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JD3845
New Poster

Slow Speed issue

Sorry to be yet another poster regarding slow speeds.  I'm in Northern California and my issue Issue is very poor speed performance.  I've been having this problem since day one of the installation and while some of the things you guys have done has helped, it's still poor.  Just tested the speed with your speed test app and it's >1Mb at 4:45pm in the afternoon. mytest.net tells me is about 500K at best.  I can sometimes get 25Mb first thing in the morning but it appears to decay throughout the day until it's like it is now, which is essentially unusable.  It can improve during the evening, but the past few days, it really hasn't.  Connection times to some sites take minutes.  While I expect some latency on the line, obviously minutes is unacceptable. I'm not in FAP - never have been.  Frankly, we can't use the internet half the time for things like steaming video to allow us to even approach the 50Mb per month we pay for.  My smart TV won't even connect to Netflix anymore.  We have a voice line too but it has such a delay on it, that conversations are really hard and voice quality is poor anyhow. I'm in the City of Auburn, in the foothills near Sacramento, CA.  When I look at some of the forum threads, it seems that there are a lot of people here with similar problems.  Some are getting pretty frustrated - it shows in some of the posts.  From what I've read in the posts, the strong suggestion is that you are unable to deliver a reliable high speed service out here.  Is that correct? What are you doing about this and what is the timescale for resolution?  I've been patient but we are getting to the point where I either need a solution or a full refund for the equipment and monthly charges I've paid to you.

Thank you.

 

BTW - I tried to send an email to your technical support people through your online form.  Two things:

1) Operating system selection dropdown - the most recent PC OS listed is Windows 7.  You may want to update that...

2) I submitted my email, only to recieve the message 404 - FILE OR DIRECTORY NOT AVAILABLE.

I've got to say that that is not too impressive. 

11 REPLIES 11
maratsade
Distinguished Professor IV

"

1) Operating system selection dropdown - the most recent PC OS listed is Windows 7.  You may want to update that...

2) I submitted my email, only to recieve the message 404 - FILE OR DIRECTORY NOT AVAILABLE.

I've got to say that that is not too impressive. "

 

Yikes.  I hope someone will fix that soon. 

sozoridge
Sophomore

TL;DR - just get "scheduled" to have your account switched to the new satellite... suddenly things start working great again.

 

But yes, terrible speeds lately. Yet, it can magically be fixed (assuming its a similar issue).  Well, its always been "slow" (it is satellite) but the last few weeks it was impossible to do even basic web browsing.  But I had just hit my 15gb cap shortly after the poor performance started, and had to wait until the monthly cycle reset to really be able to tell.  (Even though response time was still terrible during the bonus period).  Anyway, 5 days into the cycle reset and still terrible performance.  Was ready to switch to the competition.  However, while poking around, I found I could upgrade from my 15gb to a 30gb plan, and I would be switched to the new satellite.  So I took the upgrade, and within a minute, my modem cycled, and I was on a 30gb plan.  But, guess what, my slow speeds were fixed on the current setup.  No longer multi minute page loads.  No need to actually be pointed at the new satellite,

 

So, if I put on the tin foil hat, I'd venture to say that they are purposefully throttling in attempt to get people to upgrade/switch to the new satellite, yet doing a face plant by not communicating that option is available.  Anyway, once the upgrade is in motion, they un-throttle the account.  At this point, I've no interest in having a new modem or have the dish pointed at the new satellite.  The old one is working just fine again.

 

My neighbor switched to the competition last week after sitting on endless round about support calls because of the poor performance this past few weeks.  They were on the 50gb plan on the old satellite, and are quite frustrated to find out that all it took to fix was getting the account scheduled to be switched to the new satellite.  Pretty bad when support can't communicate that option and a customer is lost.  I almost followed suite.  Still might.  Everyone here that is on the competition says its great, and they have relatively huge data caps.

 

But between the upgrade and the apparent fix last week of the broken DNS caching system which was rewriting the TTL, I'll sit tight for a little longer and see how it plays out.

GabeU
Distinguished Professor IV


@sozoridge wrote:

 

  However, while poking around, I found I could upgrade from my 15gb to a 30gb plan, and I would be switched to the new satellite.  So I took the upgrade, and within a minute, my modem cycled, and I was on a 30gb plan.  But, guess what, my slow speeds were fixed on the current setup.  No longer multi minute page loads.  No need to actually be pointed at the new satellite,

 

So, if I put on the tin foil hat, I'd venture to say that they are purposefully throttling in attempt to get people to upgrade/switch to the new satellite, yet doing a face plant by not communicating that option is available.  Anyway, once the upgrade is in motion, they un-throttle the account.  At this point, I've no interest in having a new modem or have the dish pointed at the new satellite.  The old one is working just fine again.

 


When you upgrade, your modem does an internal reset, and it's likely that it changed either the Outroute ID, the connection related to the last four digits of your IPGW string, or both.  But, one thing that didn't happen, which I can tell you factually, is you being un-throttled, as you weren't throttled in the first place.   Your low speeds were as a result of an issue, possibly being related to what I mentioned in my first sentence, but you were definitely not being throttled.  There are ONLY two instances in which a customer's speed is throttled.  The first is when they are in FAP, and the second is while streaming with the Video Data Saver on.  Other than that, there is no throttling.    

Yep, like I said, "tin foil hat".  I don't actually expect that is the case.  But something certainly changed when the upgrade took place.  No amount of modem resets cured it prior to the upgrade.

 


@GabeU wrote:


 When you upgrade, your modem does an internal reset, and it's likely that it changed either the Outroute ID, the connection related to the last four digits of your IPGW string, or both.

I don't know what the significance of that is.  Those changing would affect performance, why?

GabeU
Distinguished Professor IV


@sozoridge wrote:

 


I don't know what the significance of that is.  Those changing would affect performance, why?


Each gateway, which is where your ultimate connection to the internet is, has routes that your connection goes through, and those routes change from time to time.  When the modem resets, it can search for the route that is "most open," for lack of a better term.  Kind of like if you are on a large highway and change lanes because the lane you're in is going slower than the rest.  So while you may have been on one that is more used, you may have been switched to one that is less used.  Less used at this time, anyway, as it's fluid.  They're in constant change.  The next time your modem connects, after it's been off, it may connect to a different route than it's connected to now.  

 

Two things that don't change, though, are your beam ID and your gateway.  Those will always be the ones you use.  The beam because of where you live and the gateway because of it being the one your beam is assigned to and pointed at.  


@GabeU wrote:

The next time your modem connects, after it's been off, it may connect to a different route than it's connected to now.  


Perhaps, but like I said, the modem was power cycled many times to no affect.  Power cycling was a regular occurence to work around the modem's broken DNS caching (which is hopefully finally fixed per other threads).  So, maybe it was pure coincidence that I landed on a "good route" during the upgrade.  I'll see over the next days how it continues to fair.

 

Thanks for the insights.

GabeU
Distinguished Professor IV

It won't always change when you power cycle the modem, though it can.  Something like an upgrade will force it to reestablish its connection, and, though I don't really know, maybe in a deeper way.  It may very well be that it's just coincidence that it happened to get on a good one this time, though I certainly hope, whatever the case, your better speeds continue for you.  🙂

C0RR0SIVE
Associate Professor

Just to clarify things...

Rebooting your modem will reassociate you with a different IPGW sometimes.
Each service plan for a particular Gateway/beam will have a set of IPGW's that it can use.

For instance, if you are on the 20GB service plan, you could use 0101 through 0110
BUT, the 30GB service plan wont use those ID's, it might use 0111 through 0129

Each of those IPGW's have different routes out to the internet, and handle varying amounts of customers at any given time.

Some service plan IPGW's are most likely overburdened, and upgrading or sometimes downgrading, will result in you connecting to a totally different set of IPGW's, whether there is less load, or more, is up in the air, it's purely coincidence that upgrading your service plan improved your speeds.  There was a time that reps would change the service plan of customers for testing, to force association to another set of addresses, sometimes it worked, sometimes it made things worse.

At least, this is how it used to be, but, I am not positive about ES-19 connections.


@C0RR0SIVE wrote:

Rebooting your modem will reassociate you with a different IPGW sometimes.
Each service plan for a particular Gateway/beam will have a set of IPGW's that it can use.


You mean that ground based infrastructure is causing these problems?  Wow, just wow.  How is that even remotely acceptable?  Beam saturation, ok, they over sold, but anything else that doesn't require a space trip to resolve is just bad service.

C0RR0SIVE
Associate Professor

Probably not exactly a ground based saturation issue, there are far more things involved with IPGW associations, such as frequency ranges the satellites use.

Liz
Moderator
Moderator

Good morning JD3845,

 

Thanks for posting and providing feedback. I've sent your comments about the email support form to the appropriate department. Engineering has not given us any timeframe, but they are aware of your concerns and are working to address them. Your patience and understanding are much appreciated.

 

Please check your private messages in the top right corner of the community page as I've sent you a PM to further address your concerns.

 

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!