It’s not a lie – they can’t provide upload speeds anywhere near their download speeds. 20 Mbps vs 6 Mbps is still quite small compared to 1000 Mbps. DOCSIS 3.1, the latest and not fully deployed standard goes up to 10Gbps down and 1Gpbs up.
It looks like DOCSIS 4.0 is actually a path forward to symmetric upload/download speeds over the same cables
I hate asymmetric connections. You get gigabit download but something stupid like 20-100 Mbps upload? Just why... Upload speed matters just as much as download these days.
Lower upload vs. download speed is an inherent technical limitation of the technologies (generally) used for domestic Internet connections - xDSL/Cable. From the ISPs perspective, there is often no reason to explicity limit end-user upload speed, since upstream they're buying symetrical links/
My upload is about 10 times slower that download - that's the A in ADSL.
As it's about 2.5Mbps up and 25Mbps down I'm not hugely bothered - we have 100Mbps symmetric fiber connection at work and it's generally only noticeably faster when you do multiple gigabyte downloads.
Symmetry isn't totally arbitrary. In many deployed access technologies, scaling head end send speed is easier than scaling user end send speed; sometimes there are settings to increase upload speed at the expense of download speed (ex annex M for adsl2), but sometimes it's an inherently asymmetric system.
Yeah, upload speeds are rarely limiting in most households.
It is usually the network quality for the uplink which creates problems, issues like packet loss, jitter, sudden b/w drops etc become more prominent, When the rated capacity is "20" we rarely get 20 consistently, it is "up to 20" with all that entails.
The worst is the highly one directional connections too. Sure I have a gig down. I have 25mbps up though. The upload is the same for every package from 300mbps down and above. I'd happily have less download for more upload.
10% of my upload bandwidth is a megabyte a second. That's enough for most of my upload usage - backup primarily, and the occasional youtube video.
Your perspective on upload vs download may change a bit when your connection gets better. I think a 9:1 ratio of download to upload is the right thing for most consumers. Ideally, the connection would rebalance based on demand, but I don't know enough about xDSL technology to know why that isn't possible.
As mentioned by someone else, yeah, this is almost certainly the TCP ack thing. If you throttle back the upload about 10KB/s under your max upload speed, it won't choke your download ability.
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