Rogers Seems To Be Rolling Out DOCSIS 3.1 To Customers
It appears that Rogers may have swapped enough modems, though that modem swap has been shown to be problematic, to warrant the start of their DOCSIS 3.1 rollout. This rollout as I’ve noted before will allow Rogers to provide up to 10Gbps speeds downstream to their customers. If you want to figure out if you have DOCSIS 3.1 enabled, here’s how you do it as it’s really easy. All you need to do is read the LEDs on the modem.
It’s hard to tell the color difference in the photo. And to be frank the difference is very, very slight. But the second LED from the top which is the downstream channel is the one you’re interested in at present. Here’s what the LEDs mean:
GREEN: DOCSIS connected.
BLUE: DOCSIS 3.0 multiple channels connected
LIGHT PURPLE: DOCSIS 3.1 connected
So in my case, the LED in question is light purple. That confirms that DOCSIS 3.1 is live on the downstream channel. I also note that the third LED from the top which is the upstream channel is blue. That confirms that DOCSIS 3.0 is still active outbound. I am guessing that it will be enabled by Rogers at some point. Now what difference does this make? Here’s what I was getting before DOCSIS 3.1 at the modem over Ethernet:
This is what I am now getting from my router (not the Rogers modem):
It is significantly faster downstream. Given that I am taking this speedtest from behind the Rogers modem, that’s impressive. Clearly DOCSIS 3.1 makes a difference. But not everything is perfect. I am noticing lag when I play online games that was not present before DOCSIS 3.1 was enabled. Clearly Rogers still has issues that it has to get sorted. But according to my sources inside Rogers, I am doing better than some people who have had severe speed drops when Rogers enabled DOCSIS 3.1.
I will continue to monitor things to see when they implement DOCSIS 3.1 on my upstream connection, as well as see if my lag issues disappear. I will also continue to work my sources within Rogers for any additional infomation.
February 2, 2017 at 11:23 pm
I’m sorry, but I don’t see the ‘significant’ speed difference in your pictures. The speed went from 916Mb/s to 949Mb/s…. hmmm. That’s a 4% increase. Not that much but then your increase alone of 33 Mb/s is 20 times the speed of my Internet connection of 1.66 Mb/s I have with Xplornet in Ottawa (That’s my only ISP choice where I live)….
February 3, 2017 at 8:26 am
Apologies for not being clear. It is significant because it is highly unusual for DOCSIS based Internet to have any sort of increase due to an infrastructure change once you hit 90% + of whatever bandwidth you are paying for. That implies that at least with me, Rogers has some room to play with in terms of actually coming close to providing Gigabit speeds. Another data point is that Bell via Fibe Gigabit (assuming that you have their FTTH service) routinely gets faster than Gigabit speeds. That brings Rogers closer to them. Now if they can sort out their issues so that everyone sees what I am seeing consistently, then Rogers might be onto something.
February 23, 2017 at 11:16 pm
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February 28, 2017 at 2:46 pm
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March 16, 2017 at 8:48 am
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April 9, 2018 at 9:58 am
[…] is in the process of rolling out DOCSIS 3.1 across their network (at present they have DOCSIS 3.1 enabled on the downstream part of their Internet connections, but not on the upstream part of their Internet connections), that means that they’re capped […]
August 21, 2020 at 3:56 pm
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September 22, 2020 at 1:04 pm
Do you have OFDMA signals for the return path? If so what are the power levels compared to to the QAM 64?
September 22, 2020 at 4:41 pm
I recently did an update to this story here: https://itnerd.blog/2020/08/21/rogers-is-upgrading-their-internet-service-heres-what-i-think-they-are-doing/
Does it have what you are looking for? If not, I’ll see if I can get it for you.
May 4, 2023 at 12:36 pm
[…] in the process of rolling out DOCSIS 3.1 across their network (at present they have DOCSIS 3.1 enabled on the downstream part of their Internet connections, but not on the upstream part of their Internet connections), that means that they’re capped […]