Let's talk Upstream Bandwidth

[Earache]

Let me preface this by saying, I, in no way dislike Rogers as an ISP, and am I, in no way advertising for other providers.  I have no issues with it (besides the topic at hand), and I would like to open a dialogue with Rogers employees and the community to get a better understanding of what customers want and what can actually be provided (and reasoning for it).  Also note that different providers, provide services in different areas, they do not cover all of Canada, and your location may dictate which service providers are available, therefore when discussing this topic, when I refer to a company, I'm referring it independently of services available in a given location.

I would like to have a discussion regarding upload bandwidth.  For as long as I can remember, us Canadians, have had the one of the worst upload bandwidth, which to me in 2017 is not acceptable any more.  Many people have begun careers at home (whether for a business or entrepreneurial) or even just brick and mortar businesses.  For a brick and mortar store, many offer free Wi-Fi to their client which ends up saturating their bandwidth.  For stay at home careerists, they depend on upload bandwidth for various tasks, such as (and not limiting to): video conferencing, transfer files whether to clients or web/file servers and etcetera. 

According to Speedtest.net Report, no provider is capable of anything over 30 Mbps.  As this isn't necessarily true as Bell is now offering 100Mbps on their Gigabit Fibe plan (which might I add is cheaper than Rogers offering).  I also know that there are smaller providers such as Beanfield that offer 1Gbps upload bandwidth (what the actual result is, I cannot say, but apparently it is close to advertised).  There is another provider in Muskoka, Ont, that offers the identical connection bandwidth to Beanfield (both are less expensive than Rogers/Bell, and have a smaller footprint as well).  

Seeing how 2 small providers that are turning a profit with such a small foot print, I don't see how the bigger (see wealthier) internet providers, provide lackluster upload speeds.  It may be for the fact there is more equipment needed therefore costs will go up or there are to many people on the network, but if smaller providers can achieve surely bigger more successful ones can as well.  

Rogers offers 50Mbps upload to business, but some providers, offer identical packaging to businesses and consumers, the price may vary as business will get static IPs, dedicated lines and/or service agreements.  In a CBC article from 2014 Why internet upload speed in Canada lags behind world average, Rogers stated that upstream usage only accounted for 13% of all traffic on its network and they expected it to increase 40% year over year.  This was 3 years ago, if I remember correctly Rogers internet service plans were called Hybrid Fibre and the fastest connection was 60/10. 

One of the limitations I believe is the infrastructure itself, as many cities in Canada capable of being developed as the costs are high, but that should not deter a higher upstream. Personally I would prefer the Canadian government to spend money on developing communications in Canada rather than spending money on other infrastructure projects (that will amount to money wasted).  Rogers experienced an 11% growth in Internet revenue in the 2016 Annual report (seen here),  Cable (Internet/TV) accounts for 25% of total revenue while, Business Solutions accounts for only 3%, yet according to the CBC article mentioned above, "Part of the problem lies in how telecommunications services have historically been sold in Canada. Many new innovations – think BlackBerry – have generally been aimed at businesses first, with mainstream consumers eventually following along," why would the focus be on business first when the gains in consumer products are higher?

According to BCE, Rogers racing to new frontier in high-speed Internet, Rogers has completed it's DOCSIS 3.1 upgrade in Toronto (no word on other cities/municipalities), and the cost to achieve this was roughly $250-300/home (est by Desjardins Securities Inc).   BCE (Bell) is currently investing $1.14B in fibre services in Toronto and according to Barclay's Capital the cost is $400-700/home using aerial infrastructure (using hydro poles to run fibre vs burying underground).  With DOCSIS 3.1 downstream capacity is 10 Gbps, while upstream is 1-2 Gbps.  In full duplex (which I believe is not the case with Rogers), upstream capacity is 10 Gbps.  The difference between BCE and Rogers, gigabit networks is one is cable the other is fibre.  Fibre will always be faster and more efficient as outside interference does not affect it, and it is able to travel further distances.  BCE is offering gigabit speeds with 70% more upstream for a cheaper price, and much more future proof with their fibre network.  

What I propose is Rogers to offer a much higher upstream either to match competitors (BCE) or surpass them as many Canadians are doing more on the internet, and not just downloading "stuff."  Sure there are people that will abuse it but provisions can be made to thwart that.  Many Canadians are now using cloud storage and moving large amounts of files currently can be painful (I have had to upload gigs of data to clients/co-workers), more data is being shared then ever before and will only grow as more people being switching from physical data to digital (paper vs computer). 

Thank you for listening/reading and I hope other Rogers customers will agree and we can get a good discussion going on here.

***Added Labels***

[gp-se]

Rogers has released DOCSIS 3.1 downstream on their entire footprint, not just Toronto. Bell only offers Fiber in select locations, and that footprint is VERY small. 

However in regards to upload, DOCSIS by design doesn't support high upload rates. DOCSIS 3.1 on the upload is coming in a few months, but ultimately I still think we will be upload starved. It *used* to be that download was everything, and upload speed barely mattered, but going forward upload is becoming very important. I too wish we could get better upload bandwidth going forward.

Another thing I noticed is Rogers even tunes the mobile network to have more bandwidth on the download, compared to the upload. However that could be because a lot of their cell sites are using microwave instead of fiber.

[JohnBeaudin]

DOCSIS 3.1 on the Upstream should be available in a near future ( rumors is by the end of the year or maybe early next year). When it is implemented.. they should be able to bump the upload speed to match Bell.

I personally would do

1GB/100

500/100

150/30

and any lower tier 10

Let's hope Rogers CEO will take my message to consideration.

[BS]

It is a great discussion and an important one.

I see the big push for the high speed download is to support IPTV more than our bandwidth usage issues.

And the marketing push about 10 devices average connected in the typical home - and all those drop ins.

Not my house for sure.

But on the topic of upload - I do a lot of geneology work and send up high definition pictures.  Uploading a tree is a labourious task, so i don't do my work on my computer, I maintain it on the ancestry servers.

The model of family tree maker and ancestry is that they download only one picture at a time, then use processing power on your computer to make the linking to the tree, so speed download is not an issue - it runs at less than 3 Mbs per picture - now total bandwidth cap is more important for that work than speed.

My wife has a business that requires uploads of high definition pictures of product to her site, so for her upload is important too.

Another example of how download doesn't matter to me - I watch netflix - last night, my speed connection was 12 - 19 Mbs on one tv, again bandwidth cap comes into play.

So I see a need technology for us to begin to get availability of upload and glad it is coming - just hope that pricing is fair.  And in my case, I could function fine on 30 -  60 down, 30 up and at least 500 GB per month usage.

As the new upload speeds come into play, maybe we will see a mix and match model like is beginning to develop with the TV side of things.

The big blue guys were at my door today - 100 down, 10 up available with unlimited GB, but they are putting fibe to the home, and any new installs, they have already put the fibe pedestals in and just need to bring the conduit drillers in and every corner sidewalk is already set up with steel plate covering the openings to core down the street.  He said they will be fibe to the door in the next year - not a lot of work for them to do it, all ready now.  At the moment, they are marketing, get on board now and we will offer deals when it comes next spring.

Bruce - 

[Earache]

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@JohnBeaudin wrote:

DOCSIS 3.1 on the Upstream should be available in a near future ( rumors is by the end of the year or maybe early next year). When it is implemented.. they should be able to bump the upload speed to match Bell.

I personally would do

1GB/100

500/100

150/30

and any lower tier 10

Let's hope Rogers CEO will take my message to consideration.

---

As much as appreciate the higher uploads you've suggested.  I don't think 500/100, compared to the price of Gigabit is justified.  Gigabit should be 1:1 to match the smaller service providers but unfortunately I don't believe that will happen, if it does, I surely hope that the price doesn't increase 10 fold.

With the implementation of DOCSIS 3.1 on upstream, it has a theoretical speed of 1-2 Gbps.  I truly would be surprised if  Gigabit users don't get at minimum 100 Mbps but hopefully it's symmetrical instead.

[JohnBeaudin]

@Earache

Symmetrical would be amazing and I am the first one who would enjoy this, however I don't expect Rogers to do such a move, because they tend to follow Bell mostly, and since Bell FTTH footprint is still  small, I really don't think the Big Red and Blue will offer Symmetrical speed any time soon, but I'd be happy with 100 instead of 20.

[coolspot]

I hope Rogers increases the upstream bandwidth as well... because in Today's world, 1GBps download nearly maxes out the upstream with ACK packets.

With more upstream, it should help smooth out downloads.

And like others have said, people are uploading video, using voip, and cloud storage more so than in the past and upstream is important for those apps.

[IanPStamp]

~800 dl on rogers servers, ~120 on Eastlink/Bell servers - does 1gb download even exist with Rogers?

My device is a wired PC that supports up to 1gb download. 

I switched to the 1gb package on Nov 22 2017 and I have yet to see speed test anywhere near 1gb download. I'm in St. John's NL, and when I run a test against the rogers server in Moncton NB, I can normally get between 4-700 mbps download on speedtest.net. On Rogers speedcheck, I'll get ~7-850. I understand  peak hours will affect speed tests but I have circumvented this by running tests outside of peak hours with the same results. The kicker is when I switch servers. On speed test.net, if I select an Eastlink server, or a Bell server, my download seems to cap around 120 mbps. Speedtest.net selects an "optimal server" when I first run a test. A live chat tech support rep said the optimal server is the closest server that supports fibre. The optimal server is always a Bell server in Halifax NS - this caps around 120.

I have had multiple phone calls, live chat sessions, facebook chat sessions and have had 4 appointments with technicians - none of which have offered a solution. The last tech said if the tests on Rogers speedcheck are between 7 & 800,  that's the best he can do as that is the benchmark. 

When I download a file, I can't easily choose what server I want to use. So my question to the community is this: Given the download speed seems to be capped well below 1gb on non-rogers servers, why am I paying for 1gb download? 

[wayner92]

I am on Rogers and have been so for over a decade although I may consider switching in the near future.  For along time Rogers had superior technology, at least in terms of download speeds, but that is now changing.  I believe the low upload speeds on Rogers are inherent in the architecture of their network.  

Bell does offer "small business internet" with symmetric speeds of 150/150, 300/300, 940/940. But you have to be in a FTTH area, which I am.

Can Rogers compete by that and start offering decent upload speeds in the near future?

[wayner92]

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@IanPStamp wrote:

~800 dl on rogers servers, ~120 on Eastlink/Bell servers - does 1gb download even exist with Rogers?

When I download a file, I can't easily choose what server I want to use. So my question to the community is this: Given the download speed seems to be capped well below 1gb on non-rogers servers, why am I paying for 1gb download? 

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So it appears to be that there isn't enough capacity into Newfoundland to get up to 1 Gbps - is that the case?  

Even for those of us who live in places like Toronto, we may get Speedtest results of close to 1Gbps but it isn't clear that you ever get anywhere near that when actually using the service, even when downloading large files. I have Rogers' 250/20 service and get Ookla Speedtest results of 325/22 but I rarely get anywhere near those d/l speeds when d/l'ing files.  I often FTP files from Europe and using a 50 segment FTP get and I can never get any better than 80 Mbps.  Apparently that is either due to interconnects between Rogers and Europe or limitations of FTP when you have a high latency network.

[Nick_W]

All this talk about download speeds is confusing. Your download speed depends on what the other ends maximum upload speed is divided by the number of people using that same server/link (some servers have multiple links, and some have bandwidth caps). Given that generally you don’t know what the servers upload speed is, or how many people are using it, there is no way to tell what real world download speed you will get.

The point of Gigabit download speed is to make sure that your download speed is not the bottleneck. It also allows multiple people (or processes on the same computer) to download at max speed (whatever it may be) - assuming they are not all downloading from the same server.

The only real way to tell if you are getting Gigabit download speeds, is to test against a Speedtest server (which generally has Gigabit upload speed ), is within the Rogers network, and is close by (ie a few kilometers). Rogers can’t control what happens outside their network, and servers more than a few km away (say on the mainland, or Europe, or another city) will be sharing bandwidth with everyone else in between.

If I test my download speed against the Rogers Speedtest server in my city, I get 950Mbps, but another server in a nearby city will give 750Mbps. That’s not Rogers fault. That’s just the way the internet works.

I would like to see faster upload speeds though, as 1000/30 is too much of an imbalance, and I do upload a lot to cloud backup services/teleconferencing/just stuff. 1000/100 would seem reasonable to me, seeing as I went from 250/20, to 1000/30, ie 4x download speed, but only a small increase on upload speed (relatively speaking).

This will be driven by marketing though, not technology. We will get what we demand, and Rogers will charge what they can get.

[gp-se]

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@Nick_W wrote:

All this talk about download speeds is confusing. Your download speed depends on what the other ends maximum upload speed is divided by the number of people using that same server/link (some servers have multiple links, and some have bandwidth caps). Given that generally you don’t know what the servers upload speed is, or how many people are using it, there is no way to tell what real world download speed you will get.

The point of Gigabit download speed is to make sure that your download speed is not the bottleneck. It also allows multiple people (or processes on the same computer) to download at max speed (whatever it may be) - assuming they are not all downloading from the same server.

The only real way to tell if you are getting Gigabit download speeds, is to test against a Speedtest server (which generally has Gigabit upload speed ), is within the Rogers network, and is close by (ie a few kilometers). Rogers can’t control what happens outside their network, and servers more than a few km away (say on the mainland, or Europe, or another city) will be sharing bandwidth with everyone else in between.

If I test my download speed against the Rogers Speedtest server in my city, I get 950Mbps, but another server in a nearby city will give 750Mbps. That’s not Rogers fault. That’s just the way the internet works.

I would like to see faster upload speeds though, as 1000/30 is too much of an imbalance, and I do upload a lot to cloud backup services/teleconferencing/just stuff. 1000/100 would seem reasonable to me, seeing as I went from 250/20, to 1000/30, ie 4x download speed, but only a small increase on upload speed (relatively speaking).

This will be driven by marketing though, not technology. We will get what we demand, and Rogers will charge what they can get.

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@Nick_W

I agree, I would love to see more upload speed, however DOCSIS is limited in upload compared to download bandwidth. Rogers is going to be launching DOCSIS 3.1 sometime this year which should help with upload bandwidth, I'm hoping for 1000/100.

[lethalsniper]

Will the upload running on docs 3.1 improve congestion issues and ping , lower latency?

[wayner92]

There are other options if fast upload matters a lot to you.  Bell offers a business service with symmetric speeds of 300 and 940 and it is about the same price as their "residential" service.  Hopefully Rogers offers something similar in the near future.

I haven't found congestion to be an issue with Rogers, not for years.  I have 250/20 service from Rogers but when using speedtest.net I consistently get speeds of 325/21.

[lethalsniper]

Congestion all depends on the area

[DeanLubaki]

Bell now has 1 Gbps / 940 Mbps speeds at my address. I'm really considering switching to Bell from Rogers.
I do not understand why the upload speeds max at 30 Mbps with Rogers when I have FTTH (the finer goes directly to my condo unit then is converted to cable).

This is nonsense.

[Datalink]

That fibre cable replaces the copper cable that usually runs from the CMTS to your modem.  It is literally a copper cable replacement, without affecting the CMTS or modem connecting ports. 

The upload rates over DOCSIS will increase over time.  The specification for Full Duplex (symmetrical) DOCSIS were completed last year, so, changing from the lower upload rates to high rate Full Duplex won't happen overnight. 

http://www.zdnet.com/article/cablelabs-completes-full-duplex-docsis-specs-for-1010gbps-cable-broadba...

As far as I'm aware, the only ISP that is testing upstream DOCSIS is Australia's National Broadband Network (NBN).  They're supposed to roll out Full Duplex later this year.  Rogers will also be rolling out upstream DOCSIS later this year.  I suspect that will remain limited in bandwidth, just a question of high fast the current spec DOCSIS 3.1 upstream can run.  I don't know if further changes are required to the modems or CMTS to support Full Duplex.  Note that the Full Duplex spec calls for 10 Gb/s download and upload, surpassing Bells 1 gig down and up. 

So, if you happen to live in an area that Bell has serviced with FTTH, congrats.  For the remaining 99.x % of Canada that doesn't have Bell's fibre installation, they will have to make due with DOCSIS, DSL, VDSL and others. 

[JohnBeaudin]

We are likely a year away from DOCIS 3.1 and about 4 to 5 years from FULL DOCSIS, we need to be patient with upload.

[DeanLubaki]

LOL 'we need to be patient' no! A lot of us live in buildings where Rogers provides Fiber DIRECTLY to the condo unit.
If Rogers is too unwilling to convert it to cable instead of benefiting from it, I am out.

[DeanLubaki]

Except no, a lot of people are deserved by FTTH now. Back in 2014 when I was in Québec City, most of the city already was desserved by FTTH. Bell is investing massively in the true future that is Fiber because nothing beats it.
Also, think of all the new recent constructions in cities like Toronto.

Bell might now give the fastest speeds to everyone, but at least when they do, it's solid.

My main point is that most of the new buildings have Rogers FTTH. But instead of using that, Rogers converts fiber to cable in every unit. Now that is a waste.
I do not care about all of you others who do not have FTTH. My point is, give the speeds to the FTTH customers with proper equipment. Simple.
Bell is able to provide VDSL to people that do not have FTTH, and true FTTH to people who do. So why can't Rogers give me true FTTH when it comes right up to my apartment? Why do I have to be in the same boat as those who don't have FTTH?

[Datalink]

Everyone who has that choice between Bell Fibre, Beanfield Fibre or Rogers / TPIA cable has to make his or her own choice.  Not going to debate the merits of fibre versus cable here.  That's already been done in other forums, over and over again.  

Consider the following points;

1.  Bell is cherry picking the market, servicing high density buildings in limited markets wherever they can.  Looks like you're in one of those buildings.  Congrats, you're in a competitive market.  For the rest of Canada, even VDSL (as you pointed out) isn't available.  Best I can do is 5 Mb/s down 600 K up with Bell, who keeps calling to advise me that its much much better that Rogers gigabit service.  Wonder what they're smoking these days?

2.  There are a good number of Bell Fibre users who absolutely hate the fibre fed Home Hub 2000 and 3000.  There is a thread on the DSLReports site that discusses the equipment and methods to get rid of the HH 3000.  Essentially the users partly disassemble the HH3000 and plug the fibre SFP into a fibre to coax converter and run ethernet to a router, essentially exactly the same as your current installation, convert a fibre feed into a coax feed.  End result, a much better router, with the customer picking the tab for both the fibre converter and router.

3.  As for why you're in the same boat.  Its most likely that Rogers doesn't have a fibre modem, just guessing on this one.  For the small number of Rogers customers that have fibre runs installed, running a conversion to cable means that Rogers doesn't have to supply and service yet another modem model, and train a large number of tech support staff to support an extremely small number of modems.  Very simply its a matter of cost.  That will probably change over time, but the current numbers probably drive the equipment decisions to where they currently reside. 

So, at the end of the day, if you find yourself in a competitive market, take full advantage of it if you can.  The choice is yours to make.