3 ms·

The reason cable is asymmetrical is because cable plants weren't designed for two-way communication. Cable originally was a one way broadcast system with a tiny

by mannyv 3y ago

The reason cable is asymmetrical is because cable plants weren't designed for two-way communication. Cable originally was a one way broadcast system with a tiny upstream path they eventually leveraged for Video-On-Demand/Pay-per-view (VoD/PPV). I used to work with cable modems, and it's miraculous how they got this huge amount of performance out of their physical plant by basically hacking on their stuff until it worked. The cable industry has this thin layer of really smart guys and a huge number of porn hound meatheads. I mean, did you know cable internet is basically token ring? Seriously. Not sure if that's for all implementations or just Comcast. These wires were never meant to do anything close to this...but here we are.

mannyv 3y ago
One of the reasons this is so hard BTW is that the plant has to also support all that legacy equipment that's still connected and running. There are people with cable that haven't upgraded their box for 50 years and never will. You don't want to impact their service, period. No calls, no truck rolls.
- dolni 3y ago
  > You don't want to impact their service, period. No calls, no truck rolls. From my experience this is absolutely not true. Comcast had zero issues intentionally crippling my internet connectivity because the modem I owned only supported DOCSIS 2. I received letters for months that I needed to upgrade my modem to support a “the best speeds”. Then I didn’t, and my speed dropped to less than a megabit per second. I could have waived it off as a coincidence, except a couple of months later I was telling the story at a happy hour and it turns out the exact same thing happened to another guy right around the same time. Comcast does not care if you have a shitty experience. They don’t care if you call. Me not upgrading and calling support about it is just the cost of them doing business.
  - mannyv 3y ago
    You are not 50,000 people spread across the state. Sometimes installers fuck up. But Comcast (and every cable company) endeavors to not brick all of their customers in a region.

by mannyv 3y ago

mannyv 3y ago

One of the reasons this is so hard BTW is that the plant has to also support all that legacy equipment that's still connected and running. There are people with cable that haven't upgraded their box for 50 years and never will. You don't want to impact their service, period. No calls, no truck rolls.

dolni 3y ago
> You don't want to impact their service, period. No calls, no truck rolls. From my experience this is absolutely not true. Comcast had zero issues intentionally crippling my internet connectivity because the modem I owned only supported DOCSIS 2. I received letters for months that I needed to upgrade my modem to support a “the best speeds”. Then I didn’t, and my speed dropped to less than a megabit per second. I could have waived it off as a coincidence, except a couple of months later I was telling the story at a happy hour and it turns out the exact same thing happened to another guy right around the same time. Comcast does not care if you have a shitty experience. They don’t care if you call. Me not upgrading and calling support about it is just the cost of them doing business.
- mannyv 3y ago
  You are not 50,000 people spread across the state. Sometimes installers fuck up. But Comcast (and every cable company) endeavors to not brick all of their customers in a region.