5 ms·

I'm in Fort Collins and have had city fiber for a couple years now and it's a game changer. We got it during earlyish covid and having 4 of us on video calls w

I'm in Fort Collins and have had city fiber for a couple years now and it's a game changer. We got it during earlyish covid and having 4 of us on video calls was bringing Comcast gig service to it's knees, I imagine because of the limited outbound bandwidth. The city fiber service is gigabit symmetric, no caps, $70/mo, or 10gig for $200/mo. They also are introducing a 2.5gbps, I think that's $100. I'm working on upgrading my internal network to be able to take advantage of upgrading to 10gig. And one of the best parts is that when I had a weird networking issue, I was on the phone with a legit networking person in 15 minutes, rather than stuck with someone who couldn't do anything more than read from a script. The issue ended up being a Comcast routing issue, which I told them from the top, but figured they'd like a heads-up about it. Me and one of my coworkers on the city fiber couldn't reach the office on Comcast, but 2 other coworkers also on city fiber could. I eventually got ahold of a Comcast Business network engineer later that day and they had it resolved the next day.

throwbadubadu 3y ago
> 4 of us on video calls was bringing Comcast gig service to it's knees, I imagine because of the limited outbound bandwidth...upgrading to 10gig Huh, what? Stop imagining and do the math with numbers, maybe Comcast is shitty in general and other metrics.. but still doing here regularly 2 concurrent video calls with sometimes Netflix on top without any issues... on 50 Mbit still! (also asymmetric btw, I may be undemanding, but so a bit wtf on reading that) (Or Comcast cable internet? There is often more bandwidth sharing involved than they tell, especially upstream, or what does gig service mean?)
- froggit 3y ago
  Comcast gig is 1gb/s downstream. I don't know what the upstream rate is and they avoid mentioning it, but based on my experience with them I could see 4 video calls being enough to choke it. It's hard to really appreciate the symmetric data rate until you really start using some decent upstream traffic, then it becomes a day and night kind of difference.
  - BIKESHOPagency 3y ago
    In Greeley (30 min southeast of Foco) max upload with 1gbps is 20mbps.
  - SystemOut 3y ago
    In Chicago it was typically 40Mbps but in the last few weeks my scheduled speed tests are running 230Mbps. However, during Covid I had co-workers that lived in communities with a large number of WFH and they were all having trouble with video conf on Comcast so it doesn't surprise me at all.
  - gonehome 3y ago
    Upstream from Comcast 1gbps plan was 15mbps when I had it. Thankfully I’m now in a building with Google webpass that has 1gbps symmetric (and no data cap) - much better.
  - ungawatkt 3y ago
    To pile on the examples, I had a Comcast connection in SF that was 1gbit down, 5mbit up during covid (based on regular speed tests and what little I could glean from the plans without being the account holder). With 6 people in the house juggling video calls there was definitely some audio only days when schedules clashed.
    - throwbadubadu 3y ago
      I still don't get all the downvotes.. if Comcast is selling "gig service" and you only get thst little upstream that is hilarious even in the most extreme asymmetric scenarios... If you now have symmetric 1 gig is more than enough for any private use, why would one consider 10 gig for home?
      - hkt 3y ago
        > why would one consider 10 gig for home? For the sheer crazy joy of it!
        3y ago
- hedora 3y ago
  Back when we had 100mbit down with comcast, it couldn’t reliably stream at 3mbit.
- linsomniac 3y ago
  As others have said, it is the outbound that was really killing it. Sure, we could watch multiple Netflix, but streaming our camera video and audio and it'd get flaky. ISTR I had 250Mbps inbound at the beginning and outbound was ~25Mbps. Upgrading to gigabit got us the fastest outbound they offered at the time, I think it was 40 or 50Mbps. Also, as others have said, Comcast really doesn't like talking about the upstream speed. When I got the upgrade to gigabit, I did their chat support to ask them and even when their support people were directly asked they were reluctant to say. ISTR they kept asking why I wanted to know.
- barkerja 3y ago
  I'm on Spectrum with 1 gig down, 25 Mbps up. It's not difficult to saturate my upstream.
wyclif 3y ago
I'm working on upgrading my internal network to be able to take advantage of upgrading to 10gig. I'm curious about the best way to do that. What are the upgrades you're thinking about doing?
- csunbird 3y ago
  10gig switches, cat7 cables/fiber cable and 10gig ethernet cards for computers?
- willis936 3y ago
  Microtik and Xyzel switches, MM fiber and SFP+ modules, and ConnectX-3 NICs from ebay. I did this last year and it was cheap and has been working great.
- linsomniac 3y ago
  Sure, I'm happy to go into it. Prior to 2 years ago I had been running cat5e shielded cable around the house (security cameras wanted shielded). cat5e for shorter runs apparently can do 10gig. But once I heard I'd be able to get 10gig, I started doing runs as cat6a. Significantly more expensive, but YOLO. I got an Aruba 2500 PoE switch for ~$100, it has two 10gig SFP ports. I have an old Dell R720 coming that I'm going to put a $75 dual 10gig card in. My plan is to hook that up to the fiber ONT, and run Proxmox or Ganeti on it, then run a VM for my firewall. Then hook that to the switch at 10gig. Currently I don't have any interior devices that will do 10gig, so there's not much day-to-day use I'll see from it currently. When I get there, I'll probably be looking at adding a Mikrotik 10gig switch because they're relatively affordable, though maybe I'll be able to find some old enterprise gear as well. So far I haven't really seen any. The Netgear 10gig switch we have at the office seems to work fine and was ~$800 new, but is EOL, so maybe something like that will be cheap. It's only fallen over once. :-) So the big question is why I'd go to 10gig... My primary machines are laptops, my work machine stays on my desk, so I could add one of those $300 USB-C to 10gig adapters, but probably won't. My primary personal machine is a macbook I use 100% wireless, so not really going to get any better there until I replace my Ruckus R610 with something that'll do 2.5gbps, but no plans for that anytime soon. So the Dell could have 10gig fairly easily. Maybe I'll mirror some OpenStreetMap data or mirror media for work to cut down on our AWS costs... That could be done at 1gbps though as well. Partly, I just want the geek cred of 10gig, partly I want to support the city fiber network through paying more for a bigger plan. Maybe I'll offer my family offsite backup, but that also probably won't need 10gig.
Evidlo 3y ago
Why do asymmetric plans exist in the first place anyway? I assume connections between autonomous systems are symmetric full-duplex, so doesn't these mean ISPs have the same amount of uplink bandwidth to divide between customers as downlink?
- ExoticPearTree 3y ago
  Because GPON is asymmetric and that is the cheapest way of deploying fiber optic for residential use. If you want symmetric, then you need a lot of "active" equipment and that drives the costs up.
  - detaro 3y ago
    GPON can run symmetric just fine, but the customer-side equipment does get more expensive with higher speeds, true.
    - gavaw 3y ago
      GPON is limited to 2.4 gbps down, 1.2 gbps up. It's asymmetric.
      - detaro 3y ago
        GPON has a bunch of modes, some of which are symmetric. Notably a 1.2 Gbit/s down/up setup for gigabit service. Many modes are choosen to be asymmetric, yes, but the technology is not intrinsically one or the other. Notably, just like non-multiple-access fiber connections increasing upstream speed doesn't negatively impact downstream speed (as it does for copper-based connections).
        gavaw 3y ago
        Why use 1.2/1.2 when you can use 2.4/1.2 ? It makes no sense whatsoever. Reducing download so you can say your connection is symmetric? In any case GPON is already in its way out, new deployments use XGS-PON which is 10/10

throwbadubadu 3y ago

> 4 of us on video calls was bringing Comcast gig service to it's knees, I imagine because of the limited outbound bandwidth...upgrading to 10gig Huh, what? Stop imagining and do the math with numbers, maybe Comcast is shitty in general and other metrics.. but still doing here regularly 2 concurrent video calls with sometimes Netflix on top without any issues... on 50 Mbit still! (also asymmetric btw, I may be undemanding, but so a bit wtf on reading that) (Or Comcast cable internet? There is often more bandwidth sharing involved than they tell, especially upstream, or what does gig service mean?)

froggit 3y ago
Comcast gig is 1gb/s downstream. I don't know what the upstream rate is and they avoid mentioning it, but based on my experience with them I could see 4 video calls being enough to choke it. It's hard to really appreciate the symmetric data rate until you really start using some decent upstream traffic, then it becomes a day and night kind of difference.
- BIKESHOPagency 3y ago
  In Greeley (30 min southeast of Foco) max upload with 1gbps is 20mbps.
- SystemOut 3y ago
  In Chicago it was typically 40Mbps but in the last few weeks my scheduled speed tests are running 230Mbps. However, during Covid I had co-workers that lived in communities with a large number of WFH and they were all having trouble with video conf on Comcast so it doesn't surprise me at all.
- gonehome 3y ago
  Upstream from Comcast 1gbps plan was 15mbps when I had it. Thankfully I’m now in a building with Google webpass that has 1gbps symmetric (and no data cap) - much better.
- ungawatkt 3y ago
  To pile on the examples, I had a Comcast connection in SF that was 1gbit down, 5mbit up during covid (based on regular speed tests and what little I could glean from the plans without being the account holder). With 6 people in the house juggling video calls there was definitely some audio only days when schedules clashed.
  - throwbadubadu 3y ago
    I still don't get all the downvotes.. if Comcast is selling "gig service" and you only get thst little upstream that is hilarious even in the most extreme asymmetric scenarios... If you now have symmetric 1 gig is more than enough for any private use, why would one consider 10 gig for home?
    - hkt 3y ago
      > why would one consider 10 gig for home? For the sheer crazy joy of it!
      - 3y ago
hedora 3y ago
Back when we had 100mbit down with comcast, it couldn’t reliably stream at 3mbit.
linsomniac 3y ago
As others have said, it is the outbound that was really killing it. Sure, we could watch multiple Netflix, but streaming our camera video and audio and it'd get flaky. ISTR I had 250Mbps inbound at the beginning and outbound was ~25Mbps. Upgrading to gigabit got us the fastest outbound they offered at the time, I think it was 40 or 50Mbps. Also, as others have said, Comcast really doesn't like talking about the upstream speed. When I got the upgrade to gigabit, I did their chat support to ask them and even when their support people were directly asked they were reluctant to say. ISTR they kept asking why I wanted to know.
barkerja 3y ago
I'm on Spectrum with 1 gig down, 25 Mbps up. It's not difficult to saturate my upstream.

wyclif 3y ago

I'm working on upgrading my internal network to be able to take advantage of upgrading to 10gig. I'm curious about the best way to do that. What are the upgrades you're thinking about doing?

csunbird 3y ago
10gig switches, cat7 cables/fiber cable and 10gig ethernet cards for computers?
willis936 3y ago
Microtik and Xyzel switches, MM fiber and SFP+ modules, and ConnectX-3 NICs from ebay. I did this last year and it was cheap and has been working great.
linsomniac 3y ago
Sure, I'm happy to go into it. Prior to 2 years ago I had been running cat5e shielded cable around the house (security cameras wanted shielded). cat5e for shorter runs apparently can do 10gig. But once I heard I'd be able to get 10gig, I started doing runs as cat6a. Significantly more expensive, but YOLO. I got an Aruba 2500 PoE switch for ~$100, it has two 10gig SFP ports. I have an old Dell R720 coming that I'm going to put a $75 dual 10gig card in. My plan is to hook that up to the fiber ONT, and run Proxmox or Ganeti on it, then run a VM for my firewall. Then hook that to the switch at 10gig. Currently I don't have any interior devices that will do 10gig, so there's not much day-to-day use I'll see from it currently. When I get there, I'll probably be looking at adding a Mikrotik 10gig switch because they're relatively affordable, though maybe I'll be able to find some old enterprise gear as well. So far I haven't really seen any. The Netgear 10gig switch we have at the office seems to work fine and was ~$800 new, but is EOL, so maybe something like that will be cheap. It's only fallen over once. :-) So the big question is why I'd go to 10gig... My primary machines are laptops, my work machine stays on my desk, so I could add one of those $300 USB-C to 10gig adapters, but probably won't. My primary personal machine is a macbook I use 100% wireless, so not really going to get any better there until I replace my Ruckus R610 with something that'll do 2.5gbps, but no plans for that anytime soon. So the Dell could have 10gig fairly easily. Maybe I'll mirror some OpenStreetMap data or mirror media for work to cut down on our AWS costs... That could be done at 1gbps though as well. Partly, I just want the geek cred of 10gig, partly I want to support the city fiber network through paying more for a bigger plan. Maybe I'll offer my family offsite backup, but that also probably won't need 10gig.

Evidlo 3y ago

Why do asymmetric plans exist in the first place anyway? I assume connections between autonomous systems are symmetric full-duplex, so doesn't these mean ISPs have the same amount of uplink bandwidth to divide between customers as downlink?

ExoticPearTree 3y ago
Because GPON is asymmetric and that is the cheapest way of deploying fiber optic for residential use. If you want symmetric, then you need a lot of "active" equipment and that drives the costs up.
- detaro 3y ago
  GPON can run symmetric just fine, but the customer-side equipment does get more expensive with higher speeds, true.
  - gavaw 3y ago
    GPON is limited to 2.4 gbps down, 1.2 gbps up. It's asymmetric.
    - detaro 3y ago
      GPON has a bunch of modes, some of which are symmetric. Notably a 1.2 Gbit/s down/up setup for gigabit service. Many modes are choosen to be asymmetric, yes, but the technology is not intrinsically one or the other. Notably, just like non-multiple-access fiber connections increasing upstream speed doesn't negatively impact downstream speed (as it does for copper-based connections).
      - gavaw 3y ago
        Why use 1.2/1.2 when you can use 2.4/1.2 ? It makes no sense whatsoever. Reducing download so you can say your connection is symmetric? In any case GPON is already in its way out, new deployments use XGS-PON which is 10/10