A week ago our internet started dropping sporadically, sometimes 4 or 5 times in an hour. When this happens, we get the Status Code of "12.7.1 A transient problem has occurred" from the modem. I've called tech support many times and most recently they sent a new modem which was installed yesterday and we had no problems throughout the day, but this morning it's happening again with 6 drops in three hours this morning and three calls so far to tech support. By the time it gets to the advanced tech support people, it has come back and they say they can't diagnose the problem after it has resolved itself. We've had the service for almost a year with generally good results until this started happening a week ago. Any help or advice would be appreciated !
Solved! Go to Solution.
Hi John,
I really appreciate you continuing to monitor your performance over the weekend even though you're getting Gen 5 Monday. Your feedback would be useful to our engineers and would further validate that the fix was effective.
Also, thank you for your compliment, it means a lot to me. Don't hesitate to post back in the community about your Gen 5 experience, and let us know if you have any other concerns.
3/23/17 at 5:55 am CDT "12.7.1 A transmit problem has occurred". Resolved itself in about five minutes
Good morning,
The fix was rolled out this morning on beams 21 and 29. Please monitor your performance over the next few days and let me know if you see any significant improvement.
Your cooperation, patience, and understanding are much appreciated.
@Liz wrote:Good morning,
The fix was rolled out this morning on beams 21 and 29. Please monitor your performance over the next few days and let me know if you see any significant improvement.
Your cooperation, patience, and understanding are much appreciated.
Thanks so much for sticking with this, Liz. Customer service like this fosters customer loyalty. We noted three instances of the issue yesterday, 3/23/17. They occurred at 5:55 am, 6:22 am, and 10:10 am?(I forgot to note am or pm and now don't recall which it was). In all cases, the 12.7.1 status code was observed and the problem resolved itself after about five minutes.
We have decided to switch to Gen5, and the technician visit is scheduled for Monday morning. But I will continue to monitor our situation until then as you've requested and I'll provide you with an incident report covering the intervening period. Hopefully it will be zero, and I hope this resolves the issue for all of the others who've experienced it. Intermittent, inpredictable problems like this are particularly hard to diagnose.
Thanks again.
Hi John,
I really appreciate you continuing to monitor your performance over the weekend even though you're getting Gen 5 Monday. Your feedback would be useful to our engineers and would further validate that the fix was effective.
Also, thank you for your compliment, it means a lot to me. Don't hesitate to post back in the community about your Gen 5 experience, and let us know if you have any other concerns.
@Liz wrote:Hi John,
I really appreciate you continuing to monitor your performance over the weekend even though you're getting Gen 5 Monday. Your feedback would be useful to our engineers and would further validate that the fix was effective.
Also, thank you for your compliment, it means a lot to me.
Don't hesitate to post back in the community about your Gen 5 experience, and let us know if you have any other concerns.
Well, no instances were observed since yesterday morning (3/24/17) when the engineering change was implemented. That's great. If this lasts today and tomorrow, I think we'll be able to say with a high degree of confidence that the engineering change has resolved the problem, and I'll be able to click on the "resolved" button before moving on to Gen5. Hopefully the other folks who have been reporting this problem will provide their feedback as well.
So far. so good !!
We are in an age of acceleration in technology, and I think we are often construing our experience upon the model of our experience with purely mechanical systems -- products like toasters and refrigerators. But when we stop for a moment to consider just what is going on with a system like Hughesnet, it's actually kind of breathtaking that it works at all, let alone as reliably as it does.
So problems in such a profoundly complex system are to be expected. What makes this into a viable commercial enterprise then is the ability of the human parts of the system to interact in recoginzing and correct problems when they occur, as they inevitabely will. And for me, as long as I can see that happening, it's far less important that it happens in the first place or that it isn't fixed instantly.
In working through this particular case, I've experienced a wide spectrum of responses ranging from the initial "technical service" phone responses "we're sending you a new modem" and "we don't know what the problem is and we can't do anything to fix it" and "what do you want me to do - I'm not a technician. well can you transfer me to one? no, I'm afraid that won't be possible." to my last ditch decision to try posting the problem here on the Community and then finding out it was not just me and being fortunate enough to get Liz's attention.
In conclusion, we're all part of something that is quite complex, and a lot can go wrong, both in the technology and on the human side. We must give kudos to Hughesnet to operate a business within such as context !
Final report on this problem, first thing Monday morning. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
"We are in an age of acceleration in technology, and I think we are often construing our experience upon the model of our experience with purely mechanical systems -- products like toasters and refrigerators. But when we stop for a moment to consider just what is going on with a system like Hughesnet, it's actually kind of breathtaking that it works at all, let alone as reliably as it does."
Yes, exactly! Well put.
I'm happy to report zero incidents of the problem since the engineering change made Friday morning was announced. Since we had been seeing at least 2-3 per day prior, seeing none following the change is very strong evidence that the change has fixed the problem, and I have clicked on the "accept as solution".
Good timing as we are switching over to Gen5 this morning 🙂 Thanks Liz and Hughesnet !
That's wonderful to hear, John! Thank you for taking the time to post in the community and to share your thoughts, it's good to see. I'm glad to have helped, please don't be a stranger.
@Liz wrote:That's wonderful to hear, John! Thank you for taking the time to post in the community and to share your thoughts, it's good to see. I'm glad to have helped, please don't be a stranger.
This was my first time interacting with the community in conection with a problem, and I'll definitely visit it regularly; looks to be a great place to learn.
Gen5 is good so far. With TestMy.net we're seeing 20 Gbps download and 1.4 Gbps upload, a significant improvement versus Gen4. Thanks again, Liz.
@MSmith wrote:
@ChicagoJohn wrote:
@MSmith wrote:Chicagojohn,
Good to know that I'm not the only one with problem. I fear that this issue is much wider than anyone is willing to admit. I live mid-state Illinois, and NO it's NOT the weather! Had a tech out yesterday 3-10-17. He replaced the radio on the dish. The problem reappeared today. Only cost me $125.00 for no repair.
Thanks for posting. Yes, it is good to know I'm not alone in this. Are you going to the modem's status and seeing 12.7.1 "A transmit problem has occurred" also? I was trying to reboot the modem thinking that would help, but now I'm finding that waiting five minutes it seems to resolve on its own. Is that the case for you as well? We are located up around the Aurora - Geneva - St Charles area.
Our signal strength was adjusted a month or so ago and is very good presently. They had a tech scheduled but when I spoke to them first, we concluded it wouldn't be helpful since there was no guarantee it would happen while they are here. Thanks for sharing your results on the replacement !! My takeaway from that is they need to identify the root cause of the problem before taking a shotgun approach and just replacing stuff.
Let's compare notes and see how much of what we're experiencing is the same and if there are any differences.
Hi John,
Thanks for your response. I live in the "Quad City Area" if that means anything to you. About 6 miles south of Moline IL which in on the Mighty Mississippi. We have been seeing this same problem for the past thirty (30) days. The first ten (10) days I did the same as you and rebooted the modem. This has successfully corrected other temporary issues. Like you I started calling tech support and had the problem fix itself while waiting on hold. So, of course, they could find no problem. I got lucky on one call and it stayed down long enough for tech to confirm a problem. They sent a repairman out to replace the transmitter on the dish with a refurbished one. Seems he couldn't get a new one. It made no difference. Three days later (3-10-17) a second repairman came and installed the latest and the greatest transmitter. (The one to be used with the new Gen 5 system.) To my knowledge the system has only gone down once since then.
I've seen in this string a post by CORROSIVE. He brings up our fault code 12.7.1 as usually meaning the weather had a role to play. With respect,(because I'm the dumb one in this mix) I agree that the weather can cause problems. But, I've had my system for seven years and I've NEVER seen this before. If it is the weather, then, all of a sudden, every day, several times a day, for the past thirty days the weather has gotten ugly for very brief periods of time! I'm not buying it.
In my first post I mentioned that this problem is more wide spread than anyone is willing to confirm. Something that the repairman said last Friday lead to that conclusion. He said we were the second stop of the day for the same problem. He also stated that normally he would replace one transmitter per month. Currently he's replacing two per day!
I'm going to go out on a limb here. I think the engineers are well aware of the problem and they are milking the old system until they are read to roll out "Gen 5"
I'm done ranting, have a great day!
@MSmith wrote:
@ChicagoJohn wrote:
@MSmith wrote:Chicagojohn,
Good to know that I'm not the only one with problem. I fear that this issue is much wider than anyone is willing to admit. I live mid-state Illinois, and NO it's NOT the weather! Had a tech out yesterday 3-10-17. He replaced the radio on the dish. The problem reappeared today. Only cost me $125.00 for no repair.
Thanks for posting. Yes, it is good to know I'm not alone in this. Are you going to the modem's status and seeing 12.7.1 "A transmit problem has occurred" also? I was trying to reboot the modem thinking that would help, but now I'm finding that waiting five minutes it seems to resolve on its own. Is that the case for you as well? We are located up around the Aurora - Geneva - St Charles area.
Our signal strength was adjusted a month or so ago and is very good presently. They had a tech scheduled but when I spoke to them first, we concluded it wouldn't be helpful since there was no guarantee it would happen while they are here. Thanks for sharing your results on the replacement !! My takeaway from that is they need to identify the root cause of the problem before taking a shotgun approach and just replacing stuff.
Let's compare notes and see how much of what we're experiencing is the same and if there are any differences.
Hi John,
Thanks for your response. I live in the "Quad City Area" if that means anything to you. About 6 miles south of Moline IL which in on the Mighty Mississippi. We have been seeing this same problem for the past thirty (30) days. The first ten (10) days I did the same as you and rebooted the modem. This has successfully corrected other temporary issues. Like you I started calling tech support and had the problem fix itself while waiting on hold. So, of course, they could find no problem. I got lucky on one call and it stayed down long enough for tech to confirm a problem. They sent a repairman out to replace the transmitter on the dish with a refurbished one. Seems he couldn't get a new one. It made no difference. Three days later (3-10-17) a second repairman came and installed the latest and the greatest transmitter. (The one to be used with the new Gen 5 system.) To my knowledge the system has only gone down once since then.
I've seen in this string a post by CORROSIVE. He brings up our fault code 12.7.1 as usually meaning the weather had a role to play. With respect,(because I'm the dumb one in this mix) I agree that the weather can cause problems. But, I've had my system for seven years and I've NEVER seen this before. If it is the weather, then, all of a sudden, every day, several times a day, for the past thirty days the weather has gotten ugly for very brief periods of time! I'm not buying it.
In my first post I mentioned that this problem is more wide spread than anyone is willing to confirm. Something that the repairman said last Friday lead to that conclusion. He said we were the second stop of the day for the same problem. He also stated that normally he would replace one transmitter per month. Currently he's replacing two per day!
I'm going to go out on a limb here. I think the engineers are well aware of the problem and they are milking the old system until they are read to roll out "Gen 5"
I'm done ranting, have a great day!
Thanks for sharing that information. Your hypothesis / theory could explain some of the widely divergent "information" I've heard from phone calls -- much of it was quite frustrating, suggesting that perhaps the technician was aware of the problem AND aware it wasn't fixable. On the other hand, it can be very difficult to correctly diagnose problems intermittent problems like this because changes -- such as the dish modifications you have recently experienced and the modem replacement they offered for my system -- can be mistakenly associated with performance changes that are in fact coincidences. In my case, for example, prior to the modem replacment I was seeing the drop occur several times an hour at times and only once in several hours at other times. After the replacement, things looked good for an entire day only to resume drop outs the next day just before I had planned to notify Hughesnet that they had fixed my issue. Now it is pretty clear that the modem had no effect and that my attribution of an effect was just me wanting to find something to hang my hat on.
Let me know if the change that seems to be working for you continues to resolve the issue for you. Today, without any changes made here, we observed no instances of drop out at all. If I had purposively made a change, I'm sure I'd be attributing this performance improvement to what I'd done. I did nothing.
As to CORROSIVE's observation that this error code is often associated with weather events, as am sure is the case, we have had the system now for almost a year and we are quite familiar with drops that occur in connection with weather -- both local and remote. The principle differences now are (a) frequency (b) complete absence of any significant weather events happening in this region of the country, and (c) instances of wide variation in download rates within a brief span of time; viz. values ranging from 200 kbps to 15mbps within a 10 minute testing interval. In all our previous experience with internet loss due to known weather events, we never observed this extremely slow speed phenomenon without loss of iternet and no adverse system status codes.
The combination of factors cited above would lead me to believe this phenomenon is definitely not simply the weather related losses we all see from time to time, and as you said in your last post, if it were, we would be looking for alternatives to Hughesnet because its reliabiltiy would be unacceptable -- especially when you have voice over IP phone service like we do and never know when your phone will be working. When I was told by one tech service rep on a phone call to "wait and sign up for Gen 5", I did ask him how I would know that would be any more reliable if Hughesnet was unable to explain what was happening with our current Gen 4 system. We have the 50GB data package and can't take full advantage of it now due to unreliability of a continuous connection whereas we had been able to for many months prior.
So for now, I'm keeping my fingers crossed and hoping my streak today persists for tomorrow and that Liz will be successful in looking into the history infomation she said she would. We have not rebooted our modem since she requested us not to.
@ChicagoJohn wrote:
@MSmith wrote:
@ChicagoJohn wrote:
@MSmith wrote:Chicagojohn,
Good to know that I'm not the only one with problem. I fear that this issue is much wider than anyone is willing to admit. I live mid-state Illinois, and NO it's NOT the weather! Had a tech out yesterday 3-10-17. He replaced the radio on the dish. The problem reappeared today. Only cost me $125.00 for no repair.
Thanks for posting. Yes, it is good to know I'm not alone in this. Are you going to the modem's status and seeing 12.7.1 "A transmit problem has occurred" also? I was trying to reboot the modem thinking that would help, but now I'm finding that waiting five minutes it seems to resolve on its own. Is that the case for you as well? We are located up around the Aurora - Geneva - St Charles area.
Our signal strength was adjusted a month or so ago and is very good presently. They had a tech scheduled but when I spoke to them first, we concluded it wouldn't be helpful since there was no guarantee it would happen while they are here. Thanks for sharing your results on the replacement !! My takeaway from that is they need to identify the root cause of the problem before taking a shotgun approach and just replacing stuff.
Let's compare notes and see how much of what we're experiencing is the same and if there are any differences.
Hi John,
Thanks for your response. I live in the "Quad City Area" if that means anything to you. About 6 miles south of Moline IL which in on the Mighty Mississippi. We have been seeing this same problem for the past thirty (30) days. The first ten (10) days I did the same as you and rebooted the modem. This has successfully corrected other temporary issues. Like you I started calling tech support and had the problem fix itself while waiting on hold. So, of course, they could find no problem. I got lucky on one call and it stayed down long enough for tech to confirm a problem. They sent a repairman out to replace the transmitter on the dish with a refurbished one. Seems he couldn't get a new one. It made no difference. Three days later (3-10-17) a second repairman came and installed the latest and the greatest transmitter. (The one to be used with the new Gen 5 system.) To my knowledge the system has only gone down once since then.
I've seen in this string a post by CORROSIVE. He brings up our fault code 12.7.1 as usually meaning the weather had a role to play. With respect,(because I'm the dumb one in this mix) I agree that the weather can cause problems. But, I've had my system for seven years and I've NEVER seen this before. If it is the weather, then, all of a sudden, every day, several times a day, for the past thirty days the weather has gotten ugly for very brief periods of time! I'm not buying it.
In my first post I mentioned that this problem is more wide spread than anyone is willing to confirm. Something that the repairman said last Friday lead to that conclusion. He said we were the second stop of the day for the same problem. He also stated that normally he would replace one transmitter per month. Currently he's replacing two per day!
I'm going to go out on a limb here. I think the engineers are well aware of the problem and they are milking the old system until they are read to roll out "Gen 5"
I'm done ranting, have a great day!
@MSmith wrote:
@ChicagoJohn wrote:
@MSmith wrote:Chicagojohn,
Good to know that I'm not the only one with problem. I fear that this issue is much wider than anyone is willing to admit. I live mid-state Illinois, and NO it's NOT the weather! Had a tech out yesterday 3-10-17. He replaced the radio on the dish. The problem reappeared today. Only cost me $125.00 for no repair.
Thanks for posting. Yes, it is good to know I'm not alone in this. Are you going to the modem's status and seeing 12.7.1 "A transmit problem has occurred" also? I was trying to reboot the modem thinking that would help, but now I'm finding that waiting five minutes it seems to resolve on its own. Is that the case for you as well? We are located up around the Aurora - Geneva - St Charles area.
Our signal strength was adjusted a month or so ago and is very good presently. They had a tech scheduled but when I spoke to them first, we concluded it wouldn't be helpful since there was no guarantee it would happen while they are here. Thanks for sharing your results on the replacement !! My takeaway from that is they need to identify the root cause of the problem before taking a shotgun approach and just replacing stuff.
Let's compare notes and see how much of what we're experiencing is the same and if there are any differences.
Hi John,
Thanks for your response. I live in the "Quad City Area" if that means anything to you. About 6 miles south of Moline IL which in on the Mighty Mississippi. We have been seeing this same problem for the past thirty (30) days. The first ten (10) days I did the same as you and rebooted the modem. This has successfully corrected other temporary issues. Like you I started calling tech support and had the problem fix itself while waiting on hold. So, of course, they could find no problem. I got lucky on one call and it stayed down long enough for tech to confirm a problem. They sent a repairman out to replace the transmitter on the dish with a refurbished one. Seems he couldn't get a new one. It made no difference. Three days later (3-10-17) a second repairman came and installed the latest and the greatest transmitter. (The one to be used with the new Gen 5 system.) To my knowledge the system has only gone down once since then.
I've seen in this string a post by CORROSIVE. He brings up our fault code 12.7.1 as usually meaning the weather had a role to play. With respect,(because I'm the dumb one in this mix) I agree that the weather can cause problems. But, I've had my system for seven years and I've NEVER seen this before. If it is the weather, then, all of a sudden, every day, several times a day, for the past thirty days the weather has gotten ugly for very brief periods of time! I'm not buying it.
In my first post I mentioned that this problem is more wide spread than anyone is willing to confirm. Something that the repairman said last Friday lead to that conclusion. He said we were the second stop of the day for the same problem. He also stated that normally he would replace one transmitter per month. Currently he's replacing two per day!
I'm going to go out on a limb here. I think the engineers are well aware of the problem and they are milking the old system until they are read to roll out "Gen 5"
I'm done ranting, have a great day!
Thanks for sharing that information. Your hypothesis / theory could explain some of the widely divergent "information" I've heard from phone calls -- much of it was quite frustrating, suggesting that perhaps the technician was aware of the problem AND aware it wasn't fixable. On the other hand, it can be very difficult to correctly diagnose problems intermittent problems like this because changes -- such as the dish modifications you have recently experienced and the modem replacement they offered for my system -- can be mistakenly associated with performance changes that are in fact coincidences. In my case, for example, prior to the modem replacment I was seeing the drop occur several times an hour at times and only once in several hours at other times. After the replacement, things looked good for an entire day only to resume drop outs the next day just before I had planned to notify Hughesnet that they had fixed my issue. Now it is pretty clear that the modem had no effect and that my attribution of an effect was just me wanting to find something to hang my hat on.
Let me know if the change that seems to be working for you continues to resolve the issue for you. Today, without any changes made here, we observed no instances of drop out at all. If I had purposively made a change, I'm sure I'd be attributing this performance improvement to what I'd done. I did nothing.
As to CORROSIVE's observation that this error code is often associated with weather events, as am sure is the case, we have had the system now for almost a year and we are quite familiar with drops that occur in connection with weather -- both local and remote. The principle differences now are (a) frequency (b) complete absence of any significant weather events happening in this region of the country, and (c) instances of wide variation in download rates within a brief span of time; viz. values ranging from 200 kbps to 15mbps within a 10 minute testing interval. In all our previous experience with internet loss due to known weather events, we never observed this extremely slow speed phenomenon without loss of iternet and no adverse system status codes.
The combination of factors cited above would lead me to believe this phenomenon is definitely not simply the weather related losses we all see from time to time, and as you said in your last post, if it were, we would be looking for alternatives to Hughesnet because its reliabiltiy would be unacceptable -- especially when you have voice over IP phone service like we do and never know when your phone will be working. When I was told by one tech service rep on a phone call to "wait and sign up for Gen 5", I did ask him how I would know that would be any more reliable if Hughesnet was unable to explain what was happening with our current Gen 4 system. We have the 50GB data package and can't take full advantage of it now due to unreliability of a continuous connection whereas we had been able to for many months prior.
So for now, I'm keeping my fingers crossed and hoping my streak today persists for tomorrow and that Liz will be successful in looking into the history infomation she said she would. We have not rebooted our modem since she requested us not to.
Hi John,
Thanks for your informed response. We had high hopes for the NEW transmitter, those hopes have been dashed. After the 3-10 installation we've had one loss on Sunday 3-12 around 8:00 pm, two on Monday evening, two on Tuesday evening, one this morning and one this afternoon. I don't have times for these because they were witnessed by my wife and she did not record the time. I'll back on the phone tomorrow to wage warfare over the fee I was charged for this last attempt to fix MY faulty system.
Good luck and please keep posting. If you get some real answers, the rest of us should benefit as well.
Reporting the second drop we've noticed today. Time 7:13 pm CST. Down 10 minutes after slowing to a crawl for about 1 minute. Same code "12.7.1 A transmission prolem has occurred". Recovered after 10 minutes. Weather clear under a large high pressure area over Chicago. Only bad weather on national weather map is in Pacific Northwest.
Saturday 3/18/17 at 2:15 pm CDT "12.7.1 A transmit problem has occurred". resolved itself after approximately 5 minutes with no action on our part.
The Modems are usually rather chatty in that they log a lot short term conditions. The key is the frequency and duration of the conditions.
Looking at the manual on yours, it seems that this is tough one to get a handle on.
This one looks like it will need one of the higher level folks.