The Importance of Low Latency for Future Home Services

Network latency can frustrate users of delay sensitive applications, causing gaming lag, video buffering, and AR/VR experiences that are far from realistic. Low Latency DOCSIS (LLD) creates a fast lane for delay sensitive traffic that can significantly reduce latency and jitter—and it’s available today. In this blog, Charles Cheevers explains the importance of LLD to service providers and their customers.

Gaming - Low Latency DOCSIS Solution - hero500x281Pure top line broadband speed is no longer enough to connect to the wide world of services that we rely on. We need to have our services delivered with the right latency (delay in the network) and jitter (fluctuation in latency) that they need to optimize the consumer experience and the overall network itself.

 

CLICK TO TWEET: CommScope’s Charles Cheevers explains the importance of low latency for future home services. 

To get ready for this there has been foundational work done in areas like Low Latency DOCSIS (LLD) and in Wi-Fi (QoS, new Wi-Fi 6 MAC with scheduling and 6GHz spectrum). This now enables us to re-imagine access networks and home networking to control the quality of experience of every service all the way to the end application in the device. Instead of thinking of our network as one big pipe, we now want to realize it as highly controlled individual service streams with speed, latency, and jitter optimized for the individual application.

At CommScope we are already adding LLD to our overall solutions on our CMTS and gateways as well as extending those services into the Wi-Fi domain with more quality control than ever before. We can now look forward to coupling DOCSIS 3.1 and 4.0 solutions to new 6GHz spectrum, and to creating determinism of managed delivery of a service through an operator’s network to levels of single digit milliseconds. This new platform will enable the service provider to:

  • Reduce customer call issues with more inherent quality control and improved user experience
  • Add new value applications like cloud gaming
  • Provide reliable working from home video conferencing
  • Create the reliability for software virtualization for home services
  • Provide new immersive AR/VR solutions that require stringent latency and jitter requirements for a good user experience.

During the 2021 SCTE-ISBE Cable-Tec Expo, we partnered with Charter to visualize the importance of these new low latency and application aware services during the General Session. We showcased the power of our networks today and the experiences they will enable tomorrow. I encourage you to learn more about the potential of changing the connectivity paradigm with LLD and Wi-Fi, and service-aware networks.

I also recommend you discover how CommScope is providing service providers with a competitive advantage from an end-to-end LLD solution that is available today.

CommScope’s LLD DOCSIS

LLD Interactive Infographic

LLD Video