If you use Comcast Xfinity internet, your FaceTime calls might be about to get better. Instead of bumping up the amount of data that your internet connection can send or receive at one time (usually called bandwidth or throughput), a new upgrade is coming to reduce the amount of time it takes for each packet of information to make the trip.<\/p>\n
Comcast is officially starting to roll out the \u201cpioneering new, ultra-low lag connectivity experience\u201d to cities including Atlanta, Chicago, Colorado Springs, Philadelphia, Rockville (in Maryland), and San Francisco. (Disclosure: Comcast is an investor in Vox Media, The Verge\u2019s parent company.)<\/p>\n
The technology powering this upgrade is based on a standard called L4S<\/a>, which stands for \u201cLow Latency, Low Loss, Scalable Throughput.\u201d My former colleague Mitchell Clark has a thorough explainer<\/a> of what L4S is supposed to do, but the intention is that the tech can significantly reduce latency so that things like video games are smoother and video calls feel more like talking in real life without awkward delays and pauses.<\/p>\n L4S pulls this off by giving internet packets an indicator that lets them know if they\u2019ve run into congestion or queueing along any of the hops in their trip between a user and whatever they\u2019re connecting to. If there is a delay, then the devices can start to adjust to stop making the congestion worse \u2014 and possibly eliminate it entirely.<\/p>\n As Mitchell explains, it can\u2019t bend the laws of physics to make data travel faster than the speed of light, but it can reduce the extra delays in the middle that have been slowing your connections down. While the bandwidth upgrades we\u2019ve seen over the years from dial-up to broadband have increased the amount of information transmitted, this change will actually make the internet feel faster for once.<\/p>\n