BajaNomad

Slow speeds on internet satellite system

Bronco - 4-17-2008 at 05:39 PM

We changed from an Earthlink system that became the ultimate in slow upload and download speeds. Our upgraded HughesNet 7000s is now exhibiting similar characteristics. We have had 8 months without problems and it seems like BOHICA. Any geeks or wizards with advice are appreciated.

Bronco

DENNIS - 4-17-2008 at 05:50 PM

I'm not an expert..I'm a victim. I have Starband for reasons that make no sense because I have options. I'll soon be moving into my new house and when I do, I'll get a phone and DSL. Then, I'll gather up all of the Starband gear and put it out in the street and run over it, and over it, and over it with my big diesel truck. Until that moment, I double the dosage of my anti-depressants.

Russ - 4-17-2008 at 06:28 PM

Hughes Has a Fair Access Policy (FAP) If your upload & down load exceed the limit of your service level it becomes service slower than a phone connection. Very frustrating! Hughes is very slow to begin with but better than no service.

Had a 6000 for 4 years --

beercan - 4-17-2008 at 08:32 PM

98% of the time I am running 600+ down and 140 + up --

Had a friend who's service slowed to a crawl and he spent many daze on the phone and fighting with them --they finally moved him to another transponder and problem solved !!!

It is a lot better than nothing !!

bajabound2005 - 4-17-2008 at 08:49 PM

We were pretty darn happy with our Starband system when we had no options; but those options just arrived where we live so we switched over to Telnor's DSL (which is NOT without it's issues!!!) just this week! But I will say that Starband's customer service was and still is NON-existent and the monthly premium is high. But when there are no options, worth is all!

Bob and Susan - 4-18-2008 at 06:08 AM

we too have hugesNet 7000s...

works great considering we are in a location without ANY services

we've been "FAPed" but that was our falut...
too much downloading in one day

we did have the "radio" on the dish rot out but Losfrailes insalled amother...no down time

the SAT you are on may be incorrect for your area...
just because it works doesn't mean you have the best SAT...
some are in the WRONG location

just last week we slowed in the morning...
i just rebooted the modem and corrected that...
it hadn't been rebooted for about 4 months on 24-7

Pescador - 4-18-2008 at 07:32 AM

I have the Hughes 7000 both in Mexico and home in Colorado and the only time I experience slow downloads is when I got carried away and dowloaded too much music and stuff and they cut me back.
Los Frailes set up my system and he is the master at that process. If you are anywhere near Santa Rosalia, you might want him to check your system and aiming. You can also upgrade to pro which will increase speeds.

bajadock - 4-18-2008 at 07:45 AM

Plug here for nomad Bajabus, aka Max.
www.orbitalenterprises.net

Starband satellite internet through Max is not been without challenges. But, he has spent enough time with me to earn a load of beverages and that has been gaining interest. I'd suggest that you either need to be a mini-geek or have a solid local geek to pay for your internet satellite support.

Per BB05, if your choice is a neighbor- tested DSL v. satellite, DSL wins. But, if you are remote, check out orbital enterprise website for Starband v. Hughes comparison.

Hughes slowing

MrBillM - 4-18-2008 at 08:41 AM

In my experience, In the last few days (mid-late afternoons) the Hughesnet system has had a few fairly brief slowdown periods. It's happened before on occasion, but usually doesn't last for any amount of time. In most cases, the error messages indicated it was a network problem and, usually, the status indicator "dot" on 192.168.0.1 was off-color indicating a system degradation.

I'm on SatMex 5 and have never had an occasion of exceeding the FAP.

losfrailes - 4-18-2008 at 08:46 AM

Bronco,
double click on this http://customercare.myhughesnet.com/frm_usage.cfm

Then enter your site ID, click submit, then scroll downwards. If you encounter the word 'YES' under the column 'Subject to FAP', you have downloaded more than your Fair Share of information. FAP stands for Fair Access Policy and it is meant to chastize those who use more than 'their fair share of the bandwidth'.

If there is no occurrence of 'YES' then you can run the speed test and see what your system is doing.

It is located at http://satspeedtest.hughesnet.com/cgi/launch2.cgi
Once again, enter your Site ID and let it run. Depending on which program of Hughes you are paying for, you will find both your download and upload speeds.

System Errors

MrBillM - 4-18-2008 at 08:54 AM

I just ran into a period (less than a minute) of repeated 506 errors. An irritation, but nothing more except the few occasions where it lasts for while.

Lindalou - 4-18-2008 at 10:56 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by DENNIS
I'm not an expert..I'm a victim. I have Starband for reasons that make no sense because I have options. I'll soon be moving into my new house and when I do, I'll get a phone and DSL. Then, I'll gather up all of the Starband gear and put it out in the street and run over it, and over it, and over it with my big diesel truck. Until that moment, I double the dosage of my anti-depressants.
Dennis is there some way you can be on my modem and we could split the cost? Then you wouldn't have to have the phone. When we were in Santispac we were using our neighbors (several houses away) and it worked fine. She came over and put some numbers into my computer that were on her modem.

Lauriboats - 4-18-2008 at 11:36 AM

We have the hughes 7000 and have not experienced any problems at all. We are on the new satmex 6. As I understand it there are not as many people connected to it, so maybe that is the reason. Of course, I don't get really carried away with my downloads either.

Ford - 4-22-2008 at 09:35 PM

We had a problem at our house where people that were staying at the house had Iphones that were logging on to our unlocked wireless router and slowing our service to a crawl. We didn't realize what was happening and found out that we have other options. Someone in Zacatitos sends us a signal via a repeater... Alas a service that we can use Vonage on!!! What a concept we now have phones that work. Most of the time:P.... Slim is not one of the richest men in the world cause he provides the most reliable service in MX....

Klondike_Kid - 6-22-2008 at 12:57 PM

With respect to Sat dish Internet access and slowdowns: There is a "sleeper" cause of hitting Fair Access Policy limits that most folks may not be aware of. This may affect a number of Nomads with static dish setups.

The larger the dish, the stronger the reception of the signal from the satellite. Many folks opt for the .74 meter dish as an entry level service instead of going with a .98 or 1.2 meter dish. Larger dishes also allow for being "off" slightly on your satellite targeting and still receive the signal.

Dish owners should make sure vegetation, tree branches, even just a few leaves, have not grown into the line of sight. With such a weak signal just about anything will affect it at the receiver, even a layer of dust on the dish or receiver module. Second, especially with the smaller dish, targeting dead on is a must. The slightest misalignment will lead to the "sleeper problem."

Computers at both ends talk to each other constantly in addition to serving your requests for browser pages. This is typically called "handshaking" and is a method to insure anything sent in either direction is received in FULL. Comp #1 says "I'm sending 256 bytes and here it is. Comp #2 says "I received 256 bytes, send some more." C#1: Sending 256 bytes, here it is. C#2: Whoa, only received 215 bytes. Please RESEND the last packet.

Therein lies the rub. If you have a poor signal (from misalignment or weather) the process of REsending that data impacts you the customer two ways. #1) Its appears as a slowdown when loading pages on your browser. #2) It is prematurally causing your Fair Access Policy limit to be reached much sooner than a clear, strong, straight forward transmission of data with no resends. When you are having data resent, that too counts towards your downloading limit that activates FAP. So a single web page set of files can count as double your data sent if it had to resend all the info, not to mention you waiting for all the packets to be received with no errors.

Keep your dish clean, and locked dead on. Moving up to a .98 meter dish will make a big improvement too and offer faster speeds although accounts may be pricier at that size. I know they are for the mobile rigs I'm looking at installing on my camper roof.