Comcast has announced a new technology for ultra-low latency internet on its Xfinity service. According to the company’s press release, users of certain products and software from its partners will experience lower delays in situations with bi-directional traffic. The first wave of supported applications includes some games from Valve’s Steam platform, GeForce Now from NVIDIA, some applications on mixed reality headsets from Meta, and FaceTime on Apple hardware.
Delays are reduced thanks to the open L4S standard from the Internet Engineering Task Force. The technology is complicated – here’s a whitepaper on L4S if you’re interested – but in general, if a packet traveling between your device and a server experiences congestion, it will report it upon arrival, which can improve future packet travel.
A Comcast spokesperson said that Apple, Meta, NVIDIA, and Valve products were the first to support this technology, as they were the first partners in testing this low-latency connection. Other developers will be able to take advantage of the open standard technology once Comcast fully rolls out the low-latency option, at which point it will be available to all Xfinity customers. Atlanta, Chicago, Colorado Springs, Philadelphia, Rockville (Maryland), and San Francisco are among the first cities to receive low latency technology. In a press release, Comcast said it plans to roll out the technology to other cities in the coming months.
