Modem Channel Bonding

[tocheeba]

I currently have Mediacom for my ISP. I have a 150mbps down & 20mbps up plan, and currently use a SB6121 modem. I believe the modem has 4 down channels and 2 up channels. While it's technically capable of 150mbps (and I regularly do get these speeds), I've been seeing a lot of slowdown at night lately, during peak hours.

A tech came out recently and said I need a better modem with more channels, while another tech on their support forums was looking at my info and said I don't. I believe my plan allows for 8 down channel bonding and 4 up with them. While I can technically get my speeds with my current modem, would I theoretically have the chance of better speeds during peak hours (really bad ping times I've been noticing). Would having the 4 extra down channels and 2 extra up channels bonding help this at all? Or is it purely for speed, and buying a new $100 modem isn't necessary?

 

[smorizio]

what cable isp dont tell you is your sharing the bandwith of there servers with everyone in your area. as long as they have more infrastructure then is needed at peak times most people dont see a slow down with cable modems. the problem now is in one area there may be only one cable isp and for free biz they likie comcast have all of these free hotspots. with all those free hotspots durning the day comcast and other isp get slammed. when they do they dont tell people but they throttle back people. people like netflix has to pay comcast more to keep from being throttled. if you think your area over loaded try google or open dns or ask your isp for the info of all there local servers to you. you may be able to jump to a new low user server. also if your modem is connected to a router make sure you dont have leaches.

 

[bill001g]

Mostly the ability to use more channels depends on if the ISP also has the equipment to support it. Many times ISP will use 8 channels and you will still not get faster rates because they limited it to a contracted rate.

But as stated in the above post it is all your neighbors using the cable also that is causing the issue when it happens at certain times of day. The way a cable works is the ISP is actually sending all the data for you and your neighbors mixed together. Your cable modem actually receives all of it but discards everything but yours...even if it didn't the traffic is encoded with unique encryption keys to prevent snooping.

If the ISP offers a faster option that uses more channels they likley will charge more. It could solve your issue because there is more total bandwidth and in general there are fewer people because many people will not pay more.

 

[Rogue Leader]

I don't agree with the tech saying to get the new modem. Thats not how cable internet works. I do agree with smorzio, Cable internet works like a big LAN in your area, the more folks using it the slower it goes. Here's a good explanation of how it works:

http://www.highspeedexperts.com/know-your-docsis/

So basically the 8 channel modem could (in theory) give you faster overall speeds (and I mean with 150mbps, do you really need it?) but it doesn't change the fact that if there is heavy network traffic (during peak hours) the speed will be reduced no matter what. I guess in theory having twice as much bandwidth (channels) to the slower speed network could increase performance, however having that much bandwidth can't help the ping times, so you will still run into latency.

IMO not worth it.

 

[tocheeba]

what cable isp dont tell you is your sharing the bandwith of there servers with everyone in your area. as long as they have more infrastructure then is needed at peak times most people dont see a slow down with cable modems. the problem now is in one area there may be only one cable isp and for free biz they likie comcast have all of these free hotspots. with all those free hotspots durning the day comcast and other isp get slammed. when they do they dont tell people but they throttle back people. people like netflix has to pay comcast more to keep from being throttled. if you think your area over loaded try google or open dns or ask your isp for the info of all there local servers to you. you may be able to jump to a new low user server. also if your modem is connected to a router make sure you dont have leaches.

I get the whole total bandwidth is shared by people, throttling, etc. I'm a Network Engineer for a living, but not super familiar with how ISPs deal with channel bonding. No issues on my end - CAT6 hard wired to every room in the house, hooked up to a gigabit switch and router. I just don't know if there was any truth to more bandwidth being available or ping times being better if I'm able to lock onto 8 instead of 4 channels.

 

[smorizio]

as your a network person read the cablem modem standard for cable.
http://www.cablelabs.com/specs/

comcast is now pushing for 3.1 of the standard to get more speed out of the older cables.

 

[bill001g]

If you have background read the docsis standard it tell you all you can want to know.

 

[Kewlx25]

as your a network person read the cablem modem standard for cable.
http://www.cablelabs.com/specs/

comcast is now pushing for 3.1 of the standard to get more speed out of the older cables.

They actually need new cables, nodes, amps, and filters. Upgrading to DOCSIS 3.0 cost Comcast about $9k per customer, going to 3.1 is going to be about the same. To give some context, 1Gb fiber costs about $1.5-$3k per customer.