Latency is a measurement of time delay in any kind of system. In satellite communications, it’s the length of time that it takes a signal to travel from your home to the satellite in orbit above the Earth), and then down to a ground-based gateway which connects you to the internet. Each leg of that journey is about 22,300 miles, which sounds like a long way until you realize that our signal travels at the speed of light ( 186,282 miles per second). The whole round-trip is measured in milliseconds, often referred to as “ping.” The ping on satellite internet is usually around 638 ms, compared to ping of 30 ms or less on a typical cable network.
Edit: You say your latency improves at night. How are you measuring it? The most accurate method for measuring latency is by pinging a server. If you're using anything else, you're getting inaccurate data.
Each time a data packet ‘hops’ (that is, is handled by a device along the path) several milliseconds of latency are added. The physics involved account for approximately 550 milliseconds of latency, a limitation shared by all satellite providers.
In addition to transmission times, there are other factors that contribute to the total latency experienced by the end user, factors such as the network itself, IP/satellite translation overhead, speed of upstream connections, and traffic (congestion).
All of these variables combined contribute to and account for the differences you see in latency measurements.
How are you measuring the latency?
You were given reasons for why to expect varying latency, sometimes closer to 550, often more.
The company has around 1.4 million subscribers total, distributed among several zones/beams around the country.
The Testmy latency measurement is not currently accurate; doesn't matter what they say or how stubbornly you want to believe it. Pinging (using the command line) is the most accurate tool to use for latency. Stick to this method and forget the latency tool at Testmy.
I have no issues connecting to HughesNet pages from several different ISPs. It's likely some people do and some people don't, due to issues unrelated to HughesNet, and probably also related to issues with CenturyLink, as @MarkJFine has explained often.
The issues you are experiencing with ping are likely due to issues in the route from your site to the different websites you're trying to access. HughesNet has no control over the Internet's backbone.
Please run pings and traceroutes to different websites (especially the ones you have issues with), and post screenshots so we can see what you see.
Just to add to what @maratsade said, those services will just show the apparent latency (however they determine it, which could also be affected by process caching) to just that site. Using a local ping will do the same without any of the processing effects.
A traceroute is even better, because it will show around three different values for each 'hop' in the route, and will allow you to determine which hops are creating the largest lags, thus allowing to pinpoint the problem.
Charles, I don't know the exact throughput for J2, except that it's more than 150 gigabits. Someone else may have the exact figure.
Paranoid huh? Take a look at the timeouts. This is the problem I have. Not every page does this. It will go fair for several pages and just stall. Time outs or other messages like Not Connected To The Internet.
"Paranoid huh? "
Yes.
Yes, you are paranoid. That's a perfectly good traceroute for satellite comms. There's not one hop in there that takes 2 minutes like you said. Plus, none of the timeouts have anything to do with HughesNet - at all.
But just because it took me to embarrass you into FINALLY giving a traceroute snapshot like I originally asked, I'm not going to tell you the reason why your latency is so bad, because your paranoid delusions wouldn't believe it anyway.
OK.
Cblucas3 wrote:
That's it I'm reporting this.
@Cblucas3 wrote:
That's it I'm reporting this.
You go right ahead, play victim and report everybody. I really don't care.
This 5 page thread already shows you've been playing games from the get go. Just comes right back to you.
Folks... I got better things to do today... Now I'm really out.
Got off the phone with Corporate Executive Care. I reported th slander and accusations when I was just trying to sound my thoughts on why. The fellow asked me if the modem was near anything that can interfere. Wow, so simple and I didn't consider it so I don't blame you guys either. My medical monitoring device was apparently interfering with it. It operates via cellular network. I moved it, ran a trace and ping and no timeouts and no extreme latency.
Next time "Professors" offer suggestions instead of belittling a person.
And thank you for literally wasting everybody's time.
@Cblucas3 wrote:Next time "Professors" offer suggestions instead of belittling a person.
You mean like this?
"If you don't have an ethernet cable do it via WiFi, but be aware that, if your WiFi connection is weak, it can cause the results to be highly inaccurate."
That includes interference. So get off your high horse.