Forum Discussion

John73John's avatar
John73John
Freshman
5 years ago

Are uploads supposed to affect download speed?

I've had Hughes for several years now and so far I've been pretty happy with it.   I'm trying to upload a 4GB video file to YouTube. This is the first time I've done a large upload. I noticed that ...
Data Management
Performance
  • GabeU's avatar
    GabeU
    5 years ago

    John73John 

     

    HughesNet has implemented a prioritization policy that, while favoring work and schooling related activities, is de-prioritizing streaming/video and certain types of downloads (and likely uploads of the same type).   

     

    Though I don't know exactly what the system does when it identifies a video signature, or that of a video site, it may very well be that when the system is detecting your upload, and especially to a site like Youtube, it's de-prioritizing everything done through your service while that upload is happening.  i.e. both upload AND download.  Like throttling, if you will, though as a result of the file type and/or site.

     

    That's just a guess, but with the policy that's currently in place, that may be what's happening.  And, if this is what's happening, it's unlikely that there is any way to address it. 

C0RR0SIVE's avatar
C0RR0SIVE
Associate Professor

It can, depending on protocol in use.  Some protocols require your computer to say, "Ok, I got that bit of data, send me some more."  Or, "Sorry, but that chunk doesn't look right, I need you to resend it, but these other chunks look fine".

If you ever log and look at upload/download bandwidth over a period of time, and initiate a large download, you will see your upload also increase ever so slightly.  A good example is from a graph below, green is download rate, blue is upload rate.  You can see that the blue has a small increase when the green has a large one.

 

In theory, if you are getting maximum upload speeds, or are on a heavily congested beam, when uploading, it can cause the issue you are seeing in particular.

John73John's avatar
John73John
Freshman
5 years ago

This sounds like this would explain a "slight" decrease in download speed, if it's even noticeable. I'm sending data to YouTube. For them to reply "I got that chunk, send the next one" or "please resend this chunk, it's wrong" should only be a few bytes, shouldn't it? Or did I misunderstand something?

 

I was on a DSL connection before I switch to Hughes about 8 or 10 years ago, and when I'd upload a school project I never noticed any slowdown when also downloading something. Could it be Hughes simply saying "Your plan allows X MB/s, you're using most of that that for uploading so you only get a trickle for downloads"?