New Hughes peak period performance record

[GW]

I was doing some analysis last night and arrived at a function that told me I should update Silverlight because of security issues. Since I was logged into an investment account, and my internet was basically non-functional for any practical purpose, I thought I'd go ahead with the download and come back to work another time.

Out of habit, I checked the progress of download in the browser and thought... "Really? Another 49 minutes to download 12.6 MB? Lets record this performance."

Screenshot taken at 10:34 PM and saved "Yesterday, ‎September ‎02, ‎2016, ‏‎10:35:13 PM"



I came back in about a half hour or so to see how it was doing. At 11:08 PM it was more than half done. File saved "Yesterday, ‎September ‎02, ‎2016, ‏‎11:09:14 PM". Making progress, only 12 more minutes to go.



Minor miscalculation in the projected download time. After coming back to check a couple of times, I saw the "12 minutes" part wasn't happening. I almost missed the grand finale but arrived in time to watch the last of it tick down and grabbed the final working screenshot. File saved "Yesterday, ‎September ‎02, ‎2016, ‏‎11:33:41 PM"



And after hitting the finish line. The end result, an hour to download a 12.6 MB file




How does this amazing performance rank in history? 2016 HughesNet is providing stiff competition for the early 90's 28.8 modem which would have required an extra minute of download time to get the job done. Impressive.

Yeah, I think Hughes has definitely oversold my beam.



You may wonder, am I in FAP? Nah.




I used the happy, confident, thankful, excited SENTIMENT icon but what I really mean is "Amused". Useless internet but high entertainment value nevertheless. You just can't make up stuff like this.

I sure hope Hughes isn't contracting with KaboomX to launch the next supply of rapidly depleting bandwidth.

[GabeU]

Like BirdDog said, you most certainly have a problem.  The tests you've done thus far bear that out.  Hopefully the reps will see this thread tomorrow and begin to address the problem.  237Kbps is the highest in that set of tests.  Ugh.  It's pretty bad when your upload speed is three times your download speed. 

When I first signed up for Hughesnet in 2004, something wasn't right, and my upload speed was higher than my download speed.  They switched me to a different transponder and everything was fine.  Too bad this probably won't be quite that easy to remedy.   

[GW]

No, it's a very difficult cure. This situation actually began Dec 11, 2014 and has been constantly examined and analyzed ever since. The major problem was finally fixed July 19, 2015. The speed problems with my account/site have never been resolved. Sometimes it's good, mostly it's not. What I know for sure is on July 25, 2016 I was told nothing can be done. The system is overloaded and nothing will change until a new satellite is up and running.

I have the HT1100 and I've been on the ultra high speed plan for diagnostic purposes. I test with a variety of computers and operating systems, variously directly connected or through my network, both wireless and wired. Over the years I have learned (and proved to Hughes) it doesn't make the slightest bit of difference what computer is used or how it's connected as long as everything else on the network is either shut down or asleep. No, I most definitely don't bother shuffling network cables every time I want to run a speed test.

This morning beginning shortly after 8 AM I went through the bother of running two different testing sessions with two different direct to modem connected computers. The first series logged a low of 446 kbps at 8:26 AM. The second series logged a low of 675 kbps at 10:05 AM. At that time of the day I should be seeing a consistent minimum of 20 Mbps with testmy. Since it was a holiday, this and the crazy fluctuations really do point to pure overload.

Speaking of wild fluctuations, this is what I just got running three quickly consecutive tests while hard wired to my router.



And here's three more while hardwired directly to the (edit here) modem. Previously said router.



And here's my Hughes tests for the night. One at 9:10 PM and three just after midnight. Is this schizo or what?

[Liz]

Hi GW,

Welcome back. What's your testmy.net results URL? I'll send up your latest speeds to see if there's any upcoming work for your beam; the engineers will want to see the tmn results.

Gabe et al.,

GW has been around for a long time and as he said, worked with Amanda a loooot. He knows the drill. 🙂

Thanks,
Liz 

[GW]

Hey Liz. Always a pleasure. I hope you had a great weekend.

http://testmy.net/quickstats/Gateswood

Have them look at my Hughes records too. You know the number 🙂 For all the old reasons written by Patrick F, I still have a lot more faith in the Hughes test than testmy. When I remember, I still use the cdavid route in to the test.

When you have some free time, can you please run all the diagnostics on my modem? I've been seeing some really weird behavior from it over the past month or so. I'll look in the logs and see if I can find the bizarre event that happened a while back.

[Liz]

Thanks, GW.

Diagnostics look fine; nothing significant stands out and the current status is OK despite some light rain at your gateway.

I sent over your speed tests for the engineers' reference and inquired about any maintenance done on your beam. I'll let you know of any news once I hear back.

Your cooperation, patience, and understanding are much appreciated.

Thanks,
Liz

[GW]

Thanks Liz. I don't pay a lot of attention to gateway weather until I see my signal drop for no good reason. Then I use my shortcut button to the Rapid City weatherunderground page to see what's up.

If nothing else, I try to be patient, understanding and try to enjoy the humor of it all.

[Gwalk900]

Hey GW, how are doing ?

You have been fighting the fight for a long time, that's for sure.

If push comes to shove perhaps the new bird will offer you an alternative 🙂

[GW]

Hi Gwalk. Doing well and hope you are too.

Yes, it sometimes feels like the proverbial assignment of sweeping the sun off the sidewalk. I do hope they make room for me on the new beam from Jupiter 2.

[GabeU]

Liz,

I'm becoming more aware of that now.  I had assumed the history of the problem GW was referring to was handled only by the phone support, so I thought this would be a place to get more help.  I didn't realize the extent of the problem and the previous discussions.  The problem was, when I looked on his profile at his past posts, something with the history didn't work right, and I even referenced above that I saw nothing in the history showing any problem posts, which was true, but only in that I didn't see anything due to the problem with the page evidently not loading fully.   Now, looking today, the extent of the effort is obvious.  Page after page of posts, going back for quite some time.  One thread in particular with over one hundred replies.

With that said, I still hope that something happens.   

[GW]

Before dark/after dark.

[GW]

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled Is this load balancing/client prioritizing?.

These are the two styles of after-the-fact testmy graphs available for a 37.6 MB download test this morning. Please note it's humming along at an average of well over 20 Mbps, then it hits the wall and dies long enough to make the overall test result drop to 5.6 Mbps.

This test virtually froze for more than 30 seconds (at 0.66 Mbps) before getting a burst to over 55 Mbps. The burst then tapered off to finish at nearly 30 Mbps.

The test that was on track to finish in slightly under 20 seconds took well over a minute to complete.






An immediately subsequent test completely froze but then two more tests ran at 22.37 Mbps and 23.41 Mbps.

The latest testmy and Hughes tests I ran just now came in like this.

[BirdDog]

GW, I have found the manual 15 MB  Testmy.net download test works best when speed is high. The 12 MB always wants to kick it into a much higher file size and sometimes freezes on me also.

[GabeU]

I'll second the 15MB test.  It's what I have to use, lest I end up being resized to something ludicrous.  I sometimes experience the "freeze" as well.   

[GW]

Thanks guys. I appreciate the tip on the 15 MB size. I usually just run the default download test and let it go through the gyrations to find it's own preferred level. That way I'm not running any 8-hour tests when my system decides to go with to 150 kbps mode.

This situation today is completely unrelated to the slow speed problem I have. I just got to wondering if the freezes have anything to do with the load balancing or the automated system cutting off the peons to allow traffic to flow smoother for the commercial accounts. I've never seen a freeze when testing at sub 1Mbps levels before.

Hey Sg, I like the new handle. I should change mine to something like WhiteDog.

Did they ever tell you exactly what was going on with you and Charles last year when your speeds tanked?

[Liz]

Hi GW,

The engineer just messaged me, he'll add tokens to your bucket for the tests you've run and he'll monitor your performance chart. I'll let you know what he finds out.

Thanks,
Liz

[GW]

Hi Liz. Thank you.

I feel silly asking the same question again while hoping for a different answer. Maybe this time there will be a better official answer from the higher-ups than... unfortunately it will remain this way until we launch the new satellite and free up some space."

I guess you should switch me back to my original plan and hope it doesn't fall too much flatter than the diagnostic plan I'm on now. I hope going back to the original doesn't put me fully into "draw a chalk line around it to see if it moves" mode during primetime.

Fortunately, during most off-peak hours, I  never see a speed difference between any of the plans.

[Liz]

Good morning GW,

Just spoke with the engineer. He monitored your speeds from our end and did not see anything out of the ordinary. You averaged 17 Mbps down, and for about 3 hrs yesterday during peak hours you averaged 6 Mbps down. 

He doesn't know why your speed tests are showing low results, his first question was whether the tests were done directly connected to the modem.  My only suggestion at this point is to only run testmy.net tests while connected to the modem so that we can rule any other party out. Of course this can be done at your leisure, just let us know so we can check your tmn page and compare.

Thanks,
Liz

[GW]

Hi Liz,

Yes, I noticed they started improving Wednesday and went up pretty wildly yesterday. I was going to watch it over the weekend to see what happens before I said anything.

I saw 8.65 Mbps on testmy last night during the same time I've been seeing 150-800 kbps.

I saw 3.82 Mbps last night with Hughes during the same time I saw 87 kbps Monday night and 311 kbps Tuesday night.

The router is not a factor in speeds grinding to a halt or in the wild fluctuations. Look up above to find  the two sets of consecutive tests I ran Monday night after primetime was over. One set while wired to the router followed by another set wired directly to the modem. Just another good example of the wild fluctuation that shows my network has nothing to do with it. Please note the slowest speed (2.69 Mbps) came in immediately before the highest speed of 30.73 Mbps. This was while directly wired to the modem.

The Hughes tests attached to the same post were all done Monday night while wired to the router. A low of 87 kbps compared to a high of 16125 done a few hours later. This is not router related.

[Liz]

OK, please let us know how it goes over the weekend. If you plan to run more tests, please run them via testmy.net under your account and while directly connected to the HughesNet modem. Otherwise, the engineer will question the validity of the test results.

Your cooperation and understanding are much appreciated.

Thanks,
Liz

[GW]

If and when I start seeing the ridiculous weakness again, I'll run tests while wired to the modem. I try to avoid that as much as possible since goofing with LAN cables makes it want to do a power off reboot. I was hoping you'd see something there when doing the modem diagnostics.

[Liz]

Right, there weren't any abnormalities in your diagnostics that would indicate modem problems. I'll leave this thread open for you to post updates.

Have a good weekend!

-Liz