Forum Discussion

GailWasiskiMile's avatar
4 years ago

Poor mbps every night

Every night when I try to connect my Roku I have 0 mbps connection.   And most days if I have 1 mpbs I am lucky.  I am sick and tired of this crap internet..but again have no choice because of where I live.  See attached screen shots.. and no..I am not going to run speedtest because it always seems to be fine..but as you can see..it is not.  Too bad I pay outrageous pricing for 50 gb I can never use at night for streaming 

..blah blah all the people are connected at night...whatever ..complaining done for now!

 

 

  • maratsade's avatar
    maratsade
    4 years ago

    Yikes. That's so frustrating, and since you get better speeds at other times, it sounds like it's just a whole bunch of people jumping on your beam at the same time and all wanting to stream something, thus overloading the system very rapidly.  Not sure anything can be done about that.... :(

  • Would someone care to explain to me how more people utilizing the down link would cause slow operation? Light travels at 186,000 miles per second and so do radio waves. When more people tune into a radio station it certainly does not decrease the speed. How about a technical expaination to what's going on here? I signed up for the basic service of 20 mbs DL, did a speed test and it seemed ok. Subsecquently signed up for the 50 mbs service, did a speed test and it was still 20 mbs. Did I just increase my bill for $100 for nothing????

    • GabeU's avatar
      GabeU
      Distinguished Professor IV

      n191cg wrote:

      Would someone care to explain to me how more people utilizing the down link would cause slow operation? Light travels at 186,000 miles per second and so do radio waves. When more people tune into a radio station it certainly does not decrease the speed. How about a technical expaination to what's going on here? I signed up for the basic service of 20 mbs DL, did a speed test and it seemed ok. Subsecquently signed up for the 50 mbs service, did a speed test and it was still 20 mbs. Did I just increase my bill for $100 for nothing????


      A radio station doesn't have a finite throughput.  It's broadcast and receivers pick it up.  Radio and satellite are very different.    

       

      Data, OTOH, is like water through a hose.  If you have a hose that has a maximum throughput of 10 gallons per minute, and then you divide that between ten people, they then only get 1 gallon per minute each each.  That's why the more people there are using the service, whether on a specific beam, a specific gateway or the service as a whole, it slows down.  The satellite has a finite amount of throughput.  It gets divided between gateways, which gets divided between beams, which gets divided between users.  Even satellites for satellite radio, like SiriusXM, have a finite throughput, though the bandwidth needed to provide satellite radio to someone is minuscule in comparison to internet, so their satellites can easily handle all connected users streaming radio at the same time without any issues.  

       

      As for your upgrade, you're mistaking data with speed.  You signed up for more data per month, not more speed.  That is unless you upgraded from Gen4 or a legacy plan to Gen5.  However, with the exception of those living in Alaska, if you signed up for HughesNet within the last four years, you already had Gen5.  All Gen5 plans offer the same speed.  25Mbps down and 3Mbps up, though in practice, as explained above, the actual speeds can vary.  It sounds like you upgraded from the 20GB plan to the 50GB plan.  That's 50GB of Service Plan Data vs 20GB of Service Plan Data per month.  All Gen5 plans also come with 50GB of Bonus Zone data (2AM to 8AM).

      • n191cg's avatar
        n191cg
        Freshman

        Thanks ever so much for the most eloquent and informative explanation. So the next question is, why did we go to so much trouble to launch a satellite that would not fulfill the needs of it’s user’s? And the next question is, what do we do now?

  • maratsade's avatar
    maratsade
    Distinguished Professor IV

    You had found a workaround by installing a router and it seemed to be working for you. I guess that didn't last long, or was there always a problem in the evening?

    • GailWasiskiMile's avatar
      GailWasiskiMile
      Sophomore

      And yes..it has always been a problem in the evening..from 5 pm on..I mean if I even had connection at 2 mbps..things would work.

    • GailWasiskiMile's avatar
      GailWasiskiMile
      Sophomore

      Yep. It worked ok for a while. Now this morning I am connected at 1 mbps.  How am I supposed to download..update..during free hours? For about a month..I would be connected at anywhere from 10 to 20 mbps..but not any longer.  Just very frustrated that it takes this much work to stream anything.

      • maratsade's avatar
        maratsade
        Distinguished Professor IV

        Sympathies re the frustration. That's no fun at all. And sorry to hear your workaround stopped working. 

         

        Since some of this is a new issue, though, it might be worth your while to describe the issue in the tech support area -- maybe remote diagnostics from the mods might reveal something such as a misalignment or something like that? 

         

        Forgive the stupid question, but, have you rebooted everything?  Sometimes rebooting the modem puts you on a clearer channel and that improves things.