DOCSIS 4.0 Expands 10 Gbps Cable Broadband

Author: John Shepler

Fiber services are faster and bigger than ever. It's the gold standard of enterprise unlimited bandwidth research. Many businesses, frustrated by the inability to get fiber to their buildings or the high cost of delayed building fiber, are turning to the next best option: cable broadband. Now the latest cable standard, DOCSIS 4.0, adds symmetrical upload and download speeds to standard copper coaxial cable services. Would you believe 10 Gbps download and 6 Gbps upload? Fiber has a lot of competition with cable.

What is DOCSIS?
DOCSIS is a technology that allows traditional cable TV providers to simultaneously offer high-speed Internet services over the same cable. The term stands for Cable Data Service Interface Specification. CableTelevision Laboratories, Inc. is a product of CableLabs, a nonprofit group that supports cable operators.

DOCSIS evolved along with the Internet. The original was DOCSIS 1.0, released in 1997 and setting standards of 40 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload. VoIP and QS mechanisms were added in the early 2000s, increasing data rates to 30 Mbps.

A significant improvement was introduced in 2006 with DOCSIS 3.0. Cable companies can now offer 1 Gbps downstream and 200 Mbps upstream. IPv6 support was also introduced at this time. With these improvements, it's safe to say that fiber optic cable services had a serious competitor.

In 2013, DOCSIS 3.1 increased the maximum downstream capacity from 10 Gbps to 1-2 Gbps and was widely adopted by cable operators. DOCSIS 4.0, the latest version, in 2017 increased streaming to 6 Gbps. DOCSIS 4.0 is still in the early stages of testing and production deployment. The ultimate plan is to have symmetrical full-duplex bandwidth over 10 Gbps cable.

How can copper wire work so fast?
In fact, cable television networks have been using coaxial copper cable independent of the terminal antenna for homes and businesses for many years. Almost all systems, regardless of size, today use a technology called HFC or Hybrid Fiber Cable. The network is fiber optic cable, which is how fiber optic providers operate. The difference is that these companies run the fiber to the boundary of the building, while the cable service terminates the fiber somewhere in the neighborhood and makes the terminal with the popular coaxial cable. It was HFC that allowed cable companies to offer serious broadband services.

Direct access to cable fiber network
Cable networks serve major metropolitan areas and their suburbs. Multi-system carriers have fiber that connects their networks and connects to the Internet backbone. Major cable companies have entered into direct competition with fiber optic networks by offering companies the ability to connect to their own fiber optic networks without going through a copper interface.

There are advantages to going the all-fiber route. You can get faster speeds and a fully balanced connection by skipping the modem. Remember that cable broadband is basically a shared service. You're on the last mile of an Internet connection, just like dozens or hundreds of your neighbors. As such, traffic levels and service speeds may vary throughout the day. It all depends on what other people are doing.

This is why companies, especially those with critical business processes running in the cloud, are opting for Internet access and private peer-to-peer lines. You can get high speed through traditional telecommunications services such as T1 line and DS3 bandwidth, SONET fiber service, Ethernet fiber and MPLS networks.

Which service will meet your needs depends on how sensitive your operations are to line speed and latency, as well as congestion and congestion. Cable broadband, especially DOCSIS 3.0 and above, offers many businesses a very useful and reliable service at a great price. Other businesses with more sensitive needs must access the fiber themselves and create dedicated, more private connections to achieve the efficiencies needed for maximum productivity.

Find out what cable, fiber and twisted copper options are available to your business and what each can offer.