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