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So your local internet service provider promised you blazing fast internet,

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and while they've delivered in the sense that you have no issues streaming all the 4k

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Netflix you want, you're still waiting around seemingly forever when you have to upload a video

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or a photo. So why is it that upload and download speeds are often so different, like, you know,

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driving in the reverse direction during rush hour? So it's like this, visualize the internet

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connection coming into your house as a pipe that's only so wide. In other words, there's a limit to

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how much data it can carry at one time. Your ISP sections off the pipe to accommodate different

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services. For example, if you have a DSL connection, part of the pipe will be reserved for phone service,

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while another part is dedicated to internet data. And if you have cable or fiber, that same pipe

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might also be carrying a cable TV signal. You can learn much more about that right up here,

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but the gist of it is that service providers pull this off by using different frequencies

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for each type of data so that your Apple Music Stream doesn't conflict with your

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Charlie Brown Christmas special that you're watching on cable. And because the pipe can only

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let so much data through at once, your provider has to make decisions about how much of it to

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dedicate to each service. And in the case of internet, that section of the pipe actually

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gets further divided into upstream and downstream data. But even though there's only so much space

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in the pipe, it's not like the providers out there are hurting for bandwidth. For example,

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let's say that your internet signal comes over a plain old copper cable, a relatively new standard

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called DOCSIS 3.1, which is a revision of the base DOCSIS standard that allows a broadband

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connection over old school cable TV pipes supports up to 10 gigabits per second downstream

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and 1 gigabit per second upstream by packing more data into each frequency. So there's clearly

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plenty of headroom in that old copper wire. So why the slow upload speeds? Well, when home

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internet first started becoming widespread in the mid 1990s, user-generated content like the photos

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and videos that we're constantly sharing on Facebook or Google Drive or Bumble, well, they

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weren't really a thing. And you're probably mostly sitting there looking through GeoCities pages on

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Internet Explorer 3.0. So at most, you were maybe uploading small JPEGs as email attachments.

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And the idea that we are downloading far more than we're uploading has stuck around to this very

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day. And that's actually still true to a great extent. You might watch plenty of 4k videos on

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Amazon Prime, but how many of you are uploading 4k video to social media? Probably not nearly as

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many. So while internet providers do allocate more bandwidth to upload these days, 10 or 20 megabits

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per second is pretty common right now, it's still quite a lot slower than the accompanying

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download speeds, which are increasingly pushing into the triple digit range, sometimes even on

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lower priced plans. So when you've got multiple devices attempting to upload data at the same time,

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you can quickly saturate such an upstream connection. But that doesn't mean things will

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stay that way forever. As customers increasingly demand a fat upstream pipe for high-res video calls,

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streaming their video games and uploading files to cloud storage, ISPs are taking notice. And the

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new DOCSIS 4.0 standard supports 10 gigabits per second, both up and down. Also, many fiber to the

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home connections offer symmetric connections already by default, where just as much of the pipe is

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dedicated to uploads as it is to downloads. It's also easier for the fiber providers to do this

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because light can carry so much data over a distance than copper. You can find out more about that in

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this video. So hopefully no matter where you're getting service, you won't have to wait too

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much longer for a better upstream connection than that kid who's trying to climb up the down escalator

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at the mall. So thanks for watching guys. Like, dislike, leave a comment. If you have a suggestion

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for a future Fast as Possible, don't forget to check out one of our other videos. We make lots

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and lots of videos around here. I promise at least some of them are good.