I live in a large metropolitan area, but every once in a while ( a few times per month) we go visit my wife's dad in the mountains. He's on a ranch - solar electricity, well water, cell service - there are no ground lines anywhere. I have been looking for reliable internet service for YEARS, and had Starband before they went out of buiness. They had consistently moderate speeds and ridiculous prices, so we turned them off after our contact was done, and went with wi-fi hotspots for a while. Then my son and his family of five moved to the place to help out my aging father-in-law. The kids are in school, so we need internet. I work remotely from the place too, so we need speed and reliability. I bought Gen 5. For the first year, I had it at 30Gb, and it seemed adequate, until the kids moved up. They imediately started complaining about low speed, unreliable service, dropped connections, etc. At the one year mark, I INCREASED my data plan to 50Gb (figuring they were blowing through 30Gb by mid-month, and were being throttled). now I up here, trying to get some work done. I am 19 days into my billing cycle, and according to the usage stats, I should still have 11G left of my regular allotment, and some ridiculous amount of "bonus" (the 2am) data. Using Hughes' speedtst, I get a decent (though not remarkable - Gen 5...) 27Mb/s down and 2.7Mb/s up. I'm using WinSCP to transfer several SMALL files to a remote site, and WinSCP transfer speed shows 500BPS (not Kb, not Mb - BYTES). What?? I'm transferring about 15 Meg worht of data, and it's taking me 90+ minutes?? There is NO WAY that's 2.7Mb/s upload. Speedtest appears flawed fromt he Hughesnet page. In addition, Ookla Speedtest.net (my go-to, most of the time) WON'T EVEN CONNECT, due to horrible network latency issues. This is untenable, right now. Are there really tips and tricks to making things work better, or have I been paying for a pipe dream? For what I'm paying every month for this "service", I could buy plenty of boards to bang my head against for less frustration and pain...
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