Yes, they do not have a correct location -- the city they determined for me was also in the wrong state. I am on the edge of the beam, and the city they selected as my location seemed to be toward the center of my beam. I came in with a different connection and got the same city an so I wondered how consistently they were choosing that city and more generally if others on the beam would get that same city. After digging through some tests I ran over a year ago, I see they had a different city chosen for my location -- also in a state different from me, but also toward the middle of the my beam, so it is not consistent.
So obviously since it does not consistently choose a city based upon the beam, it is impossible to compare a score against the average and know how your bandwidth compares to the beam in general -- as maratsade demonstrates by getting two different cities with different accounts. The gateways handle multiple beams in different time zones, but I did not see a city chosen based upon the location for one of those other beams, so it seems like they can narrow it down to a general geographic location based upon the beam, but can still be 100 miles off from the true location.
I was doing the bandwidth test -- I agree the TestMy.net latency test is fairly pointless especially as the HT2000W records average latency for every 5 minute and 1 hour period anyway.
The average score even for the bandwidth test would also not be an accurate measure not only for the reason you mention, but also because there are a lot of tests done on small test sizes which will not be accurate with satellite.
If you don't mind, what city did you get? Mark, I think you were beam 68 -- so did your city land toward to middle of beam 68 in northern VA?
Maratsade, would you mind sharing the cities you saw along with your beam? Or at least give a rough impression of how far the cities were from the center of your beam?
I dug through a bunch of cities this way, and the average seems to be around 35Mbps for what I thought were selected from J2 beams, and 25Mbps for J1 beams (which might be a combination of gen 4 and gen 5 services if I understand correctly), which is considerably better than what I imagined based upon reading posts on this site! It seems the great performance I get is not out of line with the areas I combed through. I did see a city on the edge between beam 68 and 69--far from the center of a J2 beam--that had an average of around 50Mbps, and they had run a lot of tests.
Thanks!
"Maratsade, would you mind sharing the cities you saw along with your beam? Or at least give a rough impression of how far the cities were from the center of your beam?"
I'm on beam 68. Where's the center of this beam (as in, what city/town is closest)?
EDIT: Sometimes the "city" you get is "US."
OK, these are the approximate distances (in miles) from what looks like the town closest to the center of beam 68 (I'm guessing here, using SatBeams) and some of the towns/cities listed by TMN:
81, 75, 68, 55, 127, 35
maratsade wrote:OK, these are the approximate distances (in miles) from what looks like the town closest to the center of beam 68 (I'm guessing here, using SatBeams) and some of the towns/cities listed by TMN:
81, 75, 68, 55, 127, 35
Ok, I see -- I think you are showing the distance for different cities identified as your location to the approximate center of your beam, so with 127 miles it must be that any city in the beam can be shown and not just a city near (within 60 miles or so) of the center. 127 miles might almost be to the edge of the beam, so maybe the city I saw with the super fast Hughes net Mbps average could have been from someone in Maryland in (or there about) in either beam 68 or beam 69 since it was right at the edge. Maybe somebody with really good test scores decided to do a few hundred tests in the last week to get that high average for the city!
maratsade wrote:"Maratsade, would you mind sharing the cities you saw along with your beam? Or at least give a rough impression of how far the cities were from the center of your beam?"
I'm on beam 68. Where's the center of this beam?
EDIT: Sometimes the "city" you get is "US."
Do you not get a city doing this?
From TestMy.net, select from the DB menu 'TestMy.net Database'
2. This leads to this display -- is there not a city shown?
3. Clicking the City leads to a display like this (the graph below would include all ISPs):
4. Clicking on the ISPs tab shows this:
This city is pretty far from me, but it does apear to be roughly in the middle of beam 82. I see in the past I had a different city showing, but it was in the same rough location.
The averages shown here are lowered by tests with the wrong test size, but it does appear to include my tests, since when I run a test, the count here increases. I do not know what they mean by '64 tests recently' perhaps 64 tests in the last week?
The average looks good -- about what I get a lot, and the impression is that others in this beam that happen to get this city are getting similar performance and therefore beam 82 is *not* over sold :-)
Beam 68 appears to be centered over northern VA, right near the border of WV -- I am just going by that picture someone posted a while back. I saw a link to some satellite page that shows spot beam positions more accurately, but I don't know much about it other than looking at it once or twice noticing the handful of spot beams J2 has down around Ecuador and in Mexico.
"2. This leads to this display -- is there not a city shown?"
Yes, different cities with different tests. I thought you wanted to know how far they were from the center of beam 68. The distances to what I think is the center vary, as do the distances from each of these cities and my location.
maratsade wrote:"2. This leads to this display -- is there not a city shown?"
Yes, different cities with different tests. I thought you wanted to know how far they were from the center of beam 68. The distances to what I think is the center vary, as do the distances from each of these cities and my location.
Yes, that was what I wanted -- it appears the city can be anywhere in the beam. I posted the above before I saw your reply with the distances.
If the cities are always within your beam, then it seems likely that the test results for HughesNet for the city are for users sharing the beam with you -- if the average is good, then the beam can not possibly be over sold, as obviously other users recently had scores high enough to raise the average given that many users are posting tests that artificially lower the average by using too small a test size, or by using Wi-Fi for the test. What we can not see is the overall average for the entire beam, since the numbers are divided up to the cities in the beam. Also, if the city can be anywhere in the beam, then some locations may be showing test results from J1/gen4 mixed in the results, depending on where you are.
Now, if we find a city showing in the above way that is nowhere in the beam foot print, then we can no longer think scores attributed to that city for HughesNet share your beam. My thinking is, if someone says they have an over sold crowded beam, then given the beam number, it is possible to find cities in that beam and review an average of other users that are likely in the same beam. If the average of recent tests good, it seems likely the issue is not that the beam is crowded since there has to be somebody with scores good enough to bring the average up.
