I’m moving to a house next month and am looking for recommendations for internet setup. I work from home with constant Remote Desktop to my PC in the office so I need a relatively stable connection.
I have NURO in my current apartment in Suginami-ku since 2017 and had no problems with wired connection, but I feel that the router they gave me (ZTE F660A) is pretty iffy with Wi-Fi and constantly gets interference from other devices, so I’m also looking for Router recommendations.
A little while back, I heard that NURO had problems with massive packet loss in some areas, but while I don’t think I personally experienced it, it’s still concerning and am wondering if it’s mostly resolved by now or if I should go with a different internet provider.
Any advice would be appreciated, thanks!
11 comments
Its been pretty stable for lots of months already.
>but I feel that the router they gave me (ZTE F660A) is pretty iffy with Wi-Fi and constantly gets interference from other devices
This likely has less to do with the device itself and more to do with a lot of wifi routers crammed together in apartment buildings, all set to the same few frequencies (channels) and colliding. If you have the ability to log into the router, try changing the wifi to use a different channel.
Nuro requires you to use their router, but nothing is preventing you from buying and using a separate wifi access point. Almost every router you can buy domestically can be switched to AP mode, then you just disable wifi on the nuro thing completely and use new one instead.
> I feel that the router they gave me (ZTE F660A) is pretty iffy with Wi-Fi and constantly gets interference from other devices, so I’m also looking for Router recommendations.
That sounds like a “too many consumer APs all trying to run at full power in close proximity” sort of problem.
First, that packet loss fuss has been over for months. Nuro admitted they needed more infrastructure and I believe they have implemented them. I don’t hear the ruckus anymore on the internet.
Second, if you suspect your router is acting weird, you can request for an exchange. I did it with mine, I had intermittent wifi signal loss. I told them the problem and they sent me a new different type of router. It’s been good ever since.
So I see no problem with Nuro, been a happy customer for 3 years now.
I’ve had great and horrific experiences with them. For about 1.5 years, speeds were great. Hardly any packet loss either. Only issues with some select overseas servers; which is apparently something that can happen with any provider if I understand correctly (due to the many nodes the packages have to pass through).
However, after almost exactly 1.5 years, my speeds dropped to about 4% of the previous speed, or 2% of the advertised speed – from one day to the next. Instead of getting the ~1000 Mbits (advertised: up to 2000 Mbits), I was suddenly getting only ~40 Mbits, sometimes less. Worse, the connection felt a lot more sluggish than the speed would indicate; some websites wouldn’t load at all or wouldn’t work correctly. For example, I couldn’t watch YouTube or Netflix anymore. Facebook refused to load. Reddit was insanely slow to load.
I got into contact with their support, who sent me a new router (in case mine broke, but also a newer model) and said that if this didn’t help, they’d have to send out a technician. Router change didn’t help, but NURO refused to send out a technician. Instead, they changed their stance and claimed that there was no problem. I explained to them repeatedly that my Internet speed and quality had dropped suddenly and extremely, but all they would reply with boiled down to “Can’t help it, there is no problem, its a [best effort](https://www.reddit.com/r/japanlife/comments/12q7ymw/isp_issues_is_besteffort_a_legal_term_here_how_is/) service”. I had already given up when a friend recommended to contact the [National Consumer Affairs Center](https://www.kokusen.go.jp/). Those guys then contacted NURO on my behalf, and guess what, one day later my Internet magically was back to exactly the speeds I originally was seeing; all issues gone. Funny enough, NURO still kept pretending there never _was_ an issue.
Moral of the story is that NURO must have either been aware of the issue but decided to gaslight me and refused to help; or they simply were too lazy to even look into it and just sent boilerplate replies back. For _several weeks_. Either way, this has left an incredibly bad aftertaste. I went on to research a bit and it turned out that there is tens of thousands of users out there who had the exact same or very similar experience; so many and so badly that [the idea of a class action law suit was circulated](https://www.itmedia.co.jp/news/articles/2209/22/news195.html). I don’t know if that ever came into fruition, but it just goes to show that my case wasn’t exactly an isolated case.
I’m sure this won’t help all that much, because at the end of the day, there is horror stories about each and ever ISP out there, but since this has happened very recently, I thought I’d let you know either way.
However, there is one takeaway: as far as I figured, all B2C contracts are on a “best effort” basis, and that seems to mean that _as long as a connection can be established_, the ISP can just say “lol” and ignore you, even if your speed is at 56k modem levels. However, B2B contracts have “minimum guaranteed bandwidth” clauses ([SLA](https://www.reddit.com/r/japanlife/comments/12q7ymw/comment/jgp7ulz/)). If the connection goes below, the ISP _has_ to act, because they’re in violation of the contract. So if this is for work, and the connection is absolutely vital, maybe talk to your employer about the possibility of subsidizing such a contract for your house/ apartment.
Oh, and generally speaking, you want to avoid WiFi. It will never be as fast, reliable or secure as a wired connection.
I had problems using their router, from random disconnections to abismal low speeds, also packet loss. Got my old 5ghz Asus router as an access point (disabled the wifi on nuro’s router) and it has been flawless. I get 80-95% of the max speed most of the time. No apparent packet loss that I can notice.
Good Internet doesn’t just depend on a particular ISP:
1. Flets hikari cross (10 Gbps) is better than normal hikari (1 Gbps). Better in the sense of less congested last mile as (the underlying GPON) is shared with much less and not shared with other non-cross users, and then from your ISP’s POP to the destination server you also have more bandwidth anyway. There are many ISPs reselling the same NTT flets product, so go for cost performance (eg. cashback).
2. Nuro is the competitor to cross and on their independent SO-Net backbone so should be equally great, especially for the >1 Gbps plans.
3. Native IPv6 is by magnitudes better than PPPoE, especially when IPv4 or PPPoE gateways are congested (evening, weekend). Transix and xpass (both dual stack lite approaches) are pretty comparable and also supported by many non-offical routers, probably better than Map-E.
4. Use wired over wifi if possible and for 2.4 Ghz wifi, only channels 1, 6 and 13 don’t overlap. If they’re in use by neighbors, try deactivating 2.4 GHz and use 5 GHz only. For mansion residents, reduce wifi transmit power to lowest to reduce interferences with neighbors’ wifis in the best possible way.
Avoid internet plans without IPv6 and PPPoE only ones at all costs, also get hikari whenever possible and not cable-TV based plans.
Go for NTT 10G Hikari. ひかり10ギガ
When I moved to new house, I upgraded my internet to 10G (though I don’t seem to see any occasion that I can get > 6Gbos) but it’s quite stable and fast
I have good experience with Nuro and their NSD-G1000T router.