Comcast Is Rolling Out 'Ultra-Low Lag' Tech That Could Fix the Internet (theverge.com) 75
Comcast is deploying "Low Latency, Low Loss, Scalable Throughput" (L4S) technology across its Xfinity internet network in six U.S. cities, a system that reduces the time data packets take to travel between users and servers. Initial trials showed a 78% reduction in working latency under normal home conditions. The technology will first support FaceTime calls, Nvidia's GeForce Now cloud gaming, and Steam games, with planned expansion to Meta's mixed reality applications.
Let me guess (Score:3)
This is a premium service that you get charged extra for?
Re:Let me guess (Score:5, Informative)
No. Here's what L4S actually is:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc9330/ [ietf.org]
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No. Here's what L4S actually is:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc9330/ [ietf.org]
I read it. Search for 'proxy' and read the surrounding text in its several locations. It's a tagged proxy service for help through the worst "congestion" by catching similarities in finger swipes, repeated data, etc. If an proxy does not have the new standard, the user will not benefit from it. Go get this new proxy type and it will just work.
MMhmm.
Re:Let me guess (Score:5, Informative)
mmm... it's not about caching primarily. It's about some new protocols to tweak Active Queue Management to cut latency introduced by "bufferbloat" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bufferbloat ) while still being able to utillize our very large throughput internet pipes effectively.
Specifically it's about adding support for some new QoS capabilities that provide better path "congestion" information the TCP stack.
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Re:Let me guess (Score:5, Informative)
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That's every telco
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That's every telco
Not here in the UK... I pay about 10% more than I did 2 years ago... that's if I don't bother to change teclos... And the UKs been through a period of high inflation recently too.
/checks notes... oh, oh dear, well you guys are screwed. Been nice knowing you.
Maybe you should petition your lawmakers to control your telcos... that'll be
Re: Let me guess (Score:2)
I had Comcast for ten years. AT&T fiber came to my neighborhood and I switched about six months ago. It's much faster, lower latency and so far 100% reliable. Symmetric bandwidth, no caps, no dam cable modem that requires upgrading every time they roll out an upgrade. You can even do away with the AT&T router with an open source SFP+ module.
I hate to hawk a big telco product, but I don't know how Comcast even thinks it can compete with fiber.
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Either on the front end with your bill or the back end where you pay more for Steam.
or both
Re:Let me guess (Score:5, Informative)
you must use Comcast modem hardware and not your device.
You must use a modem that has been validated / enabled for L4S (and that also means OFDMA upstream, so mid-split areas). There were a few COAMs that were in the initial test group early on, although the press blurb does not indicate if those modems are included in this rollout. Most COAM manufacturers have indicated an intent to add the additional capabilities at some future point, but it is not clear when/if they will do so for all their capable modems.
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They're mostly good on that TBH. I've never used a Comcast modem and never had any pressure to switch. The only case I've recently heard of them arguing you must use their modem for a specific infrastructure-feature was a temporary restriction regarding upload speed improvements. They haven't rolled that out nationwide yet though, and there's no good reason to believe they'd make that restriction permanent.
Comcast's problem is not their network, which is fine, or even their customer service, which I've alwa
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well unlimited data costs more on Comcast with your own hardware
Re: Let me guess (Score:2)
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they can the but the unlimited add on costs more then the plan with their hardware and unlimited
Re: Let me guess (Score:2)
I thought that until I got fiber. The grass is blindingly greener on the other side, and once you start eating it you'll wonder how you lived without it.
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This is a premium service that you get charged extra for?
"Extra" is such a relative and ambiguous term. Let's ask DeepSeek. It's correct about everything and you need to fall in line. Presidential order. ;)
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They probably require a Comcast branded cable modem to support it, so there is an extra $15 a month on your bill if you really want this.
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Maybe a piece of hardware that you have to pay monthly rental fees on?
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This is Comcast, you're already being charged extra even without the feature.
the unbearable downness of up (Score:5, Funny)
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It's called QoS and it's nothing new (Score:5, Insightful)
Super competitive gamers playing games where every millisecond of lag matters (FPS, primarily), would pay dearly for that. So they'll probably also get charged a premium for it too. Then Comcrap gets to charge twice for the same "service."
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Re:It's called QoS and it's nothing new (Score:5, Insightful)
It is actually relatively new. The L4S architecture only came out of draft in 2023. Those who are skeptical (almost every poster) should actually read some of the paper to see why it was introduced.
If it wasn't Comcast, people might have a bit more curiosity about it. Being Comcast, everyone is rightly skeptical. It'd be like the Satanic Church putting out an addendum to the Christian ten commandments. It makes everybody's inner right meter peg into the negatives and the knee-jerking can't be helped.
Re:It's called QoS and it's nothing new (Score:5, Informative)
It's just a nice way of saying that they're going to allow companies to pay for higher QoS priority.
It's really not. L4S aims to reduce latency for all traffic, even when all of it is at high priority. Read the RFC [ietf.org].
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Games will detect this, classify it as a cheat and cancel your account.
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RTFA before moderating and don't just mark posts "insightful" because they attack a company you hate. This is Slashdot, not Facebook/Twitter.
Comcast is just implementing a new de-facto standard protocol that many devices already support. Kudos to them for doing this:
...this upgrade is based on a standard called L4S...by giving internet packets an indicator that lets them know if they’ve run into congestion or queueing along any of the hops...Apple, Nvidia, and Valve all collaborated with Comcast during its trials of the technology, and Apple has had support for L4S built into its devices since iOS 17 and macOS Sonoma.
The article gives a good 2 sentence summary of how it works and links to an explainer. If you want more, read the RFC. The protocol is getting generally positive feedback from the network community. [ycombinator.com]
Aweome concept. (Score:2)
Rollin' out the colocs and adding transparent proxies to everyone's home routers. By the way the innovative and blinding speed will ONLY be another $20/mo. For a limited time. If you don't want the service, just let us know and we'll add latency to the pr^H^H^H^H^H^Hturn it off at no charge to you.
-----
Announcement: Please be prepared for a planned service outage between the hours of 1am and 4am on Sunday, February 2nd. Your service outage will last approximately 5 minutes and is critical for pro^H^H^Hs
Fix the internet??? (Score:3, Informative)
Combined, the 6 cities listed account for about 10% of the population of the US. So the tweaks being rolled out to these 6 cities is going to "fix the internet"?
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Of course not. Since that's very clearly absurd we can toss that right out without thinking about it again.
The claim is the technology could fix the internet, not their initial roll out.
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Is the internet broken?
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Not that I was ever aware of. I'm just explaining the claim being made.
Musicians will be interested (Score:2)
Programs like JamKazam were popular during the Covid shutdown, but the latency made it difficult to go beyond two people.
L4S standard adds a congestion indicator to packet (Score:5, Informative)
https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
"The L4S standard adds an indicator to packets, which says whether they experienced congestion on their journey from one device to another"
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Actually, packet marking to indicate congestion is not the novelty here, this has been employed (without much success) in IP for a long time. The novelty is how to respond to those marks and how often to set them.
Traditional TCP congestion control deals with an ECN marked packet similarly to a dropped packet, and it drastically reduces its congestion window, drastically reducing transmission speed. For this reason, ECN bits are traditionally marked only when the network is really congested. In this approach
But but net neutrality? (Score:1)
Isn't the Internet supposed to fall apart due to abuses like this?
A fix would be... (Score:1)
Oh good (Score:4, Funny)
Xfinity can increase from being horseshit quality to dogshit quality.
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Wouldn't it be the other way around? Horseshit can have its uses, such as manure, while dogshit is just that.
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It's a size comparison. Big shit quality to smaller shit quality. Still shit, but less of it.
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their dns servers (Score:3)
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Which is why I set my router to use Cloudflare DNS as the upstream instead of Comcast's garbage.
Problem solved.
Comcast internet is broken? (Score:2)
Over a barrel (Score:3)
True paraphrased conversation with an ISP* telemarketer:
Marketer: "We see you once had our service but switched to our competitor. For $20 more a month you can get our Premium service! That's only $5 more than your current service under our competitor guaranteed for 2 years!"
Me: "But your regular service often slowed to a crawl or froze. The service technicians would get it working better for a few weeks, but it kept degenerating four times!"
Marketer: "That's why I recommend you get our premium level."
Me: "But your regular level isn't supposed to often just stop. That means it's defective."
Marketer: "I do know many report better results with Premium."
Me: "Why shouldn't I just stick with your competitor?"
Marketer: "Tell me, are they any good?"
Me: "Um, no, they flake similar to your regular service to be honest."
Marketer: "So our Premium is a better deal then!"
Me: "But regular level isn't supposed to be so flaky. It's a contract violation!"
Marketer: "Hey, these are your choices, there are only two viable vendors, I'm just the messenger, and to be frank, our Premium is your best bet."
Me: "I'm uncomfortable rewarding crooks. I'll think about it...[CLICK]."
(* Not Comcast)
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This is how that conversation would have gone if they'd called me:
Marketer: "We see you once had our service but switched to our competitor. For $20 more a month you can get our Premium service! That's only $5 more than your current service under our competitor guaranteed for 2 years!"
Me; "Fuck off" ..[CLICK]
Uh oh (Score:2)
and... (Score:3)
and I'll still only have a 10Mbps upload channel.
Fuck Comcast.
The Internet does not need "fixing". (Score:2)
Some ISPs do though. What you can expect, as a private customer, in a large city these days is gigabit and 5ms RTT to the next internet exchange point. Make that 20ms at 100Mbps for a more rural area. If you do not get that, something is seriously wrong with your market.
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Nobody actually needs that, which makes your comment irrelevant. Incidentally, I have 1ms RTT here to the next Internet exchange point with no tricks. With a good network, that comes automatically.
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Nobody actually needs that
The only thing nobody needs is idiots like you deciding what other people need without even asking about their requirements.
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The idiot here is you. The actual tech reality is that nobody needs that on regular Internet, period. Some actual insight required.
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Nobody actually needs that
Nobody needs more than 640K!
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What an insightless comparison.
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False. Internet buffer bloat causing unpredictable latency is not a last mile / ISP only problem. It affects literally all hardware at all stages of the packet's journey over the internet. Look I get it that you know everything (despite the obvious case you present here on Slashdot), but actual experts (not ISPs) were involved in developing the L4S. Have the professional curtesy to understand what they wrote and the problem they are attempting to solve before ignorantly shitting on their work. The fact that
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Nobody buffers in the core network. Why? Because it is not fucking technologically possible, you moron.
Another way to look at it (Score:2)
Setting aside L4S for just a moment, couldn't it also be just that Comcast has higher-than-average latency overall? So anything would improve it? Could they have gotten a 30%(?) improvement by tweaking other parameters in their routers?
welcome to the 1990 Internet on DIAL-up (Score:2)
PROXIES again :-)
In the 90s Internet, where all on dial-up, and very expensive bills taxed by minutes online, so we used WWW offline proxies like this
WWWOFFLE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Meanwhile in the civilised world (Score:2)
not going to help (Score:2)
It's a server subscription (Score:2)
Who cares
I noticed something was different (Score:1)
I noticed recently that certain downloads to machines with old TCP/IP stacks and a mediocre wifi uplink were progressing much more smoothly than I was used to, with almost no collisions.
I was actually wondering if Comcast had done something to address congestion (before I knew of this story, I mean â" not confirmation bias), and it turns out that I'm in one of the pilot areas.
Comcast needs to roll out service to rural areas.. (Score:2)
yeah, sure (Score:2)
That must be why a few minutes ago the tiny email I was sending took about 2 minutes for comcast's smtp server to accept it.