Comcast to bring two-gigabit Internet service to Bay Area, boost existing tiers

[gohpep]

 

Comcast said Friday that it will bring its 2-gigabit symmetrical Gigabit Pro service to San Francisco Bay Area consumers in May, sidestepping Google and its own fiber plans. The company also said it will boost the speeds of some of its more premium tiers and add a new Extreme 250 tier.

A Comcast spokesman said that prices for each of the services would be announced closer to the launch date. Comcast also said it would upgrade its Performance tier from 50 Mbps (megabits per second) to 75 Mbps, and its Blast tier from 105 Mbps to 150 Mbps, all for free.

Comcast previously announced plans to launch the Gigabit Pro service in Atlanta.

Why this matters: Cynics will see this as a way to appease Silicon Valley techies who may be lobbying the Federal Communication Commission and the Department of Justice to enforce net neutrality and http://www.pcworld.com/article/2141320/comcast-defends-proposed-time-warner-cable-deal.html''>block Comcast

[sinetheo]

Those jerks harass me EVERY DAY to upgrade x infinity! Literally ring my phone every afternoon non stop.

Why? I refuse to pay for cable TV since I have Roku with Netflix, hulu, and Amazon Prime and they want to extort $100 a month from me. Screw that

15 megs a second is fast enough thank you very much. A new income generation tool I see.

Sorry for the cynical post but they drive me crazy. At their lowest package I can download a whole cdrom in just 15 minutes

Those jerks harass me EVERY DAY to upgrade x infinity! Literally ring my phone every afternoon non stop.

Why? I refuse to pay for cable TV since I have Roku with Netflix, hulu, and Amazon Prime and they want to extort $100 a month from me. Screw that

15 megs a second is fast enough thank you very much. A new income generation tool I see.

Sorry for the cynical post but they drive me crazy. At their lowest package I can download a whole cdrom in just 15 minutes

[LightEco]

Neat, I'm going to be going from 50 to 75.

[wahoospa]

Neat, I'm going to be going from 50 to 75.

In about a year to a year and a half your rates will go to infinity and beyond.

[Tomo]

What's the point of having a 2Gb connection when most most modern routers and computers only have a 1Gb network port? or am I missing something?

[+Red King Subscriber²]

What's the point of having a 2Gb connection when most most modern routers and computers only have a 1Gb network port? or am I missing something?

Misleading Advertisements are a good thing

[PGHammer]

What's the point of having a 2Gb connection when most most modern routers and computers only have a 1Gb network port? or am I missing something?

Because not all users (or even motherboards) are that limited.

Dual-gigabit motherboards have been in the enthusiast space for nearly two years - now they are entering the mainstream space. (By "mainstream", I'm referring to motherboard prices between $100USD-$200USD.) And I'm not referring to "Brand X" Ethernet controllers or even "ex Brand X" controllers, either (such as Realtek Semiconductor), but dual gigabit INTEL Ethernet controllers. (Such dual-gigabit motherboards started in the server space.)

With pre-wiring, you can have multiple routers and per-floor subnetting (one class-C block per floor). It doesn't require fancy routers - existing dual-band N (or even single-band N) routers will do, as long as all the ports are gigabit. (That got reduced to a checkbox item almost four years ago.)

Bandwidth teaming entered the mainstream space (as OS bog-standard) with Windows 8 - however, you could do it (with third-party optional software) as far back as Vista. Dual-wired, wired/wireless, and even dual-wireless teaming are ALL supported. Like dual-gigabit (or single-gigabit for that matter), it came from the enterprise space.

What is driving the need for bandwidth are "smart TVs" and Roku boxes - surprisingly, not tablets and smartphones so much.

[sc302 Veteran]

What's the point of having a 2Gb connection when most most modern routers and computers only have a 1Gb network port? or am I missing something?

I would think that the pro service is for business customers which can exceed 1Gb/s when multiple people pull information from the internet...this would require 10Gb/s networking capabilities which is still out of reach, cost wise, for the home user market.   Unless the home user market can afford switches that are in the $6-10k range for the low end and firewalls in the $10k plus range then they too could possibly get 2Gb/s.  Modern for the home does not mean modern for the business.

[Tomo]

Because not all users (or even motherboards) are that limited.

Dual-gigabit motherboards have been in the enthusiast space for nearly two years - now they are entering the mainstream space. (By "mainstream", I'm referring to motherboard prices between $100USD-$200USD.) And I'm not referring to "Brand X" Ethernet controllers or even "ex Brand X" controllers, either (such as Realtek Semiconductor), but dual gigabit INTEL Ethernet controllers. (Such dual-gigabit motherboards started in the server space.)

With pre-wiring, you can have multiple routers and per-floor subnetting (one class-C block per floor). It doesn't require fancy routers - existing dual-band N (or even single-band N) routers will do, as long as all the ports are gigabit. (That got reduced to a checkbox item almost four years ago.)

Bandwidth teaming entered the mainstream space (as OS bog-standard) with Windows 8 - however, you could do it (with third-party optional software) as far back as Vista. Dual-wired, wired/wireless, and even dual-wireless teaming are ALL supported. Like dual-gigabit (or single-gigabit for that matter), it came from the enterprise space.

What is driving the need for bandwidth are "smart TVs" and Roku boxes - surprisingly, not tablets and smartphones so much.

That's a very niche market, not something that 99.9% of customers can or would have the knowledge to implement (unless you're a business/enterprise customer)

[PGHammer]

That's a very niche market, not something that 99.9% of customers can or would have the knowledge to implement.

No; they mean a gigabit in each direction - which is GREATER than a gigabit full-duplex controller can handle alone. (A full-duplex gigabit Ethernet controller - from anyone - will only handle half that in each direction (512 megabits in each direction)). Implementing it is dead-simple - it takes pre-wiring and gigabit patch-panels, along with one or more routers (you can also substitute switches for some of the routers, depending on switch capabilities). Having a real USE for it is another issue altogether.

[sc302 Veteran]

Gigabit symetrical is full gigabit in either direction (this is what I order now for business).  2 gigabit symetrical would mean 2 gigabit in both directions. 

[PaulATMOS]

Hoping to see 10Gbps routers, switches and NIC come down in price over the next 12 months.

[+BudMan MVC]

^ dude same here.. I would love to put 10g in the house.. But its just so cost prohibitive on a home/hobby budget.. The wife would freaking KILL ME at these prices..  You can find some 10g nics on ebay and such for cheap but kind of pointless without a switch.

 

Here is one that is under 1k.. but come on!!  Now if that was say $329 I would get it in a heartbeat

http://www.amazon.com/Netgear-ProSAFE-10-Gigabit-Ethernet-XS708E-100NES/dp/B00B46AEE6/

[DeusProto]

So... you'll be able to hit and exceed the 300GB cap in mere minutes.