MaxLinear Inc (MXL)

[JohnCM]

docsis 3.1 vs fiber? (self.cordcutters)

submitted 1 month ago * by warm20

i'm still not sure if i understand the concept of docsis 3.1, technically docsis 3.1 is just replacing the box/modems on both sides with the same cooper cable/lines connected right? and they offer gigabit speeds @ 1/10gigabits?
while fiber does that at the same time?
is it easy to upgrade from adsl+2 to docsis 3.1 just by switching the boxes on both ends?

SORTED BY: best
[–]Silencer87 12 points 1 month ago
DOCSIS is a cable technology which uses coax. When there cable companies upgrade to 3.1, they need to upgrade the node hardware and your modem. They may need to add capacity to the node also.
Your DSL would not be upgraded to DOCSIS. The phone companies generally have copper twisted pair from the node or CO to your home. Fiber is usually the upgrade path for the telephone companies since if they need to replace the lines to a home they might as well use fiber.
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[–]DrowningApe 3 points 1 month ago
That's a nice explanation! I would've told OP to use Wikipedia. Your comment about node capacity is relevant, since there are so many factors beyond just raw last mile speed that affect the usefulness of your Internet connection. At&t offers a symmetrical gigabit fiber product like Google. At&t doesn't use their backbone and routing in efficient ways, and most users find the effective speeds are more like 300/300 than the 900/900 that Google customers get. I wouldn't be surprised if cable companies do DOCSIS 3.1 deployment on the cheap, and still have the congestion and routing issues they have with DOCSIS 3.0.
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[–]macboost84 4 points 1 month ago
Google also has the added benefit that if you are a business customer with fiber and their cloud service offerings, you basically get direct connectivity. And if you add on the private service, you basically can use the private NIC to access your cloud servers instead of through the public NIC as if you went with Digital Ocean or AWS.
It's definitely an added bonus of having both.
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[–]howyoudo 2 points 1 month ago
Never thought of that. Makes sense though since you're already on their network.
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[–]Silencer87 3 points 1 month ago
I have read that the cause of that is the technologies that are used. Google uses WDM-PON while At&t uses GPON. GPON provides about 2.5gbit downstream which is shared among the users on the node (which I think I heard At&t may be splitting 16 or 32 ways). WDM-PON is capable of at least 1gbit per user because they split based on light wavelength. So each end user from the node receives a signal that is a specific color.
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[–]zman0900 2 points 1 month ago
Does DOCSIS 3.1 actually support gigabit upload too?
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[–]Silencer87 3 points 1 month ago
It is, but it's unlikely that the cable companies will offer upload speeds that high on 3.1.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOCSIS
If you look at the charts on that page, a 16x4 DOCSIS 3.0 configuration should be able to yield speeds of about 600mbps down and 100mbps up. Time Warner Cable uses 16x4 for their MAXX deployment and their highest tier is 300/20. So while 3.1 is capable of offering speeds that high, don't expect it to be cheap and to come with the max spec upload.
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[–]Watada 3 points 1 month ago
As u/Silencer87 said, it is supported. But it not that companies won't offer it, it is more that they can't offer it. That 1 Gbps upload is the maximum rate but only under the most ideal conditions while utilizing a very large portion of the available bandwidth, literal bandwidth of the usable frequencies. While this could be remedied by moving nodes closer to home and covering fewer homes with each node, it is basically prohibitively expensive.
However, the next iteration of DOCSIS is Full Duplex DOCSIS. This should be capable of 10 Gbps throughput for both the upload and the download, at the same time. This will, of course, also be a maximum so download speeds may not increase much with this iteration. CableLabs own video advertising the new standard.
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[–]Mr_You 3 points 1 month ago
I'll just add that DSL (broadband over a copper pair/phone line) is essentially dead. There's no more investment in DSL technology by most providers. A cable/DSL duopoly is not enough competition for incumbents (like AT&T) to upgrade.
Google and a few other carriers are going the fiber route in urban/suburban areas. Unfortunately we can't really expect wide spread deployment because incumbent carriers won't upgrade until they are forced in order to compete with another fiber competitor in those specific areas.
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[–]Silencer87 6 points 1 month ago
Well there is G.Fast, but like all DSL technologies, the distance from the node is going to impact the actual speed the user can get. At this point DSL should be really be replaced with fiber, but the telephone companies have little interest in upgrading their wireline networks.