Reflections of my recent upgrade to Gen5 from Gen4
A couple of weeks ago I called to upgrade from Gen. 4 to Gen 5. To my surprise, it didnt even require an installer to come out, Hughes shipped the new modem and everything was to be plug and play. Could even stay on same plan as I already had, just at a lot faster throughput. I was originally on a legacy plan, and when upgrading to Gen 4, it was a nightmare. An installer had to come out, install a new radio and modem. Somewhere alog the way I was issued a new DSS#, but email accounts were still attached to the old legacy plan. All of a sudden I couldnt access email, and hughes solution was I would have to use a different name for email account, there was no way to move the old email account to the new plan. I called over and over again after about three weeks I finally got them to reactivate the email account, but it was a real hassle. The whole Gen 4 upgrade was. So, after that ordeal, I decided to just stick with Gen 4, it was going to have to be fast enough (usually 1-2.5 Mbps download speeds). Well I called HN a few weeks ago to see what we'd have to do to upgrade, and made sure they wouldnt screw up my email accounts or issue another DSS#. The representative assured me I would keep the same account number, all emails would work just like they always have, etc. if I upgraded. Also, it didnt require an installer to come out for the Gen4 to Gen5 upgrade. HN would ship mea new modem and it would be plug and play. The old Gen 4 modem didnt even need to be shipped back, just throw it away. ALmost sounded too good to be true. I like doing things on my own and usually can do a more professional job than the so called pros anyway. The package arrived the next week, and it took about an hour to be up and running on gen 5. I turned off the built in wifi as I already have a wifi router in living room ran off of cat5e from the modem.(The modem is installed in our bedroom and I'm not crazy about being bombarded with wifi signals while I sleep, ok?) Anyhow, at peak time, on wifi, we have anywhere from 15-30 Mbps. Early morning speeds usually >25 Mbps. Upload speed around 3 Mbps. I have not tested speeds directly connected to modem via ethernet, but wifi speeds are fast enough to stream with no buffering. I posted this to let others know how easy it was to upgrade from Gen4 to Gen5, same cost, only caveat is a new 2 year contract. I don't plan on going anywhere unless we ever get real 4G/5GLTE speed and coverageat home.
Why does my laptop always open to 5GHz when I have 2GHz selected?
Because of the EXTREME consumption of bandwidth that happens no matter what I do to minimize it, I've set my Gen5 WiFi settings to 2.4GHz (see image below), since 5GHz would be even more consumptive. However, almost every single time I start up my laptop in the a.m. the WiFi connects at 5GHz anyway. What can I do to prevent this? I need to conserve every tiny byte I can! The laptop OS is Win7. I turn off the power to the modem nightly (I'm on solar power and must conserve that way as well).
