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.