Hughesnet Community

Gen 5 going way slower than Gen 4

cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 
imalexdude
Sophomore

Gen 5 going way slower than Gen 4

I recently switched over to Gen 5 because of the contract offer of 30GB a month for only a little more than I was paying for 15GB on Gen 4. It was also advertised as faster speeds of 25Mbps. Initially, while the technician was here, I was clocking speeds to close to 25Mbps. I have rarely seen speeds that fast again. During nights when we want to stream netflix I have seen it drop to 0.2Mbps and the internet was hardly even usable. Depending on what time it is the speed is all over the place, but rarely approaching 25Mbps.  I can't live stream the news anymore like i used to on Gen 4. It constantly has to buffer or will not even load. We used Gen 4 for over a year and it was extremely reliable and even after going over our data limit it was still faster than Gen 5 is everyday.

 

So what is the deal? Is Gen 5 really this crappy during peak hours or is there something wrong on my end? The technician did have to move our satellite dish and was worried that a tree might be in the way. It was also a rare sunny day when he set us up for Gen 5. The signal strength is usually only in the 40s, which doesn't seem very good. It has even dipped into the 20s at times. We are on the Washington State coast so I don't know what is considered normal here. It is cloudly most of the year. We still never had any problems on Gen 4 during any weather condition so I am not sure why Gen 5 would be any different.

25 REPLIES 25

My signal strenght was down to 15 for most of the day and I had no internet whatsoever. We had our first big rain of the season. The strength has creeped up to the 30s tonight and I am barely getting internet. I am on beam ID 5. Speed has been consistantly around 120 to 160kbps all night since it started working again. That is amazingly slow. I am barely even getting around this website right now.

 

I called the tech support for the 4th time and they were completely clueless as usual and unable to speak english. The gal didn't even know what I was talking about when I referred to my download speed or signal strenght. She told me to call back when it wasn't raining to resolve my issue. You mean is May? This is Western Washington. It's going to be raining all f***king fall, winter, and spring. And my internet worked just fine last winter on Gen 4.

maratsade
Distinguished Professor IV

"Is Gen 5 really this crappy during peak hours or is there something wrong on my end?"

 

A lot of us are experiencing very low speeds in the evenings. The company is working on figuring out why.  These things take time.

Are you experiencing speeds of 0.1 and 0.2mbps? Or a complete lack of internet altogether? Because that is what I am experiencing and getting absolutely no help from customer service. I forced them to send out a tech after calling 4 times and just wasting hours of my time. They are going to charge me $120 because they didn't install the dish properly the first time.

GabeU
Distinguished Professor IV

@imalexdude

 

When looking in the Satellite box on the following page, what is your Satellite Name and Beam ID?

 

http://192.168.0.1/#!/home/information

Echostar 19 with Beam 5

BirdDog
Assistant Professor

A usual signal strength in the 40's is not normal. You definitely have a probem. Maybe you don't have a good line of sight to the satellite with that tree in the way.

 

Hopefully Liz or Amanda will reply tomorrow.

 

It may come to cutting down a tree(s) if you want service. The satellite can't be moved.

GabeU
Distinguished Professor IV

@imalexdude

 

A signal strength of 40 is definitely alarming.  That's quite low.  

The satellite dish can be moved. There is a lot of open space in my yard. Cutting branches or trees out of the way is also a possibility, but I need an install technician to show me which ones are in the way. It could even be a maple branch getting weighed down in the rain that keeps blocking my signal.

Good morning Alex, 

 

Welcome to the community and thank you for posting. We certainly want to address your concerns, so I pulled up your account to investigate further. I'm also concerned with your line of sight, I do hope that the site visit you have scheduled tomorrow addresses your unusually slow performance, let us know how it goes.

 

Please check your private messages in the top right corner of the community page as I've sent you a PM to further address your concerns.

 

Your patience and understanding are much appreciated.

 

If you have a tech or billing question and need help, please start a new thread in the appropriate board. Unsolicited Private Messages may not get replies.

Slow performance? Click me!

Ok thank you Liz. This online forum has been much more helpful then talking over the phone with tech support. Hopefully everything will be taken care of tommorow night if we move my dish. I will post some updates and let you know if it's resolved.

 

I am curious to what difference these beam and gateway IDs make. Is this something that can be experimented with too in order to improve performance?

GabeU
Distinguished Professor IV

@imalexdude

 

Each beam covers a specific area, and your system can only lock onto that particular beam.  Each beam is also assigned to a specific gateway, and that can't be changed.  

 

There is a small exception to this, as there are small areas where beams slightly overlap, and if one is having issues and is on the edge of one beam they may be able to utilize the edge of a beam that is overlapping, but this is not done very often, as the areas where overlaps occur are very small and one's given issues may not be helped by this.  

 

Hopefully, if your issue is due to a line of sight problem that Liz suggested as a possibility, it can be remedied fairly easily.   

 

Hi Alex,

 

Just letting you know that on top of the site visit, there are scheduled beam adjustments in the coming weeks to address speed concerns. I've just gotten this update from engineering. We'll post back once we have any other details to share.

 

Your patience and understanding are much appreciated.

 

If you have a tech or billing question and need help, please start a new thread in the appropriate board. Unsolicited Private Messages may not get replies.

Slow performance? Click me!

So the tech showed up and there wasn't anything obstructing my signal. He tried adjusting it, but there wasn't much improvement. He showed me where the sattellite was on my phone and it was far enough east of a big cedar that it shouldn't affect my signal even in the wind.

 

Apparently everyone in this area has terrible signal averaging in the 40s. We must be on the edge of even getting service at all. What doesn't make any sense is that when we used Jupiter 1 on Gen 4 the internet worked flawlessly. He said I might be able to go back to Gen 4 or cancel my service since my speeds are nowhere near what they are supposed to be. I am lucky to see 10mbps and even low quality videos still continuously buffer at that speed, which must mean it keeps cutting out or my speed is constantly fluctuating. My internet was faster on Gen 4 even after I used up all my bandwidth and was throttled down.

 

Hopefully this is something that can be resolved if it is only affecting beam 5. Otherwise how would I go about switching back to Gen 4? Is that really a possiblity? Could I keep my current plan and payments?

C0RR0SIVE
Associate Professor

From my understanding you can't go back to a Gen4 service plan, and to go back to ES-17, would require a modem swap...

There is a minimum signal that these units must meet, otherwise OVT will not pass...  I am honestly surprised the system is accepting such a low number...

I have the old modem and from my understanding the dish is the same. He said something about switching polarity.

C0RR0SIVE
Associate Professor

Any news from the engineers? Last night the internet came to a halt. It only worked at times and when it did work I was getting 5mpbs even though it didn't seem like it because I couldn't load any streaming video whatsoever. We even had a break in weather at the time and a signal strenth of 51.

The internet actually worked pretty well last night. I was pleasently suprised. Did they already make some beam adjustments or is it just a fluke? We are actually having a streak of unusually sunny weather for this time of year also.

Good morning folks,

Beam 5 has completed adjustments midweek last week to provide some relief for speed concerns.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

 

If you have a tech or billing question and need help, please start a new thread in the appropriate board. Unsolicited Private Messages may not get replies.

Slow performance? Click me!