Comment on FCC to propose a minimum 100mbps to qualify as broadband, with a future goal of 1gbps

• lemann@lemmy.one ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I really wish symmetric broadband was standard. Having 500 down (as a homelabber especially) means nothing if you have only 25 up 😭

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  • CmdrShepard@lemmy.one ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Same boat here with Comcast. I would gladly give up some of the 800Mbps download to increase the 12Mbps upload speed I’m getting.

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    • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      800Mbps*

      *with SPEEDBOOST! (We throttle lawl)

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    • mild_deviation@programming.dev ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      DOCSIS 4.0 makes that a reality. Your connection will reallocate your available bandwidth between upload and download dynamically as needed.

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  • shadow@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Homelabber here, stuck in Comcast hell with 10Mbps upload.

    I wish I could afford to bring the local municipal fiber to my house, but to go like 2 city blocks with it would be tens of thousands of dollars. :(

    I’m considering a local colocation/ datacenter to move my homelab to. But then it wouldn’t be a homelab anymore

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    • Num10ck@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      maybe you could last mile it with microwave point to point?

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      • shadow@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Would need to convince a local business down there to support it, but it’s not a terrible idea.

        But it is a terrible situation that this is the length people need to go to to work around Comcast / DOCSIS lopsided networking.

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    • eek2121@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      How much is Comcast charging you compared to the fiber? If I were in that position I would have decided differently (assuming I owned the property) as the difference for me peaked at $150/mo. Even more if I chose a slightly cheaper plan…and I have AT%T fiber, not municipal.

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  • TesterJ@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Spectrum? I’ve got the same plan. Sucks because I have trouble streaming my Plex server outside of my apartment. And when I work from home uploads take forever.

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  • ripcord@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Was definitely a big factor in going from Comcast to ATT (symmetric)in my area. Although Comcast has gotten faster too.

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• Uprise42@artemis.camp ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  The asymmetrical aspect of cable will be here to stay. Fiber can do it because it was build on a different foundation.

  Copper cable transmits data using electric signals in various frequencies. There are a batch of frequencies reserved for phone and TV. ALL of the tv programming is constantly streamed to your lines whether you have TV or not and whether you pay for it or not. It’s encrypted and is only decrypted by your cable boxes when your provider says they can decrypt it. The phone frequencies are reserved so you can make phone calls and still max out your download.

  So what about the rest of the bandwidth? Well, way back in the early days of cable it was pretty much everyone for themselves. Every company did things its own way. That’s where DOCSIS came in. It’s a platform that allows modem manufacturers to make modems that will work on any cable network that supports Docsis. And the key part is that DOCSIS is always backwards compatible. The network upgrade to 3.1 did not break the old d2 devices.

  When it was developed the download was extremely more necessary than the upload. You’d be sending small single line commands on upload and receiving entire files in download. So more frequencies went to download than upload. In a lab setting 1.0 could reach 40mbps down and 10 up. That’s not what was sold because real life isn’t a lab and there’s loss over large distances. Realistically most people got 10 mb down and upload wasn’t even listed.

  Whats changed? Well today those same download and upload frequencies are still used. We’ve added more around them to deliver higher speeds. But we’ve also kept the same principles that people need more download than upload. Docsis 3.1 was released in 2013. We really didn’t start stressing over upload until Covid and work from home had us on zoom calls all day.

  Docsis 4.0 is technically released but requires quite a bit of overhaul to work with existing networks. We pretty much need to do away with cable tv. That’s why many ISP’s are pushing IPTv. It removes the need for all that bandwidth devoted to just TV. If everyone in a region drops traditional cable for IPTv they can easily switch to d4. D4 does increase upload but does not make it symmetrical.

  Your cable company does not decide their highest tier realistically. It’s the most that medium will offer. It’s gonna be a while too for d4 to be available everywhere. Everyone would need to drop traditional cable (which is honestly a nice move regardless) and people don’t upgrade plans very often. When I worked in tech support I would frequently deal with customers complaining about slow speeds while on plans from 2002.

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  • SaltySalamander@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    They could drop the 200 or so channels that no one fucking watches and use that spectrum for more channels for cable internet upstream. It's entirely possible, with today's tech. Uploads were chopped down to nothing for the simple reason that people were using that bandwidth in the early days to share pirated material.

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    • Uprise42@artemis.camp ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      The technology is there, but we need to free up that space. Cable companies don’t just do things to their own beat. Cable Labs is the one responsible for organizing how that bandwidth is used and removing the cable frequencies to open up more internet frequencies is literally the next step.

      But you need to do entire markets at a time. We can’t just upgrade the people that move to IP tv because at a certain point they share lines with people who haven’t upgraded so that bandwidth is already used.

      Everyone needs to upgrade in an area to allow the business to reallocate that bandwidth. What you described is literally what is in progress right now. It just takes time

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  • ZephyrXero@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    False. Comcast is finally caving and is beginning to roll out 2 gig symmetrical engadget.com/comcast-starts-squeezing-2-gbps-symm…

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    • Uprise42@artemis.camp ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      That’s just because they’re not maxing the download. They could push a few a few more gigs download in the same package but that’s close to the cap for upload. That’s like a provider being capable of 1G down and 50 meg up offering a 50 down and up plan. Just marketing is all that is

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      • ZephyrXero@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        No, you’re moving the goal post. A company like Comcast offering a symmetrical service is huge, regardless of what the underlying technology is capable of. They could have been offering 100 megs symmetrical with Docsis 3.1, but they didn’t. They restricted customers to 11mbit uploads. This is a big deal

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  • someguy3@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Great info, thanks.

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• Maeve@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  You get a terabyte cap? Jfc, where I live it’s like a few gigs, and that can cost into the hundreds for maybe 25.

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  • registrert@lemmy.sambands.net ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    You guys have caps? Jfc, how do you pirate 3TB a month in pure spite of the hegemony of current year capitalism?

    I shouldn’t be too cocky though, I have a 40GB cap. On my phone. 😢

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    • Maeve@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      War walking.

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    • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Ultrabased

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  • fraydabson@sopuli.xyz ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Yeah states with Comcast caps you at 1.2TB unless you pay $50 for the unlimited plan, which I don’t think is even offered everywhere. They discount it to $30 if you use their modem.

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    • Flying_Hellfish@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Mine is $30/mo for unlimited (on top of my plan cost) with my own modem.

      Luckily there’s a few FTTH companies that are almost done laying fiber in my area. I’m finally giving comcast the boot.

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    • Maeve@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      How much do they charge you to use their modem?

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      • CmdrShepard@lemmy.one ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        They recently changed the prices. It’s $30 extra with your own modem or free of you use theirs since they’ll also use it to supply others with free ‘hot spots’ and cellular service.

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    • Sabata11792@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I had to get a fucking business plan to not deal with this BS. Still never got half the speed I'm paying for. The only other option is $100 for DSL.

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    • ripcord@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It's $20 for unlimited here with Comcast, or the business plan which is actually less right now for some reason for the same speeds.

      AT&T is unlimited with their gigabit plans or faster. Maybe their 300mbps plan too (heck I guess I'm not sure they have any caps at the moment come to think of it).

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      • fraydabson@sopuli.xyz ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        It does look like the prices changed recently. I have 2 houses currently with similar plans. My currently living in house is using the Xfinity modem and costs $25 /m but I guess that’s the modem and the unlimited so not too bad.

        My other house has my own network system and not using any Comcast hardware and that one is $30/m.

        The bad part for me was until recently they refused to give me unlimited (when it cost $50) and I wasn’t able to get it for a while. It just wouldn’t go through. I got my fair share of overage charges cause of it. I’m sure if I spent enough time bitching at support I could get something from it but I don’t have it in me to do that lol

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• Zanz@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Things with caps aren’t terrestrial broadband. You can have caps on cell based networks and still be considered broadband. One of the biggest issues is it companies like Comcast and AT&t will offer broadband service in an area but not necessarily offer only broadband service or not let you buy broadband service about also having their TV. And then they claim they’re serving the area because they have broadband speeds or you can pay a bunch of money to have your service uncapped but that’s not really the point of having a broadband connection available in the area.

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  • thantik@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Comcast is Terrestrial Broadband and has a 1tb cap. You are simply wrong.

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    • Zanz@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Comcast has broadband speed plans. They also charge you an extra $30 if you don’t have a TV bundle and then give you an actual broadband plan that’s unlimited. They have also been throwing the unlimited data and router and security bs in more competitive areas but that’s not a nationwide product.

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• Avg@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  My isp used to offer 10mbps up for like a decade, they have recently downgraded it to 5mbps for new subscribers. I’ve uploaded a few things with it and it’s extremely slow. If it wasn’t that I’m only paying $40 for 1gbps down, I’d have switched.

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  • SaltySalamander@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    ~500Kb/s. Yay.....

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• HawlSera@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  All right I have 1000 seconds of internet, what a deal

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• Bakkoda@sh.itjust.works ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I literally can’t do half of what I want to do online efficiently or in a timely manner because I can barely crack 10 up. I do video work on the side. Takes hours if not days for me to upload something. Even pictures nowadays. Great I’ve got a DSLR for a phone and I can shoot raw. Takes 5 mins to upload a pic.

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• knobbysideup@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Worse, they do that crap for my business account. Great for the vpn to the office.

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  • Zanz@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    It’s normal for businesses to pay for peak and total bandwidth. That’s one of the reasons why they guarantee speed and availability and should be refunding you if they don’t meet those.

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