Forum Discussion
Buffering!
The WiFi itself is how the satellite internet is delivered to your devices and is completely independent upon satellite latency and speed. Depending upon the protocol used, your WiFi signal may use multiple channels to widen the available bandwidth from 20MHz, up to 80MHz. The only way this can be impeded is if you have one or more neighbors whose personal WiFi may be using one (or more) of those channels, therefore interfering with it and creating a problem with your local WiFi usage. Usually, WiFi systems will analyze the local environment and pick the first unused set of available channels, but there are WiFi channel scanners for computers that can detect them as well.
Regarding the latency values in speed tests: You shouldn't put any faith in them, primarily because of the way satellite internet works. The latency tests weren't designed for the inherent latency that occurs due to the sheer distances involved, nor the additional effects of beam and gateway loading from high intensity of pings that result from server-intense activities such as streaming. The results would be all over the place at any given time. The only credible latency test that should be used is the one provided in the System Control Center's Connectivity Test, which provides an accurate assessment of the latency between your computer and your particular ground station (Wyoming) that includes radio signal latency as well as any processing delays due to user congestion. Given that, any additional latency from the internet backbone, that the ground station is connected to, is negligible for all intents and purposes (basically milliseconds as compared to 600+ milliseconds).
Thanks for the great explanations. You knowledge of this is impressive. Perhaps you can explain
why it I get so-so streaming between 12pm and 4-5pm, then unusable streaming from 5ish to 11-12
and then so-so streaming again? I have plenty of data tokens, so shouldn't be throttled for that reason.
This is why I was thinking congestion was the problem.
Could the 'beam' distribution you mentioned above be the problem?
It is congestion: Other people are trying to stream at the same time, which is pounding the **bleep** out of the ground station. It doesn't take much to disrupt one person streaming, and it doesn't take too many people trying to stream to disrupt a ground station. Streaming is a very ping-intensive operation and the inherent latency impacts the timing required. It just gets exponentially worse as more people are banging away at constantly eroding time windows until the system just becomes unresponsive.
Thanks for the quick response, so if I understand correctly, the problem is that HughesNet has too many customers per ground station. Since they'll never limit the amount of customers, they should add more ground stations.
Is there anyway to tell what ground station I'm using and the number of users hitting it?I'm assuming snice you know these facts that HughesNet does also. If there are any HughesNet reps out there
what are you doing to remedy this situation?"too many customers per ground station" - not necessarily the case. Too many customers doing server-intensive things simultaneously on a particular ground station's IP gateway is more accurate. A better analogy is everyone on the eastern seaboard turning on their air conditioning at full bore at the same time on the hottest day of the year until the grid collapses. Or more commonly, if you've ever seen your non-filament bulbs dim, it's your power company drawing down to accommodate the load. The grid was designed for that many people using electricity, just not that much of a spike at one given time. There is no remedy, per se, you just wait until the surge subsides. You also can't add more ground stations, because you would also have to add and aim more downlinks from the satellite to those additional ground stations (there are currently 17 of them), not to mention having to construct/procure the facilities to house them. You would also have to add beams to the current suite of 97 beams currently covering the country, then re-map all of them so it covers each area equitably. But this point is moot: The current capacity is the capacity. You can't just roll a repair truck into space to add new spot beams and ground station downlinks from what currently exists.
"Is there anyway to tell what ground station I'm using" - The ground station you're on is encoded in the IP gateway you're associated with. It's normally in the format J2xxxyyyHNSIGWzzzz, where xxx is the ground station location ID, yyy is the spot beam ID (for your general location), and zzzz is the particular IP gateway ID that you're currently associated with. You can find it on this page under Association Status. There's no way for you to know how many are loading your IP gateway, but if you feel it's being too sluggish you can try to re-associate to another less congested one by rebooting your modem (as I previously mentioned). The system will then attempt to pick the least congested IPGW available and put you on it.
For reference, regarding the streaming, you might want to look into PlayOn Cloud. It plays and records your chosen item on a 'cloud' based DVR, converts it to an mp4 file, then sends you a link so you can download it, whether manually, automatically or by scheduling, and then you can watch it on anything you have that can play mp4s, including Smart TVs. It doesn't work with all streaming services, but it supports most of the big ones.
Though it's not the same as streaming, it gets around the buffering, uses less of your data, and you can keep what you download forever, watching it anytime and however many times you want. maratsade and I both use it, and I've built up quite a library over the last few years. A library of hundreds of movies and TV shows. So many that I have an 8TB USB external HDD nearly 60% filled so far, which I keep connected to my TV.
It's just an idea, but compared to streaming the movies or TV shows you really want to watch it ends up being worth it.
Thanks for the info. I'll definitely look into it. How much of the cost will HughesNet cover, since it's needed because of
their poor service? (Just kidding, they'd probably charge extra if they found out)
