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New to HughesNET Gen5 from DishNET

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KarenGW
New Member

New to HughesNET Gen5 from DishNET

2 weeks ago, I “upgraded” to HughesNET Gen5 from DishNET. DishNET had issues now and them, mostly during storms but I needed the higher speeds HughesNET Gen5 promised. I’m in Wisconsin and so far, it’s nothing but disappointment.

If I read correctly, I should be on EchoStar-19 satellite, but my modem is saying it is on EchoStar-17. Isn’t this the GEN4 satellite?

If I run the connectivity test on the Terminal/Gateway from the modem, I get all kinds of results that I can not correlate with anything, storms, clouds, peak times etc. Sometimes it will be you have good connectivity to the gateway, sometimes it is poor with packet loss up to 40%, and sometimes completely failed.

I was on a chat with tech support on Friday, where they did “something” to my modem and reboot the system. I then had to call tech Support. They had me run the download on Testmy.net 3 times to get the average. I had to run it 5 times, twice it just failed to give me any number. They took the 3 numbers I got, which averaged to 16 Mbps and state I was above the threshold. Totally disregarding the 2 test that completely fail to complete.

They tried to blame the position of where the modem/router was in the house. I asked them why is the modem/router was in the exact same place as DishNet’s why would theirs work so much worst? Dead silence on the phone.

They then asked to run the test on the upload page, and they were not only below threshold, but they could see the constant drops on the line. After talking to someone else, they escalated me to engineering. I’m waiting for a call back from them.

I have had to drive to the top of a hill and transmit files over my cell phone because HughesNET takes either hours or fails completely.

Since I have nothing to compare to before the “heavy volume” of everyone working from home, is this normal?

2 REPLIES 2
MarkJFine
Professor

1. No such thing as a Gen4 vs. Gen5 satellite. Yes, the majority of people on Gen5 are on E-19. Those with poor visibility to E-19 are getting Gen5 service on E-17 - which is fine, since you'll benefit from the lower number of users for which you'd be competing for bandwith.

2. Satellite comms is a three-point radio data link: Your dish to the satellite, then the satellite to a ground station that is connected to the internet. Storms can interrupt either data link: At your location, or the ground station.

3. Yes there is heavy volume, but I'm also noticing a secondary issue with internet backbones (on in particular) having pretty big problems with routing tables and backbone handoffs, which started a few weeks ago, but really got bad last week. This is part of the larger internet and not related to HughesNet volume.


* 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

"They took the 3 numbers I got, which averaged to 16 Mbps and state I was above the threshold."

 

They count the average, not individual ones, and yes, that's above the threshold.


May want to run more tests on your own, to get more documentation so you can escalate the issue here. But it looks like you're already expecting a call from an engineer. I would imagine it may take a while, as everyone nationwide is overwhelmed with the coronavirus crisis.

 

The influx of people working from home can definitely be felt everywhere. People on Xfinity (superfast terrestrial cable internet) are complaining about it ("My speeds have gone down to 50Mbps!" *eye roll*). It is even more noticeable for those of us on satellite internet.

 

Things are going to be difficult for a while. We all need to be patient and tolerant and do the best we can with what we have.

 

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