Forum Discussion

Kaiserfamily's avatar
Kaiserfamily
Sophomore
7 years ago

Unable to stream still

HughesNet has never been able to allow me to stream without major buffering. It takes 5 hours to watch a 2 hour movie. I am going through an amazon fire stick which uses WiFi not LAN. Any ideas?
  • MarkJFine's avatar
    MarkJFine
    7 years ago

    See, this is what I'm talking about. Sounds to me like that's not a simple 683mb movie. In fact if it were, you should have no problem streaming even in FAP.

     

    @@Kaiserfamily wrote:
    Yes congestion maybe a factor but when you are paying so much for so little shouldn’t that be factored in with service? Comcast and AT&T doesn’t suffer from this.

    What you're paying for is the sunk cost, technology, real estate, and overhead required to bring a 2-way satellite signal to your house. The costs are mind boggling. You really can't compare it to the cost involved in terrestrial (Comcast and AT&T) which is nothing more than a server and some cabling (or fiber) from 3-5 miles away, and not a whole lot of overhead at all - we're talking pennies on the dollar.

     

    Next, consider that satellite has a finite amount of end-user spot beams (~97 are used), with a finite amount of bandwidth per spot beam. You're sharing that beam with others over an area covering a few hundred miles in either direction, not just a handful of expandable servers for a single neighborhood.

     

    Each spot beam, is then merged with signals from other spot beams, and channelled through one of about 17 ground stations matrixed about the west coast, which are then connected to an upstream provider on the internet.

     

    The key here is 'finite' because you can't just call a tech, fly up to the satellite and add a new beam like you can with a terrestrial service.

     

    So what you do, whatever others are doing on your router, the same beam you're on, and even the ground station you share adversely affects the congestion that you see. I think we did the math on here once and came to the conclusion that the resource demands created by only 40 people on the same beam simultaneously watching an HD movie could feasibly shut the whole beam down.

     

    I'm not even including the impact that 500ms latency (satellite: ~72k miles vs. terrestrial 3-5 miles) has on trying to do resource intense activities such as streaming.

     

    You're right, Comcast and AT&T don't suffer from this, but they're not even close to being the same thing.

MarkJFine's avatar
MarkJFine
Professor

See, this is what I'm talking about. Sounds to me like that's not a simple 683mb movie. In fact if it were, you should have no problem streaming even in FAP.

 

@@Kaiserfamily wrote:
Yes congestion maybe a factor but when you are paying so much for so little shouldn’t that be factored in with service? Comcast and AT&T doesn’t suffer from this.

What you're paying for is the sunk cost, technology, real estate, and overhead required to bring a 2-way satellite signal to your house. The costs are mind boggling. You really can't compare it to the cost involved in terrestrial (Comcast and AT&T) which is nothing more than a server and some cabling (or fiber) from 3-5 miles away, and not a whole lot of overhead at all - we're talking pennies on the dollar.

 

Next, consider that satellite has a finite amount of end-user spot beams (~97 are used), with a finite amount of bandwidth per spot beam. You're sharing that beam with others over an area covering a few hundred miles in either direction, not just a handful of expandable servers for a single neighborhood.

 

Each spot beam, is then merged with signals from other spot beams, and channelled through one of about 17 ground stations matrixed about the west coast, which are then connected to an upstream provider on the internet.

 

The key here is 'finite' because you can't just call a tech, fly up to the satellite and add a new beam like you can with a terrestrial service.

 

So what you do, whatever others are doing on your router, the same beam you're on, and even the ground station you share adversely affects the congestion that you see. I think we did the math on here once and came to the conclusion that the resource demands created by only 40 people on the same beam simultaneously watching an HD movie could feasibly shut the whole beam down.

 

I'm not even including the impact that 500ms latency (satellite: ~72k miles vs. terrestrial 3-5 miles) has on trying to do resource intense activities such as streaming.

 

You're right, Comcast and AT&T don't suffer from this, but they're not even close to being the same thing.

Kaiserfamily's avatar
Kaiserfamily
Sophomore
7 years ago
That’s probably the best explanation I have received on here. I think the issue could also be equipment. The technician used existing dish network cable instead of new cable. The old cable may not be made as well or has a dead spot. The modem/router is also not high quality. I am curious if a nighthawk router would do better.
  • MarkJFine's avatar
    MarkJFine
    Professor
    7 years ago

    Thanks. I had hoped it would help you and others understand.