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Japan To Get 1Gbps Home Fiber Connections

ashitaka writes "KDDI has announced that they will be launching a 1Gbps Internet service to single-family home and condo users in October. The service is supposedly synchronous, with 1Gbps in both directions, although the article implies that speeds will vary with location. Cost will be 5,985 yen/month (about US$56.50) for the basic Internet and IP phone service. This is intended to compete with NTT, who currently control over 70% of the Japanese FTTH market."

275 comments

  1. Hope they start using bittorrent by ChienAndalu · · Score: 5, Funny

    I mean, they have to do *something* with the bandwidth

    1. Re:Hope they start using bittorrent by rale,+the · · Score: 3, Informative

      They're too busy using PD (think freenet, but fast).

    2. Re:Hope they start using bittorrent by magus_melchior · · Score: 1

      I wish they could, but the ISPs there agreed to monitor their users for P2P transmissions of copyrighted stuff.

      Dunno if they will allow the content companies there to actually bully their customers, but given that they've taken to mimicking the US in a lot of ways...

      --
      "We are Microsoft. You shall be assimilated. Competition is futile."
    3. Re:Hope they start using bittorrent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ironically I hardly ever see IP's from Japan. I see tons from Europe, a few from China on your average medium to high popularity torrent.

      I think maybe its because Japan already has their own movie stars, popular tv shows, popular music, and software already in Japanese.

    4. Re:Hope they start using bittorrent by Migity · · Score: 1

      I use bittorrent all the time and I'm already using KDDI. Now I'll be able to upload and download porn 10x faster than now!

    5. Re:Hope they start using bittorrent by LingNoi · · Score: 2, Interesting

      They have their own slashdot too..

    6. Re:Hope they start using bittorrent by Digital+End · · Score: 1

      You're outsourcing our P2P now? Where will it end!

      --
      Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.
  2. Sweet! by commodoresloat · · Score: 4, Funny

    That makes it much more likely that Japanese slashdot users will get first post!

    1. Re:Sweet! by Kjella · · Score: 1

      Wouldn't that be the one with a station wagon full of DVDs? Or are you confusing two concepts here...

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    2. Re:Sweet! by e-Flex · · Score: 1

      I, for one, welcome our new ultra-responding low-latency overlords!

    3. Re:Sweet! by Starmengau · · Score: 2, Funny

      They have their own slashdot for that.
      Ironically, this isn't a front page story on slashdot.jp.

    4. Re:Sweet! by Idiomatick · · Score: 1

      It wouldn't give them first post that would be ping. It will just allow them to post a few trillion times an hour.

  3. Wouldn't do us here in the US much good by nurb432 · · Score: 1

    Just means we would reach our cap that much sooner. And of course, the ISP's would just go off and over sell that too.

    --
    ---- Booth was a patriot ----
  4. Re:Brilliant! by Mordok-DestroyerOfWo · · Score: 5, Funny

    You're right 640 Kbps should be enough for anybody! I'll get off your lawn now.

    --
    "Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
  5. Re:Brilliant! by thetoadwarrior · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Woah, someone is totally jealous.

  6. Re:Brilliant! by SwedishPenguin · · Score: 1

    I don't see much use for 1Gbps either, I rarely use the full capacity of my 100 Mbps. But there will probably come some use for 1 Gbps connections in the future, so it's always good to be ready. Who would have predicted 100 Mbps being (somewhat, here at least) common (or having a use) 10 years ago when we were waiting for DSL to get us out of the dial-up world.

  7. Re:Brilliant! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Seriously, 1Gbps is so insanely overboard.

    And 640K is enough for anyone.

    The amusing part about it, is that it will be capped at 30GB transfer a month probably. AWESOME! You can reach your cap for the month in a matter of hours.

    Try 4 minutes.

  8. Think of the Backbone by RichMan · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I thought the service providers were already complaining about individual users clogging up "the pipes".
    Giving a bigger bandwidth to end users is just asking for more backend network congestion.

    Unless they are expecting us to continue along the http: clicky traffic model with all this new bandwidth.

    YouTube and movie on demand services look more usable with this increased bandwidth.

    I suppose the service providers are drooling at the thought of pricing per gigabyte downloads along the lines of text-message pricing.

    1. Re:Think of the Backbone by Kneo24 · · Score: 1

      Service providers in the USA, afaik. Those people in Sushi-land? They apparently love giving out lots of bandwidth at affordable prices.

    2. Re:Think of the Backbone by SwedishPenguin · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Then upgrade the backbone. Instead of limiting the speed for end users, invest in the backbone and eliminate the clogging. I'm guessing Japan doesn't have that big of a problem with the backbone though. (neither does Sweden it would appear, I can easily reach 100 Mbps if I download directly from someone else on a 100 Mbps connection within Sweden)

    3. Re:Think of the Backbone by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      I work at tech support for one of swedens largest ISP:s (bredbandsbolaget). We're currently testing 1gbit-connections with a couple of hundred customers. I'm guessing we'll start selling to the general public within the next two years or so. ^^

    4. Re:Think of the Backbone by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      IIRC, Bredbandsbolaget has said that they will upgrade all their fiber customers to 1000/1000 by 2010.

    5. Re:Think of the Backbone by Idiomatick · · Score: 1

      SMS is free in japan and most ISPs charge a flat rate with hard caps around 30Gigs a day (upload i believe). I'm sure this much faster service will have a cap around 500G upload per day. Almost no chance they will be charging by the gig.

    6. Re:Think of the Backbone by ishobo · · Score: 1

      Except most people in the U.S. live in urbanized metro areas. The classic suburb is often medium density with lots of infill. The vast majority of land in the U.S. is dead space.

      There is an enourmous amount of fiber capacity for SONET backbones, with most of it unused.

      --
      Slashdot - The great and glorious cluster fuck of Internet wisdom.
    7. Re:Think of the Backbone by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      The backbone is not the issue. You have to take a look at the countries with these high-speed networks like South Korea, Japan, Sweden. The same factors crop up:

      - small geographical size (reach more people with less infrastructure)
      - generally quite dense population centres (possibly not the case with Sweden)
      - the native language is fairly unique to the country.

      I can't emphasise the last point enough. The majority of content viewed in Japan will be in Japanese and hosted locally. And for those who know how peering agreements work, this will not cost the ISPs a cent to deliver.

      Unfortunately I live in Australia, which satisfies none of the above three points and hence languishes behind in broadband delivery technology.

    8. Re:Think of the Backbone by SwedishPenguin · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The US is larger than both Sweden and Japan, yes. But it also has a larger population, and thus a larger economy than either, which should be able to support that infrastructure.
      And the US has a higher population density that Sweden.

      You have highways running all over the country right? Why wouldn't you make the same investment for the backbone?

    9. Re:Think of the Backbone by cryptodan · · Score: 1

      The US is larger than both Sweden and Japan, yes. But it also has a larger population, and thus a larger economy than either, which should be able to support that infrastructure. And the US has a higher population density that Sweden.

      You have highways running all over the country right? Why wouldn't you make the same investment for the backbone?

      Who will foot the bill?

    10. Re:Think of the Backbone by SwedishPenguin · · Score: 1

      ISPs.. If they want to remain competitive..

    11. Re:Think of the Backbone by Iamthecheese · · Score: 1

      I think I speak for all of us in Japan when I say: bero bero be!

      --
      If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
    12. Re:Think of the Backbone by compro01 · · Score: 1

      You would do better to compare the population densities in various major cities, but than again, that would be utterly devastating to your case.

      --
      upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
    13. Re:Think of the Backbone by KGIII · · Score: 1

      Not all of us live in cities. Those who do live in cities tend to get more bandwidth even if their rural friends manage to get broadband at all.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    14. Re:Think of the Backbone by electrictroy · · Score: 1

      First off, Japan ALWAYS leads the world in technology. I don't know why, but they do. They had HDTV in 1985!!! (It was called MUSE, it was analog, and produced 1035i images.) So news articles about Japan having the world's fastest internet is no surprise to me. It's always been that way.

      Second, the rest of the world is pretty much even. The average bitrate for the European Union, the United States, Canada, and Australia is virtually identical - around 10 Megabit/sec. I'm not really concerned about the U.S. falling behind the E.U. or the rest of the world. We're keeping pace.

      And yes Americans concentrate, but there's still a lot of space in-between. When I lived in Oklahoma City, the ~40th largest market according to Nielsen, a lot of my coworkers still had dialup. That's because (1) OKC is like a metro island in the middle of nowhere, isolated from the rest of the nation, and (2) a lot of residents live on the fringes (suburban sprawl). People in OKC have high-speed internet, but outside OKC its mostly just phone connections or satellite. (Not even cable tv.)

      --
      The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
    15. Re:Think of the Backbone by cryptodan · · Score: 1

      ISPs.. If they want to remain competitive..

      And who makes sure the ISP's get dough? THe customer you and I, so you are telling me that you would support massive rate hikes to get broadband capable of 1Gigabit a second, and even if those rate hikes are 100 dollars more per month for current service? You would be the first one inline to complain about the bill and try to find another ISP for cheaper.

      I am happily paying 55 a month for my 16Meg down 3Meg Up Comcast High Speed Internet. Id only pay at most 10 to 15 bucks more if I knew the money would be spent on current infrastructure upgrades.

    16. Re:Think of the Backbone by SwedishPenguin · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You're being gouged. I pay less than that for 100/100. If there is any sort of competition (from what I've heard, competition is lacking in the US broadband market though), the ISPs would invest that money without rate hikes in order to attract more customers. It's not like they don't have any profit margin on those 55 dollars a month they charge you.
      They probably make huge profits but they are unwilling to invest in infrastructure because it's a long term investment. It doesn't pay off within 6 months so they'd rather keep the money for themselves.

    17. Re:Think of the Backbone by cryptodan · · Score: 0, Flamebait
      See you shouldn't be commenting on such issues since its different in your neck of the woods and in your country. I am perfectly happy with using my 16Meg cable, and I do not need blazing fast internet speeds, because I do not use Torrents, I do not watch TV and movies on my computer, all I do is on my computer is casual gaming and web browsing. I dont have any high bandwidth/capacity needs. I get all my TV viewing on my Cable TV with great quality with over 400 channels of content for 80 bucks a month with DVR and HDTV Service. Its a lot cheaper to run fiber in smaller areas then it is to run it cross country at so much a foot. You still do not understand the cost of laying out a fiber network or let alone high capacity lines to give you your 100Meg Synchronized internet connection. I would suggest to you that you become more educated on how much it costs in various regions across the globe to lay out Fiber Connections starting at the OC3 level which is 155Megabits a second or roughly 3 DS3's. You will see that it is quite costly in other markets, and thusly why other markets do not have plans to offer any more bandwidth. I can guarantee that they would have to put in a few more OC192's or greater across the US Along major Interstate highways like I-10, I-5, I-25, I-40, I-95, and the others to provide a lot more bandwidth then what people are getting now.

      So who gives a flying fuck that I cannot get an ISO in under a minute, but I can get 4 Gigs in under 4 hours which is fast to me. I don't even use my allocated bandwidth or what I am paying for or even come close to capping it out, so in my opinion, people who want higher bandwidth speeds like you do should pay out more to afford their internet addiction to high bandwidth applications such as torrents and online viewing of television. And they should leave those alone who are content with their 16/3 connection.

    18. Re:Think of the Backbone by Jesus_666 · · Score: 1

      One more reason Sweden is more awesome than Germany. Over here most ISPs offer 16000k/1024k max and that's only in or around metropolitan areas. I'm in a rural area (read: 40 km from the next big city) and all I can get is 3000k/? (probably somewhere around 386k to 512k down). If I want more I'll probably have to get my own E3 line for an absurd amount of money.

      It must be nice to live in a wonderland where you can download stuff with speeds close to Ethernet or where your upstream has the same order of magnitude as your downstream...

      --
      USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
    19. Re:Think of the Backbone by TheLink · · Score: 1

      Thing is I think it takes less CPU and fancy chips to:
      1) Look at a packet header
      2) Decide which interface to send it to.
      3) Send it out that interface
      4) Keep track of tens of thousands of routes.

      Than to:
      1) Look at a packet
      2) Decide whether it's part of a connection that should be throttled.
      3a) Throttle it if it is
      3b) Prepare to throttle if it might be - deep packet inspection, accounting etc
      3c) Pass it if it is whitelisted etc.
      4) Keep track of all the zillions of connections and throttling crap, in addition to the routes.

      Sure pulling extra fibre costs money, but once you decide to pull it, I don't think it costs so much more to pull double or even triple the fibre.

      --
    20. Re:Think of the Backbone by Okkun · · Score: 1

      1000/1000?! You need to hook me up with that. I'm currently on BBB's 100/10, which as we all know, isn't nearly enough bandwidth for anyone.

  9. Re:Brilliant! by Adambomb · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Actually, he has a very good point.

    Imagine a botnet of 10000 zombied windows machines on 3.0Mbps up/down.

    Now imagine a botnet of 10000 zombied windows machines on 1Gbps up/down.

    Now if you're the target of the latter botnets DoS attack, i'm sure you'd be asking "what in the hell do they need that much upstream for to begin with!".

    Some would have very good uses for that bandwidth but if their market is anything like what I see in north america, at least half or more will be people who get it because of shinyness or the myth of the best. Depending on the ToS, this could be quite the liability for the rest of the world at large unless enough of the worlds backbones are similarly upgraded to handle the home user market hitting 1Gbps+. Not saying it is a bad thing overall, simply that the concern is valid and that given time it will no longer be a problem. Right now, he has a point.

    --
    Ice Cream has no bones.
  10. GETTING fiber and GETTING bandwidth not the same by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's one thing to get a fiber hookup but it's another to get the bandwidth. Do you believe every little Nipponese boy and girl - all 150 million of the tykes - get 1G? Come this way, I've some prime real-estate for you down on the bayou.

  11. If you can afford a single-family home in Tokyo... by bconway · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Chances are good the price you pay for your Internet access is largely irrelevant.

    --
    Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
  12. At that rate... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They can use up Comcasts's 250GB monthly cap in 33 minutes.

  13. Synchronous? by lukpac · · Score: 2

    "synchronous" = symmetric?

    1. Re:Synchronous? by dubl-u · · Score: 4, Funny

      No, it's really synchronous. That's how they can afford to do it cheaply. It works like this:

      Suppose you want to download a video. For every packet of the video you download, you need to upload one. Now naturally, you can't upload somebody else's copyrighted content. So you have to upload original video content that somebody else wants to watch.

      The main sponsors of the rollout are porn companies, because that's the only kind of marketable content most people can create. Some camwhores will probably do all right, too. And if you live in an interesting neighborhood, you can put up some webcams to meet the synchronous data requirement.

      Most people, though, won't be able to generate enough content, so they'll have to pay extra to get the synchronous requirement waved. It's sort of like how cellphone companies sell you a cheap plan, knowing they'll screw you on extras.

    2. Re:Synchronous? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Amen. Had the very same thought.

    3. Re:Synchronous? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      /clap

    4. Re:Synchronous? by sydneyfong · · Score: 1

      This sounds like a marvelous business plan. How do I invest?

      --
      Don't quote me on this.
    5. Re:Synchronous? by ashitaka · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Yes, I meant symmetric. Sorry, my brain fart. I was rushing out the door before posting and couldn't get the right word out.

      I knew, however, that some pedantics would show up and correct the oversight in a suitably (im)mature fashion.

      --
      If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
    6. Re:Synchronous? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's probably synchronous rather than asynchronous.

  14. Synchronous? by 680x0 · · Score: 4, Informative

    What the heck is synchronous about these connections? Don't you mean symmetric?

  15. Awesome by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    For legal things such as VNC (remote desktop type stuff), legal streaming video, video chat, etc. None of which is exactly feasible on 6 megabit service at "full" quality.

  16. Not hard technology; it's the politics by rbrander · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It must be almost 10 years now since I wrote (Ethernet inventor) Bob Metcalfe when he was an Infoworld columnist, to ask why the hell North America was building an Internet system out of wires installed for completely different purposes: a 1930's POTS network and a 1970's cable-TV network. There was much talk about the "unaffordable" trillions it would take to run fiber to every home.

    This begged the question of how we managed to run phone to every home with the much-smaller 1920's-1940's economy to draw on, then did it all again with more-expensive cable in a decade over the 1970's. And, you see, I work for a water and sewer utility and KNOW what it costs to run big, heavy, iron 6" diameter pipes both to and from your street and get payback on the capital out of the $40/month water bill, even after operating costs.

    Metcalfe had no reply, he tossed it to his readers; none of whom had an answer either, save those who wrote me by E-mail to rail against telephone monopolies and lobbyist-ruined governance.

    What's Japan going to DO with 1Gbps? By the time we find out, it'll take us over a decade to catch up, even if all the monopolies and lobbies are broken the next day. (In my business, we used to get a few gallons per day of water out of wells and have a shower once a week or so; now consumption can be a ton of water per day per person and we shower all we want, we have hot tubs and pools, kids in Nevada learn to swim, we irrigate gardens, and fill our cities with trees in arid climates: trust me, uses for bandwidth WILL arise, and our kids will wonder how we got by without.)

    Americans might want to start getting advice from the British on how you handle it, psychologically, when you wake up a decade or so into a new century and realize that you just aren't the most important nation on Earth anymore.

    1. Re:Not hard technology; it's the politics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Uh, right, fiber, makes you important. It's good for you, but sure leaves a LOT of crap around.

    2. Re:Not hard technology; it's the politics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A virtual-world/MMORPG with server-side photon/ray-tracing rendering(that scales well due to being able to reuse the results of those calculations among different camera positions), and simply streams audio, and JPEG-2000 compressed video , to clients?

    3. Re:Not hard technology; it's the politics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >Americans might want to start getting advice from the British on how you handle it, psychologically, when you wake up a decade or so into a new century and realize that you just aren't the most important nation on Earth anymore.

      Well said!

    4. Re:Not hard technology; it's the politics by OriginalArlen · · Score: 5, Funny

      Americans might want to start getting advice from the British on how you handle it, psychologically, when you wake up a decade or so into a new century and realize that you just aren't the most important nation on Earth anymore

      You become terribly bitter and unhappy, but you try really hard not to show it. Then you invent Monty Python.

      --

      Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
    5. Re:Not hard technology; it's the politics by im_thatoneguy · · Score: 1

      Why do you think a server would be able to devote more resources to the game than a dedicated home system?

      Photon/Ray-Tracing requires a LOT of horsepower. What makes you think that a server shared by thousands of people will be able to give you any more cycles than a dedicated high performance workstation?

    6. Re:Not hard technology; it's the politics by Idiomatick · · Score: 1

      That and the bottleneck is already processing power to move mmos to the servers. MMOs pretty much work on 5KB/s at the moment. We could probably find a way to expend that extra bandwidth to make things smoother but home user internet is nowhere near bottlenecking at the moment (in games anyways). Though we could use maybe a single percent of it to stream bluray videos (54Mb/s) not that there are any providers for it now we could build a distributed p2p streaming service with home connections this fast. At the moment we have no capture or display device available to home users that could use this connection. Your new 2008 SATA harddrive can only transfer at 300MB/s MAX (likely around 120 max). And most in home lans will only support 100 or even 10! Which entirely defeats the purpose. Aside from running a server you will not be able to cap this connection within the next few years.

    7. Re:Not hard technology; it's the politics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't seem to believe that not being able to download p0rn as fast as a person living in Tokyo will cause the United States to fall behind. In fact, it may improve the United States some. At least they will be able to use BOTH hands when using their fingers to count their way through a math problem.

    8. Re:Not hard technology; it's the politics by rbrander · · Score: 1

      Oh, sheesh, slashdot. No, I wasn't thinking of faster downloads or gaming. I was thinking of some of that stuff WiReD promised us ten years ago: most office jobs done from home via telecommuting, equipment managed from home by telepresence.

      Telecommuting didn't take off for the same reason we have business travel in a world of phones and faxes and E-mail: because people doing business want to connect personally. 80% of human communication, we're told, is in voice tones, facial expressions, body language. If we all had "VR" from multiple cameras on us at our home offices, each doing 1080p or better with CD-grade sound and zero latency, would that be tele-present enough to bridge the gap? Could you hold "meetings" between a dozen people and feel you were connecting to all of them in VR? I don't know, but only a nation with at least 100Mbps to the home is going to find out on any large scale.

      A half-decent SF writer could probably think up more things, but telepresence alone would eliminate the need for hundreds of billions of dollars in transportation infrastructure; imagine the "rush hour" a thing of the past. The car completely changed the concept of the city from a very compact thing to one very spread out. Telepresence could be as big a change again, or larger. The effects on an industrial economy beggar the imagination.

      And if it turns out not to be SF, you want to be left behind on it?

      But now that I deliberately poked a stick into the American cage with the "not the greatest nation" comment, let me end on a happier thought. I just read a great article from (here's some irony) Britain, in today's "Times Online", by Justin Web.
      http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article4735147.ece

      He was writing about the decline of "social conservatism" in America and what the voters seem to be hungering for now:

      ==
      It's the infrastructure, stupid! The Reagan era (which predated Reagan and probably began with Nixon in 1968) had all manner of effects on the nation, but among the key long-lasting legacies has been a neuralgic reaction to taxation. Many Americans have allowed themselves to think you might be able to run a modern economy on the proceeds from slot machines. As Jim Callaghan once said, in a different context: "I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists!"

      Americans hunger for mobile phone networks that work. For rapid transport that whizzes. For bridges that don't fall down. They do not hunger for government but they do hunger for efficiency, for a governing infrastructure that serves a modern economy; for a health system that delivers medicine without bankrupting companies and individuals. Both John McCain and Barack Obama know this. Each is under pressure to deliver.
      ==

      Maybe one of them should promise fiber-to-the-home...

    9. Re:Not hard technology; it's the politics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Japan has one of the biggest debts in the world.

      And probably the only debt that won't be recovered. They spend so much on everything. That said, it looks like a beautiful place to live. Too bad it's a fair bit xenophobic, but I can't blame them; they are such an isolated culture and are suffering with an aging, childless, population.

    10. Re:Not hard technology; it's the politics by Kjella · · Score: 1

      What's Japan going to DO with 1Gbps?

      Well, today I bought the GTA collection on Steam since it was half off. Trust me, those 8.6 GBs would go a lot, lot faster with Gbps downloads. At 1-2 minute download time, you could almost call it instant satisfaction.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    11. Re:Not hard technology; it's the politics by compro01 · · Score: 2, Informative

      In terms of their GDP, yes, their debt is massive (nearly double their GDP, compared to ~60% in the US's case), but their current accounts (effectively trade balance) is in much better shape than the US, sitting at about 200 billion (2nd highest only after China) in the positive, compared to the US which is over 7 trillion in the negative.

      --
      upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
    12. Re:Not hard technology; it's the politics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ... So what you're saying is that it's a pretty damn good trade. I can handle that!

    13. Re:Not hard technology; it's the politics by catmistake · · Score: 1

      1Gbit? That's nothing. Just wait until the world sees the batshitcrazy bandwidth we're gonna pump though those 6" iron pipes!

    14. Re:Not hard technology; it's the politics by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Americans might want to start getting advice from the British on how you handle it, psychologically, when you wake up a decade or so into a new century and realize that you just aren't the most important nation on Earth anymore.

      Denial works for most people.

      Read the Daily Mail. Britain is the greatest nation on earth, or would be if it wasn't for hoodies/immigrants/feral children/muslims/the EU/Nu Labour/paedophiles/political correctness etc.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    15. Re:Not hard technology; it's the politics by Icarus1919 · · Score: 1

      Gin and tonics are how they created the empire, and gin and tonics are how they deal with losing it.

    16. Re:Not hard technology; it's the politics by LingNoi · · Score: 1

      Only racist morons read the Daily Mail with its sensationalist headlines. It's the fox news of Britan's tabloids.

    17. Re:Not hard technology; it's the politics by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      It's also the second most popular newspaper, behind The Sun.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    18. Re:Not hard technology; it's the politics by LingNoi · · Score: 1

      So what? Fox news is popular too. Unless your point is that England is full of racist idiots then I am not following...

    19. Re:Not hard technology; it's the politics by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      No, you pretty much got it.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    20. Re:Not hard technology; it's the politics by LarsWestergren · · Score: 1

      This begged the question of how we managed to run phone to every home with the much-smaller 1920's-1940's economy to draw on,

      Nitpick: This didn't BEG the question, it RAISED the question. Begging the question is something different.

      --

      Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die

  17. Funny how we hear by joeflies · · Score: 3, Insightful

    that the world is getting more bandwidth capacity to individuals on new technology, whereas most of the US is on cable modem and we're getting new restrictions after years of unannounced restrictions placed on our bandwidth.

  18. Re:If you can afford a single-family home in Tokyo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    While what you say is largely true, suburbs that are about an hour by train can be quite inexpensive. And most companies buy a monthly pass for you. And where I live in Osaka, the rent is lower compared to the place I was renting back in India.

    On topic, this is awesome news indeed. I currently pay 5500 Yen for a 100Mbps from K-Opt/eonet(http://eonet.jp). But too bad that I am living in the western part of Japan.

  19. Economic crash=1gbps internet? by ntwrkguy · · Score: 1

    Maybe we need to not pass this bailout bill so our economy tanks, and then 10 years from now we'll all have 1Gbps Home Fiber connections just like Japan!

  20. The reason is obvious. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Their appetite for tentacle rape porn is insatiable. I expect we'll see another bandwidth increase in about 6 months. Honestly, how much tentacle rape porn can there be in the world?!?!

    1. Re:The reason is obvious. by RelaxedTension · · Score: 1

      Honestly, how much tentacle rape porn can there be in the world?!?!

      There can never be enough.

    2. Re:The reason is obvious. by cbraescu1 · · Score: 1

      Trust me, you don't wanna know...

      --
      Catalin Braescu
      Ofaly.com
    3. Re:The reason is obvious. by KGIII · · Score: 1

      Rule #34

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
  21. Re:If you can afford a single-family home in Tokyo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    Americans are jealous, ha-ha! Your pathetic country is dying! Do you think we forgot Hiroshima and Nagasaki??? Keep thinking... Time of our revenge is about to come. The USA are going to pay for all the evil they did around the world...

  22. Doesn't really matter by TheLink · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If you don't have a 30Gbps link, it doesn't really matter whether you're getting hit by 10000 x 3Mbps (30 Gbps) or 10000 x 1Gbps.

    It'll be hard for you to tell the difference :).

    I think most sites don't even have a 1Gbps link.

    --
    1. Re:Doesn't really matter by Adambomb · · Score: 1

      It does for sites that have the lower total throughput but have a fair bit of redundancy in place for security sake. If your disaster recovery analysis is based on the average zombie having access to 3-10Mbit, then a sudden influx of zombied 1Gbps links would definitely pooch the whole deal and make your "redundancy" rather useless. THAT is where the difference would be seriously noticeable.

      You're right though for cases of smaller providers using a single connection for the entirety of their service. In those cases, this issue is definitely moot (and obviously not involving a very large user base unless someone is being extremely stupid about their security).

      --
      Ice Cream has no bones.
    2. Re:Doesn't really matter by lysergic.acid · · Score: 3, Insightful

      true, but also i don't think limiting consumer broadband speeds is a sound method of combating the DDoS problems.

      i'm sure 1Gbps up/down sounds ridiculous to many Americans, but it probably doesn't sound so absurd to Japanese consumers. i assume that if they've decided to make such an upgrade to consumer level broadband speed, then they're probably making equivalent increases to business connections. it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that bandwidth costs will decrease over time. this is just an indication that Japan is ahead of the curve right now.

      i mean, you're not going to give a home user a 1 Gbps connection if the ISP can't handle that. and if the ISP can handle all home users having 1 Gbps then they can surely handle much bigger pipes for business/enterprise users.

      so maybe it's time for the U.S. to stop dicking around, wasting resources on packet shaping/bandwidth throttling (you know, spend money on actually increasing broadband speeds?) unless we want to be left in the dust. if we started increasing our network capacity to handle 1 Gbps home connections, then we won't have to worry about being DDoSed by 1 Gbps botnets.

    3. Re:Doesn't really matter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      unfortunately, American businesses are so obsessed about squeezing every penny out of their customers that they can, that they have to clue how to actually provide a service that people will pay for and be loyal to. I'm not sure why Comcast would rather squeeze $50/month out of me, and have me pissed off at them for everything from lousy customer service to service restrictions, and have me tell anyone who will listen that they should look for any viable alternative in their area that to have me pay $45 per month and provide great service that I tell everyone they should sign up for. I would imagine that just the 2-3 extra people who might sign up due to glowing reviews of their service would more than pay for the infrastructure required to make us all happy. The record and movie industries are the same. Capitalism made America strong in years gone buy, and could do so again, but rampant greed does not necessarily equate to good capitalism. If the damned government would get their heads out of their asses and stop allowing these damned companies (since when is a corporation a fucking citizen) to have what amounts to a monopoly, perhaps real true competition would rectify the problem. But, as I said, heads up asses... We're screwed.

    4. Re:Doesn't really matter by name*censored* · · Score: 4, Insightful

      We also have to wait for the internet to catch up too. YouTube is still showing video at ADSL1 bitrates, and most (good) websites are still mainly text-only (thank god).

      I predict that we're within "a generation" of superfluous bandwidth - that is, regular home connections will never even come close to completely saturated under reasonable use, because the content is simply not heavy enough. This is similar to what's happened with processing power (a P4 is more powerful than Joe User will ever need) and hard disk space (I've never heard of a non-nerd actually filling as much as 120GB). The only "killer app" I can imagine that'll take bandwidth into the final generation before superfluous bandwidth is streamed high-resolution video (YouTubeHD, etc). After that, we'll probably start to see mobile internet become more and more prevalent, as we have seen with the miniaturisation of computers due to superfluous processing/storage. Of course, there'll always be us nerds who'll never be able to have enough, but we're in the minority so we'll probably stay glued to wires, as we have been glued to desktops in the land of the laptop (yes, I know most/all of us have laptops, but that's usually in addition to some kind of powerful desktop/high capacity homebrew server).

      Personally, I think that 1GB/s synchronous is probably well within the category of "superfluous bandwidth" - that's more than enough for streaming high resolution video.

      --
      Commodore64_love: I don't comprehend people who're so frightened of death that they'll bankrupt themselves to stay alive
    5. Re:Doesn't really matter by lysergic.acid · · Score: 1

      i get what you're saying, but i don't think we should equivocate web usage with internet usage. remember, smart devices are on the rise, and with VoIP, internet radio, digital TV, etc. we're seeing more and more specialized communications networks being supplanted by the internet.

      my boss already finds Skype much more economical for his business than a regular land line, but he does complain that audio quality drops occasionally, which i suspect is a bandwidth or network throughput issue. i wouldn't at all be surprised if Japanese companies started broadcasting digital TV over the internet once this new infrastructure is up and running. and if they add municipal or public wi-fi to the mix, then we could start seeing portable internet radios replacing AM/FM receivers.

      usually supply chases demand, but with infrastructure resources, demand also grows to fill supply. if people are given access to affordable 1 Gbps connections, and it becomes standard in homes, then you will see consumers start taking advantage of that bandwidth to stream higher quality video, host their own websites, etc.

      i mean, people didn't start trading FLAC files or DVD images over the internet until broadband became widely available. you really can't pursue more bandwidth intensive applications until the infrastructure is up. but once the infrastructure is there, people will find use to exploit it, i'm sure.

    6. Re:Doesn't really matter by billcopc · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The fallacy in this argument is that a million Japanese bot-hosts with a million 1Gbps uplinks will not translate to a Petabyte per second of spam, because the bottleneck at the edge of the network remains the same. If anything, it will make such botnets far more noticeable, since high-speed sustained traffic will stand out compared to bursty user activity.

      --
      -Billco, Fnarg.com
    7. Re:Doesn't really matter by Jorophose · · Score: 1

      I wonder how fast that 120GB hard drive writes, and how fast that P4 is... (and bad choice of CPUs you insenstive clod!)

      1gbps is interesting if you've got a whole bunch of stuff running together, but otherwise, is overkill. I can see Japan doing IPTV across the country. Then you can dig up all those cable lines and sell them to the americans or just sell the copper (they're copper lines too aren't they?) along with the phone lines you won't need anymore.

    8. Re:Doesn't really matter by DaftShadow · · Score: 1

      What about a streaming, high resolution simulation of the entirety of Paris, France?

      The P4 can't quite do that. Maybe in a few years...

      Just like computing power; if bandwidth becomes "essentially limitless", we will still find a way to use it to the limit. Energy, food, science, philosophy, etc. As the base infrastructure improves, so does the grandiosity of that which can be built upon it.

      DaftShadow

    9. Re:Doesn't really matter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hmm I guess it depends how you define "nerd", but a lot of non-programmer, non-sysadmin types will use plenty of HDD space, that's why they sell all sorts of external drives at places like best-buy.

      One girl I was dating, despite not knowing much about the inner workings off computers - well put it this way, she knew how to download movies (including porn!), and she had all manner of external drives.

    10. Re:Doesn't really matter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "the internet" isn't what needs to catch up. web sites and content will be greatly enhanced if most people have a larger pipe. Web site designers keep in mind that regular people on low-end DSL need to see the content too. I know I don't feel like waiting for every video to buffer before it starts playing. They designed it that way for a reason. Larger pipe results in larger content.

    11. Re:Doesn't really matter by takev · · Score: 1

      Ever heard of "Super HI-Vision" or "Ultra High Definition Video"?
      Japan hopes to start broadcasting on this standard at the beginning of 2015.

      Its resolution is 7680 x 4320 @ 60p with 22.2 channels of audio. That is a lot of data, after compression it causes around 700 Mbit/s of traffic.

      So this is why one needs 1Gbit/s fiber at the home, it will take some time before a lot of people would have these kind of connections as well.

      BTW, the BBC is also interested in "Super HI-Vision", I wonder how long it will take to get into Europa.

      For anyone that says that they eye is unable to see this resolution, you clearly haven't seen "Super HI-Vision" in real life.

      Cheers,
            Take

    12. Re:Doesn't really matter by Fred_A · · Score: 1

      I'm sure it'll look great on my 28" set !

      --

      May contain traces of nut.
      Made from the freshest electrons.
    13. Re:Doesn't really matter by takev · · Score: 1

      It does, I have seen some 4K LCD panels (Super HI-Vision is 8K) at IBC (International Broadcasting Conference) which showed a down converted 8K video. It looks absolutely stunning.

      I guess we will have to wait for 8K LCD panels to see how the full experience is on a 28"-30" set. Or get a 8K projection system. They used two projectors when I saw Super HI-Vision in 2005 to achieve 8K; one for green, the other for blue and red.

      It does suffer somewhat from hyperrealism, where for people with less than perfect sight the image looks too perfect as it shows objects with much more detail then they can normally see; the distance of the screen is closer and the lens on the camera is sharper.

    14. Re:Doesn't really matter by TheLink · · Score: 1

      Quote: For anyone that says that they eye is unable to see this resolution, you clearly haven't seen "Super HI-Vision" in real life.

      Well that's their point ;).

      Maybe in the future we'll just put the feeds to our auxiliary video ports and bypass our crappy eyes. And we could do "telepathy" just by sending stuff to each other (and there's also telekinesis).

      The big problems I see that will hold this back (or at least make it rather unpleasant) is DRM and copyright.

      With the current state of things it most certainly won't be a penny for your thoughts. It would be considered THEIR thoughts, and it'll cost more :).

      Oh well...

      --
    15. Re:Doesn't really matter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ...i assume that if they've decided to make such an upgrade to consumer level broadband speed, then they're probably making equivalent increases to business connections.

      ...and if the ISP can handle all home users having 1 Gbps then they can surely handle much bigger pipes for business/enterprise users.

      I assume that they are seriously over-subscribing. I assume they think that home users won't "use" as much bandwidth continuously as business users would, and that selling 1Gbps service to end users is a marketing gimmick. I assume that 1Gbps network connectivity isn't guaranteed - that it may only be 1Gbps for 1 second out of every 60... I make a lot of assumptions, but one of them isn't that if a corporation is selling some product that they have worked out all the kinks and that they are are being 100% transparent about their product and sales tactics...

    16. Re:Doesn't really matter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I only have a desktop you insensitive clod!

  23. What's Japan going to DO with 1Gbps? by Tumbleweed · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Watch streaming video without having to hit 'pause' on the player to let it fully buffer before even starting to play?

    Not have to shut down other applications because my 4 BitTorrent connections are making my email logon time out and my web browser not load images on the pages (assuming it can even load the page to begin with)?

    Lots of possibilities for new applications, but just fixing the current problems would be marvelous.

    Yeah, these problems won't be fixed without backbone upgrades, but I bet Japan doesn't have that problem to the degree those of us in the U.S. do.

    1. Re:What's Japan going to DO with 1Gbps? by schon · · Score: 1

      Not have to shut down other applications because my 4 BitTorrent connections are making my email logon time out and my web browser not load images on the pages (assuming it can even load the page to begin with)?

      This can be fixed quite easily if you simply manage your upstream bandwidth appropriately.

      Read this for details of why this is happening to you, and what needs to be done to fix it.

  24. Re:Brilliant! by Vectronic · · Score: 1

    "Try 4 minutes"

    wouldnt it be 30 seconds? or even 15 seconds if you are downloading and uploading at cap.

    Its 4 minutes if its 1024/8 which is a 1GB line, not 1GB Per Second

    Not that it matters cause neither the 1Gbps nor the 30GB cap reality, or proven yet.

  25. No more excuses! by ppolitop · · Score: 1

    That proves that it *is* viable to have much better connectivity at an affordable price. Most of us around the world get ripped off by greedy telecom giants that instead of catching up with current tech, they invest on how to spy on us, sue us, or limit our already slow connections. Great! On the other hand, Tokyo is densely populated and has a lot better infrastructure than the average city, but still why don't we have access to equivalent services at large urban centers? Peter

  26. how far does the 1Gbps go? in town only? in the lo by Joe+The+Dragon · · Score: 1

    how far does the 1Gbps go? in town only? in the local switch only?

  27. Two words by Beached · · Score: 1

    No Fair!!

    I wish I could get 1/10th of this at a decent price. Good for them though

    --
    ---- aut viam inveniam aut faciam
  28. Whats wrong in the U.S. by mcbutterbuns · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This highlights exactly whats wrong in the U.S. Japan gets faster and faster speeds, the U.S. gets slower and slower. In my area, Comcast is now offering a SLOWER speed for less money (but not much less). 640 Kbps in 2008? Come on! 1/10th the speed for 1/2 the price. We're getting robbed.

    1. Re:Whats wrong in the U.S. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Get a life, ...... or at least speak intelligently. Please.

  29. Re:Brilliant! by alisson · · Score: 1

    Maybe your hypothetical person under attack from botnets should move to Japan and get cheap broadband.

  30. Staying Competitive by WiiVault · · Score: 1

    If the US hopes to stay competitive in the high tech sector we are really going to have to do something about broadband. Letting the companies run it the way they have has clearly slowed down the uptake and we can't let it happen any longer. Teleco monopolies are bad for America.

  31. Easy for Japan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    With the population density of japan, I figure they can get some good deals.

    1. Re:Easy for Japan by wrook · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I always wonder when people say this kind of thing because I never find Japan to seem overly crowded. So I looked it up.

      Japan *does* have roughly 10 times the population density of the US (339/km2 vs 31/km2). But in comparison to Europe, it's not really very different. For instance the Netherlands and Belgium have higher population densities (395 and 341). The UK has similar density at 246.

      But I think especially when we're talking about fiber rollout, we're mostly talking about doing so in *cities*. In this case, the US, Japan and even Canada (at 3.2/km2) are going to have similar population densities. So I have a hard time thinking that this rollout in Japan is going to be significantly less expensive than it would be in the US.

  32. Re:GETTING fiber and GETTING bandwidth not the sam by besalope · · Score: 1

    It's one thing to get a fiber hookup but it's another to get the bandwidth. Do you believe every little Nipponese boy and girl - all 150 million of the tykes - get 1G? Come this way, I've some prime real-estate for you down on the bayou.

    You Sir apparently do not know the Japanese.

  33. Re:Brilliant! by forkazoo · · Score: 1

    I don't see much use for 1Gbps either, I rarely use the full capacity of my 100 Mbps. But there will probably come some use for 1 Gbps connections in the future, so it's always good to be ready. Who would have predicted 100 Mbps being (somewhat, here at least) common (or having a use) 10 years ago when we were waiting for DSL to get us out of the dial-up world.

    Honestly, I'm sure that uses will naturally grow to fill the available pipe. It always happens. But, I'd have no idea what to do with that much bandwidth, either. I only have one machine with GigE capability right now, and no switches or routers that would handle it.

    For web browsing, I think I'm more limited by latency right now than I am by raw bandwidth, and I only have 6 Mb down, and less than 1 Mb up. For big downloads like video, or ISO's, I think at a gigabit I'd probably be able to download a hell of a lot faster than I can watch it, or burn it, or whatever. Regardless, I'm sure it;d be fun trying to figure out a good use. :) I'd probably start doing absurd things like setting up a script to get every TV / movie torrent at my favorite sites, so I could watch a bit of something to decide if it is interesting, instead of looking it up and deciding if I want to download it.

  34. Too much by UnixUnix · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You cannot be too rich, too thin, or have too much bandwidth :-P

    1. Re:Too much by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      you can definitely be too thin

  35. 1Gbps is more... by onefriedrice · · Score: 1

    ...than I get on my wired LAN.

    --
    This author takes full ownership and responsibility for the unpopular opinions outlined above.
  36. Not in Japan by RawsonDR · · Score: 5, Informative

    I thought the service providers were already complaining about individual users clogging up "the pipes". Giving a bigger bandwidth to end users is just asking for more backend network congestion.

    Far from it, actually. Japan is the world leader in internet infrastructure.

    See the recent study that quantified this into a "bandwidth quality score" for 42 countries. Japan's score was basically double everyone else. USA scored 16th, UK 24th.

    And their population is only a little less than half of the United States, but being spread out over an area 25 times smaller is really what makes adoption a bit easier for them.

    1. Re:Not in Japan by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The idea that the size of a country is what holds it back from high speed access is a myth. Japan may be smaller than the US, but it is a lot larger than the UK and contains some really difficult terrain. Yet, they are still pushing for universal fibre access by 2010, even in small remote villages in mountainous regions.

      If it was simply a question of population density, then why does no-where in the UK have fibre yet? Why does fibre in the US seem to be stuck at 20mb?

      The reason Japan is so fast is that the government decided BB was an important infrastructure/utility, like the road and rail networks or the electricity grid, and pushed it forwards themselves. After nationalising all our publicly owned infrastructure and utilities here in the UK, we are now realising that they need to be state owned or heavily state regulated or the country as a whole suffers. I expect BB will go the same way eventually, or we will simply fall very far behind and loose out to the rest of Europe.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    2. Re:Not in Japan by weav · · Score: 1

      Just tell the gov't that it'll help them surveil private citizens in their own homes, even better than cameras on poles. The bill will go through the House of Commons in a flash...

      Stay in range of the telescreen, please.

    3. Re:Not in Japan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Japan may be smaller than the US, but it is a lot larger than the UK...

      Japan may be larger than the UK, but it also has a higher population which makes its population density higher than the UK, though not by that much (337 per sq km vs 246 for the UK.)

      The reason Japan is so fast is that the government decided BB was an important infrastructure/utility...

      I'll take things you can spend your money on instead of a military for $1000, Alex.

    4. Re:Not in Japan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In a word, bullshit.

      Japan got shamed into doing high speed broadband after the Korean rollout of DSL had such high penetration that it threatened Japan's image as a high tech country. If there's one thing that will motivate the japanese, it's losing to other asians. Don't believe me? Try looking at the bandwidth and broadband penetration statistics graphs for Korea and Japan in the mid to late 90's. It's a hockey stick that would make VC's salivate, and Japan is definitely a johnny-come-lately. If it hadn't been for that, NTT and friends would have been content charging by the bit on 36.6 modems and trying to sucker you into overpriced ISDN contracts that kicked you off the line every 2.5 hours. The only real changes occur in Japan when government/industry consortia have a big accident, or are publicly shamed, and sometimes even that doesn't work.

    5. Re:Not in Japan by goss · · Score: 1

      ...After nationalising all our publicly owned infrastructure and utilities here in the UK, we are now realising that they need to be state owned or heavily state regulated or the country as a whole suffers...

      I believe nationalisation would actually mean moving the service *into* public ownership...

    6. Re:Not in Japan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Privatising, not nationalising, but I'm sure that's what you meant and I agree.

  37. Re:Brilliant! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Supposedly NHK will begin "broadcasting" streaming HDTV over the internet later this year or early next year. 1Gbps will allow this to happen without compressing the data into artifact hell.

  38. Big Deal! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is silly! Right silly! Its merely 2986.42966360856269113149 times as fast as my recently upgraded adsl connection (it used to be roughly half as fast), for $40 per month. I'm not bitter. No, dammit! Not a bit! So just shuddup about your gigabit ethernet, ok? I am not being taken by my ISP! Sniff.

  39. Re:If you can afford a single-family home in Tokyo by calidoscope · · Score: 0, Offtopic
    Japan was working on using biological weapons in 1944 to repel the invasion of Saipan and retaking of Guam. Japan was also making preparations to use radiological weapons in 1945. Fortunately for Japan, the submarines carrying the materials were sunk en-route, as the retaliation for the attacks (especially the bio-warfare) would have been massive.

    And you seem to be forgetting about Nanjing (Nanking).

    --
    A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
  40. Re:Brilliant! by adamstew · · Score: 4, Insightful

    you're forgetting the difference between GB and Gb (bytes vs. bits). there are 8 Gb in 1 GB.

    If the connection is 1Gbps: 30 GB * 8 GB/Gb = 240 Gb, which is 240 seconds. 240 seconds is 4 minutes.

  41. Re:Brilliant! by heteromonomer · · Score: 1

    Why the hell is the parent modded troll? He makes valid points. Although I very much like having that 1 Gbps too.

  42. Re:If you can afford a single-family home in Tokyo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What the sibling AC said. Central Tokyo is amazingly expensive, but while none of it is cheap, Tokyo is the size of Rhode Island, and a lot of it is affordable (else how would all those people live there?).

  43. Bottleneck? by Afforess · · Score: 1

    But, Most wireless routers can't handle 1gb/s. 802.11n can't handle more than 600mb/s. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11n

    --
    If our elected representatives no longer represent us, do we still live in a Democracy?
  44. Re:Brilliant! by Adambomb · · Score: 1

    I suppose, if you want to pay for the 10000 concatenated links to withstand what I was describing.

    --
    Ice Cream has no bones.
  45. Why don't we just use the telegraph? by DragonTHC · · Score: 1

    Fuck you Comcast. Fuck you AT&T.
    Because of your greed and sloth, the US is laggard in online innovation and content delivery. Enjoy it while you can. We may have invented everything, but the Japanese are making it cooler, smaller, faster, cheaper, and more reliable than us. The snarling greed of US corporate enterprise has reared its ugly head for three decades. It has ruined our way of life and our safety and our nation. This really doesn't surprise me all that much. I pay the same price for 6Mbit of highly limited service over a line which can handle 16 times that. Imagine if they realized they could still make money by doing things for the benefit of everyone rather than the benefit of themselves.

    --
    They're using their grammar skills there.
    1. Re:Why don't we just use the telegraph? by jamstar7 · · Score: 1
      High speed bandwidth without anything to put in it is useless. Remember, Congress is the opposite of progress in that the Senate has passed a restrictive 'IP protection' bill and sent it back to the House for another vote since they had to peel out the IP cops provision when the Justice Department told them it wouldn't fly cause it would cut into Defense's budget.

      Of course we'll never see that kind of high speed internet here in the US. The Senator from Disney would have a fit if we could pirate their old tired 'product' in seconds and get offline before they could slap a warrant at our ISP to get our names.

      --
      Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
    2. Re:Why don't we just use the telegraph? by DragonTHC · · Score: 1

      oh dear, I almost had milk come out my nose. The Senator from Disney line made me laugh harder than I have in weeks. And yet it makes me weep.

      I have long been calling them congresswhores since their services seem to be available for the right price to anyone and they're up for anything.

      It's really just the U.S. slipping its wang into the tired, loose diseased vag of fascism. The fascina. It has magical powers over people.

      It causes bad things later on when the U.S. is trying to pee. By pee, I simply mean increase broadband penetration and globalize Internet commerce.

      We invented the fucking Internet and we truly are pissing it away.

      --
      They're using their grammar skills there.
    3. Re:Why don't we just use the telegraph? by ducomputergeek · · Score: 0

      We do tend to be more spread out in this country as opposed to places like Japan, where they have huge population densities. Same in Europe, most of the people tend to live in rather compact cities. People tend to forget that we installed the phone system in this country over the course of 50+ years. Hell, my grandmother still had a Party Line up until the early 1990's! It wasn't like one day everyone woke up and suddenly had phone service to their homes.

      --
      "The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
    4. Re:Why don't we just use the telegraph? by compro01 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Examine the population density of various major US and Japanese cities. They're surprisingly comparable.

      --
      upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
  46. Re:Brilliant! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Actually you are off by a little bit. Bytes are measured in powers of 1024, while bits are not. Thus you need to adjust by a factor of 2^30/10^9.

    Or 30 GB * (1 S/Gb) * (Gb/10^9 b) * (8 b / B) * (2^30 B / GB) = 4 minutes 18 seconds

  47. Slashdot, get your act together! by Kent+Recal · · Score: 1

    My thoughts exactly.
    I wish slashdot would finally hire some editors with a clue. It can't be so hard, can it?

    Seriously, the way slashdot is headed I won't be surprised when it dies the death-by-fork, soon...

    1. Re:Slashdot, get your act together! by ashitaka · · Score: 3, Informative

      Not Slashdot's fault. Mine. I've been putting in networks long enough (22 years) to know the difference.

      Must be getting senile.

      --
      If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
    2. Re:Slashdot, get your act together! by fm6 · · Score: 1

      It's still their fault, even if the initial mistake was yours. Isn't that what editors are for?

  48. Re:If you can afford a single-family home in Tokyo by mweather · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    "Fortunately for Japan, the submarines carrying the materials were sunk en-route, as the retaliation for the attacks (especially the bio-warfare) would have been massive." You mean worse than having their cities relentlessly firebombed, then using the world's entire supply of U-238 and Plutonium to vaporize two cities?

  49. Re:Brilliant! by Tuoqui · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Only thing they'll be good for DoS attacking is something in Japan because they'll instantly hit a bottleneck of epic proportions the moment they try to touch the US Network with all its bandwidth problems :P

    I think some ISP in Japan recently capped their users at like 250 GB A DAY... Whatever Japan is doing is what the US should be doing in terms of expanding their network. I understand theres alot more problems like distance and such but still.

    --
    09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
    +2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
  50. Re:Brilliant! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Actually, bytes are not defined to be 8 bits. Their size is machine architecture dependent.

  51. Re:If you can afford a single-family home in Tokyo by freedom_india · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    If japan had used those to retake saipan and Guam, they probably would not have succeeded. Because while the land troops would have been mauled, the ships would have pummeled the japs who tried to retake them.
    Plus, Truman would have probably dropped both of the Big Boys on Tokyo, ending their emperor's reign in a blinding flash of light one wonderful morning.

    --
    "Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
  52. Re:Brilliant! by RulerOf · · Score: 1

    Actually, he has a very good point.

    No, he doesn't.

    The real point is that the current disparity between commercial links and residential links should be reflected by any any potential target of his theoretical DoS attack.

    In other words, if the average home has 3 MBps currently, and the average business has 3 GBps, then a move to 1 GBps in the home should be reflected by businesses acquiring 1 TBps links for the price of what they currently have.

    --
    Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
  53. yeah, right.... by NerveGas · · Score: 1

    The link (fiber) may be able to handle 1gbps, but users aren't going to get that much in reality. Why not? It's the routing. Call up your favorite router vendor, and ask what it would take to route 100 gigabits. Then consider that with the density of living in Japan, you could put one of those in every neighborhood, and still not be able to get even half of the people up to full gigabit speed.

    --
    Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
    1. Re:yeah, right.... by blargh-dot-com · · Score: 1

      Actually, Cisco already has line cards doing 40Gbit and 100Gbit on single fibers, and even their mid-range stuff can do a (theoretical) 720Gbit (Cisco 6500 or 7600, Supervisor 720, fabric-enabled line cards).

      10Gbit is trivial these days, in the routing/switching department.

  54. Re:If you can afford a single-family home in Tokyo by Saffaya · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    How is that any worse than the destruction of some german cities by allied bombers in WWII ?

    You should really take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II
    and educate yourself some more about the destruction waged on germany during that time.

  55. Re:Brilliant! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Actually I don't even give a shit anymore christ goddamn

  56. Wish they had this here by wmbetts · · Score: 1

    /me moves to Japan

    --
    "Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me". - stolen from Dan C alt.os.linux.slackware
    1. Re:Wish they had this here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Too bad they don't LET you live there.

  57. I always watch others multiply by poullos · · Score: 1

    hmm..I have 2mbs and I'm moving in 10-15 days to my new house, where I can only get 1mbs for now. I remember celebrating when I first upgraded to this new provider with 1.5mbs and then upgrading the speed to 2mbs. I won't be able to celebrate again when I think of japan users spending my country's bandwidth in a small area...

    1. Re:I always watch others multiply by Lennie · · Score: 1

      After buying a condo, I heared in my old neighborhood they will start running 100 Mb/s fiber. I'm now I'm "stuck" on 12 Mb/s (1.5 up)

      --
      New things are always on the horizon
  58. Questionnaire for comparison by I+cant+believe+its+n · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Please state price, speed (downstream and upstream) and country.
    I pay $58/month for symetric 100Mbps in Sweden.

    --
    She made the willows dance
    1. Re:Questionnaire for comparison by erayd · · Score: 1

      $80/month for 10m down, 2m up. Cable internet with a 20GB cap. This is the best commonly available residential connection in New Zealand, and even then it's only in two cities (Wellington & Christchurch)...

      --
      Forget world peace, bring on -1 pointless
    2. Re:Questionnaire for comparison by Ritchie70 · · Score: 1

      Around $45 a month, Chicago suburb (USA), just tested at about 4.5Mbps down, 1.5 Mbps up, no other significant traffic on my connection.

      Comcast.

      --
      The preferred solution is to not have a problem.
    3. Re:Questionnaire for comparison by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      $40 a month for 24mbps down, 2mbps up.. In the UK (London). No bandwidth cap (fair usage is ~250GB/month I think, never hit it to find out).

    4. Re:Questionnaire for comparison by YrWrstNtmr · · Score: 1

      USA, 9m/2m via Cox cable, $50. They have a 40G/month cap (up+dn), but I've never noticed any slowdown when(not if) I go over. Like now. Currently, 49.9G for the month of September, just on my main machine.

      Available speeds:
      15/15 via Cox cable,
      20/20 via Verizon FIOS - $70/month
      1.5/384k via Verizon DSL - $30

    5. Re:Questionnaire for comparison by eat+here_get+gas · · Score: 1

      $45/mo for 15/1 (w 20 burst), no cap on TWC/RR, northern New Hampshire (where they still use CB radio's!).

      --
      the significance of a signature is insignificant
    6. Re:Questionnaire for comparison by ajlisows · · Score: 1

      About $35/month for the Time Warner Cable "Turbo" package. It is advertised as 15Mbps down, 1.5 Mbps Up. I've peaked out at 13.4 Mbps Down and 1.43 Mbps Up. On average I get about 10/1. I can live with that. However, there are some days when I drop to about 3/.4 and that is not acceptable. If it goes on for more than a day I call and complain and they take a few days worth of service off of my Bill. The $5 isn't worth the time I spend dealing with them, but I feel letting them know I am displeased when I get about 20% of the advertised bandwidth.

    7. Re:Questionnaire for comparison by Jorophose · · Score: 1

      ~20$ a month for 512kpbs down in Canada, plus 15% discount for having cable TV.

      I'd rather have 1gbps and drop my cable plan, but it doesn't look like there's good stations on IPTV (the two CNNs are a must, as would be local channels, but I can get the local ones OTA).

    8. Re:Questionnaire for comparison by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      about $40 USD, 100MBps (not sure about upload), Japan.
      Also.. $10-$50 (Min, Max depending on use) 7.2mbps 3G for laptop, Japan.

    9. Re:Questionnaire for comparison by bitrex · · Score: 1

      Boston Suburbs, USA - Earthlink DSL, $35 a month for 1.5 down, 768 up. The only other services available in my area are Verizon DSL which require you to sign up for phone service with them, and Comcast which is also a package deal. I desire neither, so my options are limited.

    10. Re:Questionnaire for comparison by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I pay $50/month in the US and telephone company employees beat me until I cry. I get Internet access through carrier pigeons.

    11. Re:Questionnaire for comparison by WeblionX · · Score: 1

      I get symmetric 480Mbps... Oh wait, that's the college campus. I get up to 40Mbps (If it's to another college) down to, well, usually less than 1Mbps.

      On the other hand, having a 100Mbps connection to anyone else on campus (Some even have 1Gbps connections!) is very nice. So for the cost of living on campus I get 100Mbps locally, with pretty low bandwidth to any other site. Which brings up a question, in that just how much bandwidth do these people get to places outside of Japan? Is it like a much larger version of this campus, or do they have pretty good speeds to the rest of the world?

      --
      (\(\
      (=_=) Bani!
      (")")
    12. Re:Questionnaire for comparison by kramerd · · Score: 1

      I pay $55.90 for 8/2 Comcast in Atlanta GA. I have seen 1.2 MB down, 400 up at the best. Normal peak is about 700 down, 100 up, which drops in seconds to 400 down, 70 up.

      The only other option is 6/1, also from comcast, which when I had it the first month before "upgrading" gave me roughly half the speed.

      I have been using this service for about 6 months and am planning on changing providers when FIOS is available "next year". When my lease runs out I am moving to somewhere with better service and lower price.

    13. Re:Questionnaire for comparison by Enigma2175 · · Score: 1

      $36/mo. 15 Mb symmetric fiber, USA

      --

      Enigma

    14. Re:Questionnaire for comparison by Yeef · · Score: 1

      18 Mbps down / 1.36 Mbs up

      Optimum

      New York Suburb, USA

      --
      I was once a horse.
    15. Re:Questionnaire for comparison by Nycran · · Score: 1

      That sounds about the same level of "value" as we get here in Australia. I'm paying $75 a month for an alleged 8Mb/s. I just ran a speed test on a local mirror and received: Your line speed is 6.43 Mbps (6428 kbps). Your download speed is 803 KB/s (0.78 MB/s). Simply can't imagine 1GB/s.... crazy.

    16. Re:Questionnaire for comparison by ipsi · · Score: 1

      I get exactly the same.

      You can get 40GB, or 80GB if you want to pay more...

      They've also got 25/2 in Christchurch, with a 120GB cap (for NZ$225/month...).

    17. Re:Questionnaire for comparison by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      20Mb down 1 Mbit up. Granada, Spain. 39 Euros (56 dollars).

    18. Re:Questionnaire for comparison by MadUndergrad · · Score: 1

      $60/month, 3mb adsl. This is actually a good bit better than the "16mb" we had from Comcast. This is a medium-size city in Virginia, US.

    19. Re:Questionnaire for comparison by pajeromanco · · Score: 1

      Argentina: ADSL 1 Mbit down, 256 kpbs up, about 35 US dollars/month.

      --
      Now I am sad.
    20. Re:Questionnaire for comparison by KGIII · · Score: 1

      $50/month 1500/750 *very* rural USA.

      (Side note: I oddly get more down than rated for usually. Almost always less up though.)

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    21. Re:Questionnaire for comparison by ChienAndalu · · Score: 1

      South Germany, 16Mbit Down, 1Mbit Up: 35Euros (51 Dollars)

    22. Re:Questionnaire for comparison by jjinco33 · · Score: 1

      $54 per month for 7 Mbps Down and 896K Up in the Denver, Colorado area of the US. Qwest as the ISP.

      --
      Meh.
    23. Re:Questionnaire for comparison by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      30/30, Sweden, us$35.

    24. Re:Questionnaire for comparison by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      $40 a month for 24mbps down, 2mbps up.. In the UK (London). No bandwidth cap (fair usage is ~250GB/month I think, never hit it to find out).

      Who are YOU with? 'Be There' SAY you get 24/1.3 mbps for 18 pounds or 24/2.5 for 22 pounds. I pay for the first option and all I've ever had in South London is 7mbps/768kbps! It angers me the way ISPs lie through their teeth..... and they blame the telecom company, but happily leave your charges at the same price for the fake service level they offered. Thieves and liars the lot of them.

    25. Re:Questionnaire for comparison by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Please state price, speed (downstream and upstream) and country.

      I pay $58/month for symetric 100Mbps in Sweden.

      $199/mth for 3/1 Gbps DSL contract through telecom company, plus $99.95/mth to obligatory separate ISP for highest speed offer of 2 mbps. ACTUAL traffic speed achieved - always: 6075/765 kBit/s. Country: Bermuda

    26. Re:Questionnaire for comparison by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Please state price, speed (downstream and upstream) and country.

      I pay $58/month for symetric 100Mbps in Sweden.

      $199/mth for 3/1 Gbps DSL contract through telecom company, plus $99.95/mth to obligatory separate ISP for highest speed offer of 2 mbps. ACTUAL traffic speed achieved - always: 6075/765 kBit/s. Country: Bermuda

      Whoops: 3 Mbps upload and 1 Mbps download, not Gbps!

    27. Re:Questionnaire for comparison by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ~$50/month. 20Mb down, 5Mb up. Verizon FIOS

  59. Re:Brilliant! by Yokaze · · Score: 4, Informative

    Considering that blue-ray is 1080p, but limited to 54Mbps, I think one can safely assume, that 1Gbps is not entirely necessary for that kind of thing.

    Super HiVision, on the other hand, would be a different matter.

    --
    "Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
  60. If the island of Japan can do this... by thetoadwarrior · · Score: 2, Insightful

    then why does the island of the UK have such slow broadband?

    Some countries claim their size holds them back but the UK doesn't have that excuse. We're just getting screwed.

    1. Re:If the island of Japan can do this... by Kojiro+Ganryu+Sasaki · · Score: 2, Informative

      It is not entirely about population or population density. There's almost as much people in London as there are people in the whole of Sweden. UK people should on average have better internet access than us swedes.

      Population:
      Sweden: 9,2 million
      UK: 60 million (7 million in London)

      Land area:
      Sweden: 450 000 square kilometer
      UK: 245 000 square kilometer

      Population density:
      Sweden: 20 individuals / square kilometer
      UK: 250 individuals / square kilometer
      US: 30 individuals / square kilometers (still there should be enough people in the big cities to support some insane broadband)

      (numbers from wikipedia)

    2. Re:If the island of Japan can do this... by thetoadwarrior · · Score: 2, Funny

      I know (or at least some businesses claim this) that part of the problem is who owns the exist holes in the ground and how much money they want to run fiber optics and the likes of BT not wanting to pay extra to run it through their holes.

      We do have fiber at work and that's one of the joys of getting in before 8am before anyone else. The speeds I get are enough to make me cum my pants harder than any woman could do for me. :D

    3. Re:If the island of Japan can do this... by DanJ_UK · · Score: 1

      In the case of London, (according to a telecoms friend) and many of the UK's urbanised cities, it's down to cost and more importantly the disruption caused from digging up roads to lay the new infrastructure required for fibre, then there's also the time involved.

      --
      - Dan
    4. Re:If the island of Japan can do this... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually its not that bad for downstream. Ive been downloading over night at almost my max of 20mbit with no restriction. Virgin are rolling out 50mbit soon. OK for the price i pay i could have 200mbit both ways uncapped in Sweden, or Japan i guess. But really, even as a power user, unless im running a warez site i dont need 200mbit yet.

      Faster upload would be nice tho. Hopefully Virgin do something sensible with their 50mbit. 10 up 50 down would be nice, it wont happen tho.

  61. How many Libraries of Congress? by crabboy.com · · Score: 1

    How can an article about bandwidth, posted on /., not include a reference to how many Libraries of Congress can be downloaded in a given amount of time???

    --
    The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money
  62. Fast PC, slow web by EEPROMS · · Score: 1

    Im on a 22mb/s (small b) and I havent seen a server yet that makes use of this bandwidth. The sad thing is most web services have a capped connection speed per IP/MAC address so you can have 2,000,000Gb/s and it wont make an difference.

    1. Re:Fast PC, slow web by Fumus · · Score: 1

      Ah, but you forgot that this is an 1Gps download AND upload speed too. So you can set up your own goddamned youtube on your home server. It'll fry before you even hit half your pipe's capacity.

    2. Re:Fast PC, slow web by Shinobi · · Score: 1

      Find better servers. I routinely grab large files from SUNET/FUNET FTP's, and easily get more than 20Mb/s on a single transfer. And unlike with BitTorrent, my connection is still useful for other activities.

    3. Re:Fast PC, slow web by JackassJedi · · Score: 1

      I've got a 30mbps connection (also with a small 'b'), and it's not a big problem to come by servers which max out my line; package updates, trailer downloads, etc. Not speaking of BitTorrent downloads. Given the right number of seeders, and the right seeding speeds, it's not problem to (theoretically, of course!), download a BD-movie rip (in around 4.4GB) in approx. 20 minutes when maxing out my line with ca. 3.7MB/s

      --
      Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.
  63. Re:Brilliant! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You dont know your math. There are 8 bits in a byte but 1000Gb in a GB.

  64. Re:Brilliant! by Adambomb · · Score: 1

    Touche, i was not even thinking of the fact that all those users are squished at the under sea backbones. Reduces the point, but does not eliminate it COMPLETELY it as it still creates a situation where it becomes much easier for those bottlenecks to be maxed out. I suppose anyone reviewing this would just have to change their analysis to be based on the maximum throughput out of japan not the number of gigabit connections.

    Wait. Does anyone have the figures of how much bandwidth is available when counting the backbone routes? All i can find (between cases at work) is some stodgy old article from 1999 thats useless. If it's a fat enough pipe the fact that its bottlenecked might be moot to begin with.

    --
    Ice Cream has no bones.
  65. Re:Brilliant! by aztektum · · Score: 1

    I understand theres alot more problems like distance and such but still.

    If Japan can be connected to the rest of the internet with multiple underwater cables, I see it as a lame excuse we can't connect our country to itself with cables on land.

    --
    :: aztek ::
    No sig for you!!
  66. Re:Brilliant! by lysergic.acid · · Score: 1

    nah, the thinking right now is 3 Mbps (burst) should be enough for everyone.

    ISPs want consumers to conform their usage to the service provider's business model--overselling and artificially manipulate internet usage through bandwidth caps, packet shaping, etc.

    those crazy Japanese actually think that supply should try to meet demand, rather than the other way around? what madness is this?

  67. Re:Brilliant! by Idiomatick · · Score: 1

    At 1 gig/second you could download those things you want to try HD within 10seconds anyways, no need to store the internet on your computer.
     
    I'm more curious what this will do to the p2p scene. Right now torrents will rarely cap my meager 600KB/s download. If there were a few people on the torrent seeding w/ 1Gb/s it would easily cap. Unfortunately Japan rarely uses torrents. I'm wondering if it would be easier at this point to switch services. Annoying to write fresh code to remote control the new p2p ap though. In case people are curious i believe a lot of these mega users will be migrating to japan's "perfect dark" application as it has a requirement of 100KB/s and a 40G allocation for hashes. I think i'll give it a whirl today.

  68. Nothing new by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Like the article said, this is to compete with NTT. This kind of bandwidth has been widely available for many months already.

  69. I'd open a torrent site by dafradu · · Score: 1

    only for uncompressed BluRay discs!!

  70. I'm moving to japan by Soundfx4 · · Score: 0

    umm...yeah, subject pretty much says it all. I'm done with Verizon, qualcomm (did they get bought out?) and all the other do nothing greedy (well who isn't, but American corporations are greedy AND stupid) tel-com companies. Well...I wanted to write sayonara in hiragana, but slashdot is slightly on the retarded side and kept %@$#ing changing it to html crap or something...uggg...anyway, sayonara.

    1. Re:I'm moving to japan by motang · · Score: 1

      No kidding man, that would be a awesome connection.

  71. O_o by motang · · Score: 1

    Must be nice...I would love have that connection at home, then I can download all my favorite anime at a much higher speed.

  72. Re:how far does the 1Gbps go? in town only? in the by Sponge+Bath · · Score: 1

    If it's anything like my broadband connection here in the USA, it probably goes to the curb where it is converted into 1200bps bisync running on a Zilog 8530 (not the new fangled fancy 85230 with data FIFOs).

  73. Re:On behalf of everyone else... by Ant+P. · · Score: 1, Troll

    United States of America != "everyone else"

    In reality, everyone else is laughing. Japan included.

  74. Re:If you can afford a single-family home in Tokyo by oheso · · Score: 1

    Unless your wife (who gets your entire paycheck) expects you to pay the internet fee out of your own pocket.

  75. Re:Brilliant! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "there are 8 Gb in 1 GB."

    Wrong. Telecommunications use base10 prefixes, so 8 Gigabits (8 000 000 000 bits) is ~954 Megabytes (1 000 000 000 bytes).

  76. Re:Brilliant! by Belial6 · · Score: 1

    Great, so when you have 4 of those streams coming into your home, and are trying to video confrence, while screen sharing, you might actually be able to stop worrying about your bandwidth crapping out.

  77. Re:Brilliant! by highonv8splash · · Score: 1

    Could've just taken 1024/8 and settled by explaining a more familiar/easy speed to compare --> 128mb/s

  78. Re:Brilliant! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Not only that, but comparing the bandwidth of future 60fps 1080p news and live event broadcasts to current 24fps Bluray movies seems a bit shortsighted. True, today's HDTV doesn't go beyond 1080i, but it's not hard to envision 60fps broadcasts of live events in the near future. (At least as far as Japan is concerned...)

  79. Re:Brilliant! by Monkey-some · · Score: 1

    I suspect that this 1 GB package contains hi-def television, phone calls and internet...who btw won't reach that speed and if you could well I don't know what could write datas that fast (hint apart if you use some huge RAM buffer or array of network disks)

  80. Re:If you can afford a single-family home in Tokyo by kill-1 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Well, there were more people killed in Hiroshima (140,000) and Nagasaki (80,000) than in Dresden (24,000 - 40,000).

  81. USians don't deserve real broadband by symbolset · · Score: 1

    If we did we would quit whining about what the telecoms offer us and let our power utility districts build us a real network.

    --
    Help stamp out iliturcy.
  82. Re:Brilliant! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    128 millibits per second?

  83. Silver lining by jagdish · · Score: 1

    Woohoo, better download speeds on Bittorrent.

  84. Re:Brilliant! by spazdor · · Score: 1

    so what you're saying, essentially, is that NONLINEARITY IS WRONG?

    --
    DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
  85. Re:If you can afford a single-family home in Tokyo by A+nonymous+Coward · · Score: 1

    And more were killed in the conventional firebombing of Tokyo.

  86. Re:Brilliant! by IdleTime · · Score: 1

    The argument about distances is pure 100% golden bullshit!

    If it was correct, then you would be able to, in Manhattan for instance, get 100Mbs for $20/month and without any limitations. Can you link me tyo such an offer?

    Most US metropolitan areas have population density far exceeding many Japanese cities. And if you even bothered to look at a population density map of USA, you would see that 80% of the population lives in non-rural areas.

    Stop drinking the koolaid that tells you USA is special. It's special all right, just not they way you think it is. Backwards is a word that comes to mind talking about today's USA.

    --
    If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
  87. Demand for network engineers in Japan? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    With all this newfangled technology penetrating Japanese homes, is there a demand for network engineers in Japan?

    Possibly enough so that one who doesn't speak a word of Japanese could get hired?

    I'd like to work somewhere where I can be valued for my technical abilities and not knowing the language is the ultimate cop-out to avoiding "being social" at work.

  88. Re:Brilliant! by ashitaka · · Score: 1

    I have IP TV (Telus) and am essentially limited to 3Mbps down 700K up due to the presence of that TV. The total bandwidth coming down according to the tech is 15Mbps. 5Mbps is taken by each of the two TV adapters leaving 5 or less for regular Internet.

    Dropped by my brother-in-law's apartment in Tokyo a few weeks ago who has 100Mbps fiber. Incredible.

    Phenomenal Cosmic Bandwidth!!!!!

    Itty bitty living space.

    --
    If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
  89. Re:If you can afford a single-family home in Tokyo by commodoresloat · · Score: 1

    Do you think we forgot Hiroshima and Nagasaki??? Keep thinking... Time of our revenge is about to come. The USA are going to pay for all the evil they did around the world...

    Oh yes, and surely the best way to exact revenge for these nuclear attacks is by getting faster internet!

  90. Mixi by freaklabs · · Score: 1

    It's great how Japanese users can get 1 Gbps links to surf their Mixi friends faster. Japan should probably beef up the computer education so that the people can take advantage of the links.

  91. ...and Comcast cant even provide 1MB per sec. by Jackie_Chan_Fan · · Score: 1

    Comcast is just another corrupt American business that rips off our citizens and uses our government to legalize and enforce their never ending blood sucking existence.

    Broadband is just that... and if you can not provide it... I hope your company dies a swift death so that another more serious business can move in and do the right thing.

    1. Re:...and Comcast cant even provide 1MB per sec. by falconwolf · · Score: 1

      Though I didn't sign up with Comcast my ISP goes through Comcast. I just checked my speed and got 4.46/.9.

      Comcast is just another corrupt American business that rips off our citizens and uses our government to legalize and enforce their never ending blood sucking existence.

      Yeap. We need the competition a free market would bring.

      Falcon

  92. Re:Brilliant! by Krakhan · · Score: 1

    What practical machines actually use something other than 8 bits per byte?

  93. Re:Brilliant! by billcopc · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Slow down, you're just jealous.

    This is EXACTLY what civilized nations should be doing. Gigabit fiber is about as fast as you can go on such a wide-scale before cost shoots to infinity.

    They won't have 1Gbps to the rest of the world, but as a local interconnect, it's excellent. The main pipe leading out of Japan will still be the same size, and you'll get the same volume of Viagra spam as always. Actually most of that garbage comes from China, Malaysia and Brazil - Japan actually does have a functional legal system that deters such bastards.

    If everyone in the USA could get Gigabit to the home, even if it only translated to 1mbit per user to the outside world, holy crap can you even begin to imagine the uses for that sort of bandwidth ? How about hi-def Youtube ? How about IPTV for the masses ? How about not having to wrestle with QOS tweaks to get goddamned VoIP working properly ?

    As long as same-network traffic is unmetered, this kind of deployment can lead to huge cultural changes.

    --
    -Billco, Fnarg.com
  94. Re:If you can afford a single-family home in Tokyo by JackassJedi · · Score: 1

    It's cheaper than what I pay for 30mbps down/2mbps up here in Germany, which would be 39.90 EUR == ~58.28 USD.

    --
    Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.
  95. Re:Brilliant! by Chang · · Score: 1

    I've got a mythbox sitting in Yamanashi. I think I'll find something to do with this upstream....

  96. FIOS by soundguy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    FWIW, I'm in the Seattle 'burbs and just got Verizon FIOS 20/20. The router claims that it's connected to the CO at 251mbps and the techs I talked to said the system and the fiber drops were capable of 1gbps. I got the impression they would have to install different switches though.

    --
    Nothing worthwhile ever happens before noon
  97. Re:If you can afford a single-family home in Tokyo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    that's not true.. I pay about $1400 US per month, and I live in central Tokyo... The people who think all of Japan is super expensive are the same people who always say it's super crowded, and clearly haven't been around here much. Anyway Japan had it's housing boom and bust a little while ago, so prices aren't terribly high right now. That's not to say it's cheap, but it's certainly comparable to NYC or other big cities.

    Also, you're right the price of the 1GBps doesn't matter that much because it's new and wasn't available before at any price. But I have an NTT contract, so I'll have to "suffer" with 100mbps ;)

  98. kids in Nevada learn to swim by falconwolf · · Score: 1

    They won't be for long. The Colorado River is being overdrawn. Lake Powell as well as the other manmade lakes are drying up. Vegas is now looking to the north to take water from farmers. Things are even worse south of the state line. Cities in Arizona are running try and are making deals with farmers in southern California for water. The entire 8 state agreement splitting the Colorado River was stupid.

    Falcon

  99. Re:Brilliant! by MrNaz · · Score: 1

    I think what we're hearing from him is a muffled cry for help that goes something like this:

    "Help! I don't understand proportionality or the Internet!"

    --
    I hate printers.
  100. Re:how far does the 1Gbps go? in town only? in the by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    On 100mbps ftth I typically get 30-50mbps throughput from domestic sites (microsoft update, freebsd .jp mirrors, etc.)

    Going to gigabit wirespeeds isn't going to make a great deal of difference most likely. You're also contending with ability of the server to read from disks at that point.

  101. Re:On behalf of everyone else... by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 1

    I think I speak for everyone else when I say F*** you Japan! We never liked you anyway!

    Settle down and find some pictures of Japanese bondage. You'll forgive their bandwidth. ;)

    --

    "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

  102. Re:If you can afford a single-family home in Tokyo by mweather · · Score: 1

    Yeah, I kinda mentioned the firebombing.

  103. Re:If you can afford a single-family home in Tokyo by wrook · · Score: 2, Informative

    I guess this is off topic, but I have to agree with you. I think that people think of Japan as crowded and expensive because they come here as tourists. They go to all the famous sites where people are jammed in like sardines. And they buy stuff at tourist places and get ripped off. Or eat steak at a restaurant.

    I've been living here a year (admittedly in the inaka) and I spend *far* less than I did in Canada. Of course, you have to live like a Japanese person (buy the same food, wear the same clothes, enjoy the same entertainment, avoid traveling around, etc), but once you do prices become quite reasonable -- even in Tokyo.

  104. Here's Bell's take on the situation. by Cathoderoytube · · Score: 1

    Before I parted ways with Bell Canada I emailed them and asked why is it Japan has such great high speed infrastructure, and ours is so lousy. I think their response is quite telling of the attitudes over here in North America.

    "Dear Valued Customer

    We here at Bell would like to point out that despite their 1gbps connections, Japan still has monkeys that get inside peoples houses and cause all sorts of trouble. So really when you think about it, they need those high speed lines over there because most of the time they're fending off monkeys. Whereas here in North America we have no monkeys, and therefore 1.5mbps is more than an acceptable connection speed."

    --
    I have nothing compelling to say
  105. no use for "superfluous" bandwidth? by falconwolf · · Score: 1

    The only "killer app" I can imagine that'll take bandwidth into the final generation before superfluous bandwidth is streamed high-resolution video (YouTubeHD, etc).

    While it won't be used in the home I see a big use for high bandwidth connections, one which could very well save lives, is Telemedicine. Imagine a doctor in her office operating on a patient a 100 or a 1000 miles away via high speed broadband. Another example would be 5 businessmen on 5 different continents having a business meeting in virtual reality, VR. Despite the fact telecommunications was billed as negating the need to travel, it hasn't. Non verbal communications is just as important, more even, as verbal communications. With VR visual communications will be there.

    As for other possibilities, they will come along too, probably unexpectedly. Afterall why would anyone ever need more than 64k RAM?

    Falcon

    1. Re:no use for "superfluous" bandwidth? by TheLink · · Score: 1

      "Another example would be 5 businessmen on 5 different continents having a business meeting in virtual reality, VR"

      Actually that sort of thing while good for psychological stuff, it is not very productive in general.

      I believe the next generation are used to instant messaging, so if I were their boss and I felt like squeezing every last drop out of my staff, I'd _expect_ them to be able to be in more than one meeting at the same time.

      How many of you have "idled" during meetings for _hours_ till "your turn" came up (if ever)? So instead of wasting time in serial, parallelize it and idle in more than one meeting at a time.

      You could be in 5 different meetings at the same time and still cope well. You might even be able to chair one of the meetings at the same time :).

      I should hope my staff can read faster than people can speak or type.

      Then they can upload the chat logs (as "minutes") to the intranet site as records.

      And I won't care if you're watching youtube (or even doing real work ;) ) while in the meetings, as long as you are still reasonably "functional". Since you're not in the same room, nobody has to get distracted by whatever is on your screen, and it doesn't have to be considered "rude".

      Just don't turn your webcam on at the wrong thing/time ;).

      --
  106. good point by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I see a lot of people saying this is dangerous for botnet kind of things. I agree.

    Only let them have fast up if they're not using windows.

    1. Re:good point by justinlee37 · · Score: 1

      Windows can be kept secure. You just can't be a luser.

      And even a luser could fuck up his macintosh or linux box by running a malicious executable. Sometimes there's no cure for stupidity.

      But "banning windows" is short-sighted, reactionary, and elitist.

  107. Re:Brilliant! by pleappleappleap · · Score: 1

    1Gbps != 1GBps

  108. Free Market by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm glad to see that deregulating the telecom companies in the 90's has been successful in bringing Americans services far and above those received in countries where the government interferes in business (Japan, Korea, France, etc.).

  109. Re:Brilliant! by Khyber · · Score: 1

    actually, Japan has other standards, some going well over 1080p resolutions. It's no surprise they're upgrading network connections.

    --
    Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
  110. Well, sure it's better! by Enahs · · Score: 1

    We pay more for less, don't we? MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

    --
    Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
  111. The US is short-term profits only by Terje+Mathisen · · Score: 1

    It seems like the US is both blessed and cursed by the same short-term profit based thinking:

    It is relatively easy to get competing providers for internet connectivity, but each of those providers would much rather squeeze the maximum amount of short-term profits out of their costumers rather than trying to deliver a great product with payback times measured in years.

    Here in Norway we put up a cabin in the central mountains a couple of years ago (i.e. a _very_ sparsely populated area), but as soon as we ordered an electric power hookup, the local power company by default also pulled a fiber along.

    At home in Oslo I have had ADSL for ~5 years, currently getting 7/1 Mbit/s down/up at a cost of around $60 (NOK is very strong vs $ these days), but now I've had two different fiber providers offering FTTH so in a week or two I'll get symmetrical 30 Mbit/s for the same cost as ADSL.

    Terje

    --
    "almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
  112. Re:Brilliant! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I need to check, but aren't you confusing GigaBYTES with GigaBITS ?

    Yes, I just checked (on Wikipedia there is a nice table) and you are also confusing writing/burning speed of the media vs the bandwitdh required to simply play it as-is...

    A little math will help here: 25 GigaBYTES for say 3 hours of video gives 2.4 MegaBYTES per second (or 19 MegaBITS per second).

    The Japanese are upgrading to 1024 MegaBITS per second !

    Thanks for your attention

  113. Old News... by B4RSK · · Score: 1

    This is not new.

    NTT has been running gigabit fibre to houses for quite some time, as have the power companies.

    I put gigabit fibre into my house two years ago when construction was completed. It's fast, but honestly in daily use I don't notice a huge difference from the 100Mb fibre I had at my last place.

    --
    Some people are like slinkies--basically useless but they bring a smile to your face when pushed down the stairs.
    1. Re:Old News... by gujo-odori · · Score: 1

      Love your tagline :)

      Among the many things I miss from my years in Japan are the quality of the Internet connections. Here in the SF Bay area, I have ~15 mpbs down/512 kbps up on my local municipal cable company (so glad I don't have to use Comcast, like most bay area cable users) and I usually get as near to wire speed as TCP allows. That's much faster than most US Internet connections, but pales in comparison to what is widely available in Japan for about the same price I'm paying.

    2. Re:Old News... by B4RSK · · Score: 1

      Internet connectivity really evolved rapidly here. There were no unlimited connections when I first got here. Then it was unlimited late at night. Next came ISDN and finally ADSL and fibre.

      Now I pay a total of $85/month for unlimited use of a gigabit fibre line...

      --
      Some people are like slinkies--basically useless but they bring a smile to your face when pushed down the stairs.
  114. Re:Brilliant! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The amusing part about it, is that it will be capped at 30GB transfer a month probably. AWESOME! You can reach your cap for the month in a matter of hours.

    30GB / 1Gbps = 4 minutes. Assuming, of course, that there is a >= 1Gbps link between the site you are downloading from and your ISP. Though I suppose a torrent with a few hundred/thousand peers might just fill up that bandwidth.

  115. Australia isn't far behind by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Australia is also at a high stage of development where it is proposing the rollout of some internets that will be as fast as 12Mbps. Go aussie go!

  116. Re:If you can afford a single-family home in Tokyo by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

    Most people rent, and you can get fibre into your rented apartment.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  117. Re:Brilliant! by Migity · · Score: 1

    He's just jealous because he can't get that. I'm currently on KDDI's 100Mbps synchronous and not only have Internet but phone and TV services as well. Not to mention that as soon as it's offered in my area I'll be able download 10x the amount of porn that I'm able to download now!

  118. Re:Brilliant! by Migity · · Score: 1

    Who said anything about a 30GB transfer limit...I currently use KDDI's 100Mbps service and there are no caps on that. You must be thinking of Verishit or Comcrap or some other great provider. The parent post only mentioned "30GB transfer a month probably". It should be obvious that the poster doesn't know what they're talking about when they think something is "probably" in a /. post.

  119. Re:Brilliant! by TheLink · · Score: 1

    It's a lot harder to wiretap and archive traffic from 10000 x 1Gbps connections than it is for 10000 x 3mbps _throttled_ connections.

    Even if the archiving is for a short time, it can't be in RAM.

    So maybe the USA is special ;).

    --
  120. Re:Brilliant! by Idiomatick · · Score: 1

    and? I never confused the two....

  121. Re:If you can afford a single-family home in Tokyo by jandrese · · Score: 1

    So if you don't go anywhere and live like a college student you can save money? Wow. Who would have thought.

    --

    I read the internet for the articles.
  122. Re:Brilliant! by LingNoi · · Score: 1

    I can think of a ton of stuff..

    - 2 TVs streaming HD media (upstairs and downstairs?)
    - 2 Telephone / VOIP sessions - again one for kids one for parents
    - 2 or 3 computers downloading the whole internet..

    Of course it all involves getting a non-existent consumer gigabit router...

  123. Re:how far does the 1Gbps go? in town only? in the by LingNoi · · Score: 1

    If you're using bit torrent and connecting to a peer on the same ISP it does make a difference and there is flash based hard drive technology coming out that does much greater IO then normal hard drives.

  124. More Bandwidth for the Pokemon!!!! by jameskojiro · · Score: 1

    at 1Gps they can start sending pokemon on their network as it takes an awful lot of bandwidth to take a critter and disassemble it and then transmit it across the internet and then re-assemble it.

    In the past they had to rely on moving pokemon across the net using Peer to Peer bandwidth sharing which resulted in many of the mudkips to not be very liek-able as they came across all deformed and had to be sold for sushi.

    Now they can do full speed pokemon streaming which mean more of the disgusting cute critters will be running around...

    --
    Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
  125. Capped!?? by lindseyp · · Score: 1

    I have the 100Mb FTTH from KDDI right now. I pulled down a 5GB binary last night in around 10 minutes, and it only took that long because of the time between connections resetting and requesting the next chunk of data, so my average bandwidth usage was probably around 80% of peak. If I had a 30GB cap and a 1Gb connection I would indeed have burned that up in a few minutes. I only recently 'invested' in a 1TB drive and an account with a good usenet server. It took a matter of hours before it was filled to current levels... ~700GB. I, for one, don't need a 1GB fiber connection. What I'd much rather have is the rest of the world upgrading. Downloading from English language websites, transferring family photos over skype etc, is a chore, just because anyone *outside* japan is so bandwidth throttled.

    --
    j'ai découvert une démonstration vraiment admirable (de ce théorème général) que cette si
  126. Re:Brilliant! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Of course it all involves getting a non-existent consumer gigabit router..."

    Really?
    http://www.gamedude.com.au/prod_show.php?art_no=neLIwrt310n_giga
    http://www.gamedude.com.au/prod_show.php?art_no=neDLdir_655
    http://www.gamedude.com.au/prod_show.php?art_no=neNEwnr854t
    http://www.umart.com.au/pro/products_listnew.phtml?id=10&id2=122&bid=5&sid=32699

    and thats just from a few minutes of browsing

  127. A Prediction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No one will ever need more than one 1 Gbps fiber cable run to their home.