Weekend Open Thread → Comcast dropping Powerboost with some speed increases

I got a letter from Comcast today saying they upped the speed of their Performance tier to 20/4. But speed tests show that with the speed increase, the Powerboost feature appears to be gone as well.


Comcast letter

Why does every provider in the US cap the upload speed at 4-5Mbs?

Not all of them.

Because you can't do much more than that with single channel bonding.

Feel lucky..at least you got a speed upgrade in the northeast..the rest of us just got a price increase,

I am pulling this out of my head but most broadband is asymmetrical. Putting more bandwidth to downloading than uploading making the connect more efficient. Unless one running a server one dose need much bandwidth for uploading. One could have a symmetrical connection but it will cost you on bandwidth so instead of down/up of 20Mbs / 5Mbs one is left with 14.5Mbs in each direction.

Because then you could actually use your connection for more then just pure consumption.

I don't think cable's DOCSIS bandwidth works that way. There are separate upload and download streams (frequencies/channels) and raising the upload doesn't mean you have to give up download. At some point what you say could be true. Cable plants have ~1Ghz of usable spectrum and until the combined download and upload consume all of that spectrum, changing either doesn't mean the other has to lose.

The coming DOCSIS spec has some lofty claims of possible 10Gbps over coax with a 2Gpbs return path.

I hope I still have my PowerBoost along with Cox's new speed increases.

I sure hope it hits here in California. I don't mind if they drop PB, it only in effect for about 10 or 20 seconds anyways, after that it goes to the sustain speed of 15 mbps anyways.