About MarkJFine

VPNs are generally a two-part solution, and I'm afraid that locally employed processing wouldn't help:   The first part is the ability to securely encrypt all communications using the applicable protocols. This is the problem that satellite communications have a large problem with. The acceleration techniques utilized can't effectively support secure communications, in fact they would violate the secure protocol, so they have to be disabled in order for secure packets to be transmitted. So in this regard, adding level of security using a secondary processor wouldn't help speed.   The second part is IP masking. A remote VPN server would act as a surrogate origination point, therefore hiding the user's actual originating IP address. This has some benefits in protecting the VPN user, but in my opinion it's being used more and more to hide some malicious activity (e.g., bots designed to infiltrate web sites and turn them into spam generators, bitcoin mining sites, etc.). I see a lot of these hitting my web site and have been forced to block many VPN IP ranges. A local secondary processor wouldn't be any help here either, since the originating IP would still be the same. ... View more

1. WiFi is just a way to connect your devices to the modem as an alternative to using an Ethernet cable, which you are apparently using now. 2. Fusion uses a wireless telephone network to augment some of the satellite's data feed outside of your home in order to reduce the undesirable delay times that are normally associated with satellite communications in a number a situations.   These two things are completely independent, but a Fusion system requires the wireless telephone side to be active at all times. ... View more

Is this it: https://community.hughesnet.com/t5/Tech-Support/repair-service/m-p/140615#M93607 You may have created a new post/thread when you intended of replying to this thread. ... View more

Again, I'm on the same network as you and I'm not getting what you're getting. You may have a corrupted DNS entry. Try rebooting everything to clear the DNS.   ... View more

I'm on HughesNet also (obviously) and just tried it in Firefox and Chrome. Neither could find it to DNS into an IP address. That tells me there's something particular to your computer (applications, configuration, etc.) and/or local DNS/network, not HughesNet or their DNS in general.   Another clue is that 2a03:2880:f082:112:face:b00c:0:1823 traces back to Meta Platforms Ireland Limited, which is registered under facebook.com as a "Search Engine Spider", which is kind of weird. The actual server seems to be in Chicago, however. Not saying this is what happened, but it's a scary thought if Meta/Facebook just reached in and indexed your entire computer for you.   If it happens again, in addition to looking at Glasswire, I would right click on your taskbar, bring up a task list, and look for any processes using a lot of computer time and network access. If it looks suspicious I'd kill it immediately. ... View more

Edge is just one of the video issues. I assumed it was edge from the domain edge-video6*. When you expanded it, it's definitely a Facebook data server domain (fbcdn.net is Facebook's content data repository). You may not be able to access that domain directly. That said, Facebook does the same thing as Edge. They show and pre-load videos (some are ads) as you scroll them whether you want them or not. My wife used to scroll Facebook a lot on her phone until I pointed out how much data it uses behind the scenes - about the same rate as streaming an HD movie. What also doesn't help are all the high-res images that take a tremendous toll on data usage as well.   As to your remark about not changing what you do: Just remember that these platforms (and browsers) are updating what they do and how they do it constantly, many with complete disregard to those of us trying to conserve data usage - they're more driven by improving performance to the general public. Facebook is also notorious for changing your user-settings about not auto-loading video. In fact they change their platforms so fast that Facebook and it's family of apps (Messinger, Instagram, etc.) update just about twice a week now.   Since you stated you don't actually use Facebook, it may still be possible that Chrome has a Facebook plugin that is activating in the background, or some page you go to uses Facebook's CDN for their ads. This brings up another point: Just about anything that shows any kind of video or animation is going to be a black hole for data anymore, mainly because the videos themselves are becoming more and more hi-res. That includes games that show video ads. ... View more

I know exactly what it is, because I've seen it on my version of Edge. They have embedded HD videos in the news items that run on the home page and they launch with no way to stop it. I wouldn't leave Edge running for too long or you get what you got. ... View more

Just to add to this, one way of thinking about it is that the beam is akin to a massive router with limited bandwidth that may be used at any time by any HughesNet user in Central Virginia; as well as any of the surrounding area that the beam covers. Similarly, the beam itself is combined with two other beams at the ground station in San Diego. Those beams cover parts of Missouri and Kentucky. On top of this, there's the terrestrial internet pipe to the ground station itself that could have bandwidth and/or routing issues (as has been known to happen). This example is specific to beam 68 and SDO, but can be applied to virtually anywhere in the network.   So there could feasibly be congestion anywhere in the system, concurrently affecting tens of thousands of users at any given time, depending upon the instantaneous user load, which is never constant.   With people on vacation (and 'staycation') and kids out of school this time of year that load is hardly predictable. Naturally this becomes more predictable as September rolls around. ... View more

I know it's no consolation, but there's been a rash of Online Pharmacy and Home Warranty spams for a few days now. Judging from where they are coming from it looks like there is some phone app malware out there that is sending it from all over the world. I've gotten 10 of them today already.   The only way to filter it completely is to block anything with those keywords in the subject. ... View more

I'd like to add that scrolling Facebook for an extended period of time uses a tremendous amount of data. Between the popup ads and watching people's reels, you can burn a 1GB in a very short period of time and not even realize it. ... View more

If 64 and 66 are also having issues it makes sense that it's most likely ground station related, yes. I would assume that those beams are routed together into one data stream either at the satellite itself, at the ground station, or a combination of both. So anything is possible. 64 is over Missouri and S. Illinois, 66 is over KY, and 68 is over C. Virginia. To the best of my knowledge those are the only 3 beams routed to SDO.   Regarding 10am: I find it very strange that all the congestion is during business hours. It used to be much later in the day, towards evening. So, perhaps a bunch of people on 64 or 66 (9am CDT, incl Western portion of KY) trying to remote work from home? Kids home from school piling on Disney+? I see a bit here as a slight degradation, still nothing major, but I still do all my heavy lifting before 8am. ... View more

I am also on 68. Had been out of town while this was being discussed, but am back now.   I did notice some degradation before I left where it seemed as if I was in constant FAP, even though there was plenty of data left and the cycle had just restarted a couple of days before. We're talking all times of day, including Bonus time. Best I can tell, that has since been cleared up, because Bonus time is giving me in excess of 30Mbps on all Linux and macOS updates. However, there are times where it almost seems as if a bunch of people got new video doorbells, left them running in HD, and they were constantly running. The congestion, particularly in the evenings, is less than optimal. It's manifested itself in terms of lag time, not really speed (e.g. some initial buffering on Amazon Prime or the occasional missed connection due to a timeout) but nothing that's consistently clamped my system to below 1kbps.   If it's much worse than what I'm seeing, I suspect there may be something else afoot here, since we're all on the same beam. ... View more

I think the way this works is that someone involved in HughesNet network security needs to contact Instagram and assure them that the IPs assigned to their network are not open proxys and they should stop blocking their customers. I'm not even sure how Insta were able to make such a determination since it's actually under a double-NAT, not a proxy - there's a difference. Just as well, HughesNet can't assign you something that Insta thinks is secure if they've blocked the entire CIDR. ... View more

I wasn't aware the port forwarding in the HT2000w actually worked. ... View more

For years, Comcast used to provide Peacock Premium free, as part of their xFinity cable service. Guess what? Starting tomorrow, it will cost an extra $2+/month.   Yeah, it's not fair, but life's not fair. ... View more

@DurhamJ  It's likely there are storms interrupting the groundstation's connection to the satellite. Your dish also connects to the satellite, but the signal returns to earth at the groundstation (at a location somewhere West of the Mississippi river), which in turn connects to the terrestrial internet. So the connection between the groundstation and satellite is just as important as the connection between your dish and the satellite. Either link can be affected by weather. The first three letters after 'J2' in your IP Gateway code tells you where the groundstation is located, and you can periodically check the weather in that area. ... View more

"Plus I am receiving a security/privacy warning as of yesterday & warned not to proceed"   The security issue is just a certificate expiring. Sometimes the replacement doesn't happen before the old one expires. You are correct in being suspicious of whenever this happens, but it is most likely not malicious in this case. ... View more