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CableLabs: DOCSIS 3.1 Slightly Ahead of Schedule

A lot of the 1 Gbps deployments from cable operators like Cox and Suddenlink are going to depend on the faster speeds provided by the as-yet-undeployed DOCSIS 3.1 standard, which should support 10 Gbps downstream and 1 Gbps upstream (albeit shared). To that end, CableLabs this week stated that deployment of the standard is slightly ahead of schedule. The first chips should ship late this year, though broad deployment still isn't expected until 2016.

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Comcast's on record stating that it should take significantly less time to deploy the standard tha it took to develop it. CableLabs executives admit that while many customers don't need 1 Gbps, there will be other benefits to the standard beyond just speed:
quote:
“Today, there’s nothing in the marketplace that needs a 1-Gig sustained speed. However, one service today that consumers do value when you get to those kinds of speeds is really not so much the issue of speed overall as it latency, is what I call the ‘fast sync.’ You come into your house and if you could burst to 1-Gig to get your email synchronized, your TV shows onto your iPad because you’re dashing out to a flight…it’s that feeling of having instantaneous access to your information so you can be productive everywhere you go."
The first plugfests and interoperability tests are slated for this December. It looks like "GigaSphere" is going to be the sexier-sounding, consumer-facing branding for the standard.
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brianiscool
join:2000-08-16
Tampa, FL

brianiscool

Member

Great !

Hurry up, I'm sick of these ancient upload speeds.

bigballer
@205.214.216.x

bigballer

Anon

comcrap

When's comcast deploying it?

Will the prices be consistent (i.e. $70 1 gbps symmetrical?)

Lemme know when comcrap decides to actually be somewhat competitive like ATT giga (at least it's something)

Lastly, will comcrap still throw a hissy fit and enforce 300 gb data caps on all of us?
dutenhnj
join:2002-01-29
Monroe, WI

2 recommendations

dutenhnj

Member

Re: comcrap

It will still have a 300 gb data cap, and it will be pointless most of the time because while the last mile network could do 1 gbps the peering points can't, because nobody will want to pay comcast $10 million dollars for the required peering ports to keep up with it. So it will only run at full speed to the comcast website, the rest of the internet will be dialup.

wiggie116
Premium Member
join:2013-10-31
Pittsfield, MA
D-Link DSL-2750B
Actiontec GT784WN

wiggie116

Premium Member

Re: comcrap

said by dutenhnj:

It will still have a 300 gb data cap, and it will be pointless most of the time because while the last mile network could do 1 gbps the peering points can't, because nobody will want to pay comcast $10 million dollars for the required peering ports to keep up with it. So it will only run at full speed to the comcast website, the rest of the internet will be dialup.

That's was great..LMAO

Zenit_IIfx
The system is the solution
Premium Member
join:2012-05-07
Purcellville, VA
·Comcast XFINITY

Zenit_IIfx to dutenhnj

Premium Member

to dutenhnj
I think this is highly dependent on where you live, and the routing Comcast chooses. Comcast's backbone is a modern 40gbps network with many 100gbps segments in operation now. 1tbps long distance ibone links are in testing now.

I hate to say anything good about Comcast but I never noticed extremely slow peering to most of the internet. Always got my full 25mbps out of the link. Some foreign hosts were a bit slower, but that's understandable.
iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Austin, TX

iansltx to bigballer

Member

to bigballer
"at least it's something" for areas that can get it. Which are few and far between :/

wiggie116
Premium Member
join:2013-10-31
Pittsfield, MA
D-Link DSL-2750B
Actiontec GT784WN

wiggie116

Premium Member

Re: comcrap

said by iansltx:

"at least it's something" for areas that can get it. Which are few and far between :/

Agreed. I will never have GF or Fios in town, but we do have cable. Curently Time Warner.

journeysquid
join:2014-08-01

journeysquid to bigballer

Member

to bigballer
said by bigballer :

somewhat competitive like ATT giga

You mean their press releases?
ajwees41
Premium Member
join:2002-05-10
Omaha, NE

2 edits

ajwees41 to bigballer

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to bigballer
more likely $100 or more $70/month is what cox charges for 100megs

dvd536
as Mr. Pink as they come
Premium Member
join:2001-04-27
Phoenix, AZ

dvd536

Premium Member

Re: comcrap

cox charges 74.99 for 100megs.
ajwees41
Premium Member
join:2002-05-10
Omaha, NE

ajwees41

Premium Member

Re: comcrap

Premier Internet Service
Download speeds up to 100 Mbps. (DOCSIS 3.0 modem required) FREE cloud storage. Over 250,000 WiFi hotspots. Cox Security Suite Plus. PowerBoost (R) for large downloads.
$73.99

Yucca Servic
join:2012-11-27
Rio Rancho, NM

Yucca Servic

Member

The Limit

Cable TV has limits! Something will have to give so data can run more and more. 4K has now been thrown into the mix and will demand more space on the cable systems.
Upload will be the final killer, it has only so much space and is subject to noise, ham radio, CB radio, florescent lights and even out side grid power noise. Fiber Optics will the only and final solution to keep up with demand.

On the not so thought of a simple virus or ddns attack will drop the network right into
oblivion.

Killa200
Premium Member
join:2005-12-02
TN

Killa200

Premium Member

Re: The Limit

said by Yucca Servic:

On the not so thought of a simple virus or ddns attack will drop the network right into
oblivion.

Not any more than a g-pon fiber or FTTN vdsl2 setup would. Every technology has a shared bottleneck at some point in the system, its just a matter of where and what size.
rradina
join:2000-08-08
Chesterfield, MO

rradina to Yucca Servic

Member

to Yucca Servic
It depends on how far the fiber goes and the node size. While FTTH sure seems to have the cheapest long-term maintenance costs, using coax for the last mile (literally the last 5,280 feet) isn't so bad. If the node size is 10 homes and D3.1 claims 10Gbps/1Gbps, that's 1Gbps/100Mbps dedicated to each house. Not every house subscribes and it's unlikely every house will slam the node with their maximum speed at the same time. That's a lot of headroom for dozens of concurrent 4K OTT streams per house and gig HSI.

fiosultimate
join:2014-06-09
San Antonio, TX

fiosultimate

Member

quote

There is nothing that requires a 1 gig sustained feed......and this is from the guys making money from the deployment of it.......sure it is nice to have...so is a thermonuclear weapon in my back yard.....just in case the zombie apocalypse starts early

Zenit_IIfx
The system is the solution
Premium Member
join:2012-05-07
Purcellville, VA

Zenit_IIfx

Premium Member

Re: quote

Hey, if your a leader of a country that is not BFF's with murika said nukes are a great thing to have, regardless of how OP they are.

:P

dvd536
as Mr. Pink as they come
Premium Member
join:2001-04-27
Phoenix, AZ

dvd536 to fiosultimate

Premium Member

to fiosultimate
or a kid puts a dime in a phone and starts a war.
CPE1704TKS
APG
Premium Member
join:2007-01-13

APG

Premium Member

Okay, so...

So, it looks like Comcast and the other cable companies are actively planning to deploy 1 gigabyte service nationwide in a year and a half... and they're evil.

Meanwhile, Google may, possibly, someday, if people beg hard enough, might, just might, deploy 1 gigabyte service in a few small areas in the same time frame... and they're viewed as the saviors of all that's good with the world.

?

bigballer
@205.214.216.x

bigballer

Anon

Re: Okay, so...

you're comparing a mature coax (which is starting to show its age and there may not be much development left)

to youthful fiber where it still has a century left of innovation (1.0 gbps is its infancy)

tshirt
Premium Member
join:2004-07-11
Snohomish, WA

1 recommendation

tshirt

Premium Member

Re: Okay, so...

said by bigballer :

you're comparing a mature coax (which is starting to show its age and there may not be much development left) to youthful fiber where it still has a century left of innovation (1.0 gbps is its infancy)

Which is highly capable, replaceable/upgradable in modular fashion and thus can last as long as it is usable/forever, and has many more years to go.
and more importantly exists to the majority US addresses thus spreading the cost of FTTX over many years vs a virgin FTTH overbuild that the end user will start making payments on before it moves one bit.

We get it, you HATE! cable and anything that isn't FTTH, but if you were honest you would admit cable is far ahead on delivering high speed broadband to more people in the next 2-3 years than fiber will pass in the next 10-20 years.

bigballer
@205.214.216.x

1 recommendation

bigballer

Anon

Re: Okay, so...

Copper is so.... 20th century. Fiber optic IS the 21st century and has both the capability and CAPACITY for our data needs in this century.

Sure we can't take advantage of 1.0 gbps... yet, but look at that huge latency advantage as well as the symmetrical upload speed.

In other words, look at the upload constraints imposed upon coax. Do you ever believe that coax will ever see the light of day of symmetrical internet? It's not the download thats the weakest link, it's the upload.

And anothing thing you're missing out on is capacity. I can tell you right now my comcast node is well oversaturated and comcast is doing nada to fix it (in some parts yeah it's comcast's lazy ass to fix it, other parts shows the technological barriers coax shows.) I pay for 25 mbps down and some days it goes all the way down to 5-6 mbps down and yes I have a docsis 3.0 modem.

Faux 4k video is already available on Netflix. As more and more data heavy video is coming down to other sources such as mobile, hulu, youtube, etc. it will soon be apparent how badly FTTH needs to be sped up.

tshirt
Premium Member
join:2004-07-11
Snohomish, WA

tshirt

Premium Member

Re: Okay, so...

said by bigballer :

Do you ever believe that coax will ever see the light of day of symmetrical internet?

Yup, when they hit 10gig down they can sell you 1/1gig and use the rest for tv or you or your children's school work...any processing unit (including your brain, if you use it) needs far more input to analyze to create and usable output.
don't worry their will be plenty of bandwidth up and down to your network to handle all your twitterpics, netflix , videos and even "Linux distros" you desire, of course in 10 years HFC may have gracefully transitioned to much more FTTx with a variety of "last 100 foot" technologies depending on location and speed package and services needed. (if Google fiber still exists still they'll be asking for the next 100 cities ready to give up tax base for a CHANCE to be the ONE include in GF build 10 or 11.

If you aren't getting what you pay for keep calling/writing THEM, the franchise authority, your congressmenperson until you get it fixed.
You have no time to post here until that is fixed.

mackey
Premium Member
join:2007-08-20

3 recommendations

mackey

Premium Member

Re: Okay, so...

said by tshirt:

Yup, when they hit 10gig down they can sell you 1/1gig and use the rest for tv or you or your children's school work...

The rest??? To hit 10g/1g they need to use every bit of spectrum they have, 5 MHZ - 1.2 GHz (5 MHz - 200 MHz is the upstream, 200 MHz - 1.2 GHz is the downstream). What "rest?" Most cable systems nowadays top out at 750 MHz - 1 GHz, where are they gonna find this "rest?"

And saying they'll offer symmetric 1g/1g when they only have 10g/1g total? Right, they're gonna let a single user use all available bandwidth on a node...

/M
folsom
join:2006-04-30
Atlanta, GA

folsom

Member

Re: Okay, so...

said by mackey:

said by tshirt:

Yup, when they hit 10gig down they can sell you 1/1gig and use the rest for tv or you or your children's school work...

The rest??? To hit 10g/1g they need to use every bit of spectrum they have, 5 MHZ - 1.2 GHz (5 MHz - 200 MHz is the upstream, 200 MHz - 1.2 GHz is the downstream). What "rest?" Most cable systems nowadays top out at 750 MHz - 1 GHz, where are they gonna find this "rest?"

And saying they'll offer symmetric 1g/1g when they only have 10g/1g total? Right, they're gonna let a single user use all available bandwidth on a node...

/M

No one is going to upgrade to 200MHz, they'll just do 85MHz.

tshirt
Premium Member
join:2004-07-11
Snohomish, WA

tshirt to mackey

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to mackey
And a lot of people called cableHSI dead when it hit 4/1-10/2-25/5-105/20.... yet the technology continues to evolve to make better use of the bandwidth. as I said they can begin/already have shown they can transition to pure fiber at anytime it appears to be the best investment.
But even in the best case what other technology will bring such high speeds to so many in 2 years?
(GF seems to take at least 2 years between announcing a build and providing some actual service, and will be 5 years old before completing KC, let alone the rest of the KC metro)

Fiber is nice if you can get it, but I'm not waiting for 5+years and cable continues to advance speeds at a faster pace than I or 99% of my neighbors need.
Still waiting on that killer app that makes symmetric gig a MUST have.
APG
Premium Member
join:2007-01-13

1 recommendation

APG to bigballer

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to bigballer
True.

Looking at it another way, though, the cable companies have a 50 year head start on wiring and maintaining thousands upon thousands of miles of wire. When the time comes when coax is maxed out, the cable company will be able to wire fiber in fairly short order. The entire cable infrastructure has been rewired four or five times over those years... the 15 channel system, the 54 channel system up the current fiber-coax hybrid.
iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Austin, TX

1 recommendation

iansltx to APG

Member

to APG
Like bigballer said, at some point cable will run out of bandwidth, even on 1GHz plant. Particularly on the upload side. I wouldn't be surprised if the first gigabit cable ended up being 1 Gbps down, 50 Mbps up or some such. Still better than I've got now, but not the symmetric gigabit that fiber's been able to offer for the last few years.

Oh, and once everyone has gigabit, fiber companies can swap the electronics to XGPON to hit a few gigabits in each direction...once home networks can support that sort of thing (may take awhile)...without swapping out the actual light pipes. That's powerful.

I'm right with you on Google's slow rollout...I'm in Austin after all...but GFiber isn't the only one doing gigabit fiber at this point.

Oh, and latency is better on fiber. D3.1 might fix that, but right now TWC latency is a mess compared to what AT&T has (having used both).

tshirt
Premium Member
join:2004-07-11
Snohomish, WA

tshirt

Premium Member

Re: Okay, so...

said by iansltx:

...but right now TWC latency is a mess compared to what AT&T has ...

Should we take that as a YES for the merger? to have a new company willing to aggressively improve the plant vs one that is just waiting to be bought out?
Or would you refuse to use any car because Tesla hasn't offered you a $20k sports car?
FTTH might be the dream system, but isn't going to show up in most places for a long, long time.

mackey
Premium Member
join:2007-08-20

mackey to APG

Premium Member

to APG
said by APG:

So, it looks like Comcast and the other cable companies are actively planning to deploy 1 gigabyte service nationwide in a year and a half... and they're evil.

Bullshit. They cannot do 1 gig to any serious number of subscribers. To hit that 10g/1g figure D3.1 has been boasting about they need to use 1000 MHz of spectrum for the downstream (using the 200 MHz - 1.2 GHz range) and rework the entire plant to allow 5-200 MHz to be used for the upstream. Even if they allocated 500 MHz to the downstream to get 5 gbps, that's shared between the what, 500 people on the node? Yeah. 1 gbps down isn't going to be practical and never gonna happen on the upstream.

»www.multichannel.com/new ··· s/326216

/M

PlusOne
@73.160.110.x

-1 recommendation

PlusOne to APG

Anon

to APG
said by APG:

So, it looks like Comcast and the other cable companies are actively planning to deploy 1 gigabyte service nationwide in a year and a half... and they're evil.

Meanwhile, Google may, possibly, someday, if people beg hard enough, might, just might, deploy 1 gigabyte service in a few small areas in the same time frame... and they're viewed as the saviors of all that's good with the world.

+1
Different standards apply. Google can do no wrong(as long as they aren't really in the business of being a cable company). And Comcast can do no right because they actually deliver fast broadband to a huge number of customers. Besides, all the bloggers make their money from Google Ads and they don't want to upset the hand that feeds them.
tmc8080
join:2004-04-24
Brooklyn, NY

tmc8080

Member

fast sync

I don't think faster sync is something that tablets or other portable devices are up to..
let's not forget that the throughputs of these devices aren't exactly that of PCs yet.. it still takes several minutes transferring over speeds that are STILL somewhat under USB 2.0 speeds.. let alone usb 3.0/3.1 speeds.

••••••

XANAVirus
Premium Member
join:2012-03-03
Lavalette, WV

XANAVirus

Premium Member

Fast Sync is not latency, it's bandwidth

Comcast was wrong. Latency isn't a burstable 1Gbps 'faster sync' - that's bandwidth.

Latency is something less than the usual 10-20ms that traceroute commands see on their first hop. 10ms for cable, 10-20ms for DSL. Meanwhile, Fiber has latencies of 1-2ms (usually less).

That's latency, which affects all bandwidth. A stable latency makes for faster everything, but a lower latency gives greater benefits all the time.

Why isn't cable seeking to lower first hop and internal network latencies to less than 5ms, that's what I want to know...

Suddenlink first hop latencies are 8-9ms, which is pretty good, but it could be so much lower.
Internal network latencies are no lower than 10-13ms, which again could stand for some improvement.

telcodad
MVM
join:2011-09-16
Lincroft, NJ

telcodad

MVM

Re: Fast Sync is not latency, it's bandwidth

said by XANAVirus:

Why isn't cable seeking to lower first hop and internal network latencies to less than 5ms, that's what I want to know...

Cable is working on reducing latency now, and DOCSIS 3.1 will include Active Queue Management (AQM):

Is Faster Always Better?
CableLabs Effort Focuses On Reducing Broadband Latency

By Jeff Baumgartner, Multichannel News – August 6, 2014
»www.multichannel.com/blo ··· r/383005
quote:
CableLabs is exploring the implementation of Active Queue Management (AQM), a technology that’s designed to reduce latency, buffering and packet loss – elements that can improve the overall performance of DOCSIS-delivered broadband services. Posting big speeds will always provide grist for the marketing people, but CableLabs believes that an additional focus on latency can juice up the performance of broadband-fueled multiplayer gaming, video conferencing, video streaming and even the simple task of loading Web pages.

The implementation of AQM “could have a dramatic impact on the user experience,” Dan Rice, CableLabs’ senior vice president of network technologies, said in a recent interview

CableLabs has amended DOCSIS 3.0 with a recommendation that AQM be added to existing gear, via a firmware upgrade if possible, and has mandated AQM in DOCSIS 3.1 equipment — both at the cable modem and at the cable modem termination system.

... CableLabs has also posted a more thorough explanation of its exploration of AQM here: »www.cablelabs.com/how-do ··· agement/
 
Also see this paper: »www.cablelabs.com/wp-con ··· work.pdf
existenz
join:2014-02-12

existenz to XANAVirus

Member

to XANAVirus
I've done tests that support this...

»GigaPower vs Google Fiber - routing and latency tests

Gilitar
join:2012-02-01
Mobile, AL

Gilitar

Member

Nail in U Verse coffin

DOCSIS 3.1 will allow cable operators to further outpace U Verse on speed limitations. AT&T better ramp up fiber deployment quick or they're done within a decade.

•••