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Comment by whitepoplar | Hacker News Reader

Comcast now offers vastly higher upload speeds (10mbps -> 100mbps) so long as you rent their modem, which is an additional $25/month, but also comes with unlimited data. Paying for unlimited data separately costs $30/month if you own your own modem, but doesn't yet support higher upload speeds. It's unfortunate that this is the case, but for those who need higher upload speeds, it's at least possible with Comcast now.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/10/want-faster-comc...

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From the article you link: "Comcast told Ars that faster upload speeds will come to customer-owned modems "later next year" but did not provide a more specific timeline."

So, no. Do not rent their modem/router crap.

It's still cheaper than owning your own (if you already have the unlimited data add-on).

>Comcast now offers vastly higher upload speeds (10mbps -> 100mbps)

I mean, yeah, I guess normally a 10x increase is deemed a good thing and could be considered "vastly higher". Who wouldn't be impressed with a 10x bump in pay?

However, 100mbps is still tragically low. Having anything less than full bandwidth up/down on a fiber line is just cheating the user artificially. Being fiber, I could see offering a cheaper modem because it has a cheaper SFP in it, but even those are dirt cheap now for lowly 1Gbps

It’s not “cheating the user artificially.” Comcast delivers service over shared-medium coaxial cable that was originally designed for one-way service. The available frequencies are split into upload and download portions, and increasing the upload speed decreases the download speed.

The cable companies are incredibly slow to deploy new hardware because of the legacy infrastructure. Example: Where is the DOCSIS 3.1 upstream support? Many of the modems are capable, the cable plant is not.

which just goes to show that they are not truly using fiber. which is my point. if you're using fiber, it is designed to be bi-directional full duplex or whatever to call it technically. if you are offering a true fiber connection with asymmetric speeds, then you are doing something artificial to it.

if you are actually using coax cable, then it's 100% artificial since it's supposed to be fiber.

so what are you implying is the lie?

Why do you think it's supposed to be fiber? I've never once seen comcast or any other cable internet provider claim they're fiber.

oh i don't know. somewhere in the multiple responses in this subject got to talking about fiber, so that's what this is in my head. re-reading, i see the title as they are only requiring gigabit speed, not what medium is sent.

fuck'em anyways!!! their all shit companies and deserved to be yelled at for something they're not doing to make up for all of the yelling they are not getting for something else they are doing. /s

but seriously, fuck'em

Hey remember when Google delivered kick ass fiber service all over their own back yard in Silicon Valley to show Comcast and Verizon how it should be done?

how many months did it last before they deprecated the service?

Why is 100mbps tragically low? That would be enough for all but a vanishingly small minority of consumers, surely.

because that's no where near gigabit. and what large majority of users do is that really the metric we're going for here?

also, when's the last time you transferred a large amount of data over that slow of a connection? i don't care! I do it every day, and i'm all that matters!!! /s

> because that's no where near gigabit.

This seems like circular reasoning. Why is being nowhere near gigabit tragic?

> and what large majority of users do is that really the metric we're going for here?

Well I don't know what your metric is, which is why I'm asking.

> also, when's the last time you transferred a large amount of data over that slow of a connection? i don't care! I do it every day, and i'm all that matters!!! /s

I'm sure there are people who upload a lot of content and need > 100 I'm not trying to invalidate those. But they're also the people who know what they need and can pay for it.

Comcast often isn't FTTP, its is usually coax to the home. There are some services they do with FTTP, such as their 2Gbit service, but most installs are coax.

Speaking of coax -- does anyone know if there's a way to hang multiple wireless access points off of coax run through the home, or would one have to get multiple modems to make this work?

I've run into a couple of housing situations for myself and family where wifi does not covers the whole household well (combo of wall composition and local interference). In these conditions repeaters sometimes don't help as much as you'd like. But in every one of these conditions, there's been coax already run through the walls to support TV-cable hookups in different rooms... so if there's a way to hang other wireless access points off it, the problem could be pretty handily solved at least the 100MB/S order without having to run new CAT.

(Some of these places also have phone/CAT3 but I'd guess that's not 100MB/S even if I could get equipment that'd run ethernet over it, and I know there's also networking over household powerlines but would also guess that's 100MB/S across different household circuits in the house which usually coincide with WiFi coverage obstacles)

Honestly, the mesh wifi solutions are pretty decent; I've never had luck with the repeaters at all even without interference. MoCA can work, my last experience with it was 5 years ago but I found the connection to be flaky and unreliable. I actually had slightly better luck with powerline ethernet, but that was still flaky and both systems required fiddling with the hardware at least once a month.

I have the previous gen Eero (with 2x ethernet jacks per station) and have had excellent luck, my desktop is connected to the farthest station from the modem and I have little trouble saturating my crappy residential cable connection. My only main gripe is the hardware is only configurable via phone app and I assume Amazon is spying on me. However, in 3 years I have only had to mess with the system once after one of the stations didn't rejoin automatically after a power loss. Plus, it provides absolutely fantastic coverage to a oddly shaped property that is very long and narrow with a metal sided garage workshop on the end. But the limited options available are seriously annoying, you can basically only set dns and basic filtering/port forwarding.

Sounds like you're looking for some MoCA (https://hackaday.com/2022/11/03/moca-networking-is-a-niche-s...) WiFi access points (or just plug some MoCA Ethernet bridges into regular WiFi APs).

Thanks for introducing me to MoCA! Gigabit magnitude networking over coax that can coexist with DOCSIS sounds exactly like what I'm looking for.

If you don't need the coax anymore, you really might just think about using the coax runs to pull some CAT6 through the walls. Same goes with the telephone wiring.

That's a good thought, and I guess I could even use it as pull for both replacement coax and CAT6, while I'm at it. But probably beyond what the owner would like me doing in rental situations, and maybe more work than I'd like in the remaining ones if I can even start to approach gigabit order-of-magnitude over coax alone.

>but most installs are coax.

Good gawd! It's like cable is in their DNA and they invested heavily in a cable manufacturing company and are trying to keep it alive /s

also, is it pushing the limits of marketing to say you have a fiber connection if the cable coming into your home is actually coax?

edit: just to clarify, is it really fiber if the demarc isn't in/on your house? I get running fiber to the home to a device that then turns that into coax to run to the modem of choice for the vendor. i have fiber to fiber so the demarc is sitting right being my desk with a 6' cat6 cable from it to the modem. if your advertised fiber service brings fiber over long haul to the neighborhood but then breaks that out into standard coax for last mile delivery, is that still a fiber connection?

> also, is it pushing the limits of marketing to say you have a fiber connection if the cable coming into your home is actually coax?

This kind of bullshit is standard practice in the UK too. Pretty much every internet connection you can buy here is "fibre", but in reality most of it will end up being DSL.

I haven't seen them advertise coax service as fiber? Everything I've seen clearly positions their fiber-only service as being a different thing from their standard cable internet.

> Comcast now offers vastly higher upload speeds (10mbps -> 100mbps) so long as you rent their modem, which is an additional $25/month

$25/month is more than what I pay for 100Mbps up, 1Gbps down with unlimited data and a router included. Man, we Europeans have it good when it comes to internet access.

Comcast offers higher upload speeds in the markets where there is competition. In the markets where they have bribed their way to a monopoly they have limited uploads and data caps. Fortunately I don't live in one of those so I can avoid them and wish the unholy demise of them as a company.

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