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fast download and painfully slow throughput (waiting for data)

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hamradio
Senior

fast download and painfully slow throughput (waiting for data)

More of a ccomment than anything else...

Service is about the same as it has been...  Download speed is great when checked with testmy.net.  However, due to massive delays (no activity, waiting for data) the effectve speed when accessing a web site can be very, very slow (degree of delay is a  [random?]  variable).  

No fixes suggested by HN (there have been many) have helped.   The delay appears to be with HN and its connections to the internet.

Just returned from an extended trip where I had Xfinity.  Great throughput, virtually no delays.  FWIW, this is NOT likely a latency related problem, delays are huge compared to latency times.  It is truly painful to have to return to HN as my provider 😞

4 REPLIES 4
C0RR0SIVE
Associate Professor

If you are getting above ~5Mbps then any delays in a website loading can be explained by a few things.  The main culprit is latency, which is the time it takes for your computer to connect to another computer or server, and for that server to send a reply back to your computer.  The time is measured in milliseconds, and on Satellite internet, you will see latency sit anywhere from 500ms to 1200ms.  Cable can be anywhere from 16ms to 60ms on average.

Now, lets look at a website, each image, each section, each link, each video is a seperate data request, so delays can build up a good bit in just starting to load a website.  You could have upwards of 1000+ individual elements served from hundreds of different locations just for one website.  Hughesnet attemps to help this painful data retrieval process by using Turbo Page, which today is known as "Web Acceleration".  This system in it self has it's own problems, but the benefits generally outweigh the cons.  The biggest con is that a lot of websites use dynamic data and constantly change which negates the effects.  The next biggest is system load, the more users, the more stress on the system which can slow it down a bit.  However, in general, unless you get errors specific to that functionality, it's serving pages up faster than if it was disabled.

However, you state in your post that latency is below load times...  What browser are you using?  If you are using Chrome, install Page Load Time, it's a handy app that lets you see how long it takes for websites and different parts of websites to load.  For instance, loading this reply page took me 8.79 seconds and CNN will take me about 6.5 seconds, that is with adblockers loaded to help speed up load times.  Google is about 5 seconds.

Thanks for your reply but as noted latency could account for it if the satellite was orbiting between the Moon and Mars.

The browser is Firefox.

Load times for sites varies a lot with no discernable pattern.  Sometimes it is quick sometimes very slow.   Google just took 7 seconds, while at other times and some sites, take minutes.

 

From many previous forum discussions, the most likely cause is a intermittant problem with the connection between HN and the carriers HN uses to access the internet.

 

Woody

 


@hamradio wrote:

From many previous forum discussions, the most likely cause is a intermittant problem with the connection between HN and the carriers HN uses to access the internet.


That's still my guess. However, he is correct in that there's an inherent and minimal half-second per ping latency.


* 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.

Hi Mark,

 

Throughput is decent so far today.  Too bad, if history is any indicator, it will not stay that way.

Woody, KZ4AK