New to HN and was told we could stream "a few games a month" but then our data would decrease. What they failed to tell us is that the buffering would make anything and everything unwatchable. Called tech support and was told "there is nothing we can do" but that recorded shows and games would not buffer. This is untrue as I just tested it. Any ideas on what to try?
If the show is recorded, it wouldn't be using data or be connected to the internet, so there would not be any buffering. Where are these shows being recorded to, and what do you use to watch them?
Latency and congestion affect satellite internet and there's nothing to be done about it,as it's related to the technology itself, the laws of physics, and users trying to do data intensive activities on a limited data environment.
if you want to watch games, why not get satellite TV? That uses no data and there's no buffering unless the weather is really bad.
"Latency and congestion affect satellite internet and there's nothing to be done about it, as it's related to the technology itself, the laws of physics, and users trying to do data intensive activities on a limited data environment. "
From what I understand latency is affected by the distance from the gateway -> satellite -> home router. While the satellite -> router probably can't be changed, the gateway -> satellite distance can be changed by having more gateways. I recently was told my connection was bad because of a storm in Cheyenne, WY !!! I live in North Carolina, are you trying to say HughesNet can't afford to have a closer gateway?
As for congestion, as you mentioned too many user on a limited data environment. One tech explained it to me as think of it as a highway, once there gets to be too many cars on the highway, everyone slows down. So the solution is to add more lanes to the highway, or limit the number of cars on the highway. Since HughesNet will never limit the number of users, they should add more lanes. The tech also explained, that there are many 'channels' available, and if you happen to be on a busy channel, you get poor reception. This tech actually switched the channel I was using and it cleared up the problem. Unfortunately, all the other times I call, the support person says they can't do that.
I sure hope the guy I talked to didn't get in trouble for helping me.
The satellite is approximately 38,000 km from your dish. Even if your ground station were in the next county it would still be a 76,000 km trip to the gateway, and a 152,000 km round trip. The latency on that is still a half a second, given the speed of light. Latency has nothing to do with the location of the ground station and has everything to do with the fact that the satellite is about 36,000 km above the equator in a geosynchronous orbit.
As for many lanes, look at an open source satellite coverage map (pick one, there are many): Each spot beam is aimed at a specific region of the country. The beams are serviced by and distributed amongst the ground stations in order to try to balance the potential population per ground station. What mysterious undocumented lanes were you looking for in particular?
Bottom line: What are you talking about? Or, did you just make all that stuff up?
Edit: And as for "switching the channel", sometimes the IP gateway that you're associated to gets overused. Simply rebooting the modem will re-associate you to a lesser used IP gateway... it's not magic and you didn't need a tech to do that.
