Docsis 4 takes a step forward

[Donut417]

 

Summary

Cablelabs to begin testing submitted Docsis 4.0 modems starting on June 26. As long as modems meet the spec they can be certified Docsis 4.0 ready. 

 

Quotes

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week with word that CableLabs and its Kyrio subsidiary will allow suppliers to submit DOCSIS 4.0-based cable modems for certification testing starting June 26.

According to CableLabs' current certification wave schedule, wave 144 is set to start on July 3, 2023. Certification wave 145 will begin on October 2, 2023, and wave 146 is slated to start on January 3, 2024. CableLabs certification means the device complies with the specs and interoperates with DOCSIS networks. The stamp is also needed for DOCSIS devices sold at retail.

 

Quote

CableLabs is opening up D4.0 modem testing as several major cable operators, including Comcast, Charter Communications, Cable One, Cox Communications and Canada's Rogers Communications, move ahead with DOCSIS 4.0 network upgrades and testing.

 

Quote

Update: In Europe, Dutch operator VodafoneZiggo announced last month it is conducting DOCSIS 4.0 tests on the operator's live network. VodafoneZiggo ran the test at a tech training and innovation facility in Amsterdam.

Depending on the configuration, D4.0 will enable symmetrical multi-gigabit speeds (up to 10 Gbit/s down and 6 Gbit/s in the upstream) along with enhanced security and low latency.

 

Quote

A big initial takeaway for vendors is that they can submit modems supporting either of the D4.0 flavors – Frequency Division Duplexing (FDD) or Full Duplex (FDX) – or both.

FDD, also known as Extended Spectrum DOCSIS (ESD), uses the traditional method of running upstream and downstream traffic in separate spectrum. FDX, an option favored by Comcast, adds a new FDX band that allows upstream and downstream traffic to occupy the same block of spectrum on the hybrid fiber/coax (HFC) network.

"The same [testing] process will be used in all cases," CableLabs explained in the D4.0 testing FAQ. However, the "scope" will be different, as testing will be conducted on the specific requirements based on the given mode of operation (FDD or FDX). Additionally, D4.0-certified devices that obtain certification will be listed under the mode or modes the products were tested for.

Light Reading asked several cable modem makers and silicon companies, including Broadcom, CommScope, Sagemcom, Sercomm, Vantiva, MaxLinear and Minim (which sells devices under the Motorola brand), if they intend to submit products for this initial round of D4.0 testing.

 

 

My thoughts

I know my cable ISP Comcast has been beating the Docsis 4.0 drum for a while now. One thing I found interesting is the fact there are two flavors of Docsis 4.0. As stated above there is FDD and FDX. It seems Comcast will most likely be doing FDX, would potentially mean symmetrical internet on slower plans. I do know they are currently upgrading a few areas with 2 Gbps down and 100 to 200 Mbps up. Now with previous Docsis iterations the cable companies tended to not push the standard to 100%. Mainly due to the fact that Docsis is much like the WIFi spec, where you can have environmental interference. Because effectively the cable co's are using the same spectrum used by AM/FM radio, Cellular service and Broadcast TV. If anything this should help keep cable companies somewhat competitive with Fiber, at least at lower speeds. Who knows what residential Fiber speeds will be at when Docsis 4.0 starts to really roll out. 

 

What I find interesting reading the CableLabs website is that now Docsis 4.0 is going to be 10 Gbps down and 6 Gbps up. I recall at one point it was supposed to be 10 Gbps symmetrical. I wonder if they are having issues with the standard? Another question I have is with some cable companies killing off TV services, like WOW just did, will that have an impact on service in some way? 

 

Now with all this, its still up in the air on when Docsis 4.0 will be deployed, but I'd imagine that if they are certifying modems, the standard has to be pretty well done and the equipment for the ISP side, has to be about done as well. Which is probably why some ISP are deploying Mid splits for upstream to start those upgrades that we all have been waiting for. 

 

Sources

https://www.lightreading.com/cable-tech/cablelabs-kicks-off-docsis-40-modem-certification-program-/d/d-id/785227?

 

https://www.cablelabs.com/technologies/docsis-4-0-technology

 

Under suggestions Im adding some info about Docsis. 

 

Quote

Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) is an international telecommunications standard that permits the addition of high-bandwidth data transfer to an existing cable television (CATV) system. It is used by many cable television operators to provide cable Internet access over their existing hybrid fiber-coaxial (HFC) infrastructure.

DOCSIS was originally developed by CableLabs and contributing companies, including Arris, BigBand Networks, Broadcom, Cisco, Comcast, Conexant, Correlant, Cox, Harmonic, Intel, Motorola, Netgear, Terayon, Time Warner Cable, and Texas Instruments.^[1][2][3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOCSIS

 

If you want more info about the spec I suggest looking at the cable labs website as they have more info about the specs of each standard. 

[AlTech]

29 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

snip

You may want to add a summary of what Docsis is.

[StDragon]

Some useful links

• https://approvedmodems.org/docsis-4-0/
• https://corporate.comcast.com/press/releases/comcast-live-10g-connection-4-gig-symmetrical-speeds
• https://www.lightreading.com/cable-tech/charter-tests-docsis-40-at-18ghz-hits-multi-gigabit-symmetrical-speeds/d/d-id/774397

[Salv8 (sam)]

4 hours ago, Donut417 said:

where you can have environmental interference. Because effectively the cable co's are using the same spectrum used by AM/FM radio, Cellular service and Broadcast TV

shouldn't be that much of a problem, if it's properly shielded and isolated it's not gonna affect the cable signal quality that much (and even if it does i bet the standard requires cable distribution equipment to be able to filter it out so it doesn't affect user experience or the network itself, it might not be able to reach the speeds it needs to but so long as it's still up and within spec, shouldn't be much of a problem)

hotels have had this problem for decades for their analog and digital tv's and they've solved it, mainly by isolating and shielding the equipment that creates the signal and cables that transfer it in the first place, and adjusting the signal strength that their equipment sends out so it doesn't get leaked outside of the hotel.

 

good that Americans are getting better internet, god knows it gonna come in handy with so many company's going cloud.

Edited June 10, 2023 by Salv8 (sam)
fixed some stuff

[Brooksie359]

Honestly internet has always been one place the US has lacked vs other countries. I think a big issue is that we have such a large country with alot of sparkly populated areas that it doesn't make alot of sense to spend money on running high speed internet to. If you live near the a city then you can easily get fast internet. 

[leadeater]

2 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

Honestly internet has always been one place the US has lacked vs other countries. I think a big issue is that we have such a large country with alot of sparkly populated areas that it doesn't make alot of sense to spend money on running high speed internet to. If you live near the a city then you can easily get fast internet. 

Everything is relative to scale, multiple different factors to do with scale. Simple truth is internet access (high speed) hasn't been and doesn't look like it will be a national or state priority so that is why things are the way they are. Other countries have the same problems, again because of scale, but have chosen to make it a priority.

 

Fortunately data requirements isn't scaling as fast as technology improvements anymore so the bottom end is starting to get lifted up above the rate needs are rising so things are getting better. Just slowly.

[Brooksie359]

3 hours ago, leadeater said:

Everything is relative to scale, multiple different factors to do with scale. Simple truth is internet access (high speed) hasn't been and doesn't look like it will be a national or state priority so that is why things are the way they are. Other countries have the same problems, again because of scale, but have chosen to make it a priority.

 

Fortunately data requirements isn't scaling as fast as technology improvements anymore so the bottom end is starting to get lifted up above the rate needs are rising so things are getting better. Just slowly.

Honestly I think the internet is becoming like phones soon where even the lower end speeds and bandwidth are good enough for most people. I mean I have gigabit internet and yet I hardly ever end up using it. I could easily get a lower speed plan and it wouldn't effect me much if at all. 

[Donut417]

7 hours ago, Salv8 (sam) said:

f it's properly shielded and isolated it's not gonna affect the cable signal quality that much

There's this big nuclear fireball in the sky that breaks down these cables. Remember outdoor cabling is UV "Resistant", not UV proof. Parts break down over time and RF leakage gets in. You can see this in your cable modems Stats. Cable Co's do look for this leakage and try to fix it but there's always going to be a degree of interference. You're also assuming that homes have the best cabling use in them. Part of out run to our cable modem is RG59 thats being up in the attic since before I graduated high school in 2006. 

[Donut417]

6 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

Honestly internet has always been one place the US has lacked vs other countries. I think a big issue is that we have such a large country with alot of sparkly populated areas that it doesn't make alot of sense to spend money on running high speed internet to. If you live near the a city then you can easily get fast internet. 

I read somewhere that we have 15 programs to expand broadband service across 5 Federal Agencies. Their solution is to give money to ISP's and hope it gets done. There is no oversight, no accountability or anything. Thats why we dont have good internet across the country. Because just throwing money at the problem and hoping it goes away never fixes the problem. 

[leadeater]

36 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

Their solution is to give money to ISP's and hope it gets done. There is no oversight, no accountability or anything. Thats why we dont have good internet across the country.

At least it's the first time and it hasn't happened before.... lol

[Doobeedoo]

I'm still on DSL speeds, found out one of my operators offers up to 1Gbps over cable since no fiber where I am. Will give it a shot.

[Needfuldoer]

I really hope this means better upload speeds. The cable companies love to gloat about their "faster than gig" downloads, but the uploads that go with those plans generally top out at 35 megs. In this age of work-from-home, video calling, and live streaming, that's not great. 

 

(I really just want the ability to VPN my remote devices back through my home connection without kneecapping them too much. Less than a year ago, my plan was 350 down, 13 up.)

[leadeater]

5 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

I really hope this means better upload speeds. The cable companies love to gloat about their "faster than gig" downloads, but the uploads that go with those plans generally top out at 35 megs. In this age of work-from-home, video calling, and live streaming, that's not great. 

 

(I really just want the ability to VPN my remote devices back through my home connection without kneecapping them too much. Less than a year ago, my plan was 350 down, 13 up.)

The standard is basically 6x upload bandwidth so just look at any current plans and 4x those, you "should" get plans up to that sort of upload speed. ISPs will still be protective of that upload bandwidth since it's a shared medium and there is still less of it compared to download bandwidth.

 

Quote

DOCSIS 4.0

Improves DOCSIS 3.1 to use the full spectrum of the cable plant (0 MHz to ~1.8 GHz) at the same time in both upstream and downstream directions. This technology enables multi-gigabit symmetrical services while retaining backward compatibility with DOCSIS 3.1. CableLabs released the full specification in October 2017.^[11] Previously branded as DOCSIS 3.1 Full Duplex, these technologies have been rebranded as part of DOCSIS 4.0.^[12]

This is why it's so much better than the prior standard.

[tim0901]

34 minutes ago, leadeater said:

The standard is basically 6x upload bandwidth so just look at any current plans and 4x those, you "should" get plans up to that sort of upload speed. ISPs will still be protective of that upload bandwidth since it's a shared medium and there is still less of it compared to download bandwidth.

There are also non-technical reasons:

 

1. They don't really want people hosting things on residential contracts. Why would I pay £300 per month for a leased line to host my service/run my business off, if I could get the same speeds on a residential contract for a fraction of the price? By neutering upload speeds, they prevent themselves from competing as much with their lucrative business-oriented services.

 

2. There's a misconception that higher download speeds = more network traffic being used. It's actually quite hard to max out a 1Gb down connection for extended periods of time, as most people quickly run out of things to download. For the most part, people with faster connections use a very similar amount of overall bandwidth, they just complete those downloads in a shorter amount of time. Uploads, on the other hand, are easy to saturate for long periods of time - a torrent box would be an easy example - and so increased upload speeds are linked far more to increased bandwidth usage. As such - as you mentioned - upload speed restrictions are therefore used to apply fair use limits on an otherwise "unlimited" service.

[Donut417]

1 hour ago, tim0901 said:

upload speed restrictions are therefore used to apply fair use limits on an otherwise "unlimited" service.

Except its not an "Unlimited" service. Comcast, Cox, WOW and Medacom I believe all the caps and overage fees. 

 

Funny ehough usage caps have been reported to cause more usage. 

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/06/05/broadband-usage-caps-now-drive-more-broadband-usage-study-finds/

 

This is due to the mentality of I get 1.2 TB of data a month, Im going to use as close to that 1.2 TB of data I can. 

Edited June 10, 2023 by Donut417
More info

[Donut417]

2 hours ago, Needfuldoer said:

I really hope this means better upload speeds. The cable companies love to gloat about their "faster than gig" downloads, but the uploads that go with those plans generally top out at 35 megs. In this age of work-from-home, video calling, and live streaming, that's not great. 

 

(I really just want the ability to VPN my remote devices back through my home connection without kneecapping them too much. Less than a year ago, my plan was 350 down, 13 up.)

Both Comcast and Charter I think are really pushing faster uploads. Comcast has been testing both faster Download and upload in select areas. You can find this info more at DSLreports.com as its more focused on telecom news then the LTT forum.  But I think many cable companies were waiting for Docsis 4 to become more of a reality before they started upgrades. 

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, tim0901 said:

They don't really want people hosting things on residential contracts.

Just CGNAT the connection and that is DOA.

[leadeater]

13 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

This is due to the mentality of I get 1.2 TB of data a month, Im going to use as close to that 1.2 TB of data I can. 

I used to tee up a bunch of downloads an hour before and an hour after monthly plan switch over as that was a data usage black hole. I'd do an entire months worth in 2 hours lol. Data caps were quite low back then, 40GB I think, and I had 26Mbps connection (actual) and the plan was to down speed to 64kbps once data cap exceeded which was the cause of the black hole. Takes time to do the usage accounting then instigate the down speed but then it's a new month so boom, 40GB with zero usage again haha.

 

Pay for 40, give me 40, use 100+ 

[Donut417]

1 minute ago, leadeater said:

Just CGNAT the connection and that is DOA.

Like every US ISP has an acceptable usage policy. Basically states if your activities cause issues for their network they can do what they need to do to prevent it. Generally these issues end with a phone call, being forced on to a business connection OR account termination. 

 

Also in the past Comcast was known to throttle select traffic, So if they see certain types of traffic they might choose to throttle it. 

[leadeater]

5 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

Like every US ISP has an acceptable usage policy. Basically states if your activities cause issues for their network they can do what they need to do to prevent it. Generally these issues end with a phone call, being forced on to a business connection OR account termination. 

 

Also in the past Comcast was known to throttle select traffic, So if they see certain types of traffic they might choose to throttle it. 

A lot of US ISPs are using CGNAT now though, that's pretty much havoc and the death of any home hosting because of it.

 

Also it's disgusting how much business plans cost there btw, residential plan here is say ~$80/month (NZD) and small business plan with higher upload, 24/7 support and 8 public IP's was $159/month (NZD).

[Donut417]

10 minutes ago, leadeater said:

A lot of US ISPs are using CGNAT now though, that's pretty much havoc and the death of any home hosting because of it.

The only ones I know who use CGNAT are cellular providers. Verizon LTE Home internet Ive even heard comes with a public IP. Comcast issues both public IPv4 and v6 addresses, where I think they provide a block of v6 addresses. 

[PocketNerd]

11 hours ago, Salv8 (sam) said:

good that Americans are getting better internet, god knows it gonna come in handy with so many company's going cloud.

Too bad we’re likely going to get asked for our first, second, and third unborn children to use it. Or it’s businesses only.

[leadeater]

15 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

The only ones I know who use CGNAT are cellular providers. Verizon LTE Home internet Ive even heard comes with a public IP. Comcast issues both public IPv4 and v6 addresses, where I think they provide a block of v6 addresses. 

I know it's used outside of mobile networks, quite a lot actually.  Even encountered some people here on the forum that had them on their connections. I think smaller ISPs choose it more to save cost and I've heard some places do it on legacy DSL now so they can use the IPs on services that benefit more with the extra IP space.

[StDragon]

8 hours ago, leadeater said:

Everything is relative to scale, multiple different factors to do with scale. Simple truth is internet access (high speed) hasn't been and doesn't look like it will be a national or state priority so that is why things are the way they are. Other countries have the same problems, again because of scale, but have chosen to make it a priority.

 

Fortunately data requirements isn't scaling as fast as technology improvements anymore so the bottom end is starting to get lifted up above the rate needs are rising so things are getting better. Just slowly.

 

The US is vast in size, and so therefor is the disparity in infrastructure between rural and urban. Unless you live in the city or suburbs, you're not going to have a water district that would otherwise supply piped water and sewage treatment. In our rural areas, it's well water and septic tanks.

 

 We will see more LEO sat (Starlink) service and cellular 5G adoption before fiber is ran out to rural areas.

[jagdtigger]

49 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

The only ones I know who use CGNAT are cellular providers. Verizon LTE Home internet Ive even heard comes with a public IP

No not really, had a pretty long arguing with our isp (cable provider) why i do not want the "more secure" private address. Lets just say i made short work of their misleading marketing.... (And dont even get me started on their insistance that their router is definitely better than whatever i have ATM.... )