here.
My internet is ubber slow 384/256kbps wireless transmitted from nearby tower station. Nope, its not wifi, its dedicated wireless channel where you need special modem at home. So basically from isp to my home is wireless, and in my home its wireless again.
The ISP im subscribing to seems like going to die anytime soon, since they been offering this speed at the same price since 6yrs ago(rm68/usd20) ┐(-｡ｰ;)┌

in my region only use traditional only a cheap modem and have telephone and call the provider !!!
or install a wifi !

Wow.. the lines.. the connections.. the speed.. the gadgets.. the macs.. ..I'm jealous

I pay 39.95 euro for a 24mbit ADSL line. (although I mostly just reach 12mbit at most)
It is unlimited though. Not like the many other limited, slower and more expensive connections here in Belgium. Mine is quite cheap for what I get.

Japan is a heaven yet again when it comes to internet connections ^^

I haste you so much right now Danny, I pay 87$ a month to get 10mbit and 1mbit upload. I would love to run a server out of my house but its just not possible in Canada... not to mention the fact that they limit me to 85gb cap per month... and throttle bittorrent and occasionally other protocols as well.

Those cables are hideous -_-' but the speed and price of Japanese Internet is as always amazing. I have to pay about 20$ for 1Mbit/256kbit ADSL now, cause I've moved to a small town. In my University days I paid about 10$ (!!!) for > 54Mbit. I didn't really know how fast it was but it was waaaay faster than my ADSL now ;_;.

I don't pay, man. Neighbour's Wi-Fi FTW.

Too bad I can only pick it up in _exactly_ one spot.

Bleh, I pay £17.50 for a 24mbit up 1mbit down ADSL+2 connection. But I usually sync around 17mbit(best sync has been 22mbit). Would kill for a 100mbit connection.

Oh, I guess this explains the Apache book we saw in an earlier article... I guess hosting your own site has its perks, as long as they are small, don't know if Japan ISPs have strict Fair Usage Policies like we have here in the UK.

Danggg.....100 mbps for that much?! In San Jose with Comcast I get around 54 and so for $33 per month.

I'm definitely going to set myself up to get myself a home in Japan eventually. ^_^ I'll still have a home in San Jose, but if I needs my internets, then I needs my internets. :D

I currently have Comcast (no fiber-optics in the vicinity of the apartments) and get around with 700kb/s DL speed, and 500kb/s UL speed.

Me wonders if there's any bandwidth cap to the 100Mbps package.

I agree about the Japanese doing a great job when they offer service. Even though I didn't get a new internet line for the nine days I was there, the people at convenience stores and places like McDonalds was so much better what I would get at home. I don't even know if I could handle the 100Mbps, but I wouldn't mind having it if it meant I had to spend less than I do for crappy Comcast service.

I don't think I've seen a localized manual with happy appliances, they even take them out of the foreign language parts. I would like to see my computer smile back at me when I hook it up to highspeed internet :(

Argh Canada >_<! I'm so jealous of your internet speeds . . .

Funny you ask, our rates just went up and quality just got much worse. We have Time Warner Cable in ever since they upgraded their system last October the connection has been much slower. It's been over 3 years since they took over Adephia which IMO was much better. We have no other comparable speed option here though as these companies are allowed to monopolize... I am sure someone is getting some kick back from that in the local government.

All utilities are underground and it's your responsibility from junction box to house, therefore many lazy people actually have bright orange fiber optic cables on top of their lawn until they get a chance to bury it themselves or hire somebody. Usually in the summer they get nicked by the lawn mower or chewed by animals.

Fortunately I live in dorms so I don't pay for internet. My connection isn't super fast (about 6Mb for download and 2Mb for upload), but I can't complain, my connection when I am at home is slower and we have to pay for that >_<

my mother pays 21.12 usd for the internet...

I'm a bit surprised, I thought you already had fiber ... Actually if you want to host servers you'll almost certainly need better routers than those cheap ones on the pictures, cheap routers don't hadle QOS correctly (some don't even support QOS at all...) and the relatively small amount of internal memory and slow CPU will limit performance especially when using port forwarding, NAT, etc... Also, I would like to know what kind of hosting service you get in Japan for 12000 USD/year but it has to really kick lots of asses for such an insane price ?... Besides only a fool would believe that 54 wifi is close to 100 wired (maybe I misinterpreted your sentence ?), 54 wifi tops at about 20 Mbps in real life, 100 wired is much faster...

my internet connections should be 100mbps, but due to wireless, it has dropped significantly to only 4mbps. i'm not entirely sure why this happens, prolly due to router or my wireless device..

Even though I've seen it plenty of times, wiring in Japan never ceases to amaze me.

I thought Japan would have wires running underground more. Maybe frequent earthquakes preculde that option?

I pay 54USD for 10Mbps.

The wires are all underground but they don't need to do anything to set up your internet since the infrastructure is already set up. They have to run a new line if you want a dedicated Fiber Optic line though.

The workers here though don't have the same appreciation for their jobs. I hear all the time about internet installers ringing the door bell and driving off before you can answer and then claiming you weren't home. Or the infamous Comcast roll where you complain over the phone so they pay a driver to drive past your house and claim you weren't home for them to help you (they don't even stop).

Also those wires look dangerous. Are there any regulations on those wires? Could any company just start hanging wires from those poles potentially messing up the existing wires up there? If some of the internet companies in America started operating in Japan there would be many many problems.

holy shit you made me burn with jealousy!

here I am stuck with a crappy ~3Mb down, 0.4Mb up, _unreliable_, AND throttled connection, then you come along and brag about having _2_ fiberoptic lines which are over 20 times my down and 100 times my up while paying LESS than me! you don't know how pissed of I am. the only thing that prevents me from smashing my monitor on the ground is the small chance of me actually having something like this one day.

I'll go cool down now, thnx.

If I took pictures of people working on stuff like this here I'd probably get in trouble. I wonder though. I got cable internet and it's pretty good I guess. around 60 USD a month, started at just over 50 but first 3 months was around 30. The quality doesn't seem to go up when the price does though, although they claim it did.

If I took pictures of people working on stuff like this here I'd probably get in trouble. I wonder though. I got cable internet and it's pretty good I guess. around 60 USD a month, started at just over 50 but first 3 months was around 30. The quality doesn't seem to go up when the price does though, although they claim it did.

well, THE DOWNLOAD AND UPLOAD SPEEDS ARE INSANE!! D:

in Singapore, all our cables are also underground (maybe due to british influence?)
we have a few ISPs but mostly, people sure Singnet (NICKNAME: SINKLAG) and StarHub (NICKNAME: SHITHub) well if u see these "nicknames" dun be afraid they refer to our ISPs. it costs about 48 bucks for a 10Mbps connection?

Singnet is using DSL (well they say that they will lay optic fibre cables bla bla bla... all is unknown though) MAX connection = 25Mbps
they have Voice over the modem too, so we save money ^^ (they call it the mio plan)

Starhub is using Coaxial (Cable TV lines)
Max connection = 100Mpbs
They have voice over cable too.... hehehe

i though that "Hikari denwa" is cool "light telephone" *_*

For half the price DC's going to be paying, we get an 8Mb line here. Still waiting for them to roll out the next set of speeds and upgrade the local exchange. 100Mb would be great for all that "open source" stuff =P

This blog reminds me of Clannad Afterstory for some reason. :p

I started paying $44.95 for Internet back in mid 2007 from Time Warner Cable in Los Angeles. Starting January 2009 the price went up for everyone. Now i pay $46.95 a month.

I have Road Runner Interent from Time Warner cable. I've had absolutely no problems with my connection since i signed up. It's not the best Internet but it also isn't a bad service as well.

I refuse to call that a van. It's so tiny! >< It's got to be at least twice that size to count as a van over here.

Not sure about my Internet connection since my Dad controls it, but it's not great. It varies in speed during certain hours of the day, from relatively fast to crippling slow. Can't say I like all the wires in Japanese neighbourhoods, though. It looks interesting, but I like walking down the street and looking up to see nothing but clear blue sky.

Sometimes the manuals for Japanese language in Singapore aren't even localized. The smileys, must be to emphasize a warm service culture.

Danny, if you connect using wireless, and then ethernet, id think you should be able to access both networks. (wireless to the 2nd fiber line, ethernet to the original)

Not 100% sure, because ive never tried it out, bit it might work to access the mac network.

Simply amazing. Cheap and fast

-drools-..
My family pays around 20USD/Mo. for 750kbps down/130 up (you guys think you have it rough? ;_;)
Might want to consider changing the plans for a slightly fast internet connection though ><.

My family pays 40 USD for a 1 Mbps down conection.

Looking at all those wires kinda makes my head spin...There's only one company that I know of that uses fiber optic, but there's none in this area...

Ah, I'm jealous. I'm on 768k with random disconnects/lag spikes. My ping in online games has jumped to and stayed at 300 for no reason.

Also, I love how the utility poles look. So many wires...

Wow, gets really technical towards end @_@ I'm surprised that those workers let you took all the pics, thought maybe they try to make their work not appear on internet and such ^^;

So most of those wires up there are data and phone? Here they're some data and phone, but also a lot of electricity. You can usually tell the power lines by their distinctive hum. Above ground wires and cables are considered highly unattractive here, so they're put underground. They try to put them under sidewalks instead of streets, so digging them up doesn't block traffic, but it doesn't always happen that way. ^^; I know there's some way they can pull up commonly used lines without digging up too much stuff; I'll have to ask my uncle, who installs DSL lines and the like for a living. I do know there's a lot of crawling under houses involved.

Oh, that's another difference between Japan and the US: instead of getting a team of people to install your internet or phone, you get one guy. Yeah, that's right, ONE. So installing one line takes a good couple hours sometimes, which then means he's late to his next stop. This means that you don't really get an appointment, you get a day, where they say they'll come between 9AM and 5PM usually, and you sit around waiting for them. Sucks majorly, both for the installing guys and for the customer.

connect to one network with a lan cable and the other with wifi ^^

Here in PH we do have caps on the net connection. Not to mention during installation
you end up waiting for a long time with major telecommunication companies here.

Network Tech stuff XD
Sure would love to learn lots of those too.

After seeing all the wires above ground, I can now see the Japanese fascination with tentacles.

Ooo. Seems Spiderman just passed by Danny's area.

Your download speed is 10 times of mine!

i'm jealous.we got a 3mb line here and the bill is like $60 a month

OMG! 6270 yen for that speed. Where I am at, these kind of speeds are a pipe dream.

Plus your ISP either has a month bandwidth cap or is throttling
the connection. (AT&T and Comcast, I'm looking at both you idiots!!)

Well, just survived major restructuring (ie:layoffs) today
at our company. A lot of good people got screwed, so I've
learned to appreciate that I can still afford my crappy
internet connection for sometime longer.

good lord... now i know why i wasn't an electrician...

yeah.. there limiting teh internet over here.. they say its to free up the net.. and stop torrents.. these people need to look in to the future and catch the hell up.. they can't Dis invent stuff.. so just get used it and make money off it... sheesh

good article Danny, learned something every day here... :D

i freeload off my neighbor's wi-fi! MBP's have nice reception, but sometimes the internet connection will disconnect... so i either go outside for better signal or go to the library.

that's a lot of cables, you don't have that in the US.

Danny - Without going into too much detail, I would look into using Samba via a separate network connections on the Powerbook (you will need a different IP addressing scheme on the 2 networks). You can also try tunnelling Samba over SSH (slower) or using a VPN. It does completely depend on how you intend to link the 2 etc and security should be the primary concern.

Here in the USA I use Comcast for Cable TV/ Telephone / Internet, and pay 120$/month for these 3 services. It's kind of a lot of money, but I can call anywhere in the USA for the same price as local. Plus we have something like 900 channels. And our internet is the same speed as Danny's. Our family cell phone plan costs easily as much for 4 handsets and no extra features (text message, internet, etc), just phone calls. In this area, it's almost impossible to get just internet connection without some sort of cable/phone bundle . . . they wanted to charge 70$/month for just the internet so getting cable and phone was not really much more money. Our house was already wired so we got to opt out of setup fees, but I think the fee was only like 35$.

I really envy you Danny, for $15 more, you get a connection 100x faster than mine. These speeds are more than enough to make me want to move to Japan.

Arg, Canada = internet fail. I've got DSL and I'm lucky if I get 1 mbps.

being an electrician in Japan looks a tad bit scary with all those wires lol. Me is having high speed comcast so I have a very fast connection. One test i did suprisingly gave me a download speed of 27230 kb/s.

54mbps upload thats really great value! I only have 1mbps upload so self hosting really is out of the question. Not to forget hardware in japan are also quite cheap , :( so jealous.

Btw danny , what sort of servers you're running Dannychoo.com ? Dell 1u servers ? Would be good if you could post an article about the requirements of the server required to handle so many hits/day.

Great conection you got there in Japan. Here we play a lot of € for 20MB/s down and 1MB/s up (NOT REAL!) so...

That is so cool, especially since we don't have residential fiber in South Africa. Im amazed at the quality and efficiency of work. Would very much like to see your upcoming article about customer service mentality :)

Enjoy your new toy.

i pay $ 27 usd for my crappy DSL, accessing my test server at home from the university is a pain in the @ss; random disconnections, and the speed fluctuates like wall street in a bad day.

Does the network provider allow installing a web server using that link?

Both my parents have worked in the Telephone industry for 30+ years so I asked them what's up with the lines being underground VS them above ground like in Japan.

They say the majority of lines are underground because above-ground lines are simply more exposed and in danger of always going down. Car accidents, bad weather, trees, and there's even the danger of wires eventually sagging down very low over time. Apparently it's a nightmare to have everything out in the open like that - and it's ugly.

The streets have to be dug up for new fiber lines, but a lot of telecom companies end up sharing the same underground tube (there's a technical term for this) if available and so less digging is required over time.

A lot of consumer "fiber optic connections" such as AT&T's U-verse are carried on fiber to your home as close as possible, but instead of digging up the street to lay fiber to your door they use existing copper connections. Apparently copper can be "pushed" to carry equivalent speeds of a standard fiber connection and they don't have to dig up the street.

My father went on to say the best internet connection anyone could possibly want would be a T1 connection (or T3, ect.). It's fast and highly reliable due to the fact the telecom company would actually have the ability to monitor it's status in real time. Unfortunately this costs about $340 a month. O_O

dr00ls one day I`ll have that kinda speed

Whenever I fire up those evil torrents, i cheered when i connect to a japanese ip. Ok, provided i haven't got throttled by my isp -_-

Oh...you tease...

No caps in Japan...but I heard downloading 'OpenSource' stuff can lead to the termination of one's internet service...which is the whole point of getting Broadband in the first place, isn't it?

When are we going to get affordable Fiber Optic services here in the States? T_T

in Indonesia you pay Rp. 750,000.- which is around 7000yen for a 1Mbps ADSL. I'm not joking, I'm using that service. In some housing area the cables run overhead above the ground, in which cable connection is available (which is a lot cheaper than ADSL. in my area the cables run underground so the cable providers can't plant their cable in, no cable connection.
Well luckily the said cheaper cable connection is more unstable than ADSL...
in Singapore cable internet and TV lines are planted underground but is available islandwide.

>btw is it really safe to hook iron/aluminum ladder to cable lines and have human body weight on them? >.<

Damn...I'm so envious now. Not just the humongous speed for about the same price as I pay for 20 Mbps, but also your pimped-out server-storage-router-network config. Whish I could do that, but I'm only just about able to forward a port for uTorrent and that's it ^^;

stalk material to track down danny's house!

for some reason i got reminded of a Clannad after story poster when i saw the article pic

工事呼ぶときはフィギュア片付けたほうが…………ｗｗ

I HAS A 100Mbps connection speed from where I live now. But I don't need to pay a single cent since it's included in my rental payment.

Anyone else think of Tomoyo from Clannad when they saw the pic for this article?

All those wires floating around overhead sort of look cool in a way. But another part of me wonders how much more natural and beautiful the surrounding areas could look without them. Though i live out in the country, so maybe that is just my bias towards nature speaking. I guess it is part of Japan that is unique to me, so I'll say i like it lol.

I pay 12$/month for my DSL through Verizon. It is a lil slower than the RoadRunner I had when i lived in the town a few miles up the road, but that cost me 40$/month, so the I'll take the Verizon any day over that absurd cost. No DL caps that i am aware of, but I've never DL'd more than maybe 30 gigs of stuff a month. I don't believe there is a limit, and I was shocked to hear others had one imposed on them as well.

danny

just noticed the iphone app

could you please let us know the name of the VNC app for controlling the mac with the iphone ?

thanks a lot

The guys look professional ^^;

I really want super fast internet, imagine how fast those torrent will go!

I like read articles like this in Dannychoo.com!
I want fiber too...

Whoa.... thats alot of cables...

And yes, I thought of Tomoya-kun when I saw those uniforms lol.

And in the UK, Samuel L Jackson calls it Fibre Optic, so I'll stick with that lol. If SLJ says its so, its so. I think I called it that before anyways lol.

Oh to have broadband that fast....:sob:

Here we spend about 20USD for internet and that is still slow. And I think only big companies can afford to install fiber optic here.

I'm so envious T_T...Wish they would hurry with the fiber optic set up here...

*If this was the UK, people would beat up the guy in blue and steal the ladder.
lol! if it was in the Philippines someone would have either tap the box for free internet or stole the cables up on the post. believe me, I've had problems with internet providers that would tell me that the internet is down in my area because someone stole the cables for the post. ^^;
about internet speeds I think the max we have here is about 4mbps and would cost about $100usd a month.

sadly optic fibre connections are still pipe-dreams in singapore

I would really wish we have the same high speed internet at a really cheap price just like there Danny. Here, we have a decent speed, no cap in the bandwidth at a cheap and reasonable price...

Singaporean internet speed is downright expensive... One of the two main ISPs here charge USD40+ for a 10mbps connection... And thanks to the monthly costs, I'm only using a 6mbps connection. I wonder when will true 100mbps ever come >.<

That's cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap, damn my line over here. Pay around 15$/mon for a 1Mbit/512Kbit up/down here. No traffic shaping though. I use over 100GB/mom bw though and at some periods like comicket or when I download some full show, it can go up to 300GB/mon.

Optic Fiber~~~~ Wonder how many century will it take to be available for the mass market in M'sia...

Customer services in M'sia are mostly unbearable especially for government-based corporation, some MNC are still fine, nevertheless it solely depend on the person though.

I missed my days when having my office in HK~~~~~~~~ always envy of how superfast the internet speed are in other highly developed countries.

I pay 20 euros for 10Mbps.

the wires are all over the street and there are so many of them

just awesome, for me =D

Danny-san,

To your question about how to connect your computer to 2 networks simultaneously, i think i can give you some answers :

- First you can connect 2 networks with 2 networks adapters (simple isn't it!), each network adapter will get an IP from the network assuming there's a DHCP server on it, and your routing table on the client computer will be able to address your request to the correct network.

- The other way, which uses only one network adapter, is to set up VPN on the desired network. This way, the network you have VPN on can be accessible from any network, home or remote (VPN can be used through the internet)
You just have to set up a VPN server on, say, network A, server A being the VPN server (the server can support differents roles too). Your client computer connects to the network through a VPN client connexion (software available on all CLient OSes) from network B to network A through internet, and gets an IP from network A on a virtual network adapter. Routing table gets the virtual adapter and sends requests aiming for network A through virtual network adapter which is a tunnel in your physical network adapter.

Main advantages are : ultra-secure (tunnels are encrypted through L2TP or IPSec), and possibility to work on remote as long as you have internet connexion (and of course, VPN ports aren't blocked)
VPN server software exists for several platforms and even opensource (openVPN)

I hope i've been clear enough (sorry english isn't my mother tongue), if you need further information or help don't hesitate to contact me ^-^

P.S : quite a long speech ですね！ >_<

This is truely an amazing article, and it really shows off the exact process of pulling fiber into a home. This is excellent knowledge for everyone else in the world, and helps others understand why Japan can have fiber so easily and other countries cannot yet. Hopefuly Obama gives billions in funding to wire individual houses instead of just nodes with fiber. You know that businesses in America would never fork out that kind of money.

Great article. I've been stuck on a crappy connection, but I don't pay a whole lot for it at least.

Re: smiley faces in owners manuals, no, they don't keep them in our localized manuals. I wish they did though. It'd make reading the manuals that more interesting. Good example that I've seen are the manuals for the Nintendo products. Those should keep the illustrations.

I live in a dormitory and have a cheap connection, about 10 USD or so month. And the ISp is the same one who provides internet connection to my university so the speed is usually very good.

>.. telecommunication wires are mostly above ground in residential areas and are easy to install.
Didn't know that before, but now that you say it I remember seeing seen those wires on many pics and also anime series.

Damn, 100mbp can't even imagine how fast that is. I get 10mbps free with the cable.

Some many wires, i live in a rural village so your not aload wires or dishes to be seen. Cost a bit more for installing thing but it also mean that during winter no trees crash into line cutting me off from the intetnet, which i imagine would be hell.

Like there uniforms, ive been told that the Japanese love uniforms.

Fiber is cheap here in Sweden as well, but you can't get your hands on it that easily. In all newly built houses, fiber is included, it's also installed quite often in areas where the average age is lower. So basically, you have to live in a building where it's available, once you do that, you end up paying about $50 or less a month for 100Mbit.

I have a cable connection, ~20Mbit down and 12Mbit up, which is good enough as I don't have any servers. However, I do pay just as much as I would for 100Mbit in a house where fiber is available, but I try not to think about that, haha.

Well, setting up a server on nowdays is just a joke. I installed an entire ISP back in 1995, at that time it was a nightmare to do, and you needed to be an IT expert (no kidding!).

About those wires, well, they're ungly if you used to be on a city w/o any wires visible at all.

And I still dream the day we'll have that speed at such prices.

Interesting article... stuff I always wanted to know.
In Brazil, dedicated fiber optics links simply doesn't exist for homes.
And I pay 2 times the price for a 4Mb Cable link, which doesn't get anywhere near that speed.

It's a proven fact that you never get the speed advertised by ISPs here in Brazil.

4Mb is kinda of a luxury not many people have around here... I decided to get basic cable and the cheapest phone plan so I could spend more on Internet speed.

Since I live in an apartment now, instalation was not a problem... the previous owner already had cable TV, so everything was kinda set up.

But back in my hometown, we pretty much had to redo most of the electrical instalation of the house in order to get ADSL running, and even so, it still has lots of interference and problems.

There's absolutely no standards on passing electrical cables and stuff, so it's a nightmare to install cable TV, extra lines and other stuff.

But since Internet is more a basic need to me than phones or TV, has to be done.

I'm jealous of the speeds you guys get over there. Over here, fiber optic is 20Mbps for the more basic package and up to 50Mbps for the most expensive. And availability is so limited. The roll out of the cables is slow too. Also most avg cable and dsl speeds are 768Kbps to 6Mbps which is pretty sad considering you would think we would adopt newer technology much quicker.

10mbps for $48USD after $3 modem lease and $10 discount for having cable TV as well.
Uploads for 1mbps (10% of download speed, seems to be the case for majority of connections in the USA)

I have never seen so many cables at once in an open area like that. o.0!
USA re-did it's infrastructure with Fiber Optic cables, but mainline to house is still coaxial cables, unless you order Fiber Optic specifically. So far I've only seen upto 16mbps for a household connection, anything higher and you'd have to request a business line with Fiber Optics, costing you an arm and a leg.

I love your house Danny~ T.T

Danny this post is just amazing, nice pics and good covering explanations as alaways. I'm into businness intranet and what i've seen here it's very inspiring for me! I love this kind of stuff!

Interesting. Here in Portugal optical cables to ones home is not common yet, ADSL technology as been improving reaching 24Mb+, I believe the last version of it can theoretically reach 54Mb+, making the transition to optical cabling less attractive. I myself have a 1Mb mobile HSDPA conection for €30 a month, caped of course (10GB total upload+download), but having internet everywhere has it's advantages. (^^)

Danny, if you also use MySQL I recommend you this backup suit http://mysqlbackup.zmanda.com/ if you don't know about it yet. This thing is really flexible. I'm using it over here and find it really powerful and easy to use. Requirements are perl and crond. Perl is ok but I'm not really sure about crond.

over here we pay roughly about $20 for a 1mbps connection (up/down). sucks doesn't it? wish we had japan's bandwidth and pricing over here. *sigh*

Lol, you gave them a few nendoroid puchi? I couldn't say no to that xD
Interesting that they let you take photos though, did you have to get permission from higher ups for that? =o

I pay au$70/month for 20gb peak and 40gb offpeak [12am-12pm] cable [avg. speed of about 50kB/s, but it's gone up to 700kB/s on torrent xD], normally it's about $80/90 separately [not sure] but we've bundled with the phone and cable TV.
We're located fairly close to an exchange so that may account for the semi good speed, though we get slowed down to 6.4kB/s if we go over the bandwidth [which we do almost without fail every month xD;]

i never thought that observing people hook up fiber optic connections can be enjoyable ^^

The UK isn't as bad as you make out Danny!!
I know London can be a living Nightmare but there are really nice places too!
Interesting article though! Thanks!

Woot, do want an optic fiber internet! Unfortunately by the time it comes here I'll probably be somewhere else, enjoying it already... *cough*

I still have the original documentation and manuals of my Gameboy Advance, lol. You're right about the smiling part.

Im so jealous im hoping to justify getting fibre optic 50Meg over here in England as my dads company pays for the internet and stuff so its a case of trying to give alot of pro's for it. Its going to be expensive i know it :( wish it was simple like japan good times and bad times :(

I wish my fiber optic connection was as fast as it used to be here in Japan. It seems to have slowed way down since it was installed about two plus years ago. I guessing there are too many users in my building clogging it up.

Wow, looks complicated ^^; That's a lot of wires and cables...really, nothing like I've seen before ^^;

Always want a super fast connection, been always a dream.

I heard Singapore is going to install fibre optic cable island-wide. I remember reading a newspaper article last year stating that there are 2 companies that's fighting over the rights for the installation, one is from Hongkong and the other is Canada or something. Once they are done with it, it'll take around 2 years for the installation to complete and boom!! ~Super high speed here we go~ ^^

They promised a speed that could upload a single DVD file (4GB+) in matter of minutes ^^

Messy poles indeed. Some poles also contain heavy transformers.
I wonder how many unused cables there are and how many companies manage these cables.
They might reuse a part of Danny's phone wiring? Or would they remove it completely to make space for other cables.

good article.

in our part of America we have only one option - Cable internet for broadband, We are out of range of DSL and Satellite is not good enough for me. i get about 600K on a good night with this system. If we get the option of fibre optic in this area I am switching to it so fast.

did you check here:
www.commufa.jp

I'm still on v.92 modem here. It is *cheap* ($7.95 | mo when you pay for a year), but sadly, no match for when Danny posts articles as clustered with images like this (unfinished after 25 minutes - stopped it - blocked images from static.flickr.com - then re-loaded it).
Both I and my dad now have new computers [I just bought him a Windows® Vista system with the AMD Quad processor and 64-bit OS.]. I probably will eventually go to _DSL, but not yet. The corporation will have to make a very good offer.
I ran Speedtest.net on the line I was using in Shibuya-ku over a month ago. It showed that *that* computer was running faster than 97% of the computers connected to the Internet. Ohmigawd.

mmm I cant believe I read all that, quite interesting! and damn cheap internet with high speeds and no download cap! thats insane...

Wow, that's very fast. Wish we had this in the Philippines. I'm stick with 1.2Mbps - 1.4Mbps download on my DSL connection... T_T

My friend back in the states (IL) got the Verizon FIOS packages for $60 a month. He is going to to ape doodoo when he hears about this.

I shall search more info on this package you got Danny. I am definitely interested in getting this as service as well. Looking forward to the D/U speeds, Hopefully this helps online gaming from laggs and such.

I have a DSL connection
1Mpps up
30kbps down
no bandwidth cap ( yeah! )
dynamic ip ( kinda yeah! )

paying about 80pln monthly which according to uncle google is about 2,088 yen
wanna switch places...? :C

I wonder,if you pull down one of thoses electricity pile, will the rest follow :D?

I wish fiber was available in my area. I am stuck with expensive cable that keeps having problems instead. D:

Well well, you've got pretty detailed process here, i like it. To figure out how us in Indonesia paid for these lousy communication fee, i had CATV an FO based which come along with broadband internet access which limit our connectivity up to 3mbps only (which cost around $108 per motnh) and that come from a private company, while the national communication company just offer half of that speed (I'm aware Japan pretty more advance handling communication in vast landscape compare to us here).

And looking at picture shown above, i would love to pull a cable directly to my home for my own server so i don't have to rent it anymore. But it cost more here (for now) to pull the plug directly, so i stayed on public server. I'm pretty confuse looking how many cable wavering around the neighborhood like that, isn't it dangerous?

Singapore is currently building the infrastructure for fiber optics internet...
some areas are conducting pilot testings already....
but is gonna take a while more since all our cables are under ground......

14 trillion bps... shit... rogers in canada is pretty bad...

Eh? In UK, they beat up traffic guide just for fun? Stealing ladders? What for? Sell to scrap yard for money?

Its nice to have optical Internet connection. Hope Singapore will have that in the future.

d@@b

"If this was the UK, people would beat up the guy in blue and steal the ladder".I heared that happening in other coutries like Ukraine.

I'd love to get FTTH at my home, but I don't think it will be available before 3 or 4 years. I guess I'm stuck with my 4 Mbit/s DSL until then...

Thanks a lot for this very interesting article and photos.

¡¡¡¡¡¿¿Why I have to live in Argentina??!!!!!, here I pay $50 for 1MB, ¡¡it`s not fair!! XDD

FYI I've dared to include some of your pictures in Wikitel at http://es.wikitel.info/wiki/Obras_de_transporte_y_acceso_en_vías_urbanas

ISPs alright in California; nothing to really complain about.

I pay 12 buck a month for "pathetic 256kbps" connection XD

It's lame speed but enough for me because I use my cellphone as 3G modem and mostly I just browsing and streaming video from youtube.

I currently pay 50€ a month for my crappy internet of 3456KBit down/448KBit up. Got owned since I technically pay for 16MBit, but the connection quality in my area is made of fail, and am locked into the contract. Well, some of the features that come with it are nice, like a Germany-wide Hotspot flatrate, but I rarely ever make use of that.

Keep in mind that my phone is included in those 50€, though.

I hate those asymmetric connections. We get moderate to good downstream, and usually horrible upstream. I absolutely loathe that. But symmetric lines literally cost an arm and a leg, and decent optical connections are only available in very few regions.

To my knowledge, you only get the really awesome internet (for affordable prices) in three cities over here at the moment. Hamburg (as of yet small affected area, up to 300MBit(!) at 90€(!!) per month), Cologne (100MBit for Tokyo-ish prices) and Frankfurt (Germany's biggest internet hub, around 150MBit for cheap depending on where you live).

Hamburg would be relatively close for me, I am seriously considering moving there just due to the better internet. God knows I'd afford a line or two.

Interesting article, I wish I could get fiber at my place, well it's possible but it would cost a lot to get them to install it to just our house. especially considering that they would be forced to dig up some of the road outside just to get the fiber connected. I would need the whole neighbourhood to agree to get fiber at the same time to get it down to a reasonable price.

That's amazing. I only have basic internet were I'm at. When I get my own place, which is soon, I'm going to get the fastest internet I can get. To bad it won't be as fast as yours in Japan. I have a Korean friend who says that the internet in South Korea is the fastest in the world. Not sure if that's true or anything. I just had to nod to him and say wow.

Only choices around here for internet is cable or DSL. It would be nice if fiber optic was available, but sure it would cost a fortune a month here. Like you mention in your article, a lot of those cables are ran underground. Running everything on poles makes a lot of sense to me, shame not done here. ^^;

Awesome!
I'm currently using the same internet speed 100Mbps, but it's kinda hard to believe ^___^ cuz the bloody thing is sooooo slow! It takes about 30-45 minutes for a 15-20 minute video on youtube or elsewhere to load :S ahhhhhhh!!!!!

"One of the reasons why Japan has the highest internet speeds in the world at cheap prices - telecommunication wires are mostly above ground in residential areas and are easy to install."

Wait, what? It's the same here in the U.S., but you'd be lucky to find decent broadband (alone) for less than $50/month. Therefore your logic is FAIL.

Then again, it might be my gov'ment protecting the telecoms companies whenever they bitch about something so business counterproductive, such as "competetion".

danny, why commenting here always so hard. well, you make me even more jealous with your internet connection.. it has been my dream to have a lightning fast internet on my own.. in my country, for about 1000 yen u could only get a sluggish slow 384 Kbps (thats right, kbps, not mbps) down and below 128 kbps upload for a month connection.. really, u make me jealous -_-"

Here in South Africa, the fatest line offered to the public is 4mbps, the starting speed is 384bps costing roughly $30... yup its DAMN expensive! Cant wait for out fibre optics to get installed, along with those ever illusive flying cars! (^.-)

100Mbps... wow @.@

A friend of mine studying in Tsukuba gets 30Mbps wireless free from her university campus. Dang!

It's so great in Japan, we're paying about the same price but I only get half the speed!

I do not know how much our high speed internet is a month or what the speed is but after living with slow dial for the longest time it is much faster than what I amused to.

I can see that all the phone line cables are a mess and a eye source. One my street we do not have them.

when i was looking at the linemen in the picutes I noticed that they were not wearing gloves and their helemt were suppost to have a bill in front for additional protection.

where can i buy optic fibre for rollout and manuals for install - nothing like that here in brisbane, australia

It's been awhile since we've acquired an Japan-built appliance with a noticeably localised manual. The two that we've got date from the mid 80's - a VCR & reverse-cycle AC - and yes they do come with smiley face and appropriate SD graphics.

There's a car yard not too far from me that sells that size van, along side R32/3/4 V35 Skylines, Stageas, Supra, S-Cargo, Delicas. They've got an RS4 Stagea I'd be interested in if it was an auto.

When TBP came out to install Cable, the only digging the techs had to do was at the front wall of me house. That was so they could get to the conduit Telstra ran from the access hole in the street and pull a length of coax from the cable splitter in the access hole to the terminal block they installed out the front.
You'll find in Aus, where ever Telstra lay Coax Cable for 'pay tv' they also put empty conduit runs into each house so they could feed coax/fiber in later.

Hmm...my coming living place say provided the Fiber Optic connection..I wonder it mean this?

i am so jealous of those speeds and those prices....i wish we could get that kind of stuff in the US...not only that but we're getting caps on our bandwidth soon too : (

I pay about 60 per month. I wish the states would hurry up with the optic fiber though.

I pay 60 Euro per month for my optic fiber internet flat.

But what I like about this Article are you pictures... The are top notch as always and I just luv that blue sky .... why issit so blue?! NAAANNNDDEEE...

Those are some of the most serene and clean repair dudes I've ever seen.

Woooow this speed is so so fast and the service as you mentioned is so good too. As in my college, the service is terrible and paying for almost the same price as jp optic fiber just to get 512kbps speed =.=''

I just got Verizon fios for my connection. I got the 20mps download/5mbs upload. Your connection makes me salivate. The plan is about $55 per month.

Wow that pretty cool have a fiber optic internet

Its amazing how all the optic wires are just running over the streets along the roof tops of houses. Seeing the photos of the workers hanging on the lines with the ladder is pretty amazing, in the fact that the wire can support a person. Anyway, very interesting and cool to see how everything works. Awesome post!! ^^

We recently had a 1GB optic connection installed (in central Tokyo). When they came to fit it I asked the chap, "So, I know this is supposed to be a 1GB connection, but how fast will it *really* be?!"

"To be honest, it probably won't be any faster than you current connection". He ws right, but we're not complaining as it was already 30mbps!

wow...go japan...100..damn i dont even get that/ hm..64.bucks not bad..though there some deals her for 70 you get otp fiber with the phone for one year. but still i bet thats a great deal in japan like u said.. and thats really cool how they work on it like that XD

japanese houses are nice, i want one!

in italy, the faster optic fiber is 20 mbps... for 45€/month i feel bad...

Honestly, i almost cried reading this article, because the internet speed (and service) in my country sucks sooo bad...*sob*

Props to you, Danny.

i might be going to Malaysia for work related stuff, and I have heard of many horror stories about how slow it is there, i don't know how I am going to get my work done...
Internet speed in Japan and also in Korea are just amazing to me, just wish those people in charge can understand the inconvenience and inefficiency that can be caused with a slow connection and low bandwidth digital communication infrastructure.
Nice pics !