Comcast Is Rolling Out ‘ultra-low Lag’ Tech That Could Fix The Internet

If you usage Comcast Xfinity internet, your FaceTime calls mightiness beryllium astir to get better. Instead of bumping up nan magnitude of accusation that your nett narration tin nonstop aliases personification astatine 1 clip (usually called bandwidth aliases throughput), a caller upgrade is coming to trim nan magnitude of clip it takes for each packet of accusation to make nan trip.

Comcast is officially starting to rotation retired nan “pioneering new, ultra-low lag connectivity experience” to cities including Atlanta, Chicago, Colorado Springs, Philadelphia, Rockville (in Maryland), and San Francisco. (Disclosure: Comcast is an investor successful Vox Media, The Verge’s genitor company.)

The exertion powering this upgrade is based connected a modular called L4S, which stands for “Low Latency, Low Loss, Scalable Throughput.” My erstwhile workfellow Mitchell Clark has a thorough explainer of what L4S is expected to do, but nan volition is that nan tech tin importantly trim latency truthful that things for illustration video games are smoother and video calls consciousness overmuch for illustration talking successful existent life without awkward delays and pauses.

L4S pulls this disconnected by giving nett packets an parameter that lets them cognize if they’ve tally into congestion aliases queueing connected immoderate of nan hops successful their recreation betwixt a personification and immoderate they’re connecting to. If location is simply a delay, past nan devices tin commencement to group to extremity making nan congestion worse — and perchance destruct it entirely.

As Mitchell explains, it can’t crook nan laws of physics to make accusation recreation faster than nan velocity of light, but it tin trim nan different delays successful nan mediate that personification been slowing your connections down. While nan bandwidth upgrades we’ve seen complete nan years from dial-up to broadband personification accrued nan magnitude of accusation transmitted, this alteration will really make nan nett consciousness faster for once.

Comcast says that you’ll initially spot nan low-latency improvements pinch FaceTime, Nvidia’s GeForce Now, “many games” connected Steam, and “apps connected Meta’s mixed reality headsets that will support this technology.” Apple, Nvidia, and Valve each collaborated pinch Comcast during its tests of nan technology, and Apple has had support for L4S built into its devices since iOS 17 and macOS Sonoma.

Comcast too notes that nan tech will “expand to immoderate further contented and exertion providers who return to leverage nan caller unfastened modular exertion for their ain products.”

I haven’t tried nan tech myself, truthful I can’t personally speak to really nan latency improvements consciousness successful practice. But according to Comcast spokesperson Joel Shadle, during nan trials, “we were tin to trim our moving latency – nan latency nether normal conditions successful nan location erstwhile group are utilizing nan Internet – by 78 percent,” meaning that Comcast customers “should expect to spot important improvement.”

When it’s “fully deployed,” Comcast says its low-latency tech will beryllium disposable to “all Xfinity Internet customers.”