Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by Fnord666 on Monday October 16 2017, @07:11PM   Printer-friendly
from the quite-a-'bit'-faster dept.

Tired of slow internet connections? CableLabs announces a new version of DOCSIS 3.1 (Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification) with Full Duplex 10Gbps connectivity. From an article at The Register:

Which is why an announcement by the cable industry's research and development arm, CableLabs, this week is such good news. The organization has completed work on an upgrade to the next-generation DOCSIS 3.1 spec that in the next few years will replace the "M" in Mbps with a "G" for gigabit.

DOCSIS 3.1 is the cutting edge of home cable technology, and big players such as Comcast in the US are testing it in specific markets with a new generation of modems. That testing and rollout of near-gigabit broadband in the US, UK, Canada and beyond has been somewhat marred, though, by the fact that high-speed DOCSIS 3.1 home gateways powered by Intel Puma chips suffer from annoying latency jittering under certain conditions, and can be trivially knocked offline by attackers. No fixes are available.

Those hardware problems aside, the DOCSIS 3.1 spec has another issue: it sticks to the age-old sucky 10-to-1 downlink-uplink ratio.

No longer with the Full Duplex Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification. Full Duplex DOCSIS 3.1 will allow broadband subscribers – in the next two years – to benefit from up to 10Gbps both up and down. And it will be possible on existing household connections rather than requiring the installation of new fiber.

[...] You can find out more about Full Duplex DOCSIS 3.1 on the CableLabs website.

So, you could reach your monthly 1 TB data cap allowance in just under 3 hours, assuming, of course that the upstream link is not so oversubscribed that you only actually get a fraction of that.

All kidding aside, that is a huge speed improvement. A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that a 100GB BDXL Blu-ray disk could be downloaded in about 2 minutes. As the connection is full-duplex, it could be uploaded in about 2 minutes, too.

I can't even think of anything where that kind of speed would be useful in a home, except for making for speedier downloads of game/OS updates/installs and maybe for offsite backups.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 3, Informative) by nobu_the_bard on Monday October 16 2017, @09:25PM (2 children)

    by nobu_the_bard (6373) on Monday October 16 2017, @09:25PM (#583171)

    You can purchase business lines with higher upload speeds and host stuff at home/work.

    Personally I don't recommend it though for your purposes; it's more prone to problems than data center connections, bandwidth issues aside. Your content goes down if metal thieves decide to attack your lines outside or whatever. By hosting stuff on your home setup you also get stuck with all of the hassles; DDoS, botnet probes, etc, all happening on the same line you use for your internet access. You could just rent a rack at a data center (a real one, not a virtual instance with a web interface) and host your own "cloud".

    I see your point but don't think it is a good strategy for anything you intend to host with any level of seriousness, whatever the bandwidth. If you just want to throw up stuff for your friends/family/co-conspirators/etc and use tunnels or something to restrict access though .... hmm...

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Informative=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Informative' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   3  
  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 16 2017, @10:12PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 16 2017, @10:12PM (#583186)

    It's cheaper, though, and you have better security. I'm going to buy a high bandwidth home internet connection anyway, and I have a Linux desktop PC anyway. So I slap two extra hard drives into the PC and an extra 16GB of RAM, and now it runs my own instance of the open source Sandstorm software 24/7 (broadly similar to OwnCloud but arguably much better) while I can still play the occasional game, surf the web, watch movies, and so forth. Total cost is $300 for the two extra drives, SATA cables, and RAM and maybe $13 per month for the higher bandwidth connection. I can also run some Linux ISO torrents 24/7 (I don't pirate... not that I expect anyone to believe me) and maybe a node for Yacy or GNU Social or similar.

    How much would I have to spend to get an equivalent server from some other server provider? And while law enforcement issues can get a warrant to seize my servers, it's unlikely to happen unless they have a good cause. Compare that to hosting at some colocation center, where overly broad warrants can allow an agency to sift through your data because someone else once shared torrents of Scary Movie 4 from the same virtualization host.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Tuesday October 17 2017, @12:16AM

    by NotSanguine (285) <NotSanguineNO@SPAMSoylentNews.Org> on Tuesday October 17 2017, @12:16AM (#583235) Homepage Journal

    You can purchase business lines with higher upload speeds and host stuff at home/work.

    I am aware. But that's not the point.

    The point is not whether *I* have decent upload bandwidth, but that synchronous (and *fast*) bandwidth can decentralize and get us away from the "cloud" and centralized communications hubs.

    Personally I don't recommend it though for your purposes; it's more prone to problems than data center connections, bandwidth issues aside. Your content goes down if metal thieves decide to attack your lines outside or whatever. By hosting stuff on your home setup you also get stuck with all of the hassles; DDoS, botnet probes, etc, all happening on the same line you use for your internet access. You could just rent a rack at a data center (a real one, not a virtual instance with a web interface) and host your own "cloud".

    My purposes aren't what you think they are. I'm interested in replacing the spies and advertising executives with secure, easy to use, peer-to-peer communications That will require both quality, easy-to-use software and a credible federation system.

    It also requires wide usage. As such, it's not my upload bandwidth that's at issue, it's *everyone's*.

    I see your point but don't think it is a good strategy for anything you intend to host with any level of seriousness, whatever the bandwidth. If you just want to throw up stuff for your friends/family/co-conspirators/etc and use tunnels or something to restrict access though .... hmm...

    At least WRT this discussion, I'm thinking a little bigger. I want to be a participant in an environment that allows me to control and share my stuff in a secure fashion without intermediaries. As long as there are middlemen, they have control, for whatever purpose.

    Unless large numbers of people are able to securely share (i.e., with significant upload bandwidth), that will be a complete non-starter.

    --
    No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr