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Slow streaming speeds

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Brundin-Jordan
New Member

Slow streaming speeds

We are new to HughesNet and have found that almost every show we watch gets a wheel of death. Sometimes we can’t go 30 seconds without having it. We use Netflix and Prime but haven’t been successful with using Hulu. This is 4 times the amount that we paid with our last company and can’t believe that we can’t even watch one episode of something. Please help!
10 REPLIES 10
maratsade
Distinguished Professor IV

Because of the pandemic, streaming has been deprioritised to give priority to business and learning applications, in order to support the millions of people working and learning from home.  In some areas streaming may not work very well or at all, and it's likely not going to get better for a while. 

 

You can try pausing the Video Data Saver and see if that improves your experience, but be warned that pausing the VDS will cause your data allowance to be consumed much faster and you will run out quckly. 

 

Statellite internet is far more expensive to build and maintain, and the prices reflect that.  If satellite internet is not working for you and you have non-satellite internet options near you, you may want to consider those. 

 

Brundin-Jordan wrote:
We are new to HughesNet and have found that almost every show we watch gets a wheel of death. Sometimes we can’t go 30 seconds without having it. We use Netflix and Prime but haven’t been successful with using Hulu. This is 4 times the amount that we paid with our last company and can’t believe that we can’t even watch one episode of something. Please help!

 

What will it cost to discontinue service? I don't think I can take much more of this.

 

GabeU
Distinguished Professor IV

@Liz123 

 

If you simply want to cancel, you need to call 866-347-3292 to do so.  The service comes with a 24 month commitment.  The Early Termination Fee schedule is $400 for the first 90 days after activation and $15 less per month thereafter.  The leased equipment (modem, modem power pack and radio from the dish) must also be returned within 45 days of service termination in order to avoid a non returned equipment fee ($100 for modem and power pack and $200 for the radio ($300 total)).

 

If, however, you'd like to troubleshoot the issue to see if anything can be done to improve it, please start a new topic, which you can do here.  If you are NOT out of plan data and the two boxes at the top of this modem page are green, you should start by running some speed tests as outlined in these instructions.  Please be sure to read the instructions thoroughly before running the tests to ensure they are properly run.  After you've run a few tests, you can start the new topic and include your testmy.net "My Results" page URL so the test results can be viewed.

 

The HughesNet reps are on M-F from approximately 9AM to 6PM EST.  They will be the ones to help you, but they will need some speed test results in order to do so.

Streaming is particularly challenging for satellite providers, because they have capacity limits that ultimately can only be increased by launching more satelites, which is really costly.  They can manage around it for standard web browsing because going from webpage to webpage creates short requests, followed by inactivty while folks are reading the page.  So there are a lot less concurrent connections when folks are browsing and each request can get it's chunk and then wait.

 

Streaming though is a long lived connection needing a steady stream at a relatively high data rate.  That simply doesn't work well with satellite providers, because it consumes lots of capacity for a long time and if left unchecked would really suck up all the capacity for just a few consumers.  The way ISPs deal with that, is through depriortizing that traffic so that other types of traffic can get it's turn. 

 

Netflix publishes data on the throughput for it's consumers by ISP during peak hours.  Of the 69 ISPs Netflix tracks in the US, the only 2 satelite providers (Viasat and HugesNet) are dead last, and it's a big gap from them to the slowest terrestial providers (DSL). (Note: Netflix stopped publishing updates to this data in March of this year due to the pandemic, but historical data is still there).

 

In general, I would say that if streaming is important to you and you have access to non-satelite based providers, that indeed may be the best choice.  Since you are already here though, it's probably worth at least going through the steps that GabeU outlined to see if you can get it to work well enough for you.  I know some people here have mentioned they are able to stream, so it is doable.

Liz123
Spectator

Have had this service since March and have yet to watch anything without interruptions - I cannot watch amazon prime, netflix or hulu, so what am I paying for?

stevef
Junior

Same here for a month now. Before that, I did watch Youtube, 480p worked just ok with a little buffering. Now even 320p is not watchable, I have to buffer 5 minutes to watch 2 minutes. But sometimes even 144p gets totally stuck. (Right now it's buffering with like 25 kbyte/s. Also, when it's really bad, emails can't be opened, notifications can't be checked, bank's website can't be opened.) For some reason, the thread I opened for it got locked by someone, even though it's an ongoing situation for 4 weeks now. 😞 


Obviously, the system could be good, if it was no problem giving everyone enough speed to watch Youtube videos in 480p. So it's not about satellite technology. 😞 

maratsade
Distinguished Professor IV

No, it's about network optimisation practices that take away from some activities such as streaming to shore up others. There's only so much bandwitdh to go around, and the data intensive activities such as streaming have taken a bit of a back seat to others, which explains why you were having fewer problems before.

Although it seems you're having a lot of other issues, Steve. You may want to start your own ticket to have these addressed as there may be some other problems with your system or your beam.

 

stevef wrote:

Same here for a month now. Before that, I did watch Youtube, 480p worked just ok with a little buffering. Now even 320p is not watchable, I have to buffer 5 minutes to watch 2 minutes. But sometimes even 144p gets totally stuck. (Right now it's buffering with like 25 kbyte/s. Also, when it's really bad, emails can't be opened, notifications can't be checked, bank's website can't be opened.) For some reason, the thread I opened for it got locked by someone, even though it's an ongoing situation for 4 weeks now. 😞 


Obviously, the system could be good, if it was no problem giving everyone enough speed to watch Youtube videos in 480p. So it's not about satellite technology. 😞 


 

So it isn't just me then.  I'm on my 3rd day of Hughesnet and I was horrified to discover that I can't even watch a lew-res video on YouTube without it pausing to buffer.  My old DSL service was a fraction of what Hughesnet claim in speed and managed to show 1920x1080 HD perfectly.  FuboTV managed to steam a football game for me, but every 5 to 10 minutes the picture quality would drop from excellent to Commodore 64 quality.
If this is "normal" service then I feel that I have been frauduently locked into a contract, making it null and void.  If it is a technical issue then I hope that it can be fixed.  I switched to this service because I'm in the Lake Charles area and I needed a phone and internet quickly.  I'm still running on a generator.  The installation technician had major problems alighning the dish because the app on his phone to show the signal stregth kept failing due to an issue with his phone (it had been repaired after a drop, but wasn't functioning correctly).  I wish we had a way to check the actual satellite signal strenth, but that doesn't seem to be available.  It's a shame as satellite TV boxes in the 80s could do this and so does the DirecTV box.
Right now I have bigger priorities like getting my roof repaired and grid electricity restored.  After that, I'm going to give this issue my full attention.

That PSG brawl was blurry?


* 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

My old DSL service was a fraction of what Hughesnet claim in speed and managed to show 1920x1080 HD perfectly.

 

Terrestrial ISPs work differently than satellite ISPs, including in terms of the latency inherent to satellite internet.   Comparing the two is nonsensical.


If this is "normal" service then I feel that I have been frauduently locked into a contract, making it null and void.

 

Think again. The website, the contract, the ads, all burst with disclaimers. Read them.