List of ISP to check / ignore

[JeanValjean]

Hello everyone,
I was reading few topics, including this one ISP Connection and I saw that Japanese ISP are still limiting data ? 30GB a month with Flets ? LOL !

Anyway, I really need your help now and I think it will be good for a lot of peoples. Making a list of the best ISP is a thing you cannot find.
And when I say best, list has to include price but download limit and website blocked. Because yes, some ISP have a list of blacklisted website (like China, ya know) when even a VPN will not work.

I don't read japanese so well so I may mistake.

Kakaku list of ISP in Tokyo

Major ISP in Japan <- meaning a lot of bad side.

My goal is to stream HD almost everydays so I do not want to see any limit in upload / download. So is it possible guys that you help me to find the best ISP and saying why it is ? Thank you!

[matsuki]

30GB a month? I do that in a day on my Flets connection?? Are you saying they throttle it down if you go beyond that or is this some sort of new plan?

[LUBA]

30GB a month? I do that in a day on my Flets connection?? Are you saying they throttle it down if you go beyond that or is this some sort of new plan?

How many % of those 30GB in a day is pr0n related??

[yanpa]

I remember seeing something in the Flets t&c about a 30GB monthly limit, but have yet to experience any kind of issues.

[matsuki]

30GB a month? I do that in a day on my Flets connection?? Are you saying they throttle it down if you go beyond that or is this some sort of new plan?

How many % of those 30GB in a day is pr0n related??

Looks at rack of HD's....

I don't want to know.

Seriously though, I stream a bunch of kaigai videos and am constantly uploading product videos, pics, websites, marketing materials and such. Then there is the wifi connected keitai and whatever that adds to it. 30GB in a day is totally feasible.

[Coligny]

yup... 30gb that's around 2-3 days max here. just me. I don't want to know for the rest of the Klan or even what the Masheenz are doing ...

[Taro Toporific]

I remember seeing something in the Flets t&c about a 30GB monthly limit, but have yet to experience any kind of issues.

Ditto here.
Flets has never limited my connection that is well over 30GB a week because I'm streaming Netflix/YouTube/AmazonPrime through my TV 18 hours a day.

What's more far important than the particular ISP you use, is the throughput of your VPN because insane location restrictions for streaming (and Japan's jailtime for t0rrentlng).

[wagyl]

(and Japan's jailtime for t0rrentlng).

Surely it is not illegal to torrent Linux distributions.

[JeanValjean]

I remember seeing something in the Flets t&c about a 30GB monthly limit, but have yet to experience any kind of issues.

Ditto here.
Flets has never limited my connection that is well over 30GB a week bescaue I'm streaming Netflix/YouTube/AmazonPrime through my TV 18 hours a day.

What's more far important than the particular ISP you use, is the throughput of your VPN because insane location restrictions for streaming (and Japan's jailtime for t0rrentlng).

Can you tell us how much it cost for your connexion ? And about speed (There is two differents flets actually). Did you ever had a website blocked even with a vpn ?

[Taro Toporific]

(1) Can you tell us how much it cost for your connexion ?
(2) And about speed (There is two differents flets actually).
(3) Did you ever had a website blocked even with a vpn ?

(1) My internet is bundled with my cellphone and telephone fees, but separated out Internet costs less than 2,000yen/m.
(2) My B-Flets plan claims "Download speed maximum 200Mbps, Upload speed maximum 100Mbps" but in reality it averages 120Mbs down and 40Mbps up.
(3) Nothing is "blocked" in Japan and don't think Japanese ISPs are throttling or traffic-shaping either. However, VPNs often arbitrarily block torrents (or cancel service without refund like StrongVPN just did to me, grrr) .

[Mike Oxlong]

When I used to have Asahi-Net service, Vuze claimed that traffic was throttled.

[Coligny]

When I used to have Asahi-Net service, Vuze claimed that traffic was throttled.

I don't think they have the technical competence to do this...

and by the speed of some of my transfers (like "oh shit, didn't know my router could take this transfer rate without melting" quick) I don't think they do.

BUT
it is also important to avoid buying dirt cheap acces router for your home... or even worse, pocket wifi bridges...
if your router don't even have gigabits ports... it's certainly good for the museum.
just before our usual flock of retarded nitpicker start shitting on the thread.
it's not the gigabit speed of the port that is important, it's the implied powerful hardware running the show behind.
AND don't do traffic shaping on your own either...

[Mike Oxlong]

Thanks for that. When I noticed it, was using the NTT provided router. A friend whose P2P software can't even establish a connection has many years old router he bought - not sure how cheap it was.

[JeanValjean]

Okay, the best choice I could find for now is OCN (from NTT)
The english website is fine, but too expensive (gaijin are all rich ya' know...) . If you go to kakau, you will get best price.

[FG Lurker]

Anyone having any throttling issues these days? Asahi Net seems to be throttling me if I transfer more than a few gigabytes of data in a short period of time, regardless of the protocol used for the transfer. Speeds start out around 40MB/sec but after ~30 minutes they drop to ~900KB/sec and seem to remain there. If I stop and restart it will still be at ~900KB/sec but if I wait a few hours it jumps back to 40MB/sec for another 30 minutes or so.

I don't think it's an issue with my local hardware but I suppose anything is possible.

Thoughts?

[wuchan]

Anyone having any throttling issues these days? Asahi Net seems to be throttling me if I transfer more than a few gigabytes of data in a short period of time, regardless of the protocol used for the transfer. Speeds start out around 40MB/sec but after ~30 minutes they drop to ~900KB/sec and seem to remain there. If I stop and restart it will still be at ~900KB/sec but if I wait a few hours it jumps back to 40MB/sec for another 30 minutes or so.

I don't think it's an issue with my local hardware but I suppose anything is possible.

Thoughts?

excite likes to cut me down to 2Mbps 5 or 6 nights a week. 1 or two nights I get 300+Mbps up and down. If I go away for a few weeks I get to keep the 300+ for about ten days before they cut me down again. When I call and complain it goes away for about a month. I'm really tired of calling them every month. Strangely, it only seems to affect connecting to things outside Japan.

Apparently they all do it but it is illegal. but they all do it and TIJ.


EDIT: The truth is NONE of the providers own anything. They all pay internet initiative japan for access. Your provider pays NTT, NTT pays IIJ.

[FG Lurker]

I've been doing some more testing tonight in various ways. Created an OpenVPN connection to an overseas server and then tried to transfer a large amount of data split into about 100 files. Fast, VERY fast for about 30 minutes, then throttled again. This is exactly what I saw with FTP and SFTP transfers.

After the throttle happened I ran speedtest.net from the computer doing the data transfer as well as from my phone and the download speed was capped at ~8Mbps. No change in upload speed, it exceeded 300Mbps.

Hard to say who is doing the throttle but the ISP is the most likely culprit. I guess I should call and complain? Are you sure throttling is illegal in Japan? I expect they will deny they are doing any throttling, of course...

I could try changing to OCN or someone else but I quite like the cheap fixed IP option that I get with AsahiNet.

> EDIT: The truth is NONE of the providers own anything. They all pay internet initiative japan for access. Your provider pays NTT, NTT pays IIJ.

Are you sure about this? If everything used IIJ infrastructure then I'd expect to see them in my outbound traceroutes, but I don't. I see AsahiNet followed by NTT, and then whatever overseas network it connects to eventually.

I also came across this earlier today where Plala (an NTT provider) talks about providing both NTT infrastructure and IIJ infrastructure for an extra monthly charge.

[Taro Toporific]

Anyone having any throttling issues these days? {AsahiNet}...
I don't think it's an issue with my local hardware but I suppose anything is possible.
Thoughts?

Sorry, I don't use AsahiNet at home, and at my agency's office we have some kind of business AsahiNet (which "guarantees" a commercial-grade connection).

"Throttling" at my home:
Every single time I think I'm having throttling issues, it turns out to be my router or my firewall firmware. Whether it's the router provided by Tokyu Cable or by NTT, the damn routers (or most likely their firmware) crap out every year or two.

Lucky for me, Mrs. Taro is a real pro at working through support to swiftly get escalated to highest levels. Once she establishes that it isn't our computers and the provider checks that their lines and nearest collocation facility are ok, we just demand they exchange our router for a new one...and VOILA! No more "throttling" issues.

In the past 11 years in this building with two different providers (NTT and Tokyu), I have swapped out SEVEN routers---each time that has solved the problem*.

*Ok, ok, it seems my building is wired improperly
and there are odd voltage variations that
are killing my routers (and LED bulbs).

[wuchan]

The story I got was many years ago NTT was having trouble giving large companies the bandwidth they needed to run cloud based solutions. They teamed up with Japan Inc. and started the IIJ. Today NTT is still a major share holder along with the usual suspect banks. Its a way for NTT to be able to pay for super expensive projects without risking their own capital.

As a regular consumer you can't buy internet access directly from NTT. You can get it from fleets but that's a smaller company that NTT just happens to own. This is a way for them to legally give priority to large companies since they only sell very expensive service that would be just silly for a home consumer who checks email and watches porn.

There is no law that directly says throttling or slowing down your internet is illegal BUT if they throttled a company they would be breaking the disrupting business law. By throttling homes they would be violating fairness and equality laws. I know my contract does not say anything about limits and when I call to complain they swear they aren't slowing me down but magically everything instantly goes back to normal. I suspect that the ISPs have a deal with NTT to stay below a certain level and have oversold their services.

[FG Lurker]

Sorry, I don't use AsahiNet at home, and at my agency's office we have some kind of business AsahiNet (which "guarantees" a commercial-grade connection).

This is actually for my business but until now we have just used a standard "home" connection without any troubles. Looking at AsahiNet's website for business customers the prices seem much the same so I could change to that if it would fix the problem. I wouldn't even mind paying more per month (within reason, of course) if it would avoid this issue.

"Throttling" at my home:
Every single time I think I'm having throttling issues, it turns out to be my router or my firewall firmware. Whether it's the router provided by Tokyu Cable or by NTT, the damn routers (or most likely their firmware) crap out every year or two.

I saw your smalltext note about the voltage issues... We have an NTT ONU that doesn't use an IP and we have a small HP ProLiant MicroServer that is set up with pfSense for our firewall and incoming VPN connections.

The firewall is in an air conditioned room and it never even gets warm so I'm not worried about that. The ONU however could be getting a bit warm at this time of year. I've just pointed a small fan at it and we'll see if this helps the problem or not...

Thanks for the info.

[FG Lurker]

The story I got was many years ago NTT was having trouble giving large companies the bandwidth they needed to run cloud based solutions. They teamed up with Japan Inc. and started the IIJ. Today NTT is still a major share holder along with the usual suspect banks. Its a way for NTT to be able to pay for super expensive projects without risking their own capital.

Interesting. Looking at the IIJ 会社案内 page both 日本電信電話株式会社 (aka NTT) and NTT Communications are listed as major shareholders.

As a regular consumer you can't buy internet access directly from NTT. You can get it from fleets but that's a smaller company that NTT just happens to own. This is a way for them to legally give priority to large companies since they only sell very expensive service that would be just silly for a home consumer who checks email and watches porn.

As far as I can tell FLETS isn't a separate company but is a marketing brand off NTT East and NTT West. FLETS also isn't actually Internet access it's the line without an ISP. To get actual access you need a provider like AsahiNet, OCN, or Plala. OCN is owned by NTT Communications and Plala is owned for the most part by NTT Communications and NTT Docomo. I don't know of any ISPs owned directly by NTT (日本電信電話株式会社).

There is no law that directly says throttling or slowing down your internet is illegal BUT if they throttled a company they would be breaking the disrupting business law. By throttling homes they would be violating fairness and equality laws.

I wonder if anyone will spend the time and money to test this... Nice in theory but without a test case I can see why they just ignore it and throttle.

I know my contract does not say anything about limits and when I call to complain they swear they aren't slowing me down but magically everything instantly goes back to normal. I suspect that the ISPs have a deal with NTT to stay below a certain level and have oversold their services.

Yeah, I am sure they have all oversold their available capacity, and especially for overseas bandwidth there is nowhere near enough when most urban houses & apartments in Japan can get these types of speeds for a few thousand yen per month:



Thanks for taking the time to reply and I will follow up if I have any sort of resolution to this problem.

[Maths Dude]

FGLurker, that name brings back memories..

[FG Lurker]

Pointing a fan at the ONU doesn't seem to have made any difference. It had decent ventilation and wasn't particularly hot to begin with but I suppose was worth a shot. I've made sure the pfSense box is up to date and isn't experiencing any problems.

I have tried transferring this data in multiple different ways and it always ends up being throttled after about the same amount of time. Doesn't matter the time of day, either. I've even tried some "p to p" stuff as a test and the same thing happens at about the same point. It's all quite odd and I guess I'll call AsahiNet tomorrow and complain.

[FG Lurker]

FGLurker, that name brings back memories..

Look what the cat dragged in! Last time you were here old Chuckles was still posting.

[matsuki]

I have J.com and it seems to get by without being throttled for several hours and then gets it. PC/Modem/Router reset and back to the races....