State error code 12.1.9 30.101 Off and on for the last week

[dfbeck]

I've had an error code of 12.1.9 intermittantly for the last week. It also randomly gives me a 30.1.1 more often up to over an hour and a half today. I have reset acceleration many times. I have the modem plugged into a regular surge protector but when this runs with no issues for 3 months plugged into an ups, I don't believe that is an issue and since we have transient outages regularly it needs to stay in the ups. I've had 2 or 3 techs here for outages and state code issues. No one has offered to change the modem while one tech diagnosed a bad cable and refused to believe he had it plugged into an inactive usb port on his laptop. The dish has been tweaked twice, maybe more. I don't remember. It just seems like this will work without a problem for about a month then the intermittant problems start, hang around for a while, and then leave. I don't call repair unless I absolutely have to since the cell reception is spotty and if I'm disconnected I have to start the story all over again. To be fair, the last intermittant poor reception was a loose connector that the Hughes tech did a splendid job finding. High marks to him.

This latest problem has been occuring since Thursday, 3 days ago and it has finally degraded the service to the point it's nearly unuseable and I'm being logged off sites constantly. They send an update and when there's no response they log me off.

I like the service, when it works and complete outages don't happen all that often but these intermittant problems are pushing me towards a dns service that is one mile away and moving, sending out letters addressed to 'Dear Future Customer'.

I don't believe that there is anything else I can do on this end and tech calls scheduled sooner than 4 days out are not the norm, they are an absolute miracle. They're usually 5 to 7 days. I'm open to suggestions.

[GabeU · Accepted solution]

---

@dfbeck wrote:

I forgot to mention one other issue, 480p is the max on resolution, after that it buffers every 5 to 10 seconds for 5 to 10 seconds and this is during bonus time. I tried it again this morning at 2:30 am and videos were unwatchable above 480p.

---

I can't remember if this was ever mentioned, but when you want to watch something in a resolution higher than 480p you will most likely need to turn off, or snooze, your Video Data Saver.  The VDS deliberately throttles the service speed when streaming to such that is amenable to 480p, but not higher resolutions.  This is done to help save data, as streaming in HD can use up to 3GB or more per hour, vs. around 700MB per hour for SD (480p).  

Hope this helps.  🙂   

[dfbeck]

This has grown progressively worse over the last 12 hours. It took me 15 minutes to just to log in here. Reseting MBX makes a difference only about half the time. The state codes alternate between 30.1.1 and 12.1.9 and trying to use the computer is getting infuriating. Any suggestions are desperately needed!

[Amanda]

Hi dfbeck,

I'd be glad to take a look at your system and see if I can find the problem. I'll get back to you with my findings and any questions I might have.

Thank you,

Amanda

[dfbeck]

Thanks, I'll be watching.

[Amanda]

Hi dfbeck,

Thank you for waiting. I see some problems on the transmission side of things, but this requires some deeper investigation and monitoring to make sure I do not mis-diagnose and recommend a repair, replacement or change needlessly. If you can, please keep the modem powered on (unless you lose connectivity and need to reboot) until at least tomorrow afternoon. 

-Amanda

[dfbeck]

I don't know if you have done anything but there have been fewer problems in the past couple of days but that's the main character  of an intermittant problem. Without watching the state code constantly I can tell there is still an issue when videos buffer or pages that require a login and automatically update continue to log me when the page times out. I'll wait to hear from you. Dave

[Amanda]

Hello dfbeck,

I actually have not done anything, but in looking at the system, those state codes have not reoccurred for 1 day, 23 hrs... a good sign this was related to connectivity at the gateway and hopefully temporary. General health of your system shows no equipment fault, so if there is a problem like this again in the future, it is most likely happening over the air to the satellite or gateway. I will keep your case open and check in on your system. 

Can you give me an example of pages that are giving you trouble, and where you are trying to watch videos (app, browser and on what device) ?

[dfbeck]

Amanda,

I spoke too soon, the problem has returned. It occurs on any page I try to open, Youtube, Google, Twitter, are pages I open regularly so they demonstrate excessively  long load times. The computer is HP, Intel i3 2100 cpu, 8  g ram, Windows 7 with a Netgear router. ( I have bypassed the router and disconnected from the ups but with no improvement I reconnected them)

When page loading times become excessive I open the system control center to see what the error is. Though the System Status light is green on the first page, an error will be displayed in the summary. I set Testmy.net up to run every half hour for 8 hours but it closed with an error when it couldn't connect to the computer.

I don't know if it is helpful but I've included a view of the System Control State Code Monitor.

[dfbeck]

Amanda, I'm having the same issue with pages timing out again but the state code was reading 0.0.0 so I ran Testmy.net for signal. I've included a screen print that shows upload speeds dropping to .3 Mbps while the download speeds are quite fast. This was tested Friday afternoon but I also ran it at 2:30 am and 7:50 am Saturday morning and had the same results: upwards of 2.5 Mbps until a period where the upload dropped off to less than .4 Mbps. Pages that set to auto refresh like Hughesnet mail log off as does Hughesnet mail and Twitter. As a matter of fact, any site that requests an update logs off and I have to sign back in. Needing to log back in to Hughesnet mail or Usage is an issue since even when there is no problem it takes 45 to 55 seconds just for the first page to load. I hope you are still investigating this since I didn't open a new topic. DaveI forgot to mention one other issue, 480p is the max on resolution, after that it buffers every 5 to 10 seconds for 5 to 10 seconds and this is during bonus time. I tried it again this morning at 2:30 am and videos were unwatchable above 480p.

[GabeU]

@dfbeck

When you test your speed at testmy.net, please make sure to use the manual 4MB size for upload tests and the manual 25MB size for download tests.  This will not only ensure that the tests last long enough, but it also helps to see differences when the same size test is used each time.  

Also, in your particular case, it will help to conserve data when running the download tests.  The 25MB file is not only an adequate size for the download tests, but it's also a file that doesn't forward to a larger size, so when your download speeds are very good you won't have to use a lot of data to know it.  I see from your Results URL that, since February, your download tests are using a tremendous amount of data, and using the manual 25MB size for those download tests will prevent this.  Data being as precious as it is, this should help to save you a good amount.  🙂  

[dfbeck]

GabeU

I used to set the download size manually when I used this quite some time ago but I simply forgot to do it until your reminder. When data was flowing flawlessly some time ago I had to be careful not to have it consumed with tests. I didn't really give it a thought this time since I can't download videos at a resolution higher than 480p. The consequense of that is having15 gigs available at the end of the month. Last month I had 19 left. Right now I have 53% available out of 50 gigs. Very wasteful. I ran Testmy.net last night and this morning it had used 6.8 gigs. Freaked me out until I remembered the test eats it up. I'm hoping I'll get back to having to conserve and I appreciate your suggestion.

I'm hoping that Amanda is going to discover the cause of the errors but I have a semi-unrelated question: when you open  a Hughes page to either read email, check data usage, or even reach this page, does it take less than 45/55 seconds to load the password page and an additional 45/55 seconds after that? I had been leaving my email open but due to, I assume, slow response times I'm logged out constantly and logging back in a nearly a minute is frustrating. I just want to know if that is system wide or an issue here. Not the logging off, the time to load.

Appreciate the reminder.

[GabeU · Accepted solution]

@dfbeck

The HughesNet pages do tend to take a little longer for me than most pages, but nowhere near 45 seconds or so.  Maybe fifteen seconds or so.   Other pages, however, like you listed in a previous post, don't tend to take even that long.  Like when I click on Youtube in my favorites it opens in less than ten seconds.  Google and Twitter open even faster for me than Youtube.    

It's entirely possible that the slow speed you're experiencing when opening those web pages is tied to the the state codes you're seeing.  Hopefully the picture of the state codes will help Amanda in figuring out what's going on.  That 12.1.9 in the pic is troubling.  

BTW, if you're running automatic tests you can set it like in the picture below so that it uses the sizes mentioned.  Make sure to tick the nfw box, which means "no forwarding", as in no forwarding the test size, or increasing the test size, when it doesn't last long enough.  I put it for every half hour and 12 times, but you can put it for whatever frequency you'd like.  It's "Combined", the aforementioned 25MB for download and 4MB for upload, and nfw checked.  Using 25MB for each test instead over 100MB should help to save some of that data, even if you do have a lot left at the end of the month.  You never know when you might need a lot of it.  🙂 

 

[dfbeck]

GabeU,

I get about the same response when logging into Youtube or other sites, it's just the Hughesnet site that's slow. I going to assume it's just one of those things inherent in the system. You answered the question so I'll leave it at that.

On the random data size of Testmy.net, very sage advice. I was in a hurry Saturday and let the test run on automatic. I checked it Sunday morning to find it had consumed 7.3 gigs! I'd be in a serious bind if I didn't have so much available. 21 gigs available for 8 days sounds like alot but it isn't when 300 to 800 megs is going out every 30 minutes on top of normal browsing. Thanks again.

[Amanda]

Hi dfbeck

Thanks for the follow up and added info. I've just run a remote speed test to your equipment which came back at 24.4Mbps down/2.6 up. 

Gabe's advice that using a large file size is better is absolutely correct and why our engineers recommend running the manual size option. I've added some additional data to your token bucket if you run out early since you're doing some tests for us. If something happens tonight please take note and I can check it in the morning when I come in.  The modem appears to have been rebooted about 4 hours ago, so most of the recent data is wiped.

~Amanda

[GabeU]

@dfbeck

I'm glad I was able to help.  I do hope that the response time of your HughesNet related pages improves a bit for you, though.  🙂    

[GabeU · Accepted solution]

---

@dfbeck wrote:

I forgot to mention one other issue, 480p is the max on resolution, after that it buffers every 5 to 10 seconds for 5 to 10 seconds and this is during bonus time. I tried it again this morning at 2:30 am and videos were unwatchable above 480p.

---

I can't remember if this was ever mentioned, but when you want to watch something in a resolution higher than 480p you will most likely need to turn off, or snooze, your Video Data Saver.  The VDS deliberately throttles the service speed when streaming to such that is amenable to 480p, but not higher resolutions.  This is done to help save data, as streaming in HD can use up to 3GB or more per hour, vs. around 700MB per hour for SD (480p).  

Hope this helps.  🙂   

[dfbeck]

GabeU

I have never use VDS. I had to look it up. There's only a couple of video pages that I would set at 720 since when this is working properly I can eat up 50 gigs with 5 days to go in the month. Sometime I'd like to see what 1080 looks like without the white spinning circle in the center of the picture but using the VDS is cool. Thanks for that.