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Upgraded to Gen5 and speeds are still extremely slow at times

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lakeland4
Junior

Upgraded to Gen5 and speeds are still extremely slow at times

I upgraded from Gen4 to Gen5 about a month ago due to extremely slow speeds at various times, especially in the evening and during the weekend.  With Gen4 it would quite often buffer when trying to stream, especially during those times, and the length of time each buffering lasted would range from annoying to not ending which required stopping and restarting the stream.  This problem did not change when I switched to Gen5, which is very frustrating to say the least.

 

To help solve this problem I followed the instructions in: http://hninfo.us/speedtest and ran several speed tests on different days and at various times of the day using testmy.net. Below is some information on the setup for these tests:

 

PC setup with Windows 10 and Chrome

Disabled the wifi on the HT2000W

Disconnected my router

Connected the PC directly to the HT2000W with an Ethernet cable

Nothing else was running on the PC

 

Here is the URL with the test results:

 

https://testmy.net/quickstats/kilroy

 

Let me know if there is any more information you need to help solve this problem.

 

Thank you

123 REPLIES 123

That would be great if the engineers can have a look.

 

I have tried editing the format of that message a number of times but to no avail. 

 

Does there happen to be a limit on the length of a post?  The original post had 563 words, the longest I have written, and included a picture of a small table from Excel. I tried using just characters for the table and ended up with 583 words.

 

Thank you for looking into this.

Good morning lakeland4,

 

There should be a character limit, but one would get an error message if trying to post something exceeding the limit. 

 

-Liz

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Slow performance? Click me!

If you can read this it means I have developed a work around to finally post my system performance observations taken from the end of May through early July.

 

As I stated in my 5/25/2022 post, the overall system performance had significantly improved since the dish was repointed on 4/25/2022.  However, the overall system performance since the end of May is as bad as it was prior to the repointing of the dish at the end of April. 

 

Service stops and starts intermittently

Since the end of May the overall service has intermittently stopped and restarted.  When attempting to access the internet all devices will suddenly hang.  You may eventually receive an error such as ‘This site cannot be reached’ or the downloading of files will fail. This issue may last for a few minutes or up to several hours before the service will function properly. Many times I have tried to reboot the devices, turn both the router and modem off and on with no improvement in the service.

 

Live Streams

Sun. 6/12 – 10:45am – Attempted to watch church service on Vimeo – Continually buffered and was unable to watch

 

Sun. 7/2 – 10:45am – Watched church service on Vimeo. Ran fine - only buffered once for a few seconds

 

Streaming Videos

Fri. 7/1 – 7:15pm – Attempted to watch a video on Prime Video.  Extremely pixelated, twice buffered for around 30 seconds then got the ‘Slow Internet Connection on TV’ error.  Stopped watching

 

Sat. 7/2 – 7:00pm – Attempted to watch a video on Prime Video.  Pixelated and got the “Slow Internet Connection on TV” error as well as 8 different errors before stopped watching.

 

Download speeds are much slower

The data from the small sample of speed tests that I have run with testmy.net, nothing else running on the PC, no other devices, etc. is shown in https://testmy.net/quickstats/kilroy.

 

Below are the dates and times when the download speeds were recorded in June. The times shown are when first attempting to run testmy.net and when the Hughesnet service was finally operating well enough for the data to be collected.

 

Tue. 6/7 – 7:00pm to 8:30pm

Thu. 6/9 – 9:30am to 1:00pm

Fri. 6/10 – 3:30pm to 5:15pm

Sat. 6/11 – 9:00am to 2:00pm

 

The measured download speeds in June were significantly slower than the speeds in May. 

 

Conclusion

As stated at the beginning, the overall system performance since the end of May through early July has been as bad as it was prior to the dish being repointed at the end of April. Most of the live and video streams were not able to be viewed and the service stopping and restarting made even typical web browsing and checking of email unavailable at times nearly every day.

 

The question that needs to be answered is:

 

When will the overall system performance be back to what it was immediately after the dish was repointed at the end of April and until the end of May?

 

This has forced me back to asking what I can do to assist HughesNet as this problem is being corrected.

 

I look forward to your response.

My message finally posted!

 

Since early July I have made a dozen changes to my message trying to get it to post.  None of these attempts made any significant changes to the overall format or length of the message. 

 

I got to thinking that my last couple of posts worked and were much shorter than the one that kept failing to post.  I reviewed my previous messages that did post and the longest one had a character with spaces count of 2650.  The message that would not post had a character with spaces count of 3295. I guessed the limit was 3000, so this last time I edited the message to lower the character with spaces count to 2917 and it posted!

 

What looks to be the cause of my message not posting is that there is a character with spaces limit at or slightly above 3000.  If that is the case, there is no actual error message.  The message you are attempting to post just does not post.  I did search the HughesNet websites and did not find a limit mentioned anywhere.

 

I deeply appreciate the HughesNet Community’s help in solving the problems that I have faced since early June in both connecting to and posting to this topic.  The issues and solutions are described in the topics ‘Cannot Connect to ‘Upgraded to Gen5 and speeds are still extremely slow at times’’ and  ‘Cannot Post to ‘Upgraded to Gen5 and speeds are still extremely slow at times’’.

 

Now we can get back to solving the issues listed in my previous post.

 

EDIT: There has been an update to the ‘Cannot Post to ‘Upgraded to Gen5 and speeds are still extremely slow at times’’ topic.

During the past 4 weeks the observed overall system performance is still not as good as it was between the repointing of the dish at the end of April through the end of May but has improved somewhat over what was described from the end of May through early July in the 7/22/2022 post:

 

The intermittent service stops and starts are less frequent and have not lasted as long but are still occurring.

 

There have been no significant problems with the live and video streams as listed below:

 

Live Stream:

7/10/2022 – 10:30 – Church service on Vimeo – Set quality to 240p - Slow loading but no problems afterwards

 

7/24/2022 – 10:30 – Church service on Vimeo – Set quality to 240p - Slow loading, afterward only buffered once for less than 10 seconds.  Otherwise no problems

 

7/31/2022 – 9:30 – Church service on Vimeo – Set quality to 240p - No problems

 

 

Streaming Video:

7/24/2022 – 7:00 to 10:00 – Watched three 45 minute shows on PBS.org. Set quality to 360p. No problems.

 

The observed download speed over the past 4 weeks is still noticeably slower than between the repointing of the dish at the end of April through the end of May but has improved somewhat over the speed from the end of May through early July. 

 

I will keep you updated.

Good morning lakeland4,

 

Thank you for these updates, I've sent these over to engineering. They've also just informed me that they made a change on 8/2 to try to address your concerns. Please continue to observe your streaming performance and let us know how it is. Please also let us know how streaming church on Vimeo goes.

 

Your cooperation, patience, and understanding are much appreciated.

 

Thanks,

Liz

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Slow performance? Click me!

In addition, your Video Data Saver is currently enabled, so please leave it that way so our engineers can best evaluate whether the change they made is helping or not.

 

Thanks!

 

-Liz

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I appreciate both you and engineering continuing to work on improving the system performance and will keep providing you with my observations.

 

Regarding the Video Data Saver setting, I do not touch it so it should stay enabled.

 

What I have done over the years when streaming is manually set the picture quality resolution to the lowest possible setting.  The main reason is to reduce the data usage as much as possible to help stay under the download limit but it is also done when the picture quality is very poor and you try anything to improve it.

 

This leads me to a question about the Video Data Saver.  Does manually setting the picture quality resolution take precedence over the Video Data Saver setting?

 

Thanks for your help.

You're welcome lakeland4!

 

Yes, if you manually set your video playback on whatever video platform you're streaming it will stream in that resolution, however it will then be at odds with VDS trying to automatically re-adjust. In the end the playback may suffer, so if you want to stream at a specific resolution, like in HD or 4K, turn off VDS. 

 

-Liz

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Slow performance? Click me!

GabeU
Distinguished Professor IV

@lakeland4 

 

From what I have been able to discern over time, the Video Data Saver is basically a speed throttling device. When it detects streaming, which seems to produce a particular signature, it throttles your speed for that streaming activity to around 3Mbps or so. When the streaming service detects that your speed is too low for Full HD, it automatically reduces the resolution to that which will work within that ~3Mbps speed, saving you data.

 

When you manually set the resolution of the stream to something lower, the speed needed for it tends to already be lower than ~3Mbps. In this case, even though the VDS still throttles your speed to around 3Mbps or so due to detecting a streaming signature, it won't really affect the stream.

 

I hope that makes sense. 

 

For a little extra info, this post of mine is from about five years ago. It kind of shows what the VDS does. Netflix's speed test mimics streaming, so it causes the VDS to kick in and do its thing.

Given the responses I am glad I asked that question!

 

To help the engineers evaluate the changes I will leave the Video Data Saver enabled and not change any resolution settings.

 

The HughesNet My Account/Usage/Video Data Saver webpage states the Video Data Saver will ‘deliver a DVD quality experience (up to 480p)’.  I do hope this is the case. The size of the room and the TV makes DVD quality adequate and is preferred to keep the download usage as small as possible,

Below is the system performance update for the last 3 weeks. 

 

Summary:

Intermittent starting and stopping has virtually ended.

 

Live streaming using Vimeo was good while video streaming using Prime Video was terrible.  Video Data Saver was enabled and no resolution settings were changed.

 

The observed download speed is still slower than the time between the repointing of the dish at the end of April through the end of May. 

 

More Detail:

Live Stream:

8/21/2022 – 10:45am – Church service on Vimeo - No problems

 

Since early July there have been no issues with Vimeo.

 

Streaming Video:

8/19/2022 – 8:00pm – Movie on Prime Video.  30+ seconds initial load time, approx. 5 minutes later buffered for 30+ seconds then ‘Slow Internet Connection’ was shown. Pixelated slightly for several minutes, then buffered another 22 times, 15-20 seconds each, spread out over the remaining 1 hour 20 minutes of movie time.

 

8/20/2022 – 8:30pm – Attempted to watch a movie on Prime Video.  45+ seconds initial load time, then ‘Slow Internet Connection’ was shown.  Five times over the next 5 minutes of movie time, the video buffered approx. 30 seconds each time, then became very pixelated the following 10-15 seconds.  Quit watching.

 

8/21/2022 – 8:00pm – Movie on Prime Video.  30+ seconds initial load time then pixelated slightly for a short time.  After approx. 25 minutes, the video buffered 9 times, 15-20 seconds each time, spread out over the remaining hour of movie time.

 

Since early July Amazon Prime Video has been terrible.  Of the 5 movies we started we stopped watching 3 of them.  The two videos we did watch to the end buffered on average every 6 minutes, 10-15 seconds each time.  This is a major reason why we have not used Prime Video very much.  What can be done for it to be improved?

 

I will continue to keep you updated.

Hi lakeland4,

 

Thank you for this update, this is very helpful! Good to see the Vimeo streams are better,but looks like the Amazon Prime Video is left to tackle. I've sent over your update to the engineers and I'll let you know what's next. 

 

Your cooperation, patience, and understanding are much appreciated.

 

Thanks,

Liz

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Slow performance? Click me!

Hi lakeland4,

 

Engineering will monitor your site regarding the remaining Amazon Prime Video concern. This time, please DISABLE Video Data Saver and try using Amazon Prime VIdeo. Please let us know how it goes. For a refresher, here's how to toggle VDS.

 

Your cooperation, patience, and understanding are much appreciated.

 

Thanks,

Liz

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Here is an update on the video streaming and download speed.

 

The Video Data Saver is ON.

 

Live Stream:

9/11/2022 – 10:45am – 1 hour church service on Vimeo. No problems until the screen completely froze 2/3 through the service.  Closed and restarted the streaming and no problems afterward.

 

Streaming Video:

9/9/2022 – 8:00pm – 1 hour show on Prime Video. No problems

 

9/12/2022 - 8:00pm – Movie on Prime Video.  30+ seconds initial load time, then very pixelated. A few minutes later buffered for 30+ seconds then ‘Slow Internet Connection’ was shown. Buffered another 13 times, 15-20 seconds each, spread out over the remaining movie time.

 

Turned off Video Data Saver on 9/15/2022

 

Streaming Video:

9/15/22 – VDS OFF – 8:00pm - 1 hour show on Prime Video.  30+ seconds initial load time, then very pixelated.  Buffered for 15-20 seconds after 15 minutes, then buffered again 15 minutes later for 30+ seconds and ‘Slow Internet Connection’ was shown.  After that, it buffered another 14 times, 20+ seconds each, spread out over the remaining 30 minutes of show time.

 

10/2/22 – VDS OFF – 11:15am – Church service on You Tube. No problems

 

Download Speed:

The observed download speed has not changed since the last post.  It is still slower than the time between the repointing of the dish at the end of April through the end of May. 

 

I will continue to keep you updated.

Good morning lakeland4,

 

Thank you for this update, I've sent this over to our engineers. I'll let you know once I hear back with further instructions or news. 

 

Your cooperation, patience, and understanding are much appreciated.

 

-Liz

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Slow performance? Click me!

Here is a quick update on the Prime Video streaming.

 

10/13/22 – VDS OFF – 8:30pm – Second half of Thursday Night Football on Prime Video.  20+ seconds initial load time, then varied between slightly and extremely pixelated the rest of the game, which included 7 instances of buffering for 10-15 seconds each.  The pixelating was so bad I would have stopped watching very quickly except I was interested in the outcome.

Good morning lakeland4,

 

Thank you for this update, I've sent this over to the engineers. I'll post back once I have anything for you.

 

-Liz

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Slow performance? Click me!

A quick update on Prime Video streaming.

 

10/22/2022 – 7:00pm – VDS Off - 1 hour show. No problems

Thank you for this update lakeland4, I've sent this to engineering as well.

 

-Liz

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Slow performance? Click me!

Hi lakeland4,

 

Good news, engineering is rolling out an update in your area to address performance. Please monitor your streaming performance in the next few days and keep us updated as you normally do here on your thread. I'll be out for a couple weeks, but Amanda or another mod will be sure keep the communication going between you and engineering.

 

Your cooperation, patience, and understanding are much appreciated.

 

Thanks,

Liz

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Slow performance? Click me!