If you live in Atlanta, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Colorado Springs or Rockville (Maryland), comcast might have given you a sneak highlight on the Internet of the future. In collaboration with Apple, Meta, Nvidia and Valve, the service provider is currently using a new open standard called “L4S”, who is trying to reduce the LAG online and make game and video calls much smoother.
What is L4S?
In short, L4S for “low latency, low loss, scalable throughput” wants to feel this internet faster – not by increasing the bandwidth, but more efficiently.
Your Internet service provider or ISP currently sends data to you in the form of packages. These are small chunks of information that have to be in poorer scenarios to find themselves on their way to them. L4S adds packages that are currently in a queue, so that the network can tackle overload and may end it.
Essentially, it is the idea of clarifying the streets for your internet traffic so that it doesn’t take that long to get to or from your house. This should make video chats sit on a coffee table with someone, or how to play with your teammate much more like sharing a couch. In A Statement to Lifehacker Sister Publication CnetComCast said that the L4S tests reduce a worklatency by 78%.
How do you use L4S?
L4S is open source, so comcast has no special rights, but in fact it still includes a number of large companies to agree to the slow rollout, and therefore comcast is the first to really implement it.
The biggest problem with L4S is that App developers have to support it alongside Internet service providers. This means that the version of Comcast begins with just a few applications -L4S now work with Facetime, Nvidia GeForce and supported apps for meta -quest headsets and for Steam. The latter two companies have not yet published a list of apps or games with L4S, but if they are next Counterstrike 2 Match feels smooth, that would be the reason.
What are the restrictions of L4S?
In a non -profit step, the company says that L4S is available “all XFinity internet customers”, but that does not mean that there are no potential hiccups here. The internet is a two-way road (billion-dollar path, really), and sometimes the chain is only as strong as the weakest limb.
For example, if you have a Facetime call with grandma and live grandma in rural Indiana and uses DSL (no personal experience that inspires this example, I promise), no technical magic will make your connection better at the end.
Similarly, playing a game together with teammates who have no L4S means that they are delivered which player is selected to host the match.
It is still early, but among people who use comcast broadband in the test cities listed above, their interactions may become much more smooth. Comcast indicates Use L4S with the 5G network of the former. It is an optional bonus for the time being, but the more people take over L4 than the norm, the more the Internet becomes more smooth for everyone.
