About RandyPAlex

Lower part: Satelite with 16Mbps bandwidth and 800ms latency (near ideal conditions from what I hear)... Oops, I meant "(more reasonable bandwith and latency though still great for high congestion times from what I hear)" ... View more

I guess I should explain the grid of figures a bit.  Top part: Satelite with 25Mbps bandwidth and 600ms latency (near ideal conditions from what I hear) is compared to DSL with only 1 Mbps bandwidth and a fairly normal latency of 50ms.    -If you have a page that loads EVERYTHING with a single request (or all requests virtually simultaneously), if the page requests a total of <0.58Mbits then DSL will load it faster than satelite. More data and satelite will load it faster than DSL. If the page is 0.58Mbits it will load by either method in 0.63 sec. -If you have a page that loads EVERYTHING with no more than three sequential requests and otherwise all requests are simultaneous, if the page requests a total of <1.72Mbits DSL will be faster than satelite. More data and satelite will load it faster than DSL. If the page is 1.72Mbits it will load by either method in 1.87 seconds. -If you have a page that loads everything with no more than 7 sequential requests and otherwise all requests are simultaneous, if the page requests a total of <4Mbits DSL will be aster than satelite. More data and satelite will load faster than DSL. If the page is 4Mbits either method will load it in 4.36 seconds.   Lower part: Satelite with 16Mbps bandwidth and 800ms latency (near ideal conditions from what I hear) is compared to DSL with only 1 Mbps bandwidth and a bit slower latency of 70ms.   Same scenarios as earlier but DSL wins on pages with even higher amounts of data.    (Extrapolating: If satelite latency is 1200ms (most people calling that not bad during congestion), satellite wins only if data in the page is about double what is shown in th upper part.)  It is VERY easy for me to now see how this latency made it feel like I had worse bandwidth that the lousy 1Mbps that I left.    Does Hughesnet have plans for lower orbit satelites? Halving the latency would dramatically reduce how much stuttering would be perceived in delivery (due to sequential requests compounding the effect).   ... View more

I follow the line of reasoning about the "apparent" slow speed but find it EXTREMELY disturbing. However it got me thinking it through a little differently. For the satelite to load a page in the  same total time as DSL, the satelite data rate speed must be fast enough to more than make up for the difference in the latency betweem the two (which is HUGE):   Total load time for a page is roughly       t = (page bytes) * (data rate) +  (number of serial requests) * latency.   So i ran some numbers calculating where the page load time is the same for satelite and DSL given the specifid bandwidth and latency numbers shown. Basically, the satelite wins on pages that have few serial requests and large amounts of data.  DSL wins for pages with little data or lots of sequential requests - even really slow DSL. Here are the break even points for a few scenarios: So physics is physics, you can't make the signals go faster than light. Satelite WILL have very high latency until they put them in lower orbits.  The latency delay is enough on normal days that it can result in web browsing being slower than even lousy DSL (that normally has much lower latency).  The latency will make gaming impossible (they inform you of this) and VPN connections probably are unusable thinking they lost connection due to the latency (but the sales people ask about that too).  They don't mention stutteringly delivered browsing and an often EFFECTIVE bandwidth that is much closer to low speed DSL. It isn't too bad for streaming videos as long as the app has significant buffering, but you may get a "lost internet connection" if you hit it just wrong. It is great for loading large files.    Once this all started to click I stumbled on the following article that I REALLY wish I'd have found a month ago before I had satelite service installed. https://www.howtogeek.com/138771/htg-explains-how-latency-can-make-even-fast-internet-connections-feel-slow/   I believe there is a small window of time after service is installed in which you can cancel and NOT have to pay the $400 cancelation fee. Anybody know where that is stated? Is it 20 days or 30 days? I hope I'm not outside the narrow window.       ... View more

Well that was a real pain! Spent all that time since my last post just attempting to upload the pics. Had to reload so many of those that the site stopped me saying I'd loaded 100 images in the last 24 hours.   Well tomorrow I'll upload the image of the TCP messages from the wirshark trace. Looks like lots of messages needed to be requested again and many duplicates were flagged. Seems like a lot of churn though individual speeds aren't bad??    So I get it the latency test doesn't square with things you all see and it doesn't seem to reflect my poor performance either. Is there a test I can run from my end that you do trust? I hope it is something on my end so that it is fixable. Just let me know what to run, please.  ... View more

The stats and data only matters to me if it helps get to the root issue of why this tremendously fast bandwidth with 1second lag feels as slow (or worse) than <100ms lag but <1 Mbps bandwith. If the metrics aren't showing it, then it seems we aren't looking at the right metrics. I had to reload this page multiple times tonight. Hughesnet,com took like a 60 seconds to load. The router diagnostics show no RTT errors. Traceroutes look pretty good. Even the latency test iisn't as bad tonight but performance is. Below are trace routes for all the Latency sites while the latency test suite ran. I tagged the two peaks. Each line is a series of consecutive TCP hits to a site. Then the next site same thing done.   I then repeated the process a second time while capturing a wireshark trace to get it all and at the tail end of the trace I hit Hughesnet.com, and Amazon.com.  At the tail end of these pics is the wireshark trace with the TCP messages sorted. Looks like lots of errors, repeats, duplicates, etc. So if something is trashing the messages in transit, no ICMP message would show it and even the TCP ping (Latency test) would only show it to some degere, right?  So now next the data sets...   ... View more

I appreciate any suggestions out there that lead to greater insight on this issue. Since this is a community tech support site I assume there is only so much that kind volunteers can do as opposed to paid HN employees if I call tech support there. I guess that is my next step.  ... View more

Here is what she looks like currently. Not much of an issue with RTT but some of the experienced latency is quite significant. It showed nothing when I started an hour or so ago.   It wasn't until I ran the latency test on testmy.net that it stimulated something.           If you read what it says in the latency test, it makes sense to me that it is a better gage of web page latency (TCP; layer 4) than ICMP layer 3 messages like tracert and ping. It feels more like what I experience in usage too. TCP latency to multiple sites, 20 reps each.   Since I don't just believe what I read, I ran tracert to many of those same sites in parallel so it could be captured in the wireshark trace I was running. The pcapng file has this kind of gorey detail on the comms through my ethernet port:   Wireshark is a free network analysis tool (https://www.wireshark.org/) with awesome trace capability.  Is anybody at Hughesnet interested in looking at my trace to see what the source of my frustratingly laggy performance is? I'd be glad to email it to you. Ultimately, the experience of the user is what HN delivers, not statistics, but stats help us troubleshoot techical issues. My router seems to say I don't have RTT issues (at least not bad enough to trigger the built in fault) and tracert shows quite good response (albeit optimistic layer 3 and below), SO... whatever my issue is seems to be  in the TCP layer above it or in the gateway or the external site. Since I captured tracerts to those same sites and they too show <1000ms speeds unless they just bombed ("*"), this would say the connection to them is fast enough (by ICMP judgement). And yet TCP is laggy. All the data is in the PCAPNG file.   I'm really not trying to be a jerk. I'm just an engineer looking for answers based on data.    ... View more

Thanks. I’ll post results. It occurs to me that unless I have something constantly trying to pull a little bit down then there are no data transactions from which to have round trip transport delays. True? Does the router itself send periodic packets that would suffice to stimulate the RTT errors if it is substantial? ... View more

Actionable... something I can take action on. Just the literal meaning 'able to take some action' I can look at my router and help split the dictionary, so to speak. If there are tons of RTT errors it seems that it points to something involved with the satelite exchange. If there are none then it says the lag is in in other half of the dictionary - the ground based portion or the specific site lagging in response. Or did I misunderstand. It is an action that can be taken to move troubleshooting effort forward based on data. Conjecture does none of that. I'm not sure who MrBuster is but I appreciate people sharing concrete things that I can act on that moves problem solving more concretely forward.   I'd done what I could think of by capturing a few wireshark traces to put data to the TCP lag of the system, whatever the source(s). MrBuster gave me something tangible that helps bring additional data.  (I didn't even think of the darker overtones that can be implied by "actionable". I didn't mean any of those.)   ... View more

Thanks MrBuster. That is actionable information. I'll take a look at it when I get home tonight.  ... View more

I just signed up with HN because my local DSL provider had <1Mbps that would come and go to even worse conditions. I hung in there for several years in expectation that they would replace the DSLAM that was the pinchpoint, but finally gave up. Honestly I could tolerate having only several Mbps steady bandwidth with latency <1 second but latency of several seconds almost all the time and bursts of 25Mbps feels almost the same as 1Mbps with negligible latency.   What is the plan to mitigate the effective latency? Where should I send the wireshark trace to support the investigation? ... View more

    This shows what you need? ... View more

The latency test on testmy.net is not a ICMP message test but uses TCP messages so it should be a fair representation of the dynamics for browsing response, right? In this latest wireshark trace I captured during the last post sending (quite quick response) and the Red.com hit (quite slow response) I included a latency test to Dalles and got a few delays approaching 3 seconds.  I'm sure these will be helpful since it provides empirical data of the dynamics and removes the conjecture. Where should I send the traces for analysis by your experts? ... View more

 I ran a wireshark trace while I went to Amazon.com.   While I waited for it to respond I started and ran a tracert to 8.8.8.8.   The Amazon page stopped filling soon after I closed the cmd window from the tracert. I assume amazon is a bit busy on their end this time of year so I will run another wireshark trace for the sending of this reply. Certainly this site isn't going to be bogged down. To make it interesting I'll also try to hit red.com in that same trace just so it isn't dependent on any single site response. Is there a way for me to upload the pcapng files to the forum or send to you via email? ... View more

Thanks for the link. I started there originally. Ran some this morning. Good speed as I indicated at the top of my post. Congestion would be contraindicated by good speed if I understand it correctly. But now isn't this morning so I ran the test a few more times just now. Still really good speed >20Mbps. When going to the web page following your link, it first choked saying it couldn't reach the site (long lag maybe?), I reloaded and it found the page. I then went to testmy.net to log in and at first couldn't reach that site, but reloaded and ran the tests. Can you help please? ... View more

I ran a tracert and got back the 600ms ish response as you suggested. But that’s not TCP data, right? Congestion would be apportioned data rate being lower, not lag in response, right? I click on a link and there is a notable DELAY in response, and when it does respond I get a flood of data. Is that what you’d expect with congestion? If it is congestion and I run a wireshark trace and look at the TCP data latency i should see a similar 600ms delay but data rate on the returning page throttled to spread the wealth amongst my fellow users on the same beam at this time, right? Congestion wouldn’t result in a ‘site not responding’ message would it? ... View more