COVID-19 and HughesNet...

[GabeU]

Though I understand there are situations out there where changes could help, I really hope that HughesNet doesn't do anything too drastic, or at least not data wise.  A lot of people are asking on various social media sites about abandoning the high speed data caps.  I simply can't imaging how bad the system would get were that to happen.  It could, and likely would, slow to an absolute crawl.  😞

[ChrisBaker]

Bah, what's the point of bickering with you about it. I don't really care what you think, guess I'm just venting about how unreliable this service has been for us, all along. It's the only aspect of living in a rural area that I dislike, having to resort to this collection of sticks and tinfoil for internet connectivity.

[GabeU]

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@ChrisBaker wrote:

Bah, what's the point of bickering with you about it. I don't really care what you think, guess I'm just venting about how unreliable this service has been for us, all along. It's the only aspect of living in a rural area that I dislike, having to resort to this collection of sticks and tinfoil for internet connectivity.

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I agree.  You should start the new thread as suggested for your issue and leave this thread to its inteneded purpose.

[GabeU]

@ChrisBaker 

Then instead of wasting your time posting on a thread concerning COVID-19 and HughesNet's reaction to it, you should start your own thread asking for help.  And those same reps will need speed test results. 

BTW, you can always cancel the service, pay the Early Termination Fee and be on your way.

[ChrisBaker]

"To help improve your experience, with so many working and studying at home, we’ve increased the speed you receive if you exceed the amount of data in your monthly service plan. In addition, we’ve optimized network traffic to prioritize educational and business collaboration software, especially during daytime hours. These changes went into effect today to help improve network performance during this time of high demand."

Well gee, it looks like they did the impossible.

I appreciate it. The service is still rough, generally speaking, but I appreciate concrete action in line with other internet service providers, to the extent the technology platform allows.

[maratsade]

"I appreciate concrete action in line with other internet service providers, to the extent the technology platform allows."

Ditto.

[jackwilliambell]

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@ChrisBaker wrote:

I understand exactly how the technology works.

I don't know what kind of experience you have, but when Hughes decides we are out of data, it is absolutely nonfunctional. I can't get a github page to load, pulls and pushes fail and timeout, jira pages won't load.... it's not functional. It goes from barely adequate to effectively nothing. I'm not talking about just during the last few weeks, that's the end of every single month for us. We already can't wait for our contract to run out, carrier pigeons would be more worth the money than this is but I'm not paying a termination fee.

One time, we were throttled because my kids were home for a school holiday and ate up all the cap. I had to drive to a nearby city to get on a McDonald's wifi to push my code for the day. When I'm working from home and the kids are doing school from home, with the current caps in place, we'll hit that point weeks earlier. We've got 10 days in our billing period, we're already completely out.

This company charged me money for six months for modem lease while I was not living in my house due to a fire. I view it as the least they could do is ensure I can do my job.

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I can't get Github to work at all and my data allowance is just fine right now. If they are throttling me it isn't because I maxed out my data cap.

This is severly affecting my ability to work on projects.

[maratsade]

You're not being throttled. It's congestion caused by severe overload of the internet nationwide. The whole world is in the middle of a crisis, and it's affecting everyone. 

ackwilliambell wrote:

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I can't get Github to work at all and my data allowance is just fine right now. If they are throttling me it isn't because I maxed out my data cap.

This is severly affecting my ability to work on projects.

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[jackwilliambell]

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@maratsade wrote:

You're not being throttled. It's congestion caused by severe overload of the internet nationwide. The whole world is in the middle of a crisis, and it's affecting everyone.

Sorry, but the problem existed before now, it isn't new to me or unique to me. Moreover, people not on Hughesnet are not seeing this problem, I checked.

[Bgleason62]

I knew I wasn't being throttled. For some reason though my connection just sucks. It shows as an excellent connection, but no matter what amount of data I have left for the month I have real slow internet and constant buffering. If I connect to my modem on my phone, it will say internet not available but also show full signal and it is extremely slow. If I turn off my wifi and use my mobile data it is tremendously faster. Keep in mind that I am in the forest and for my phone I use a cell phone booster antenna. I usually get about 3-4 bars. Sometimes lower depending on where I am and sometimes 5 bars. At any rate, my HN is very slow both on wifi and ethernet as well. But I do know I'm not being throttled.

[maratsade]

That sounds very frustrating. Your best bet at getting competent help is create your own thread under Tech Support, and provide details of what's going on. The reps on this site work individually with each subscriber and each tech ticket, so it'd be to your advantage to create a new topic, provide details, provide case numbers (if you have any), and let them look into it and see how they can help you. They have a good track record with this, and they are much higher up than the phone and chat agents, so they can do a lot more for you, and sooner. 

Bgleason62 wrote:
I knew I wasn't being throttled. For some reason though my connection just sucks. It shows as an excellent connection, but no matter what amount of data I have left for the month I have real slow internet and constant buffering. If I connect to my modem on my phone, it will say internet not available but also show full signal and it is extremely slow. If I turn off my wifi and use my mobile data it is tremendously faster. Keep in mind that I am in the forest and for my phone I use a cell phone booster antenna. I usually get about 3-4 bars. Sometimes lower depending on where I am and sometimes 5 bars. At any rate, my HN is very slow both on wifi and ethernet as well. But I do know I'm not being throttled.

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[GabeU]

I can just imagine what's going to happen this weekend on this community.  😞  

[MarkJFine]

The vitriol has already started, as you'e probably already seen.

"We want more bandwidth"....

      "Ok, here's bandwidth"

"Now we want more speed"....

     "Sorry, can't have both."

[Bgleason62]

Honestly, mine has sucked from the time it got installed. I'm not asking for more bandwidth or speed, I just want what I pay for. I get buffering throughout a monthly cycle regardless of how much data I have. I use my phone data for internet use. If we stream a movie off of the satellite, it is a constant buffer no matter where our data is. And we are trying to watch id SD not High Def. I just wish I hadn't even gotten the service. I am no better off than if I had gotten CenturyLink @ 3mbps. But I have never said anywhere that I want more of either bandwidth or speed. Just what I am paying for. I was told I could easily stream SD movies or shows.

[maratsade]

You actually can stream, but it's not unlimited, and it may vary per region depending on the congestion.  If you feel you were misled during the sales call, and if it's been less than 3 or so months since installation, you can ask for a sales call review.  The reps here can retrieved the call,if it's still available, and listen to see whether the salesperson set the proper expectations. If they did not, the reps may provide you with options.   If you want to request a sales call review, you need to do that in Tech Support.  Click "start a topic" explain your situation, and request a sales call review. 

Bgleason62 wrote:
Honestly, mine has sucked from the time it got installed. I'm not asking for more bandwidth or speed, I just want what I pay for. I get buffering throughout a monthly cycle regardless of how much data I have. I use my phone data for internet use. If we stream a movie off of the satellite, it is a constant buffer no matter where our data is. And we are trying to watch id SD not High Def. I just wish I hadn't even gotten the service. I am no better off than if I had gotten CenturyLink @ 3mbps. But I have never said anywhere that I want more of either bandwidth or speed. Just what I am paying for. I was told I could easily stream SD movies or shows.

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[Bgleason62]

I know it is not unlimited, but I should be able to stream at the very beginning of my cycle without constant buffering. I watch my data to see where it is at. Personally, I don't stream myself, my wife has shows she likes to watch. At any rate, it buffers from day 1 of a cycle and because it buffers our data burns up through the buffering so we aren't able to view as many episodes as we should. A one hour episode can actually end up as 1 1/2 hours to 2 hours because of buffering. Haven't done the math yet on how much data that accounts for but essentially we lose 1/2 to a full amount of what we should extra during a single episode. Like I said, we could have 100% data remaining, 75%, 50%, 25%...whatever, it still buffers badly and constantly. We also have computer off and we just use our mobile data on our phones not wifi.

[maratsade]

"I should be able to stream."

This can't be guaranteed in a system with such limited capacity and so subject to congestion, latency, and the devices and configuration the user has at home.   If they guaranteed that you could stream, then you need to ask for a sales call review. 

The amount of data you have is not what influences the quality of streaming.  People in the past have posted they can stream while they're in FAP.  What influences streaming is congestion, latency, network management practices, and things on the user's side such as the kind of devices they have and how they are set up.  And those who have issues have to become troubleshooters and detectives, as very often the system is working fine on the satellite side and the issue is on the users' side, so they need to figure it out, as the reps can only see the system side. 

I don't want in any way to invalidate your concerns, because I agree that it's very frustrating to pay so much money for something and then find it doesn't work as well as we expected, but perhaps we all need to focus more on reality and adjust our expectations, and learn to be proactive instead of reactive.   

In any case, I think you'd get more out of doing something proactive, like requesting the sales call or working with the reps on this site to troubleshoot your system than out of just being upset.  Be upset, but do something about it. 

Bgleason62 wrote:
I know it is not unlimited, but I should be able to stream at the very beginning of my cycle without constant buffering. I watch my data to see where it is at. Personally, I don't stream myself, my wife has shows she likes to watch. At any rate, it buffers from day 1 of a cycle and because it buffers our data burns up through the buffering so we aren't able to view as many episodes as we should. A one hour episode can actually end up as 1 1/2 hours to 2 hours because of buffering. Haven't done the math yet on how much data that accounts for but essentially we lose 1/2 to a full amount of what we should extra during a single episode. Like I said, we could have 100% data remaining, 75%, 50%, 25%...whatever, it still buffers badly and constantly. We also have computer off and we just use our mobile data on our phones not wifi.

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[Bgleason62]

If it appears I am being or getting upset it is because I was just pointing out to a post that stated people were wanting HN to dump the cap and their service would come to a crawl. I was just stating mine has always been that way from day 1. Then EVERYONE starts telling me to open a new thread and open a ticket. I wasn't asking for anything, I was just commenting. If I am being reactive it is because my first comment was being read into with something I never asked for. I am only stating our experience.

[maratsade]

They were telling you to open a ticket because this site is tech and account support, not a comment site. This site has real HN reps at a high level within the company that can help solve issues, and in the past, they've been both very supportive and very  successful.   To me it's worth a try. I've worked with them when I've had issues and they've been very helpful.

Bgleason62 wrote:
If it appears I am being or getting upset it is because I was just pointing out to a post that stated people were wanting HN to dump the cap and their service would come to a crawl. I was just stating mine has always been that way from day 1. Then EVERYONE starts telling me to open a new thread and open a ticket. I wasn't asking for anything, I was just commenting. If I am being reactive it is because my first comment was being read into with something I never asked for. I am only stating our experience.

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[Bgleason62]

And yes, I was told when ordering the service we would not have any problem streaming and even after the data was gone we would be able to stream @ SD quality which was fine with me. Not the case though and now it appears from what you are saying that there is no guarantee that we can stream at all.

[GabeU]

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@Bgleason62 wrote:
I get buffering throughout a monthly cycle regardless of how much data I have. I use my phone data for internet use. If we stream a movie off of the satellite, it is a constant buffer no matter where our data is. And we are trying to watch id SD not High Def.  

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This is why you should follow maratsade's instructions and start a new topic asking for help.   With it now being close to the rep's quitting time, however, you're likely to not receive a reply from them until at least Monday if you do.  With this said, the reps will very likely need speed test results to help you.  These are the instructions for the tests.  Please be sure to run them as outlined.  There's a discrepancy in the upload test file size (4MB vs 3MB) between the page instructions and the in depth guide instructions for Gen5.  You can use either size. 

Keep in mind that with the increased load on the system you may have issues streaming, even in SD.  Whether they'll be able to address streaming issues right now only they can say, but they'll need those speed test results to start troubleshooting.

[Bgleason62]

Quite frankly, with everything that is going on right now with this COVID-19 problem, I don't know what good it will do. Everyone tells me my problem is related to the spike in usage by everyone else even though we have had these issues before the virus would have had anything to do with anything. Everyone else has escalated this issue, I simply said I just wish I hadn't gotten this and stuck myself in this contract. I just had a feeling before installation that we would have these issues as we always had issues with other satellite services like Dish and DirecTV. But my wife wanted internet and it HN showed that we would get better internet than the 3mbps that CenturyLink said they could provide us. I can somewhat understand the streaming issues, but when I get contant buffering on my computer or it says I have no iternet yet it shows a full signal strength, that I don't understand. I have also read reviews of many people who don't get satisfactory results through tech support and I am not going to pay someone to come and look at an issue that has always been there. Simply, my bad.