[Rant] Got my new internet connection

Yesterday in the evening, I got the router from NTT. There was the actual router, an instruction leaflet, a LAN cable, the power brick for the router and the optical fibre cable inside the package.

Until I received the package, I wasn’t sure if I would be able to plug the optical cable to the router. But when I examined the new router, I figured out – without reading the leaflet – how to install the optical fibre cable. It was just like plugging in the LAN cable – it just had a different socket and a jack.

I had routed the old optical fibre cable along walls and it took me quite a bit of time when I did that the last time. So I figured, it would be great if I could just reuse the same fibre optic cable instead of the new one, such that it would cut down the installation time substantially. Plus, the power cable to the router was also laid along the walls similarly. So I wanted to see if the new router would work with the same power brick and fibre optic cable.

There was one issue though. I didn’t know how to remove the existing one from the old router. The new router is a bit different to the old one. There weren’t any screws on it. It seemed that there was a sliding door like thing, but it would not come off at first. But after trying several orientations of sliding, a door came off revealing the actual port. After that, it was a simple pull of the jack to disconnect the cable.

Then I plugged the old fibre optic cable and the power plug to the new router and it worked! My internet worked. (Since I received my username/password from OCN several days before, I had already setup the connection inside my Wi-Fi router.) Now that everything was working fine, I decided to reuse the old stuff with the new router.

But there was one issue. I was supposed to send the old router back to NTT. I should have done that a while back, but I kept delaying till I got the new connection as it would make installation easier if I had something to refer to. They actually wanted me to send back the accessories as well. So I decided to bundle the accessories I got with the new router – basically the fibre optic cable and the power brick of the router – with the old one and send back to NTT.

Today I sent it back to them. I already had the envelop that I got from them. All I had to do was to put the router and stuff in the envelop, paste the sticker which had the sender/recipient details and ask the courier – in this case Japan Post – to come and pick it up.

[Rant] Got the new internet connection confirmed

A couple of days ago, I came home from work and went to take a shower. Like always, I took my iPhone with me, as I listen to podcasts while taking a shower. Otherwise I would feel all alone in there. Anyways, since I didn’t buy 2 year Apple Care protection with my iPhone 5S, I always put the phone in a seal bag so that moisture doesn’t sneak into the phone.

Anyways, while I was half way into the shower, I got a phone call. I figured it could be from NTT, so I answered. Yes, it was a girl from NTT. She told me that they received the fax I sent them the other day. But there was a little problem. I wrote down my wife’s name in short – just the first name and the surname. But since the ID had her full name, they were confused. Seriously? These Japanese people are like robots.

But that’s not the issue. They said the photo of the ID was not that clear enough to make out the full name of her. So I had to read it out one letter by letter. I mean, I was in the middle of a shower and I was feeling cold.

Once that was done, she asked me many questions. If I wanted to sign up for fixed line telephone; if I wanted to use their antivirus scanning; if I wanted to sign up for IPTV etc. etc. I said no to all of them. One of the reason why I bought the connection through Kakaku.com was because I didn’t have to sign up for those bloated services.

Finally we set up a date for them to activate the internet connection and send me their router. If you read my earlier post, I opted to setup everything on my own. It shouldn’t be that hard because I could refer to the current installation when installing the new router. That said, I wasn’t hoping to send the current equipment before I got the new ones. We decided that they should send me the router on Friday evening.

The girl further told me that I would get mail with the instructions on how to connect to the internet – from OCN as well as from NTT.

And, that was it. Finally after about 20 minutes, I was finally able to resume my shower.

[Rant] Applied for a new internet connection

Finally it was time for me to renew my internet connection. I disconnected my old connection on 31st of January. The internet connection that I had been using had a contract period of 2 years. The contract would automatically renew unless you disconnect it in the month after the two year period.

So why would you want to disconnect the internet connection?

Simple answer is "discounts".

When you buy a new connection, you get various discounts. When you buy it from different places, you get different discounts. Some give you money back discounts. Some discounts your monthly bill. Some let you buy an electronic article and they would deduct a substantial amount of money from the price of it. The amount of discount is also different from place to place.

I bought the MacBook Air with the discount I got when I bought my first internet connection. That was from Yodobashi. The size of discount amounted to ¥35,000 back then. But this time I decided that I needed more than ¥35,000.

[Rant] It’s time to upgrade the internet connection

I’ve been using my internet connection for almost 2 years. I can cancel it without any extra charges now and get a new internet connection. Otherwise it will automatically get renewed.

So why would I need to get a new internet connection? One reason. Discounts!!! When you get a new internet connection here in Japan, they give us a big discount on select products OR sometimes give cash back. I’m after that! In fact, if I buy it from kakaku.com, I can get discounts on even more goodies. Me loves goodies!!! A new graphics card, anyone? A new camera anyone? Yippie!

But there is one catch. It takes them a long time to give me the internet connection. I cannot live without a internet connection. It is just like living without electricity. But it is fine, as there are many friends living in the same building and I can use their wireless internet connection until they give me the connection.

Wireless connection, I said. What about my desktop PC, the PC that I use mostly. It doesn’t have wireless. But then I remembered, I don’t have to worry about it. When I moved to this apartment, I had the same issue. I didn’t get internet connectivity until a couple of weeks had passed. So I had to use a friend’s WI-FI connection. For that, I bought a USB wireless adaptor which cost me JPY1,257. It is supposed to support 802.11n but you never get the full speed anyways.

So I went through my stuff and found the dongle. I connected it to my desktop via a USB 3.0 port. It got recognized and then I could simply enter the WI-FI access key of my own WI-FI connection and connect to the internet. It worked! At first I was a bit worried that it didn’t work.

I ran a quick benchmark to see how good the dongle was. Here’s the speedtest result.

[Rant] Blistering fast downloads via OCN Flets Hikari connection with EA Origin

The public beta of the most anticipated game of the year, Battlefield 4, came out yesterday. However, they let us preload the game the previous day and be ready as soon as the game went online. I also had the Battlefield 4 Beta automatically added to my games list, and even though I am not much of a Battlefield fan, I started downloading it.

This is not the first time, but the download finished in about 5 minutes. The download size is 5.5GB. That’s about 18MBps (not Mbps) average. I hit over 23MBps towards the last quarter actually.

Few times before, I have been managed to fully exhaust the connection, which is supposed to be 200Mbps (or 25MBps at max efficiency). The funny thing is that OCN sales personnel said that in reality you won’t get more than 100Mbps. Hey, 100Mbps is nothing to be sad about. It’s 200 times faster than the connection I have at home!!!

Of course I didn’t play the game fore more than a few minutes. The game wouldn’t play full screen, Hitting ALT + Enter didn’t fix it. Sabreen said it could be because of TeamViewer and I still couldn’t check it out. He could be right. I had the same issue with BF3 as well, when I checked it a few days ago. I had been using TeamViewer to monitor the PC remotely when I was stress testing it to see if the overclock was stable. I don’t really need it anymore, but I’ll keep it there in case I need to access the PC remotely. Of course, I have to have the PC turned ON in the first place.

An update on Carbonite Backup status

About 2 months ago, I signed up for Carbonite. I got an extra 2 months of free subscription thanks to the offer code from Leo’s TWIT network. So, 14 months, plus the 14 days trial period. Unfortunately, I had to break the backing up spree after about 10 days into the trial period because I visited Sri Lanka. Even though it was originally supposed to be a 2 week break, it ended up being 3 weeks.

The price being reasonably cheap for unlimited size of storage, the only problem that remained was how long it would take to backup all of my data to the Carbonite servers. The speeds seemed to be good for the initial few gigabytes of data but it would slowly crawl down to 2Mbps. (With a capacity of 200Mbps in my internet connection, that’s so much wastage.) Given that I have over 1TB of data to be backed up, it would take a couple of years until all of that data was safely stored in the cloud. I won’t be running my PC 24/7 just for Carbonite.

Accurately speaking, I first subscribed to Carbonite on 2012/12/11. We left for Sri Lanka on 2012/12/23. So I ran Carbonite till 2012/12/22 evening. That’s 12 days. Then we arrived back in Japan on 2012/01/13 and I actually forgot to install Carbonite straight away. So the backup resumed from 2012/01/15. That’s another 18 days. So, in total, it’s been only 30 days - a full month – of backing up time.

So after 30 full days of uploading, this is the state of my Carbonite backup.

Note: I have no idea what that file it is uploading in the above screenshot.

113GB of my data has been uploaded. That’s actually better that I imagined. That means, after full 10 months of use, I might be able to upload all of my data to the Carbonite servers. It states that I only have 616GB remaining – I probably have to add more files to the backup queue manually. It doesn’t add those clunky files such as huge video files and ISO files to the backup by default. I just have to force it.

SLTNet ADSL speeds have improved: Dec 2012 Experience

So, I am back in SL. I do miss a lot of things in Japan. My PC, for example, is irreplaceable. So is the internet connection. At home (SL), we have a 512k unlimited package. Browsing on it is dirt slow, but it felt better than the last time. But still, 512k is 512k.

Right now I am writing this from my wife's place and they have the 8M 25GB connection known as the "SLT Web Family". It's pretty sweet for browsing. It would be million times (exaggerated of course) slower than the one I have back in Japan when it comes to downloading stuff, but for a cheap Rs.1490 price, it is sweet. I don't have any problem browsing the internet with it. Pages load -amazingly- very fast. YouTube doesn't run into buffering even at 720p and sometimes even at 1080p. That's crazy. 

Finally, there is some hope. I don't have to worry about the internet when I come back to SL.

The only issue I have is the 25GB download limit. There are ones with higher limitation points, but they are pretty expensive. 25GB one is pretty much the best bang for the buck package. Just imagine downloading games with the size of 10GB or more with a 25GB limit? Yikes! 

New internet connection in action

A lot of things happened in the last couple of months. I will slowly reveal what happened, but for today, this should do.

I opened up Origin to see if there were any updates for BF3 or something, and instead of an update, I got the message that I can download the demo version of Mass Effect 3.

I went ahead with the download. Checked the download speed. A drop of tears came to my eyes….tears of happiness. 11.6MBps of awesomeness!!!