How Can I Get Faster Uploads on Comcast

The speeds aren't existent but they are spectacular —

Comcast offers tantalizing hint of a future with upload speeds above 35Mbps

Lab test produces 4Gbps upload speeds just actual uploads are nevertheless 3 to 35Mbps.

Enlarge / Flick of a Comcast router/modem gateway from the company's website.

Comcast today offered the latest hint of a future in which its cablevision customers won't be express to 35Mbps upload speeds. Announcing a recent lab test, Comcast said its research team "deliver[ed] upstream and downstream throughputs of greater than 4Gbps" and that "future optimization" will allow "even greater chapters."

This was "the get-go-always alive lab test" of a Broadcom "system-on-chip (SOC) device that will pave the fashion for Comcast to deliver multigigabit upload and download speeds over its hybrid-fiber coaxial (HFC) network," Comcast said. It won't require installation of more cables because the "technology works using the aforementioned types of connections already installed in hundreds of millions of homes worldwide," Comcast said.

Cable customers have been waiting a long time for upload speeds that aren't a tiny fraction of download speeds. Comcast'due south cablevision uploads, ranging from 3Mbps to 35Mbps, are so depression that Comcast hides them deep within its online ordering system. While cable download speeds of up to 1.2Gbps are prominently displayed, Comcast doesn't tell customers what upload speeds they'll get until they enter a valid credit card number.

Comcast justified its tactic of hiding upload speeds by saying that its "website reflects the way customers apply the Cyberspace, with downstream overwhelmingly dominating usage." Just occasionally, such as in today'due south announcement, Comcast acknowledges that customers desire higher upload speeds.

"This milestone is specially exciting because this technology is an important step forward toward unlocking multigigabit upload and download speeds for hundreds of millions of people worldwide, not just a select few," Comcast executive Charlie Herrin said in the proclamation.

"Total duplex" DOCSIS

Comcast does offer a residential fiber service with upload and download speeds of 2Gbps, but availability is limited and the service costs $300 a month, plus installation and activation charges of upwardly to $i,000 combined. The fiber service requires the installation of new wires into each home, only the newly announced lab test delivered multi-gigabit upload and download speeds over the standard cable wires that Comcast has installed throughout its 39-state territory.

The exam used a Broadcom SOC powered by the latest version of DOCSIS, the Data Over Cablevision Service Interface Specification. The Broadcom "device is expected to become the world's first production silicon to exist adult using the DOCSIS 4.0 Full Duplex standard, which represents an evolutionary leap forward in the power to evangelize ultra-fast speeds over HFC [hybrid fiber-coaxial] networks," Comcast said. "One of the virtually important breakthroughs in the DOCSIS iv.0 standard is the power to use network spectrum more efficiently, allowing operators to dramatically increase upstream speeds without sacrificing downstream spectrum to do so."

Years of unfulfilled upload-speed promises

The cable industry has been promising symmetrical upload and download speeds over cable networks for years without ever saying when such speeds will become available.

The DOCSIS 3.1 specification released in 2013 theoretically allowed 10Gbps downloads and 1Gbps upload speeds, but actual implementations never came close to those numbers. An update to DOCSIS iii.one finalized late in 2017 was supposed to bring download and upload speeds of 10Gbps, and the cable industry unveiled a "10G" marketing campaign in Jan 2019 to boast of those symmetrical 10Gbps speeds. Comcast today called its newest test "an important footstep forward on the path to 10G."

The full-duplex version of DOCSIS iii.one was updated and renamed "DOCSIS 4.0." Despite the "total duplex" name, the cable industry has lowered the estimated upstream speeds from 10Gbps to 6Gbps.

"Current DOCSIS 3.ane cablevision modems back up capacities upward to 5Gbps downstream and 1.5Gbps upstream," the cablevision-industry grouping CableLabs says. "DOCSIS iv.0 cable modems will back up capacities up to 10Gbps downstream and 6Gbps upstream."

Comcast said that a "central advantage of DOCSIS iv.0 Full Duplex is that information technology establishes a foundation for operators to deliver multigigabit speeds over their existing networks to the connections already in hundreds of millions of homes around the globe, without the demand for massive digging and construction projects." Comcast called information technology "a powerful new tool to back up our mission of delivering the best possible connected experiences to our customers," but it didn't say when those customers will be able to purchase a future "full duplex" service.

Smaller upload increment possibly on tap

Comcast in October 2020 said information technology achieved a "technical milestone" that delivered i.25Gbps download and upload speeds over existing cable wires during testing at a home in Jacksonville, Florida. While gigabit upload speeds over cable would be a massive improvement, it likely isn't anywhere shut to existence implemented. Information technology's also non clear when Comcast volition raise cable upload speeds to anything college than 35Mbps—Comcast hasn't even confirmed an increment to 50Mbps uploads, which is already offered by WOW on that company's gigabit-download plan.

Currently, Comcast's 25Mbps download programme comes with 3Mbps uploads; the 100Mbps and 200Mbps download plans both have 5Mbps uploads; the 400Mbps download plan has 10Mbps uploads; the 800Mbps plan has 15Mbps uploads; and the 1Gbps download program (i.2Gbps in some areas) comes with 35Mbps uploads. By contrast, cobweb-to-the-home providers by and large provide symmetrical upload and download speeds of up to 1Gbps.

Comcast did hint at higher upload speeds "in the near term" using DOCSIS 3.1, only it didn't specify what those speeds volition be or say when they will be bachelor:

Even as Comcast works to test and deploy Full Duplex DOCSIS to enable multigigabit upload and download speeds in the time to come, the company is leveraging the technologies from the Oct trial, along with DOCSIS 3.1 in the upstream, to increase speed and capacity in the near term.

The October 2020 test "deliver[ed] 1.25 Gig symmetrical speeds over a live, all-digital network by leveraging advances in Distributed Access Compages, Remote PHY digital nodes, and a cloud-based virtualized cablevision modem termination system platform," Comcast said. In the more recent test announced today, the sit-in occurred in a "false" environment instead of a domicile.

"Comcast technologists in Philadelphia and Denver conducted the test by installing the Broadcom SOC in a false network surround to track the functioning of its Full Duplex DOCSIS features—including echo cancellation and overlapping spectrum—which combine to support substantial improvements in network throughput," Comcast said.

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Source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/04/comcast-touts-4gbps-cable-uploads-in-lab-test-still-limits-users-to-35mbps/

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