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Tom93
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Speed issues

I've been having speed problems since december 2018 at first i assumed it was from the christmas influx but 6 months later it has not gotten any better so im hoping for some insight.

 

The problem is when i try to download anything, movies, files etc.. the downloads just take forever, even when i have data in off peak hours (2 to 8AM) it runs at about 10 kbps and i have plenty of data during this time, The weirdest part is once it switches to peak hours where i have no data currently the download will go up to 60-100kbps so it's running much faster during peak hours without data than off peak with many gig's left. Now i have doubts it's due to anything on my end as there are times where it bumps up to 300~ kbps but it will only stay up there for a couple of minutes if that before plummeting back to 10 or so at off peak hours.

 

I haven't done any speed tests as of now but i don't think thats the problem since i occasionly do get the faster speeds i use to get 7 months ago before all this started so i'd like to know if i have bad equipment or if my dish is out of alignment or something that would cause this for such a long period of time.

14 REPLIES 14
maratsade
Distinguished Professor IV

In order to have speed issues addressed in this community, please follow the steps outlined here:

https://community.hughesnet.com/t5/Tech-Support/Think-you-have-slow-speeds/m-p/110034#M74607

 

 

Speed tests will have to wait till i get data back but as i said i doubt it will show anything, I have 100% signal strength all the time, 0 packet loss all the time, and my downloads will occasionly work but there's something up with peak and off peak hours for me downloads will drastically slow down once they hit 2AM and speed up once they hit 8AM.

maratsade
Distinguished Professor IV

Even if you doubt they will show anything, the tests actually provide a lot of diagnostic information to the HN reps and engineers, and this is why they are required.   

 

It's possible the issues you're experiencing have to do with congestion and/or latency.  People take advantage of the bonus bytes hours and congestion may go up considerably.   At 8 am many users would be at work and congestion would lessen. 

 

 

Tom93 wrote:

Speed tests will have to wait till i get data back but as i said i doubt it will show anything, I have 100% signal strength all the time, 0 packet loss all the time, and my downloads will occasionly work but there's something up with peak and off peak hours for me downloads will drastically slow down once they hit 2AM and speed up once they hit 8AM.


 

Here are some speed tests from today, As you can see it says i have great speeds. I will also include a screenshot of what my actual download speed is though because it is still horrible.

https://testmy.net/quickstats/Thomas93

 

http://prntscr.com/o7zeca

 

Not sure what the second download measurement was, but the first is a good indication of your speeds to testmy.com, and in general is an indication of your overall, unrestricted speed.

 

That said, there's an apparent issue either with the routed connection to wherever your 70MB download is coming from,  an issue with their server, and/or an issue with the protocol - sometimes secure downloads are significantly slower than unsecure downloads because certain acceleration techniques can't be used on secure connections.

 

In other instances, simply pausing (or even quitting) and restarting the download that slowed or stalled causes it to be a lot quicker... no idea why that works, but it does.


* 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.

The second download was a tv show from a video streaming site, Those are the speeds i get from every streaming site/download such as youtube and amazon etc... The speeds used to be much faster but dropped off months ago as i said in my original post and just never returned. The 70MB download did jump to about 60kbps for about a literal second before it dropped back down to those speeds. I have tried pausing, restarting, downloading at different times of day etc.. but nothing seems to actually help. If there is an issue with the routed connection, server, protocol than it seems to be effecting every website i visit that has any form of media on it.


@Tom93 wrote:

If there is an issue with the routed connection, server, protocol than it seems to be effecting every website i visit that has any form of media on it.


I've seen it periodically with anything served by Akamai (such as for Microsoft Office downloads), Amazon, and possibly a few others (ClamXAV updates seem to slow and stall out sometimes). This is for large files in general, not just streaming media.

 

My suspicion is some sketchy goings on at the gateway's upstream provider if it's CenturyLink or ATT, just because I've seen similar things happen with them on networks other than HughesNet. And, those backbones in particular always seem to be the thing in common.

 

You can tell who the upstream provider is in a tracelink, by looking at the IP in hop 4 or 5, or whatever it is immediately after all the first few DirectWay hops. If it's CenturyLink, good luck, they won't even admit they have a problem. ATT knows and admits they have a problem - they admit its what's driving errors in the DirecTV guide that they push down their service channel (mine was even missing a few channels yesterday that 'magically' reappeared later in the day!).


* 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.


@MarkJFine wrote:

@Tom93 wrote:

If there is an issue with the routed connection, server, protocol than it seems to be effecting every website i visit that has any form of media on it.


I've seen it periodically with anything served by Akamai (such as for Microsoft Office downloads), Amazon, and possibly a few others (ClamXAV updates seem to slow and stall out sometimes). This is for large files in general, not just streaming media.

 

My suspicion is some sketchy goings on at the gateway's upstream provider if it's CenturyLink or ATT, just because I've seen similar things happen with them on networks other than HughesNet. And, those backbones in particular always seem to be the thing in common.

 

You can tell who the upstream provider is in a tracelink, by looking at the IP in hop 4 or 5, or whatever it is immediately after all the first few DirectWay hops. If it's CenturyLink, good luck, they won't even admit they have a problem. ATT knows and admits they have a problem - they admit its what's driving errors in the DirecTV guide that they push down their service channel (mine was even missing a few channels yesterday that 'magically' reappeared later in the day!).


If i read this right level 3 communications is my upstream provider, It's also very possible it's centurylink  so i guess that doen't bode well for me. I do have issues with large files as a whole such as programs and such so it does seem to imply that's the issue with me. Thank you for the help so far.

Yup... CL bought Level3 and a few others.

 

What I tend to see is a short burst, then it seems to stall for 60 seconds, then restarts, and goes up and down for the remainder. Sometimes there are other 60-second stalls that happen after that initial one, but it's never a straight-line download, always a bumpy up-and-down kind of envelope.

 

Here's how I know it's CL and not HughesNet: I have some managed server space that is not near HughesNet at all. The server has a small bot that pulls the rss feed of a blog. It then takes the feed and embeds the last 10 titles onto an image, which then gets posted on the blog's Twitter account. The bot kicks off three times a day... except when it doesn't, because the oauth to Twitter has timed out after 60 seconds and the server sends me an cron error email. I literally ssh'd onto the server and did a traceroute from it to the Twitter url that I use and there are only 2 hops between them, both CenturyLink. QED


* 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.


@MarkJFine wrote:

Yup... CL bought Level3 and a few others.

 

What I tend to see is a short burst, then it seems to stall for 60 seconds, then restarts, and goes up and down for the remainder. Sometimes there are other 60-second stalls that happen after that initial one, but it's never a straight-line download, always a bumpy up-and-down kind of envelope.

 

Here's how I know it's CL and not HughesNet: I have some managed server space that is not near HughesNet at all. The server has a small bot that pulls the rss feed of a blog. It then takes the feed and embeds the last 10 titles onto an image, which then gets posted on the blog's Twitter account. The bot kicks off three times a day... except when it doesn't, because the oauth to Twitter has timed out after 60 seconds and the server sends me an cron error email. I literally ssh'd onto the server and did a traceroute from it to the Twitter url that I use and there are only 2 hops between them, both CenturyLink. QED


Alright that makes sense than, so im probably not going to be able to resolve anything with them by the sounds of it. Thanks for the help guys.

GabeU
Distinguished Professor IV


@Tom93 wrote:

for me downloads will drastically slow down once they hit 2AM and speed up once they hit 8AM.


My download speed normally takes quite a hit at 2AM EST, as well, but this is because that's the time that many people schedule their larger downloads.  After a while, my speeds start to kick back up, and they're normally good again after about a half hour or forty five minutes or so.  As well, at 8AM, the instance of downloads lessens, as those doing such in the morning have now gone back into their Anytime/Plan data time period, so they stop downloading files.  For me, the best time to download files, or when they download fastest, is from around 3:00AM to 6:30 or 7:00AM.  

 

BTW, just so you're aware, the speed shown in the download example given (Windows?) is in bytes per second rather than bits per second.  I only mention this due to ISP speed being represented in bits per second.  Sometimes people see, via that method, that their download speed while downloading a file is something like 4MBps, with them thinking that's low, but without realizing that 4MBps is actually 32Mbps.  That's only an arbitrary example, but I just wanted you to be aware, and you can multiply what you see by eight to get bits per second.  

 

With that said, 108.8Kbps (your example, but in bps) is still VERY low.  

 

One thing to check, when you see that your speed is low when you are trying to download something, like in your example, is the speed variance.  You can do so by running a testmy.net speed test, then looking at the variance for that test, which shows on the result page.  You can also click on the TID for each test on your test Results Page and see the variance there. The variance doesn't actually show congestion, but it is indicative of it.  If it looks choppy, that may explain it, as choppiness suggests congestion, and congestion is a speed killer when it comes to file downloads.  If it's smooth, then it's likely that the slow download speed is being caused by something else, including what Mark mentioned.  

 

Two arbitrary examples....

Low CongestionLow Congestion

High CongestionHigh Congestion

Thank you for the info on bytes ans bits, I realized the speed shown are bytes but didn't know about the ISP being in bits. Now i'll try to be more clear about the off peak hour issue. If i am starting a download at midnight it will run at lets say 60kbps, The second it hits 2AM it drops to about the speeds I showed previously and never goes back up until it hits 8AM, It is also worth mentioning i have no data for 8-2 where the speed is faster but i do have data at 2-8 where it is slower. Because my schedule i am around at those early morning hours and unlike you i never see an uptick in speeds, that is the crux of my issue.

 

The shown download was started right after my last speedtest so going by the variance there it doesnt seem to be an issue. So if that doesn't seem to be the problem what if anything can i do on my end to try and get it working better?

GabeU
Distinguished Professor IV

@Tom93 

 

Though I have no doubt that you've done this, what do you see when you power cycle your modem?  What I mean is, unplug the HughesNet modem, wait at least a minute, plug it back in, wait at least five minutes, then try going back online.  When you do this, are the speeds any faster with the downloads?  Also, though it may not necessarily matter, it would be best to be using a LAN cable connected device, if you have one, rather than a WiFi connected device, while troubleshooting.

 

As for what's causing it, I have a feeling that the source servers or something in between is the problem, but I'm not very versed in networking, so what could actually be causing the problem, I don't know.  Nor do I know why you're seeing what you are with the Bonus Zone speeds.  Hopefully a rep will respond with some ideas.


@GabeU wrote:

@Tom93 

 

Though I have no doubt that you've done this, what do you see when you power cycle your modem?  What I mean is, unplug the HughesNet modem, wait at least a minute, plug it back in, wait at least five minutes, then try going back online.  When you do this, are the speeds any faster with the downloads?  Also, though it may not necessarily matter, it would be best to be using a LAN cable connected device, if you have one, rather than a WiFi connected device, while troubleshooting.

 

As for what's causing it, I have a feeling that the source servers or something in between is the problem, but I'm not very versed in networking, so what could actually be causing the problem, I don't know.  Nor do I know why you're seeing what you are with the Bonus Zone speeds.  Hopefully a rep will respond with some ideas.


No change after power cycling, That was one of the first things I did and no change in speeds at all. I have used LAN connection intermittently across the many months of problems and there was never a change in anything than either, I do try to have a hardwire connection when I troubleshoot though. Thank you for the help so far.