Comcast CEO Shows Off Superfast Modem
Posted by
Zonk
on Wed May 09, 2007 09:24 AM
from the like-riding-a-pat-of-butter-across-a-griddle dept.
from the like-riding-a-pat-of-butter-across-a-griddle dept.
Gary writes "Comcast CEO dazzled cable industry audience by showcasing a super quick modem, using a technology called DOCSIS 3.0. It was developed by the cable industry's research arm, Cable Television Laboratories. It bonds together four cable lines but is capable of allowing much more capacity enabling a data download speed of 150 megabits per second, or roughly 25 times faster than today's standard cable modems. 'The new cable technology is crucial because the industry is competing with a speedy new offering called FiOS, a TV and Internet service that Verizon Communications Inc. is selling over a new fiber-optic network. The top speed currently available through FiOS is 50 megabits per second, but the network already is capable of providing 100 mbps, and the fiber lines offer nearly unlimited potential.'"
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Technical Mumbo Jumbo (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Technical Mumbo Jumbo (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Technical Mumbo Jumbo (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Technical Mumbo Jumbo (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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Re:Technical Mumbo Jumbo (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If you can get a 20Mbps connection then - duh! - the 150Mbps connection is (roughly) 7.5x faster than what you're currently getting.
DOCSIS 2.0 potential (Score:4, Insightful)
oh, I see. They want us to buy new modems. OK, my questions are answered.
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See, the problem is that here in the U.S., we're not accustomed to metric measurements and notation. Megabits, kilobytes, these things mean nothing to us.
Therefore, I propose the U.S. instate a new standard of measurement in accordance with our SI units. There will be 3 bits in a byte, 5,280 bits in a kilobyte, and 43,560 square bits (or 4,840 square bytes) in a megabyte. I think we can all agree that this is much more logical.
(Sigh)
/Sorry, rest of the world
Saturation (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Saturation (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Saturation (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Saturation (Score:5, Funny)
That is if your local Radio Shack sells anything besides cell phones.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the problem with science fair projects (at least when I did one) was that way too much emphasis is placed on coming up with a new idea, so the students get the idea that they should actually be doing new science. I know I had a series of terrible "experiments" because I sp
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
(I know it was a joke, and I'm joking too... sort of.)
4 Channels, not 4 Cables (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Saturation (Score:5, Informative)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Remember, don't think of things from technical advantages only. Think about it as a business (which it
Yeah, sure, sure (Score:2)
And will the backbones follow suit???
Upload? (Score:4, Insightful)
The article makes no mention of what kind of upstream speeds you'll get with this technology.
More bandwidth, please... (Score:4, Insightful)
And until FTTH becomes more prevalent, cable is the best available option.
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yeah, cool (Score:2)
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Also, $200-300 per month for just 1.5M synchronous (T1) is a fucking ripoff. We already paid the telcos billions of dollars to fucking
4 lines = 25 times faster?! (Score:5, Funny)
That means 16 cables should be 625 times as fast
and 128 cables... oh my god
Quick, get the bonding glue and a spool of coax!
It's download time!!!
Can o' worms (Score:5, Funny)
"It's an important step forward for the Web 3.0," Ebeneezer Swindler, lawyer for the RIAA, said. "Someone could get on that evil BitTorrent site and download our content. This happens so fast that by the time we logged in we couldn't even see their IP addresses. Our current technology requires us to temporarily join the pirates so we could get their information... it's no good if they'd already stolen what they needed and gotten out of there!"
"It's NO good," reiterated Swindler, with peculiar emphasis on the "NO."
No government official could be reached for comment as they were busy preordering ivory backscratchers from expected additional campaign contributions from the MAFIAA.
Funny definition of competition (Score:5, Informative)
That's competition?
Re:Funny definition of competition (Score:4, Insightful)
Right. Before it was being rolled out, they weren't having to compete with it. Now it IS being rolled out, so they DO have to compete with it. Is this a little too complex, or something? People (including zoning boards in municipalities, property managers for large buildings, developers, etc) are going to be making lots of infrastructure decisions. Things that weren't, but now ARE available figure into that. If a cable company doesn't show any sign that they're even going to TRY to compete with a wildly faster technology that is now actually in use by actual consumers, what do you think would happen to them over time? That's not a "funny definition" of competition, it IS competition. Or... do you think that something's only a factor in competition if it magically appears on the market in exactly equal supply, with perfect adoption in exact porportion? If you're even slightly thinking that way, then Macs and Linux boxes can't be competition for Windows boxes, either. Which would surprise all of those Mac owners out there, for example. Sort of like my mom would be surprised that when she had her choice of a dish provider or two, two cable companies, and Verizon's FIOS, that competition wasn't a factor in all of those sales pitches at her front door.
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Increased speed means... (Score:3, Insightful)
More information can be found at: (Score:5, Informative)
1. Specifications: http://www.cablemodem.com/specifications/specific
2. Press release: http://www.cablelabs.com/news/pr/2006/06_pr_docsi
3. Ars Technica article: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060808-745
Slowskies (Score:5, Funny)
Not multiple cable lines... (Score:5, Informative)
Horrible description (Score:5, Informative)
Cable/tv channels are 6 MHz wide. On a typical cable system you can use 256QAM to encode digital data for transmission. In 6 MHz you can get about 39 Mbps. If you bond four channels together (24 MHz) that's 156 Mbps using 256QAM.
So what it sounds like is DOCSIS 3 supports channel bonding or perhaps simply a very wide channel.
The "four cable lines" has nothing to do with how much physical coax comes to your house. On paper an all digital 750 MHz plant could deliver on the order of 4.5 Gbps. But having 70 channels of analog really cuts into that.
150" tap on a 1" pipe (Score:5, Informative)
Irrelevant for a number of non-technical reasons. (Score:4, Insightful)
I remember hearing the CEO of Time Warner ask this question in regards to fios: What can't you do with 30 Mbps that you can do with 100 Mbps? He was stating that you can easily do VOD, Voice, and Data over 30 Mbps connections and there was no reason for more speed.
With that attitude, do you think these guys will actually deploy this technology?
The only application I can see for these types of speeds is private connections. I would love to have a 100 Mbps connection between my sites, but the only way to get private connections between sites is leased lines and the last time I priced a private DS3 my boss got sticker shock.
Eventually regular consumers will not care about extra speed. We may already be at that point - plenty of people like Verizon's cheap DSL (768k/128k) because it's cheap and faster than dialup. Once joe average stops caring about speed increases, the only way to sell this service will be to interconnect businesses via private circuits.....but that is a long way off.
Cable companies and telcos like Verizon need to start thinking about faster uploads, static IP, and private connections to get businesses interested.
-ted
Re:Irrelevant for a number of non-technical reason (Score:3, Interesting)
Several earlier posts, including one of mine, have pointed out that they will not be running new cable lines to your house.
With that attitude, do you think these guys will actually deploy this technology?
Having sat around the table with "these guys" for most of the past two years while developing the DOCSIS 3.0 specs, I can guarantee that most of the big operators will be deploying this tech
Not "developed by ... CableLabs" (Score:5, Informative)
It is not clear whether the "it" referred to is the modem or the "technology called DOCSIS 3.0". In either case, the quoted information is not true.
DOCSIS 3.0 is a suite of specifications that represents the newest release of the DOCSIS specifications that have been around for nearly a decade now. CableLabs (the usual name for "Cable Television Laboratories, Inc.") managed the process of creating the specs, and performed the actual publication, but the specs themselves were developed in almost entirely by equipment manufacturers, with input from interested (mostly large) cable operators.
Similarly, the modem that was demonstrated was built not by CableLabs but by one of those equipment manufacturers (ARRIS, for whom I work, although I have no direct association with the group that builds the DOCSIS 3.0 modem; I was a contributor to the DOCSIS 3.0 specs).
The complete sleep-inducing suite of specs may be downloaded from www.cablelabs.com.
It's not the speed! (Score:5, Interesting)
Verizon is coming into the Washington metro area with FIOS and based on informal discussions with friends and colleagues is kicking Comcast's butt.
Right now, it's primarily a price issue. High speed internet (5M/2M) is similarly price, but the FIOS TV is where Verizon has a huge advantage. Right now, most people are reporting savings of $25/month (that's SAVINGS) and this is for more channels, but standard def and high def.
Plus, the Verizon installers are, in general, far more professional because they haven't outsourced installation to guys in pickup trucks. They do it themselves, and the quality of their work is outstanding.
The good news here is for consumers... Comcast must do something they've refused to do so far... compete on price, because they have less features than Verizon. Right now, Comcast is offering limited deals (1 year, all your boxes for free), but as FIOS penetrates more neighborhoods, the prices will drop.
This really is good news for everybody.
The best part (Score:3, Funny)
The new modem still has the limitation of only ~300k of upstream bandwidth. It's totally win-win.
This is a stop-gap at best (Score:4, Interesting)
Hah! (Score:3, Funny)
I wouldn't really call DOCSIS 3.0 a "technology" (Score:3, Informative)
Just a clarification, please? (Score:3)
Oh, wait, TV channels. D'oh! Lemme have my 466 megabit! I don't watch television!
Do they use their own products? (Score:3, Interesting)
I ask this as my Comcrap cable has been knocked out *again* from a thunderstorm. Since January, we've lost service due to an ice storm, a relatively light snowfall, and just plain old rain. Another occasion had the TV service freezing up because it was *raining*. We've received nominal credits (yay, a $1.30 credit on my $90 bill!)
Does the CEO have to read about FiOS offering substantially better speeds and programming at a similar or lesser price than his own cable? If he has a problem, does he have to wait on hold for an hour and a half to talk to someone, just like his technicians? Is his area stuck with a cable guide that is 3 generations behind those in the middle of freakin' Indiana? Does his HD pixellate or get out of sync every so often? Is he happy with the literal handful of HD channels available to his lineup?
Yep, I'm bitter. I use Comcast because I can't get DSL (I'd have to get a landline phone for that anyway, which I don't want) and they are the only provider. I hate it hate it hate it. I just don't understand how someone could subscribe to their service and actually *enjoy* it, given the other technology alternatives that are out there, but just aren't available yet to everyone for some unknown reason. Gahhhhh!
Complete bunk. (Score:3, Informative)
This is NOT 25 times faster than current standard cablemodems. It may be 25 times faster than Comcast currently OFFERS, but that is a significant difference.
One of the reasons uncapping modems worked as well as it did is because DOCSIS 1.1 and 2.0 are both capable of 45Mbit/sec downstream. There are current services (Disclaimer: I work for Cablevision, where one of these is offered) that are offering 30Mbit/sec download speeds - and getting them. (I personally have topped out at 29Mbit/sec.) There are other technologies than DOCSIS out there that are currently implemented which are easily capable of 100Mbit/sec.
There's absolutely nothing to get excited about with this. If anything, I admit to being puzzled as to why they weren't managing 180Mbit/sec on a modem with 4 bonded channels - 20Mbit/sec is a bit much to be writing off to overhead.
DOCSIS 3.0 is a solid step forward, but this is not the next greatest thing. There are comparative technologies available right now that would require minimal upgrades, if any. And the guy at Time Warner's right, what can't you do with 30Mbit/sec that you can with 100Mbps?
You'll will not see the speed anytime soon (Score:3, Informative)
Your bandwidth is constrained by your cable ISP's bandwidth to their Tier2 or Tier1 provider and your subscription plan.
My modem was capable of a theoretical 40Mb/s+ 5 years ago. I doubt comcast will be offering ANY service in the next 5 years that max out the capability of my DOCSIS 1.x modem.
Re:Still not fast enough... (Score:5, Funny)
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