Comcast is doing some kind of work in our neighborhood today.

cypherstream · 2025-04-22T11:47:23+00:00

Comcast came into our development in 2022. Prior to that we were a single cable company neighborhood. They came in with Arris label midsplit gear and harmonic nodes. Today there’s a few trucks and also a pickup from “fiber network services, inc.”. The guy down the street from me took off the amp pedistal lid and was banging on sometihing really hard. Metal on metal for sure, almost like pounding a rod in the ground or something. Wonder what they are up too? It’s an established new cable plant. Could it be FDX upgrades already?

cypherstream

MacLeech that’s wild. Reminds me of that 3 GHz overlay system proposed back in the early 2000’s that never went anywhere. Technetix comes up with some creative stuff.

I have to wonder if in our new build they put big vented doghouses even just for splice blocks, for future CBRS, WiFi or additional high frequency amps if ever required in future designs. Obviously a simple splice block could have fit in a small z series tap pedestal.

fmd

Technetix has the direction neutral amplifier. It has no diplex filters (and no echo canceller)… TDD support - it just needs to go a lot higher in frequency. Technetix is also rumoured to be part of the project.

They also promote it as an FDX amplifier. They just don’t guarantee that the node can support overlapping upstream/downstream, because there will be more echos reaching it - since the amplifier doesn’t cancel them out.

CommunityMember

cypherstream at some point when does it make sense for companies like Harmonic to just manufacture Pebble-2 (or equivalent), to simplify product lines?

As soon as the pricing premium they can charge does not exist. Which probably is sometime after Pebble-4 is released.

CommunityMember

cypherstream I don’t think Intel for example is still making Pentium 3 and 4’s (though they were all the rage the last time many of these cable plants were touched).

While I think the original Pentiums have ended their special status, you may not be aware that Intel has a (very pricey) program for select customers for certain select processors where Intel will commit to providing availability for quite an extended period of time. Those processors are chosen by the manufacturers/integrators where certification and/or validation may include regulatory requirements (so, in essence, nothing can change in the device(s) for the life of the product, which may easily exceed a decade).

cypherstream

The lid is now finally put back on the ped. Took a long time.

That overlay (3 GHz) system that flopped was back in 2007 era.
https://www.tvtechnology.com/equipment/vyyo-increases-bandwidth-with-ultraband

Let’s see if the 5G over coax overlays flop just as bad. Well this time around technology is better and an application is available to utilize it. It was a different world back in the mid 2000’s.

MacLeech

cypherstream The Vyyo solution was too complicated and expensive for the amount of bandwidth gained. Improvements in DOCSIS were faster, cheaper to deploy, and could be done using the majority of equipment and support systems already deployed. All the benefits listed in the article have been available for many years without using UltraBand frequencies.

PS, You could’ve put the lid back on in 30 seconds.

kirkyg

Aceq2jot This is one of my major concerns…cable provisioning is very aggressive as opposed to fiber and the interference and frequency amplification technology seems to have alot of variables. It will be interesting to see of docsis 4.0 can provide consistent rated speeds as opposed to docsis 3.0 and 3.1. I have 1gbps plan and while the upload on mid splits is consistently 300+ the download speed is rarely 900+mbps. I often get 400-800mbps which tells me either the interference on these lines even with current technology is not stable or they are way overprovisioning the shared bandwidth.

Aceq2jot

kirkyg Thank you.

MacLeech

kirkyg the download speed is rarely 900+mbps. I often get 400-800mbps which tells me either the interference on these lines even with current technology is not stable or they are way overprovisioning the shared bandwidth.

It’s rare for interference on the downstream side to impact download speeds that much. Interference or instability could easily be seen in signal levels, lower SNR, and/or bit error rates of the modem.

Lack of bandwidth could be tested rather easily too, checking and comparing speeds between peak 8pm-midnight vs non-peak 8am-noon. If it’s always slow no matter the time, it’s probably not oversubscribed bandwidth issues.

Slow download speeds issues are more often affected by testing using old modems, WiFi or USB Ethernet connections, older network drivers, some security/anti-virus software, testing through web browsers, and/or parental control or web filter settings on routers.

retnbmn

When checking download speeds it can be meaningful to test to different providers servers. Testing to alternate destinations will help identify whether the degraded download speed is due to your actual connection (the last mile), or is indicative of congestion within the providers network. When I test via my Xfinity service to an Xfinity endpoint and see degraded download speed, testing to Intrepid Fiber or Lumen Technologies as an end point will often show higher download speeds.

jweaver

kirkyg technically on fiber providers you still share a bit.

That’s sounds like node congestion of it being oversold.

MacLeech

jweaver technically on fiber providers you still share a bit.

ALL residential providers share, including ALL PON based fiber, more than a bit. Frontier and Verizon are pushing 1/1gbps tiers on shared 2.4/1.2 capacity GPON.

badtlc4

jweaver Exactly. PON Fiber has the exact same shared bandwidth issues that cable does.

bigcoda

Has anybody else notice a lot of overnight maintenance lately? I will be going on my third consecutive night of maintenance over here in Stockton CA. It always says there performing Next Gen upgrades. My neighborhood was upgraded to Mid-Split a year and a half ago. Most of north Stockton is underground, so I can’t see what nodes or amps we have. But I have been seeing Comcast contractors doing a lot of upgrades around Stockton lately. One aerial area were it runs down a main street, they installed nodes that are painted white. I don’t think Stockton CA is supposed to be a FDX DOCSIS 4.0 area? Could they be getting ready to light up FDX? Or maybe the maintenance is for Low Latency DOCSIS?

badtlc4

bigcoda if you were already on mid-split then the only reasonable conclusion is that it is D4 work.

MacLeech

badtlc4 if you were already on mid-split then the only reasonable conclusion is that it is D4 work.

Or capacity upgrades, equipment replacement, node splits, fiber changes/repairs, coax changes/repairs, video work, frequency changes, or a dozen other things.

badtlc4

MacLeech

None of that other than massive repairs would require so many regular outages and that would most likely have visible performance issues. Upgrades and node splits dont require that many outages, at least in my area.

Aceq2jot

It has been that way for the last three months here in Minnesota. Not a week goes by without at least one scheduled update outage. But nothing has changed as of yet and there is another scheduled for midnight tonight.

cypherstream

MacLeech here they added ground stakes and grounding cable from the amp housing to the stake.

Not sure what prompted it a few years after the build.

bigcoda

Aceq2jot It has been that way for the last three months here in Minnesota. Not a week goes by without at least one scheduled update outage. But nothing has changed as of yet and there is another scheduled for midnight tonight.

Yea I don’t know what Comcast is doing. I’ve never seen them do so much back to back overnight maintenance in one week. They have a 4th one scheduled tonight. Fortunately most of the time, it doesn’t seem to effect my internet connection.

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