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The reply was actually pretty spot on. It’s not a demand issue. It’s true that there is not overwhelming demand for higher upload, but that’s pretty far down th
by lawnchair_larry 7y ago
The reply was actually pretty spot on. It’s not a demand issue. It’s true that there is not overwhelming demand for higher upload, but that’s pretty far down the list of what prevents it from being offered.
DOCSIS 3.1 allows it on paper, yes. But in the real world, bandwidth is a huge constraint, especially if you’re also serving digital cable. No cable ISP in North America today on D3.1 has a network that can support it even if they wanted to.
For example, Comcast has 4 upstream 6mhz sc-qam channels (which is basically using none of the advantages offered by 3.1) and 32 downstream, and their video service is 720p across the board and overly compressed. They are constantly trying to free up data channels and migrate to newer codecs, and eventually go to IPTV, but that requires changing hardware both in their network in the customer’s home, or the customer’s TV goes black and their internet goes out and you get to hear their rage when you tell them they have to spend a few hundred dollars on new cable boxes/modems so that Comcast can build out their network. It’s a massive infrastructure upgrade to use DOCSIS 3.1 to its full potential that is further complicated by a need to support all of the legacy hardware during a transition.
Add to the mix that upstream channels are far more susceptible to unwanted ingress, most homes are full of amateur RG59 coax cable, and it becomes a support/troubleshooting nightmare as well. When you get into higher upstream speeds, these deficiencies become a much bigger problem.
I have observed speed tests on an uncapped docsis 3.1 modem on the comcast network getting full bandwidth on all channels, and it was still way below 100mbps upstream (around 80mbps).
- mercora 7y agoin Germany Vodafone deployed DOCSIS 3.1 partially and while still not symmetric i get 100Mbit/s down and 50Mbit/s up more or less consistently with DOCSIS 3.0 where i live unless something goes wrong (it does sometimes interfere with LTE here). DOCSIS 3.1 is also available with lots of [0]channels using the newer 1024QAM. they offer up to 1Gbit downstream and 50Mbit upstream for about 70€ a month. i also made a [1]screenshot of the channel usage and stats page of the modems web interface. [0] https://helpdesk.vodafonekabelforum.de/sendb/belegung-11.html https://helpdesk.vodafonekabelforum.de/sendb/belegung-11.htm... [1] https://gist.github.com/mercora/ef66f5bcd95b060ac25269b17cc66b75 https://gist.github.com/mercora/ef66f5bcd95b060ac25269b17cc6...
- lawnchair_larry 7y agoThats approximately what is offered in the US as well. The reason that 100/50 seems close to symmetric is because the 100 is low. The fact that it’s still only 50 up with the 1 gig downstream suggests that they have the same constraints as cable ISPs in NA.
- iamzenitraM 7y agoIt's not required to have DOCSIS 3.1 to have 100Mbit/s symmetry, 3.0 can provide that. Vodafone in Spain has a mixture of HFC footprint (the widest), its own small FTTH footprint, and Telefonica (Spain's DTAG) wholesale FTTH. Prices and speeds for the three of them are the same, but if you are on an FTTH zone you get symmetric upload speeds, while on HFC zones they provide 100Mbit/s upload with all their plans (min download is also 100MBit/s). They argue they will be able to have symmetry on 1Gbit on HFC when they complete their DOCSIS 3.1 rollout, but that has been going on for years with no news. Ironically their own FTTH footprint is pretty small so they end up, in most cases, providing better upload speeds when reselling Telefonica infrastructure than with their own.