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I've been coping with 6 Mbps upload speeds from Xfinity for years now. This morning I got an email from them saying they were raising my speeds at no cost, and

I've been coping with 6 Mbps upload speeds from Xfinity for years now. This morning I got an email from them saying they were raising my speeds at no cost, and after a modem restart I'm now getting ~20 Mbps up. This whole time I've been told that Xfinity couldn't provide decent upload speeds because of infrastructure reasons, but now that's been proven a lie.

rqtwteye 3y ago
The 20Mpbs is definitely very welcome and so far it’s pretty constant. I hope one day we will have symmetric connections everywhere.
conradev 3y ago
It’s not a lie – they can’t provide upload speeds anywhere near their download speeds. 20 Mbps vs 6 Mbps is still quite small compared to 1000 Mbps. DOCSIS 3.1, the latest and not fully deployed standard goes up to 10Gbps down and 1Gpbs up. It looks like DOCSIS 4.0 is actually a path forward to symmetric upload/download speeds over the same cables
- boneitis 3y ago
  I feel like this does more to affirm the "been proven a lie" statement than refute it. 20 Mbps, while still suffocation, provides a massive amount of breathing room from 6.
- lolinder 3y ago
  I didn't say that asymmetric upload speeds being required was a lie, but until today Xfinity wouldn't allow me to pay for >6 Mbps upload without going up to some sort of business-tier package. Now, the day that the FCC sets 20 Mbps up as the minimum, I magically get that exact number for free.
- ksec 3y ago
  I was under the impression DOCSIS 4.0 was basically a rebranded maximum feature of 3.1?
jtbayly 3y ago
I just got an email saying my provider is bumping my fiber upload from 200 to 400. Seemed crazy to me, but I guess they are just staying well ahead of the crappy competition.
selectodude 3y ago
CATV was designed as a one-way pipe. There are filters everywhere in the network that block inbound traffic because there wasn't much of a reason for cable boxes to need to communicate with the wider network which meant that the bandwidth on the cable that was actually usable for upload bandwidth was orders of magnitude smaller than downloads. As Comcast basically rebuilds their network (fiber to the edge), they're bypassing and removing all of those filters which means that there's plenty of frequency for uploads.
- Scoundreller 3y ago
  Designed, maybe, but it's not like the cabling is directional. I thought one of the reasons why DOCSIS was straightforward to rollout was because they only really needed bi-directional amplifiers to do it. Though in the early days of cable internet, some setups used a telephone modem for your uplink. And if you already had Hybrid-Fibre Coaxial infrastructure (which was rolled out for noise reasons in the pre-data analog days) you were already a step ahead of the game in terms of segmenting nodes/worrying about CPE noise. Upload is crap because they have to dedicate channels to it at the cost of download channels, and upload has more overhead because of the coordination required. 70s/80s cableTV companies basically won the lottery by being able to re-use their existing last-mile plant for high-value data. Telcos not so much.
  - rayiner 3y ago
    The wires weren’t unidirectional but the amplifiers were. Amplifiers capable of full duplex have only come out in the last few years. https://www.telecompetitor.com/comcast-gains-a-key-element-needed-for-symmetrical-multi-gigabit-plans/ https://www.telecompetitor.com/comcast-gains-a-key-element-n....
chiefalchemist 3y ago
I got the same email. I was kinda assuming it was spam.

rqtwteye 3y ago

The 20Mpbs is definitely very welcome and so far it’s pretty constant. I hope one day we will have symmetric connections everywhere.

conradev 3y ago

It’s not a lie – they can’t provide upload speeds anywhere near their download speeds. 20 Mbps vs 6 Mbps is still quite small compared to 1000 Mbps. DOCSIS 3.1, the latest and not fully deployed standard goes up to 10Gbps down and 1Gpbs up. It looks like DOCSIS 4.0 is actually a path forward to symmetric upload/download speeds over the same cables

boneitis 3y ago
I feel like this does more to affirm the "been proven a lie" statement than refute it. 20 Mbps, while still suffocation, provides a massive amount of breathing room from 6.
lolinder 3y ago
I didn't say that asymmetric upload speeds being required was a lie, but until today Xfinity wouldn't allow me to pay for >6 Mbps upload without going up to some sort of business-tier package. Now, the day that the FCC sets 20 Mbps up as the minimum, I magically get that exact number for free.
ksec 3y ago
I was under the impression DOCSIS 4.0 was basically a rebranded maximum feature of 3.1?

jtbayly 3y ago

I just got an email saying my provider is bumping my fiber upload from 200 to 400. Seemed crazy to me, but I guess they are just staying well ahead of the crappy competition.

selectodude 3y ago

CATV was designed as a one-way pipe. There are filters everywhere in the network that block inbound traffic because there wasn't much of a reason for cable boxes to need to communicate with the wider network which meant that the bandwidth on the cable that was actually usable for upload bandwidth was orders of magnitude smaller than downloads. As Comcast basically rebuilds their network (fiber to the edge), they're bypassing and removing all of those filters which means that there's plenty of frequency for uploads.

Scoundreller 3y ago
Designed, maybe, but it's not like the cabling is directional. I thought one of the reasons why DOCSIS was straightforward to rollout was because they only really needed bi-directional amplifiers to do it. Though in the early days of cable internet, some setups used a telephone modem for your uplink. And if you already had Hybrid-Fibre Coaxial infrastructure (which was rolled out for noise reasons in the pre-data analog days) you were already a step ahead of the game in terms of segmenting nodes/worrying about CPE noise. Upload is crap because they have to dedicate channels to it at the cost of download channels, and upload has more overhead because of the coordination required. 70s/80s cableTV companies basically won the lottery by being able to re-use their existing last-mile plant for high-value data. Telcos not so much.
- rayiner 3y ago
  The wires weren’t unidirectional but the amplifiers were. Amplifiers capable of full duplex have only come out in the last few years. https://www.telecompetitor.com/comcast-gains-a-key-element-needed-for-symmetrical-multi-gigabit-plans/ https://www.telecompetitor.com/comcast-gains-a-key-element-n....

chiefalchemist 3y ago

I got the same email. I was kinda assuming it was spam.