About mmollinet

I'm the one that started this thread. Hughesnet is not a scam and I don't think that they are intentionally attempting to screw people over with data usage.  Yes, I too would go with Comcast or some other provider with unlimited (or exceptionaly high limited) data if that were an option here, but it is not.  The only other option in this area is Excede and from what I researched the new Hughenet Gen5 has higher speeds and higher data limits.  I have measured speeds with Gen5 off and on and routinely am getting much faster than advertised speeds. So this is my best option and I am fine with it and glad that I can now get internet this fast in the middle of nowhere at over 11,000 feet elevation. My only concern is whether there are any bugs in this new system in how the data usage is being measured and tracked and is Hughesnet looking into this? Because it seems that many others are experiencing the same things I have, which is that some activities now are using much more data for the exact same activity than previously with Gen4.  I do not have countless hours to investigate this and given the very high cost of this service, it seems that Hughenet should have the responsibility to investigate this not me.   I have not had any mysterious data usage or loss when I am not using data.  I have a security system that can control thermostats, lights, and a camera connected to the internet as well as a WiFi weather station and also DirectTV and AppleTV. But when I look at indivdual days of data usage over the past several months for days when I am not at the vacation home, the total usage for all of those devices is only about 10-20 MB per day. This is almost identical to what it was before when we had the previous Gen4 Hughesnet. That is acceptable and not a problem for me.  DirectTV does not seem to be a problem for me either. I have looked at data usage before and after many activies and I have no mysterious data loss when I am not intentionally doing somethig online. I do not stream On Demand movies on DirectTV and have seen no unusual data usage there that is any different than before.   Where am I seeing a difference is when I do intentional online activities. Like looking at Facebook, streaming music or video, etc. I am doing exactly the same kinds of activities as before with Gen4 and using the same data resolution for video streaming as before with Gen4. But in some cases, the data usage seems to be many times higher. This is where I have concerns.  I do stream movies and TV shows from time to time.  Yes, I fully understand that uses a lot of data. But since it is a vacation home that I use only 6-8 days a month, I can do that now and then.  I did that before with Gen4 as well even on occassion a 1080p HD movie (maybe 2 a month total).  But I still never hit my 20 GB /month data limit.  Now with 50 GB, I seem to be comng perilously close to using my limit doing exactly the same activities. I had hoped with the new 50 GB plan I could do about twice what I did before. But it seems I can only do about what I was already doing. This is my frustration.  I paid more so I could now do more, but I don't seem to be able to do that, because the same activities seem to be using far more data for some reason.  If I previously streamed a one hour TV show in 720p, it used about 750 MB - 1 GB per hour.  If I previously streamed a one hour movie or TV show in 1080p (rare I would ever do that) it was about 2 GB per hour.  But now suddenly with Gen5 it is almost double that.  And just basic activities like Facebook are also much higher than before. When I have looked online at what streaming of those various video resolutions is supposed to use in data, those numbers from before with Gen4 seem to be accurate.  But double that is not. So again, why the sudden massive difference doing the same activity? Why is a 1080p HD movie now using 4 GB per hour instead of 2GB per hour?  It isn't because of mysterious activity going on when I'm asleep. It is just much higher usage doing a very specific activity compared to before with Gen4.    I don't have Glasswire, because it is not available yet for the Mac.  But I look at data right before and right after an activity like watching a TV show or movie just like I did before and there is a noticeable difference...like double.  So again, why so much more data with Gen5 compared to Gen4 doing exactly the same thing?  It is a dramatic difference.   ... View more

@Gwalk900   Yes, all good points. I fully realize things change over time and that many websites have auto load features now for video, which increases data usage. But again, my point is that this changed dramatically when comparing the week after the upgrade to Gen5 compared to the week before on Gen4.  Things didn't change that quickly.  Yes, I understand that it may be helpful to gather evidence through something like Glaswire. But given that there seem to be many people having this issue, enough so that the HughesNet moderators have said their engineers are looking into it, that the burden should be on HughesNet to troubleshoot the problem, not the customers. ... View more

@BirdDog   Yes, I am fully aware of that, I am not computer illiterate.  Perhaps you didn't read my entire message.  I know this is capped data and not limitless like with Comcast or CenturyLink. But if you read my message, you would clearly see that I am not attempting to stream HD movies 24/7 or even use the internet 24/7.  If you looked at my entire message, you would see that I clearly stated this is a vacation home that is only used maybe 6 days a month total and that over the past 4 years with Gen4, we NEVER used more than 20 GB a month doing EXACTLY the same activities we have done so far since upgrading to Gen5. We generally only do some basic email, a little time web browsing, and Facebook.  We have not yet, but do wish to watch maybe 5 movies a month.  That is why we upgraded to the 50 GB plan and are willing to spend over $140 a month for internet at a vaction home. Even at 1080p HD, 50 GB should be perfectly adequate for that when it is only used 6 days a month.  If you looked at my message you would see that I mentioned that despite heavy daily usage on Comcast the remaining 24 days a month at our primary residence, we NEVER use more than 100 GB a month ( at any time over the past year).  Again, I did in fact monitor this with Gen4.  With Gen4 a single 2 hour 1080p HD movie was about 5 GB of data.  This is in line with what I have seen should be data usage for a 1080p HD movie.  With Gen5 that same type of movie and same length was over 7 GB.  So something is clearly wrong.   ... View more

@Liz Liz,   I appreciate your response and it is good to know that the engineers at HughesNet are looking into this. I hope that sort it out very soon.   I have seen many elaborate and detailed responses to this topic in various threads on this subject.  But I, and I'm sure countless others, simply don't have the time or expertise to spend hours and hours researching this, getting software like "Glasswire" as many have suggested, and monitoring it endlessly for days to try to prove to HughesNet that there is a problem.  This is in a vacation home where I want to relax and vacation in my limited time there, not spend countless hours monitoring my internet usage.  Or trying to figure out why my data usage on the new HughesNet Gen5 is exponentially larger than on Gen4 even though I'm doing exactly the same activities online.  When I pay $120 a month for internet service, which is double what I pay for much faster internet at my primary home in the city, I at least expect that HughesNet will sort this out and not expect me or other users to figure it out or to have to prove to HughesNet that there is a problem.   I do not have to use Glasswire and spend hours on this to know that clearly something is off in how HughesNet is tracking data usage for the new Gen5.  It is just so glaringly different than it was with Gen4 doing exactly the same activities.  You don't have to be a rocket scientist to see there is a problem here. As I previously mentioned, I previously had HughesNet Gen4 for several years.  As it was a vacation home, we never once used more than our 20 GB per month data limit in over 4 years with that service.  We even watched maybe one or two 1080p HD movies a month on our AppleTV.  So I am just dumbfounded that now with Gen5 I somehow supposedly burned through 17 GB in a single day!  This is simply not feasible given our online activities didn't change.  At my primary residence where I have Comcast and speeds of over 200 Gbps with data limits of over 1 TB a month, we stream 1080p HD movies on AppleTV or HD content on Netflix almost every other day.  Yet our total monthly usage is only about 95 GB per month on avearge.  We spend 3/4 or our time at the primary residence and maybe 1/4 at the vacation home where we have HughesNet.  So again, if we stream all kinds of HD at our primary residence and never break 100 GB per month, how on earth could we burn through 17 GB in a single day on HugheNet?  I have recently monitored my useage, before and after watching a single 2 hour log 1080p HD movie on AppleTV now with Gen5.  It burned over 7GB for that single movie!  (And no, it was not Ultra HD, we do not even have that). When we did exactly the same thing on Gen4, it only burned about 5 GB.  So what is up with that? Now with Gen5 we seem to routinely be burning through about 2 GB a day just doing routine stuff online like email, web surfing, Facebook, etc.  Before on Gen4 doing exactly the same activities we would only burn through maybe 500 - 600 MB max in a day.  It simply cannot be just because Gen5 is faster that it must be burning more data.  We are doing exactly the same thing.  The speed should be irrelevant if we are doing the same exact acitivies and using the same resolution for any video streaming content. Our internet at our primary residence is 8 times faster than Gen5 and yet we aren't burning data anywhere near that rate.    So again, something is clearly wrong!  The entire reason we upgraded to the 50 GB Gen5 plan was specifically so that we could now stream some movies on AppleTV or Netflix a bit more often at our vaction home.  50 GB should be more than enough data to not have to obsessively monitor our usage given that we are only there about 6 days a month and given that we do the same thing all the time at our primary residence the remaining 24 days a month and still use less than 100 GB a month there.     HughesNet is a very expensive internet service provider, but our only option (other than Excede) at this vacation home, so I certainly hope HughesNet's engineers sort this out very soon.  Please keep us informed as to the progress. ... View more

@Amanda   Amanda,     Another moderator @Liz copied your response into her response to my thread about essentially the same topic titled "Why sudden massive data usage since upgrade to Gen5."  I don't know how to copy that thread as a link into this message.  Anyway, I appreciate your response and good to know that the engineers at HughesNet are looking into this.   I have seen many elaborate and detailed responses to this topic in various threads on this subject.  But I, and I'm sure countless others, simply don't have the time or expertise to spend hours and hours researching this, getting software like "Glasswire" as many have suggested, and monitoring it endlessly for days to try to prove to HughesNet that there is a problem.  This is in a vacation home where I want to relax and vacation in my limited time there, not spend countless hours trying to figure out why my data usage on the new HughesNet Gen5 is exponentially larger than on Gen4 even though I'm doing exactly the same activities online.  When I pay $120 a month for internet service, which is double what I pay for much faster internet at my primary home in the city, I at least expect that HughesNet will sort this out and not expect me or other users to figure it out or to have to prove to HughesNet that there is an issue.     Clearly something is off in how they are counting their data.  As I mentioned in my thread on this subject, I had Gen4 for several years.  As it was a vacation home, we never used more than our 20 GB per month data limit.  We even watched maybe one or two 1080p HD movies a month on our AppleTV.  So I am just dumbfounded that now with Gen5 I somehow supposedly burned through 17 GB in a single day!  This is simply not feasible.  At my primary residence where I have Comcast and speeds of 200 Gbps with data limits of over 1 TB a month, we stream 1080p HD movies or HD content on Netflix all the time.  Yet our total monthly usage is only about 95 GB per month on avearge.  We spend 3/4 or our time at the primary residence and maybe 1/4 at the vacation home where we have HughesNet.  So again, if we stream all kinds of HD at our primary residency and never break 100 GB per month, how on earth could we burn through 17 GB in a single day on HugheNet?  I have recently monitored my useage before and after watching a single 2 hour log 1080p HD movie on AppleTV now with Gen5.  It burned over 7GB for that single movie!  When we did exactly the same thing on Gen4, it only burned about 5 GB.  So what is up with that? Now with Gen5 we seem to routinely be burning through about 2 GB a day just doing routine stuff online like email, web surfing, Facebook, etc.  Before on Gen4 doing exactly the same activities we would only burn through maybe 500 - 750 MB in a day.  It simply cannot be just because it is faster it is burning more data.  Our internet at our primary residence it 8 times faster than Gen5 and we aren't burning data anywhere near that rate.    So again, something is clearly wrong!  The entire reason we upgraded to the 50 GB Gen5 plan was specifically so that we could now stream some movies on AppleTV or Netflix at our vaction home.  50 GB should be more than enough data given that we are only there about 6 days a month and given that we do the same thing all the time at our primary residence the remaining 24 days a month and still use less than 100 GB a month there.     HughesNet is a very expensive internet service provider, but our only option (other than Excede) at this vacation home, so I certainly hope HughesNet's engineers sort this out very soon.  Please keep us informed as to the progress. ... View more

The 2.4 GHz radios seemed a bit finicky too, but better than the 5.0 GHz.  But as I mentioned, I finally just gave up and turned all of the built-in WiFi off and used my Apple Airport Extreme which auto-adjusts from 2.4 GHz to 5.0 GHz, depending on where you are in the home and which bandwidth works best for that device in that location.  Seem to be getting great speeds so far juts using my Apple router. ... View more

Hmm, yes, perhaps it is something along those lines. I know several websites with streaming video auto-adjust resolution based on bandwidth. I didn't think that AppleTV did that since you can set the desired resolution for TV and movies.  But perhaps you are right that there are still different bit rates and that still alters how much data is used.   ... View more

Interesting points.  I do not know if the Apple Airport Extreme has a traffic monitoring feature.  I am pretty familiar with it and do not recall see any of that in the system control software features. But I'll have to take a look.   I do have DirectTV attached to it, but I also had it attached to my former Hughesnet Gen4 internet and never had any issue with it using unexpected amounts of data.  It seems to only use large amounts of data if you use watch On Demand content, which we do not use.  But I'll have to pay attention to that and see if any unexpected data being used then.     After monitoring for several days, the data does only seem to be used when we are actually using the internet.  There is no unexpected data usage at times when we are not home or asleep, etc.  It is just that when we do some activity that uses data, it seems to use far more than it did when we had the Gen4.  Even with Gen4, we occassionaly streamed a full length HD movie on our Apple TV.  But that would use about 5 GB of data for a 2 hour movie.  Now when we tried it with Gen5, it used just over 7 GB of data for a 2 hour movie.  So just wonderin why it is so much more for essentially the same activity (and same HD quality setting on the AppleTV). ... View more

Brad, Yes, Chris (I think it was Chris) had their IT people push some software or firmware fix to our modem supposedly to allow it to work better with the Apple Airport Extreme router.  It seemed to solve the problem for us.  It has been working fine now for months. Have never had it disconnect when we aren't there since then. Mark ... View more

Chris, I will be up there at the location this coming Friday Nov. 20th. It would be great if an experienced technician at HughesNet could call and see if we can't get this sorted out. Preferably after 10:00 AM MST. Can they give me an approximate time window? Is there a way for me to privately send you the correct phone number for them to call? The official number on the account is not actually at that location. Strangely our connection has come back up since we last talked. This also happened when we had this problem in the past. It would randomly lose the Internet connection and then randomly come back up, sometimes hours, days, or weeks later, even if we were not at the home and had not rebooted the modem. We have not been on site and have not rebooted the modem or done anything since I last talked to you. . There was no power outage to my knowledge that could have effectively rebooted it for us. Odd and frustrating. We really need this to return to a more reliable connection. Thanks, Mark ... View more