Unable to stream still

[MarkJFine]

What's the data rate of the video? Is it HD, SD, or (hopefully) less?

Also, are you within your data allowance, or are you in FAP mode?

[Kaiserfamily]

SD and running a token because HughesNet doesn’t have a plan that fits my needs.

[Kaiserfamily]

What a waste of a token. Started movie 2 hours 20 min ago and just now at 50 min mark.

[Hardy]

Kaiserfamily, 

Here are some tips on how to Manage Data. If you have any further questions please ask!

Thanks!

[Kaiserfamily]

I would need roughly 300+ as a minimum. Can’t manage 300 out of 50.

[GabeU]

@Kaiserfamily

A possible cause of the issue, especially in the evenings, is congestion.  Unfortunately, streaming can be touchy, and while your speed may appear to be adequate when tested, the quality of your bandwidth, due to the aforementioned congestion, may be of such that it's not conducive to steady streaming, even in SD, at a given time.  Again, though, it's more prevalent in the evenings because that's when most people are online.  

Further, and further on the unfortunate side, if the problem is due to congestion, there may not be a whole lot they can do to alleviate it.  

[MarkJFine]

I'm confused. You only need tokens if you run out of your anytime data allowance. The tokens will get you out of Fair Access Policy (FAP) restricted data rates, but won't necessarily help fix buffering due to excessive latency and/or congestion.

So, are you really buying tokens because you're running out of data? And if that's the case, are you absolutely sure you're streaming at less than HD quality? HD uses some ungodly 3-5GB/hr...

[Kaiserfamily]

Yes I run out of data in a matter of a day or two so to ensure my data stream is strong and running at greater than 3 MB’s I buy tokens. If you run out of data you are throttled. So running at 25mbs streaming a 683 mb movie or less depending on the compression of the sd video should not buffer. If I am running 1 mbs then definitely it should buffer especially anything above 480pps, but I am running 25 mbs or faster.

[Kaiserfamily]

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.

[GabeU]

---

@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.

---

Well, it's a niche service, and it's very expensive to provide.  It also has a much more restricted throughput than any ground based service, which is why those services tend to experience less congestion, though cable sometimes does.  Each satellite can only provide so much throughput/bandwidth, and that has to be split between thousands upon thousands of people.  When a lot of people are online it's just like traffic during rush hour, and because they can't easily expand their capacity like ground based services can to keep up with demand, congestion starts to happen.  The more people online, the worse it gets, and the worse it gets over time.