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Tokyo has 20 times as much WiFi as it needs

theregister.com

51–60 of 74 posts

Re: Tokyo has 20 times as much WiFi as it needs

#51
post #26
post #14

> should be shared with blockchain No, this is not finally a use case for blockchains. (before any zealot goes "AHA!", obviously I mean a distributed trust blockchain, not e.g. git)

git does not use a blockchain

Not in a way that is relevant, I agree. But if you squint enough then it's an "immutable" ledger that appends and uses signatures.

Blockchain zealots often yell out "git" as a success story of blockchain, whenever someone says "blockchain as a solution is yet to find an actual problem to be applied to".

So that's just me trying to avoid a "gotcha!" from people who are talking nonsense.

But it seems there's no way around it. Either I'll get a blockchain zealot replying "what about git!" or if I try to preempt that I get someone sane (like you) replying "git's not that!".

Sigh.

Re: Tokyo has 20 times as much WiFi as it needs

#52
post #51
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

git does not use a blockchain

Not in a way that is relevant, I agree. But if you squint enough then it's an "immutable" ledger that appends and uses signatures. Blockchain zealots often yell out "git" as a success story of blockchain, whenever someone says "blockchain as a solution is yet to find an actual problem to be applied to". So that's just me trying to avoid a "gotcha!" from people who are talking nonsense. But it seems there's no way aro…

git uses a DAG, not a blockchain at all

Re: Tokyo has 20 times as much WiFi as it needs

#53
post #52
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in a way that is relevant, I agree. But if you squint enough then it's an "immutable" ledger that appends and uses signatures. Blockchain zealots often yell out "git" as a success story of blockchain, whenever someone says "blockchain as a solution is yet to find an actual problem to be applied to". So that's just me trying to avoid a "gotcha!" from people who are talking nonsense. But it seems there's no way aro…

git uses a DAG, not a blockchain at all

I'm not disagreeing.

Blockchain zealots like to play this game of semantics. You should direct your energy on debating semantics towards them instead.

Re: Tokyo has 20 times as much WiFi as it needs

#54
post #4

I am in Japan and when my mobile net has run out I've had to use public wifi for a day or two and it's not a pretty picture. I find I can barely connect after multiple tries and they drop out frequently, and often have time limits like 20 minutes on them. Usually I get a sim from the airport vending machine, or for longer trips go to Yodobashi/Bic Camera and get one, you can get 30GB for less than the cost of a month…

"when my mobile net has run out"? Are Japanese mobile networks stuck in the 2010s? In Europe unlimited (or at as near as makes no difference) data has become so ubiquitous that public wifi is more or less redundant.

Re: Tokyo has 20 times as much WiFi as it needs

#55
post #54
post #4

I am in Japan and when my mobile net has run out I've had to use public wifi for a day or two and it's not a pretty picture. I find I can barely connect after multiple tries and they drop out frequently, and often have time limits like 20 minutes on them. Usually I get a sim from the airport vending machine, or for longer trips go to Yodobashi/Bic Camera and get one, you can get 30GB for less than the cost of a month…

"when my mobile net has run out"? Are Japanese mobile networks stuck in the 2010s? In Europe unlimited (or at as near as makes no difference) data has become so ubiquitous that public wifi is more or less redundant.

What in the world are you talking about?

Taking a brief look at Airalo, it looks like it'd cost me $4-5 per gigabyte to buy an eSIM. I literally see no unlimited options on Amazon.

Randomly navigating to telekom.de, I see a front page offer of €34.95 monthly for a five gigabyte plan with a 24 month contract term.

orange.fr seems to do a little better with a €16.99 plan for 100 GB but it seems to be a promo rate and also requires an activation fee and a bank account statement, making it useless for tourists. Still, $5 is a lot cheaper than €16.99 even if you could get that rate. For €5 prepaid you get, I shit you not, 20 megabytes of data from Orange. https://boutique.orange.fr/vitrine/rechargements-mobile/mobi...

Re: Tokyo has 20 times as much WiFi as it needs

#56
post #4

I am in Japan and when my mobile net has run out I've had to use public wifi for a day or two and it's not a pretty picture. I find I can barely connect after multiple tries and they drop out frequently, and often have time limits like 20 minutes on them. Usually I get a sim from the airport vending machine, or for longer trips go to Yodobashi/Bic Camera and get one, you can get 30GB for less than the cost of a month…

[dead]

Re: Tokyo has 20 times as much WiFi as it needs

#57
post #54
post #4

I am in Japan and when my mobile net has run out I've had to use public wifi for a day or two and it's not a pretty picture. I find I can barely connect after multiple tries and they drop out frequently, and often have time limits like 20 minutes on them. Usually I get a sim from the airport vending machine, or for longer trips go to Yodobashi/Bic Camera and get one, you can get 30GB for less than the cost of a month…

"when my mobile net has run out"? Are Japanese mobile networks stuck in the 2010s? In Europe unlimited (or at as near as makes no difference) data has become so ubiquitous that public wifi is more or less redundant.

So I bought a 16GB 6-month tourist sim, and somehow run it out, probably by drunkenly making video calls / using YouTube without realising I wasn't connected to wifi.

I think there are unlimited or huge (30GB/month) sims available for non-tourists. A lot of households use 4G as their main internet source via a dongle!

Re: Tokyo has 20 times as much WiFi as it needs

#58
post #22

While I love the blockchain-based solution which also probably handles payments (a nice use of crypto instead of many scam projects that give it a bad reputation), if they don't scale on a L2 network scalability will be a huge issue.

It can all be done without blockchain. Blockchain is not needed for anything. Anything built on blockchain is likely to be a grift and a scam.

You must be living in a perfect society with a caring government then.

Good for you.

Rest of the world needs blockchain.

Re: Tokyo has 20 times as much WiFi as it needs

#59
post #40
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its the same in all big cities. From my kitchen I can see 23 other access points in the list. I'm sure we could pool our internet & wifi if we could coordinate, but coordination is too hard. Given how saturated the spectrum is, its remarkable how reliable wifi has become. I get occasional dropouts (maybe once or twice a day for a few seconds) but otherwise my connection is rock solid. And this is all over 802.11ac -…

5GHz doesn’t have the collision problem of 2.4GHz because it weakly propagates through brick and concrete.

Isn't the difference marginal at best. I swear i read a debunk on this

Re: Tokyo has 20 times as much WiFi as it needs

#60

I live in a high-density multi-family apartment block. 300 families in a small space. There are probably at least 300 SSIDs being broadcast in this area, plus Bluetooth and other noise. This is a low-income joint, so amenities are comparatively minimal, but there's just no excuse for not forging a deal with one of the local ISPs and having their WiFi/Ethernet to blanket the property, convincing residents to shut thei…

Sorry but at home I would like to connect to my WiFi, with my preferences and access to my local network. The last time I was forced to use a common access point was in my dorm at the university, and even then I bought a small travel router to rebroadcast the AP. But I do understand what you mean. I guess one thing to do is to set the router to not broadcast at full power, and use 5GHz to limit the range.

My old apartment (built to rent) had a pretty sweet scheme. You connected to a shared WiFi network throughout the building and was put in VLAN 0 with all the other unauthenticated devices, but once you signed in (captive portal) you were bumped in to your own private VLAN and you could only see / connect to your other devices.

The only downside was any device where it wasn't convenient to login to the captive portal had to have its Mac address registered to your account.

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