Will Comcast Ever Increase Their Upload Speeds?
The speeds aren't real just they are spectacular —
Comcast offers tantalizing hint of a future with upload speeds to a higher place 35Mbps
Lab test produces 4Gbps upload speeds only actual uploads are still iii to 35Mbps.
Overstate / Picture of a Comcast router/modem gateway from the company's website.
Comcast today offered the latest hint of a futurity in which its cablevision customers won't be limited to 35Mbps upload speeds. Announcing a recent lab test, Comcast said its research team "evangelize[ed] upstream and downstream throughputs of greater than 4Gbps" and that "future optimization" volition allow "even greater capacity."
This was "the commencement-ever live lab test" of a Broadcom "organization-on-chip (SOC) device that will pave the way for Comcast to evangelize multigigabit upload and download speeds over its hybrid-fiber coaxial (HFC) network," Comcast said. It won't require installation of more cables because the "engineering works using the same types of connections already installed in hundreds of millions of homes worldwide," Comcast said.
Cable customers have been waiting a long time for upload speeds that aren't a tiny fraction of download speeds. Comcast'south cable uploads, ranging from 3Mbps to 35Mbps, are so depression that Comcast hides them deep within its online ordering organization. While cablevision download speeds of upwardly to 1.2Gbps are prominently displayed, Comcast doesn't tell customers what upload speeds they'll become until they enter a valid credit card number.
Comcast justified its tactic of hiding upload speeds by saying that its "website reflects the way customers use the Internet, with downstream overwhelmingly dominating usage." But occasionally, such as in today's announcement, Comcast acknowledges that customers want college upload speeds.
"This milestone is especially exciting because this technology is an important stride frontwards toward unlocking multigigabit upload and download speeds for hundreds of millions of people worldwide, not just a select few," Comcast executive Charlie Herrin said in the announcement.
"Total duplex" DOCSIS
Comcast does offering a residential cobweb service with upload and download speeds of 2Gbps, but availability is limited and the service costs $300 a month, plus installation and activation charges of upward to $1,000 combined. The fiber service requires the installation of new wires into each dwelling, simply the newly announced lab test delivered multi-gigabit upload and download speeds over the standard cable wires that Comcast has installed throughout its 39-state territory.
The test used a Broadcom SOC powered by the latest version of DOCSIS, the Information Over Cablevision Service Interface Specification. The Broadcom "device is expected to get the earth's first product silicon to be developed using the DOCSIS four.0 Full Duplex standard, which represents an evolutionary spring forrard in the ability to evangelize ultra-fast speeds over HFC [hybrid fiber-coaxial] networks," Comcast said. "One of the virtually important breakthroughs in the DOCSIS 4.0 standard is the ability to use network spectrum more than efficiently, allowing operators to dramatically increase upstream speeds without sacrificing downstream spectrum to do so."
Years of unfulfilled upload-speed promises
The cable industry has been promising symmetrical upload and download speeds over cable networks for years without ever proverb when such speeds will become available.
The DOCSIS 3.i specification released in 2013 theoretically allowed 10Gbps downloads and 1Gbps upload speeds, but actual implementations never came shut to those numbers. An update to DOCSIS 3.1 finalized late in 2017 was supposed to bring download and upload speeds of 10Gbps, and the cable industry unveiled a "10G" marketing entrada in January 2019 to boast of those symmetrical 10Gbps speeds. Comcast today chosen its newest test "an of import pace frontward on the path to 10G."
The full-duplex version of DOCSIS 3.one was updated and renamed "DOCSIS four.0." Despite the "full duplex" name, the cable industry has lowered the estimated upstream speeds from 10Gbps to 6Gbps.
"Current DOCSIS iii.i cable modems support capacities up to 5Gbps downstream and 1.5Gbps upstream," the cable-manufacture group CableLabs says. "DOCSIS 4.0 cable modems will back up capacities upwardly to 10Gbps downstream and 6Gbps upstream."
Comcast said that a "key reward of DOCSIS 4.0 Full Duplex is that it establishes a foundation for operators to deliver multigigabit speeds over their existing networks to the connections already in hundreds of millions of homes effectually the world, without the need for massive earthworks and construction projects." Comcast called it "a powerful new tool to back up our mission of delivering the best possible connected experiences to our customers," just it didn't say when those customers will be able to buy a future "full duplex" service.
Smaller upload increase possibly on tap
Comcast in October 2020 said it accomplished a "technical milestone" that delivered 1.25Gbps download and upload speeds over existing cable wires during testing at a abode in Jacksonville, Florida. While gigabit upload speeds over cable would be a massive comeback, it likely isn't anywhere close to existence implemented. It's also non clear when Comcast will enhance cablevision upload speeds to anything college than 35Mbps—Comcast hasn't even confirmed an increase to 50Mbps uploads, which is already offered by WOW on that company'south gigabit-download program.
Currently, Comcast'south 25Mbps download programme comes with 3Mbps uploads; the 100Mbps and 200Mbps download plans both accept 5Mbps uploads; the 400Mbps download plan has 10Mbps uploads; the 800Mbps plan has 15Mbps uploads; and the 1Gbps download plan (ane.2Gbps in some areas) comes with 35Mbps uploads. By contrast, fiber-to-the-home providers generally provide symmetrical upload and download speeds of upwardly to 1Gbps.
Comcast did hint at higher upload speeds "in the near term" using DOCSIS iii.1, but it didn't specify what those speeds volition exist or say when they will be bachelor:
Even as Comcast works to test and deploy Total Duplex DOCSIS to enable multigigabit upload and download speeds in the futurity, the company is leveraging the technologies from the Oct trial, forth with DOCSIS iii.1 in the upstream, to increase speed and capacity in the about term.
The October 2020 test "evangelize[ed] 1.25 Gig symmetrical speeds over a live, all-digital network by leveraging advances in Distributed Access Architecture, Remote PHY digital nodes, and a deject-based virtualized cable modem termination organization platform," Comcast said. In the more contempo test announced today, the demonstration occurred in a "simulated" environs instead of a home.
"Comcast technologists in Philadelphia and Denver conducted the exam by installing the Broadcom SOC in a simulated network environment to track the performance of its Full Duplex DOCSIS features—including echo counterfoil and overlapping spectrum—which combine to support substantial improvements in network throughput," Comcast said.
Source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/04/comcast-touts-4gbps-cable-uploads-in-lab-test-still-limits-users-to-35mbps/
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