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Breninithaca
Sophomore

Issues with Google Apps

My son has to do online public schooling. His school is using Google Classroom and Google docs to accomplish this. The high school kids all have Chromebooks to work from or they can work from their home devices. Last week this was slow but still worked. This week we can't access Google Classroom or any of the Google apps, just Chrome itself and Gmail. On my PC (Win 10) and his personal laptop (also Win 10), if you try to load docs.google.com it just comes up with a white screen and spins until an error comes up. He can't get his school Chromebook to connect to Hughesnet at all. Our iPad and both iPhones bring up Google Classroom and Google Docs in offline mode and refuse to go online. I've even tried our old Linux machine that we never use anymore and it can't get them to load either. Everything else works fine! I've rebooted systems, cleared browser caches, even gone so far as to try to download Google Apps from the Windows Store. It won't work either. And it's just us, because I've reached out to other parents from our district and they aren't having this issue. If it weren't for the fact that google.com and gmail.google.com were working I would think Hughesnet was blocking Google.
I don't think this is a data issue because we got an email just a few days ago from Hughesnet that they were lifting data limits indefinitely to help all the people who are now working and going to school from home.

30 REPLIES 30
maratsade
Distinguished Professor IV

Breninithaca, 

You're not alone. I'm experiencing the same issue with Google docs and Google drive.  They just won't load on the HN network but work on others.  Ditto icloud apps from Apple.  Very odd. Hopefully they'll figure out what the problem is. 

 

*I am not a Hughesnet employee or representative. This is a customer-to-customer tech support community, and I am a customer.

I can't help but wonder if they've blocked them deliberately because the number of people working from home and the number of kids doing online school is overloading their system. If that is the case, they need to do something about it - like yesterday.

1. They know about the problem - I've already brought it to their attention.

2. They are not deliberately blocking, in fact they are prioritizing school/teaching apps.

3. What's known is that there's an issue with the way Google Drive is specifically interacting directly as well as from within Google Classroom - it's timing out. It's a good possiblity that the problem lies with Google themselves or in the internet backbone.


* 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.
maratsade
Distinguished Professor IV

Cheers, Mark, for being the voice of reason. 

 

" It's a good possiblity that the problem lies with Google themselves or in the internet backbone."

 

That's what I thought too, that it may be something from Google, and also from Apple. 

The engineers will find it sooner or later, I hope sooner. 

'the backbone' for many of HN groundstations is basically what used to be Level3 and Qwest, all bought up by CenturyLink, who has the worst network performance ever. So it would not surprise me in the least if it weren't them doing some 'prioritization' of their own, imo.


* 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.
maratsade
Distinguished Professor IV

This whole thing will make or break CL.  I'm rooting for make, myself. 

 


@MarkJFine wrote:

'the backbone' for many of HN groundstations is basically what used to be Level3 and Qwest, all bought up by CenturyLink, who has the worst network performance ever. So it would not surprise me in the least if it weren't them doing some 'prioritization' of their own, imo.


 

maratsade
Distinguished Professor IV

Like Mark said, that's not it.  HN has actually worked to provide more support for homebound kinds and parents. Best thing to do right now is to hang tight and wait until they figure out what's going on, and if you can, contact the schools to let them know there are issues going on. It's very likely they know already and that they're willing to help if they can. 

 

Breninithaca wrote:

I can't help but wonder if they've blocked them deliberately because the number of people working from home and the number of kids doing online school is overloading their system. If that is the case, they need to do something about it - like yesterday.


 

Hi Breninithaca,

 

Thank you for your detailed description about your Google Classrooms experience, this is exactly the type of feedback our engineers are looking for and collecting right now so they can address this for everyone. Once we have further updates on this, we will let you know.

 

  Your cooperation, patience, and understanding are much appreciated.

 

Thanks,
Liz

 

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!

maratsade
Distinguished Professor IV

Please add me to the list as well, @Liz .  Also, icloud.com spins and spins and never loads while on the HN network. (I can start a new topic if you'd like). 

An interesting tidbit that might be of help to your engineers - we can work around this by working through a VPN and the Tor browser. It's extremely slow but it does allow Google apps to load and be usable. So far it's the only way my son has been able to do his schoolwork.

Hi Breninithaca,

 

Thank you for this additional piece of info! I'll be sure to send this over to engineering, I appreciate it!

 

-Liz

 

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!

You can add me to this list. Most of the google apps are not working through Hughesnet for my kids on their chromebooks. Nor is it working on my Apple devices. I can switch over to cellular and they work fine on the same device. Very frustrating as it looks like this has been an issue for a couple weeks and my highly expensive and slow internet is basically useless.
maratsade
Distinguished Professor IV

  • Known issue
  • Affecting other ISPs as well, not just HN
  • HN is working on it
  • They will update us once they have an update to share

 

 

*I am not a Hughesnet employee or representative. This is a customer-to-customer tech support community, and I am a customer.

 

V8zspeed wrote:
You can add me to this list. Most of the google apps are not working through Hughesnet for my kids on their chromebooks. Nor is it working on my Apple devices. I can switch over to cellular and they work fine on the same device. Very frustrating as it looks like this has been an issue for a couple weeks and my highly expensive and slow internet is basically useless.

 

Hello,

 

We've had other customers reporting that Google apps have resumed working for them, is this the same case here?

 

-Liz

 

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!

No. We are still having the problem this morning.
We also have the modem locking and rebooting regularly. Only during the day, so my assumption was some type of load shed on the satellite.

Hi V8zspeed,

 

Thanks for posting. I sent a command to your modem so that it can try to successfully update (that's why it's been rebooting a lot). Please let me know if you notice a difference, if all is well on that front, please let me know more about what's still happening with Google apps.

 

  Your cooperation, patience, and understanding are much appreciated.

 

Thanks,

Liz

 

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!

Hi liz
We are still having intermittent issues with the google apps. I just hotspot my phone to give them access.
The modem is still locking and resetting itself several times a day. It only looks to be during the week days. Not weekends or overnight.
Usually starts about 8 or so central time.
Jesse

Hi Jesse,

 

Thanks for this detailed update, I've sent this over to engineering; they're currently investigating.

 

-Liz

 

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!


@Breninithaca wrote:

An interesting tidbit that might be of help to your engineers - we can work around this by working through a VPN and the Tor browser. It's extremely slow but it does allow Google apps to load and be usable. So far it's the only way my son has been able to do his schoolwork.


I wrote about this same thing 3 weeks ago. VPN is the only way my kids and I can often access Google Docs for school and work. When I raised this issue, all I got was push back from HughesNet apologists. (It's CenturyLink. It's Google. They're working on it. It's a pandemic. Be patient. Sigh. HughesNet do your job! And if you recognize the problem and are working on it, then be transparent about it!) 

maratsade
Distinguished Professor IV

Keep in mind VPN doesn't work for everyone. In the past this community has seen complaints by users who need to use a VPN for work and can't on the HN network. 

 

The "pushback" you got are reasons why things happen. Being asked to be patient is not "pushback."  Patience is actually needed, and the reps themselves ask people to be patient. 

 

There are no apologists here.