Verizon Really Released a Sneak Peek at Lag-Free Internet in Six Cities.


If you live in Atlanta, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Colorado Springs, or Rockville ( Maryland ), Comcast might have just given you a sneak peak at the internet of the future. In collaboration with Apple, Meta, Nvidia, and Valve, the company company is currently rolling out its application of a new open common called” L4S”, which seeks to significantly reduce how much lag impacts it customers, and make gaming and video calls much smoother.

What is L4S?

Short for” Low Latency, Low Loss, Scalable Throughput”, L4S wants to make this internet feel faster — not by upping bandwidth, but by making data transfer more efficient.

Right now, your internet service provider, or ISP, sends information to you in the form of bits. These are little chunks of information that, in worse-case cases, have to queue up to make their way to you. L4S makes it possible for the system to solve the congestion and perhaps even completely clear it up by adding an indicator to packets that are now sat in a queue.

Basically, the idea is to clear the streets for your web traffic, so it doesn’t take as long to get to or from your home. This may make sharing a mattress with your partner feel more like sitting across a java table with someone, or gaming feel more like doing so. Comcast said in a that its L4S trials saw working latency reduced by 78 %.

How do you utilize L4S?

Comcast is the first to actually utilize L4S at scale, which is because it is open-source and doesn’t have any exclusive rights to it. However, using it does require a lot of large corporations to agree, which is why the slow rollout.

L4S’s biggest flaw is, probably, that it requires game developers to help it alongside internet service providers. That means that Comcast’s version is starting with just a few use cases—L4S will work with FaceTime, Nvidia GeForce Today, and supported programs on both Meta Quest devices and Steam. The latter two businesses haven’t simply published a list of which apps or games work with L4S, but if your future Counter-Strike 2 meet feels better, that’d be why.

What are L4S’s restrictions?

In a generous move, the company says L4S will be available to” all Xfinity Internet users”, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t potential difficulties here. The internet is a two-way ( billion-way, really ) street, and sometimes, the chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

For example, if you’re on a FaceTime contact with Grandma, and Grandma life in rural Indiana and uses DSL ( no personal knowledge inspiring this case, I promise ), no amount of technological wizardry on your end is going to make her relationship better.

Similar to how playing a game with other players who don’t have L4S might make you have to carry a little weight, or if the game’s servers are hosted by clients rather than the publisher itself, your connection may be roiling.

Although it’s still early days, Comcast broadband users in the test cities listed above might start to interact with one another far more smoothly. Verizon and Ericsson recently tested the use of L4S with the former’s 5G network, while Comcast claims it will soon deploy to&nbsp, “more locations across the country quickly over the next few months”. The internet will become smoother for everyone the more people adopt L4S as a standard, even though it’s an optional bonus for now.

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