
Comcast to bring two-gigabit Internet service to Bay Area, boost existing tiers - prostoalex
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2911793/comcast-to-bring-two-gigabit-internet-service-to-bay-area-boost-existing-tiers.html
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callahad
I wonder if this will still have the 250 GB (or is it 350 GB, now?) cap on
data transfer? Either way you could blow through the cap in less then 25
minutes.

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Havoc
They should at least do what my provider does...cap in place but midnight to
8AM is exempted. That way the people that feel a need to download the entire
internet can still do so...but in a way that doesn't affect anyone else &
doesn't require additional capacity.

Obviously true uncapped would be ideal but it strikes me as a decent
compromise. And 8 hours of gigabit ever day gets you pretty far if the aim is
to move data...

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eli
True uncapped is only ideal if you download a lot. Personally based on my
usage, I wish there was an option for fast, cheap, and metered service.

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wilwade
Over here in Chattanooga, TN we have had 1Gb service for a while, but nearby
Atlanta it was only when Google started talking about bringing fiber to the
Atlanta area, that Comcast started talking about boosting speeds in Atlanta.

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latimer
Is the gigabit service subject to the same data caps as their regular service?

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nkozyra
I assume the Chattanooga 1Gb is the municipal network that runs ~ $70/mo.

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jgoewert
Waiting for the twist...

Will it be that the word "customers" means two houses owned by Comcast
executives?

Will the soon to be announced prices be 50x the Google fiber price and then
used as a justification that "customers just don't want fast internets"?

Or, and I know this is shocking, will Comcast provide a quality service and
support system?

~~~
reality_czech
It will all end in tiers. $200 a month for first world internet, $70 a month
for the crap-tacular service that people can afford.

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Veratyr
As much as I dislike Comcast, I pay $80/month for 105/10 Mbps and that's with
no promotional pricing in a local monopoly.

I strongly dislike Comcast but their pricing isn't incredibly unfair.

Plus according to this article, they're about to bump my speeds by 50% without
making me pay anything.

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hueving
$80 for that speed is awful compared to many places in the world.

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Veratyr
Oh I know it can be better, I'm just disagreeing with the hyperbole in the
comment I was replying to. I also come from Australia where it's much worse so
I'm not used to complaining this much.

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thomseddon
Don't forget that on the consumer side, anything above 1Gb is an entirely
different kettle of fish. We can achieve 1Gb over the most common cat5/e
cables (1000BASE-T) but they simply don't support carrying anything more, same
goes for the NIC on most computers, it's just not common to get anything above
1Gb.

The main benefit that is reasonably achievable for most people would be that
they could aggregate at over a Gb, so they could connect multiple devices and
expect a full Gb for each. Even then you would have to ensure they either both
connect to the router directly or you have > 1Gb towards any switches (either
10Gb or LAG).

Achieving more than 1Gb on a single device would require the use of both cat6e
cable or fiber and having a 10Gb NIC on that device - this is assuming the
Comcast router even has 10Gb ports! And even then I'm sure they're would be
some other hardware/firmware/software issues to tackle...

An interesting problem though....as for delivery, it could be using GPON, most
active point to point is either 1 or 10Gb whereas most existing GPON ports
support up to 2.5Gb which seems to fit better.

~~~
virtuallynathan
I imagine it will be either 10GbE or Nx1GbE on the CPE (or maybe both). 2.5GbE
& 5GbE will be out soon (already in new Atom CPUs) and will work over
Cat5e/Cat6 up to 100m.

Newer 802.11ac devices can in theory do ~1.7Gbps, about 1Gbps in practice.

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micro-ram
2.5Gbps = NBASE-T. [http://www.nbaset.org/](http://www.nbaset.org/)

5Gbps = MGBASE-T.
[http://www.mgbasetalliance.org/](http://www.mgbasetalliance.org/)

My real world testing of 1.3Gbps 802.11ac only yields about 250Mbps of real
throughput. Wifi is half duplex and has more overhead than Ethernet.

Good interview with Matthew Gast on 802.11ac

[http://twit.tv/show/this-week-in-enterprise-
tech/135](http://twit.tv/show/this-week-in-enterprise-tech/135)

~~~
virtuallynathan
I've tested my R7000 router and MacBook Pro up to ~900Mbps, which is just as
good as Ethernet (within 10-15Mbps).

Both MG and N BaseT support 2.5G and 5G, not sure why there are 2...

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staunch
I just want fiber for the improved latency. When I had Verizon FiOS in LA I
was playing Quake Live with 4ms RTT to local servers! It was glorious.

The worst thing about cable is MoCA ("Multimedia over Coax"), because it seems
to always add significant latency/jitter.

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bratsche
So much for net neutrality killing all investment in new infrastructure.

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dluan
Curious, from a strategy stand point what's the reasoning behind Google not
launching gigabit in the Bay Area? At this point they've likely learned and
scaled, and Comcast doesn't want to seem like a laggard in a large market. But
even if it was 1 month delay for Google, I'd still switch and kill our Comcast
account.

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raldi
Google Fiber prioritizes municipalities that make it easy to get things done.
San Francisco makes it very, very difficult to get things done.

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dluan
How is Comcast doing it? And is it in a particularly non-Google way?

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raldi
They started the process 35 years ago.

When broadband internet became a thing, their cables were already in the
ground, and they already had long-established underground and pole rights-of-
way.

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boyaka
Born and lived most of my life in the Bay Area.

My Dad got us @Home cable Internet, which is the same infrastructure Comcast
currently uses, in around 1997 when it first became available. It eventually
became AT&T broadband Internet (attbi), and then Comcast bought it (IIRC,
might be missing something).

My older brother heard about Napster right when it came out and I remember
getting very impressive download speeds (I think I saw it get to 600 KB/s or 1
MB/s at some point). We were also part of the batch of people that got banned
for uploading Metallica mp3s. After that I found GNUtella (although I had no
clue what GNU was at the time, just heard about it as an alternative service)
and Kazaa. I also moved on to mIRC to get mainly anime and music videos. All
in the late 90s, early 2000s. The infrastructure has served us very well!

I don't really know about the laws, but I assume the issue in municipalities
is laying down new infrastructure, even though you'd think Comcast monopoly is
more of an issue.

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chrissnell
As much as it pains me to say it, if you want good cable modem service, get
Comcast Biz class. You'll spend more--obviously--but you'll get faster speeds,
no download cap whatsoever, and far better support. You're generally at the
front of the line for all things support-related. For a remote worker like me,
it's the best way to go. That said, if I move to a Google Fiber town, I will
drop them like a rock.

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choppaface
Curious, are there sites or (single) torrents where people are maxing out
their download capacity at these rates? Don't content providers throttle now?
I have WebPass (100MB) and I'm never able to pull down more than
3-4MBytes/sec, even from Apple (e.g. Xcode). SpeedTest shows the connection is
indeed 100MB.

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Smerity
I'm on Webpass (100/100) and can hit 11MB/s fairly consistently on torrents
and downloads, so it's certainly possible. This was enough of a problem that I
had to connect my media center directly via cables instead of wifi as the wifi
was slower than the connection.

Getting that speed consistently would really depend on the capacity of the
backing server and other various details (i.e. many small downloads will
result in limited throughput due to connection overheads).

* P.S. I think you meant to note 100Mbps vs 100MB

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choppaface
yes sorry 100Mb not 100MB

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mtarnovan
2Gbit looks like a publicity stunt to me. Customers won't see an actual speed
increase from a 1GBit service unless they're willing to give up the
convenience of wireless.

~~~
largote
AC wireless can be pretty fast.

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yuhong
I wonder if they use 10GBase-T, NBase-T, or something else.

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gonzo
That's my question. This has to be 10GbaseT.

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toomuchtodo
It's fiber directly to the home above 1Gb/s. At or below 1Gb/s, its Docis 3.1
over the cable last mile (with fiber to the neighborhood node/cabinet).

[http://corporate.comcast.com/comcast-voices/imagine-
where-2-...](http://corporate.comcast.com/comcast-voices/imagine-
where-2-gigabit-speeds-will-take-you)

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yuhong
I am talking about the uplink to the router.

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toomuchtodo
I'd assume a custom Comcast provided router, with individual ports at 1Gb and
wireless at 802.11ac. Very few, if any, consumer devices out there with 10GigE
hardware, and an even smaller amount of sites out there that will let you
saturate a 1Gb link directly (torrents perhaps).

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Havoc
To what end? Obviously faster is better, but right now anything above 500
faces a serious diminishing returns problem let alone 1 gig vs 2 gig.

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colinbartlett
Oh no... please do not discourage providers from offering higher speeds.

I understand that that individual devices might not be able to take advantage
of of such speeds. But remember that any household could have a number of
devices using the internet at the same time.

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Havoc
I get that, and I don't want to discourage anyone from offering higher speeds.
I don't think you quite understand the scale though.

As you say multiple devices...a 1 gigabit line means about a 100 people can
sit at your house and stream 1080p youtube. Now unless you've got a very big
family upgrading that to 200 people (2 gigabit) will not make any real
difference.

Perhaps when 8K+ video shows up then it might make a difference, but for now
few things need 1 gigabit, let alone 2.

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nijiko
It's still Comcast though.

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largote
Are the speed increases also coming in May?

