Comcast Introduces Ultra-Low Lag Internet Technology on Xfinity Service

Comcast has announced a new technology for ultra-low lag Internet on its Xfinity service, providing users with less delay in situations with bi-directional traffic. According to the company’s release, select products and software from its partners will experience reduced latency. The first wave of supported applications includes select games from Valve’s Steam platform, NVIDIA’s GeForce Now, select apps on mixed reality headsets from Meta, and FaceTime on Apple hardware.

Reducing Latency with the Internet Engineering Task Force’s L4S Open Standard

The reduction in latency comes from the Internet Engineering Task Force’s L4S open standard. The technology is complex, but in simple terms, it allows a packet traveling between your device and the server to report congestion on arrival, which can improve future packets’ journeys.

Initial Partners and Availability

A representative from Comcast told Engadget that the products from Apple, Meta, NVIDIA, and Valve are the first to support the tech because they were initial partners for testing this low-latency connectivity. Other developers can choose to take advantage of the open standard technology once Comcast has fully rolled out the low lag option and it will be available to all Xfinity customers. The first cities to receive the low latency tech include Atlanta, Chicago, Colorado Springs, Philadelphia, Rockville (Maryland), and San Francisco. Comcast plans to deploy to additional locations in the coming months.