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.
"if the average is good, then the beam can not possibly be over sold"
But there may be other reasons for speed issues -- in 2017 there were problems with Bean 68 and the speed was pretty bad for a while and didn't get better until the engineers fixed whatever the issue was.
"I can run 50 tests when everyone else is asleep so as to make an oversold beam look good :-)"
LOL.
maratsade wrote:"if the average is good, then the beam can not possibly be over sold"
But there may be other reasons for speed issues -- in 2017 there were problems with Bean 68 and the speed was pretty bad for a while and didn't get better until the engineers fixed whatever the issue was.
Yes, absolutely. When there was that problem, presumably all recent tests run when the problem existed would have been bad and the recent average would be low.
Just because the recent average is bad does not imply the beam is oversold. But if the average of recent tests is good, then how can anyone say the beam is experiencing poor performance because it is oversold?
If I have repeated bad test results recently, but the average of recent tests is good as shown in the DB, then I think the following are implied:
I think this can be a useful way to say beam X is *not* oversold, and appears to be running good recently. It is not a demonstration that beam X is oversold. It also lets us know approximately how we are doing compared to others in our area. This kind of test does not offer proof the beam is oversold -- it simply provides evidence it is not.
[Sorry, deleted something by mistake -- I had asked if there is evidence that an oversold beam functions poorly. Since we don't know what beams are oversold, if any, we can't really test, so all of this seems to be just speculation).
EDIT: other reasons for poor performance could be issues with specific servers (such as web acceleration), and gateway issues. Performance issues were present in several beams towards the beginning of Gen 5, and the beams were not even close to oversold. Congestion happens very easily too, especially at prime time, and it doesn't take that many people to clog the beam. If memory serves, without optimisation, clogging happens with just 64 subscribers using the system at the same time. I imagine optimisation raises this number, but since the amount of data to go around is not all that much, the quality can deteriorate pretty quickly, especially when those 64 or so people are all trying to stream.
maratsade wrote:Is there evidence that an oversold beam always functions poorly?
Of course not. But it is unlikely that an oversold beam will have an *average of many* recent tests above 25Mbps and therefore probable that the beam is not oversold, and so it looks to me to be evidence the beam is not oversold.
Of course, I laugh pretty hard at the idea of trying to figure out when I can run 50 tests when everyone else is asleep so as to make an oversold beam look good :-)
Maybe we can coin a term for it -- "salting a beam" haha
