Fred; > For the record, I'm sitting at this instant in Tokyo Station, and am on my > way from Narita to Yokohama. I am sitting in the green car, and I accessed > the appropriate web page. Note that that is an experimental service of JR, itojun mentioned, and has nothing to do with MIS service, I mentioned, subject line of which you copied. Anyway, > I have wonderful 802.11 connectivity, and I have an IP address. Whether > that means I can use the Internet is another question. On the parts of the > track where the connectivity is there, we see ping round trip delays > varying from 380 ms to over four seconds. There are fairly large parts of > the track where the NTT DoCoMo 3G data connectivity appears to simply not > be there - especially when in concrete tubes and ditches, but also on > places with open track. As you know, JR uses not IP mobility but telephone network mobility. So, it is a problem of a plain old telephone system so called 3G. :-) > So I think here the term "seamless", when applied to connectivity, doesn't > really apply. Direct WLAN service, today, has much less service area. However, in the future, inexpensive base stations of WLAN are essential to cover small holes of connectivity. Masataka Ohta