Forum Discussion
GEN 5 Upgrade Problems
Thanks for your help Amanda. I have been monitoring my receiver signal strengh and it has been ranging from 68 to 73. My speed tests show a large variation and exceed 25Mbps in some situations. This is definitly a beneficial upgrade. I look forward to your help in the future.
I run an ethernet connection and can still get metered.
Thanks, I switched source Eathernet went to "Status" and set as metered on. Three qwick tests: 7.84 Miami. 15.32 Dallas and 25.96 Chicago, definitly improvement.
Hello! I'm going to try to explain this as painlessly as possible. I've stolen some graphics from our website and re-arranged them :)
First, we build a cool satellite and shoot it into space. We test it out and make sure it's working as intended then open it up to the general public. Once it's on the rocket and blasting off, we can only make adjustments to the panel angles, position, stuff like that. Most of the time the birds go up with extra equipment on board for future implementations (like the 4x4 switch on a truck). When we refer to "beams", they are technically known as spot beams but do what you think they do - "shine" down a blanket of coverage over the US to provide our services!
When you see us say things like "performance improvements" or "network changes", we're referring to changes being made in 1 or 2 places (sometimes both). One may be at the Gateway, which are manned buildings filled with hardware we use to move traffic around. There are many across America, Mexico and Canada.
The improvements or changes can come in the form of a couple of common forms like updated hardware or coding changes made at the Gateway or deployed right to your modem through a firmware update that gets automatically downloaded to your modem. These are usually reserved for small tweaks and changes.
In your case, the improvements are being made at the Gateway. I hope I was able to get that across clearly!
I think that was a great explanation. Thanks Amanda
Why are the ground stations on the opposite side of the country from the user?
Good morning!
Glad I got across well :) maratsade - it's not required, but to my knowledge this is considered a 'best practice'. Since a gateway has to be inside of the satellite beam, this means traffic is moving back and forth all the time. Combining traffic managed by a gateway and local traffic, you'd have more congestion. Essentially, assigning a gateway outside of the customer's beam helps to increase capacity.
It should be noted that there are extra gateways in addition to the ones we normally use, which are for the purpose of redundancy in case a fiber line is cut or something happens to cause that gateway to be otherwise unusable for a period of time.
~Amanda
Thanks Amanda.
