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Hughes over reporting data usage?

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Hughes over reporting data usage?

  I guess nobody will believe the data I've been gathering, that seems to show that Hughes is over charging for data usage, without screen shots.

 

So here's a screen shot from the bonus period:

 

Screenshot from 2018-11-29 06-42-55.png

 

  I had reset the Linux iftop data total just before running Hughes usage for this shot. As you can see, just running Hughes usage uses about 2 meg of data according to iftop.

 

  Here's a shot from after I reset iftop at 8:00 am and then ran Hughes usage later in the day:

 

Screenshot from 2018-11-29 13-21-39.png

 

  As you can see, it looks like Hughes over charged me 19 meg for this day. I've been running these tests for almost five months now and this is typical for a day. I have seen as much as 44 meg in a single day and as little as 4 meg. The more data that day the larger the difference.

 

  Doesn't seem like much, but this amounts to about .57 gig a month. When you've only got 10 gig, every little bit helps. BTW all four radios on the wifi are disabled.

 

  I've tested iftop by downloading files ( in the bonus period of course ), and comparing the file size on disc with the data reported by iftop, and it looks consistant to me.

 

  Actually, iftop reports slightly more than the disc file size, which is to be expected, because there's always a small amount of data flowing anyime the modem is not isolated.

 

  Can anybody point out a mistake in my methods or conclusion?

 

"The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with it’s credibility. And vice versa."

Lazarus Long

7 REPLIES 7
MarkJFine
Professor

Have you accounted for base-2 vs. base-10 counting? One method may be seeing 1.024 as rounded to 1M or 1k, so there's 2.4% possibly accounted for right there.


* Disclaimer: I am a HughesNet customer and not a HughesNet employee. All of my comments are my own and do not necessarily represent HughesNet in any way.


@MarkJFine wrote:

Have you accounted for base-2 vs. base-10 counting? One method may be seeing 1.024 as rounded to 1M or 1k, so there's 2.4% possibly accounted for right there.


    Thanks for your reply.

  

  The Hughes usage display implies that it has a .1 meg resolution.  It doesn't seem to though, there's never anything but  a zero after the decimal point.   Iftop does have a .1 meg resolution.  I round this using regular rounding rules before entering it in my spreadsheet.

 

  The difference on the day I posted was 11.9 percent of what Hughes reported.

What about packet resends?


* Disclaimer: I am a HughesNet customer and not a HughesNet employee. All of my comments are my own and do not necessarily represent HughesNet in any way.


@MarkJFine wrote:

What about packet resends?


Screenshot from 2018-11-30 12-45-52.png

Think that's a one-time check between modem and gateway. Can't guarantee it will be that way 100% of the time. And, sometimes there are resends just due to busy/congested servers which could be anywhere between the gateway and destination, at any hop point.

Think you said you were also hooked up by ethernet cable, so may not apply to you, but for anyone else following along: There are plenty of packet resends on wifi connections as well - more than you'd think.

 

Edit: regarding server resends - obviously only what is seen at the gateway as a resend would be counted, of course.


* Disclaimer: I am a HughesNet customer and not a HughesNet employee. All of my comments are my own and do not necessarily represent HughesNet in any way.


@MarkJFine wrote:

Think that's a one-time check between modem and gateway. Can't guarantee it will be that way 100% of the time. And, sometimes there are resends just due to busy/congested servers which could be anywhere between the gateway and destination, at any hop point.


  I quit checking packet loss very much, because every time I checked it was always zero.  That's an idea though, It's supposed to rain later today, I'll check it when the signal strength has been degraded by rain, and see what I get.  I haven't noticed a relationship between the weather and the amount of data difference though.

  I confess  ignorance  about the inner workings of a Hughes system,  I've been trying to find out by googling around for information without much success.  I even posted a message here to see if anyone here could point me in the right. direction.  I came to the conclusion that much of this information must be a trade secret.

Edit: regarding server resends - obviously only what is seen at the gateway as a resend would be counted, of course.

    I would hope that only resends between my equipment and the satellite itself would count in my data usage, not all the way to the gateway.   I don't have any control over the satellite or gateway equipment.  I would hope that resends anywhere else on the system would only effect my speed.

 

   At one time I thought about switching to the newest Echostar.  After posting the speeds I was presently getting here, I was advised against it.

  Hi markjfine. I've been thinking about what you kindly pointed out as a reason for my data usage results: IE resends.

 

  About thirty five years ago I wrote a data historian program in 'C' that communicated with AB PLC5 over a DH+
link. Every data packet exchanged had attached to it a CRC. ( cyclic redundency check ) My program would run a CRC on the incoming packet, and if the results didn't match the attached CRC, it would send a NAK signal to the PLC, which would then resend the packet.

 

  I thought that this is what the Hughes connectivity test would report as a lost packet, and that this would also give me an indication of amount of data that had to be resent.

 

  If so, it looks to me like there is very little data being resent. I ran multiple connectivety tests today in the rain and only got a single test that reported a 10% packet lost. Even with the signal strength down as low as 37.

 

  If Hughes is charging my data usage for resends past the gateway, IMO that makes my original point: that Hughes gen5 is over charging for data usage.

 

  Thanks for your suggestions!

 

"$100 placed at 7% interest compounded quarterly for 200 years will increase to more than $100,000,000--by which time it will be worth nothing."

 

Lazarus Long