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hughesnet123
join:2012-11-08

hughesnet123

Member

Review! New Gen 4 user/Mac OSX/IOS

Hello,

I have been looking at this forum for a while but never joined until I got Gen 4. I have enjoyed reading the topics. I have seen a lot of people not wanting to get it because of the issues with Mountain Lion and IOS. I fortunately don't have those issues. But it seems a lot do.

I am used to having 60MB down with cable. I moved to a home out in the country, barely even any cell phone signal here. Before Gen 4 I was not interested in hughes net. I watch YouTube video's and I would go over the daily cap very quickly. So, I used a Verizon 3G air card which I had to buy expensive antenna's for in order to even get 3 bars of service. Which would stream 360p video quite well most of the time. I then got AT&T which had 4G service, but hardly ever worked, yet I had full bars with installed antenna.

I was online one night and I seen the Gen 4. I expected it to not go well. I had stayed away from satellite internet because I knew enough to know how bad it sucked.

I have had it a few days not and I am very surprised. Everything is instant. No load times on even 1080p videos. I have the 15mb package and sometimes I even get 20Mb. The speed does change but it never gets low enough to really affect anything to be noticeable. I haven't power cycled once. I am used to caps with Verizon so I am able to navigate a lot of stuff with 20GB in the day and 20GB at night. It is more than it sounds like browsing the web. not as much as it sounds like if you are downloading big files.

Right now hughesnet gen 4 has no cap. I guess because there aren't enough people on it. But the cap resets about every 2 or 3 hours for me and the night cap never comes on. So I can download all day and watch all YouTube video's in HD and it never matters.

I suspect they will turn the caps on very soon. I hope this last as long as it can though, as I am able to do software updates and app store updates on my Mac in the day time without worrying about taking my data cap.

Honestly, this works like a dream. I live so far out in the country I honestly thought I would live here for probably the rest of my life with no way to get on the internet but a slow 3G aircard connection. I knew DSL nor Cable would ever come and I had lost hope in any satellite company doing anything good.

Like I said before, I expected to get this and it run at 2Mb and barely even do that and have to power cycle all the time, but even then, it seemed worth it over the air card. But to my surprise, it just as reliable as my cable internet was. 0 problems.

I have the ht1000 modem for anyone who needs to know. I am running IOS 6, Mountain Lion, and Lion. Everything is wireless, I have nothing plugged into the router.

I had heard so many bad things about the old hughes net. I expect they will have a lot of customer satisfaction if they keep Gen 4 working as good as it works for me, for everyone else. Even when the cap does go into place, again that's something I'm used to dealing with.

I have done speed test every day since I have had it and tested it through every time of the day before writing this review. I wanted to make sure I gave the most honest assessment of this product as possible.

Although I do not have IOS or Mountain Lion issues, this does seem to be an issue for a lot of customers so I hope they fix it. If you don't have mountain lion, I would get it. Even if you do have mountain lion, the terminal code to fix the problem takes 2 seconds of your time and is simple.

Thanks for reading.

mr_rique
@direcway.com

mr_rique

Anon

hughesnet123, I have seen you mention a terminal patch to address issues which Macs have with Gen4 in other posts, also. Yet I can't seem to find any details for the patch (I have googled it). Can you please publish the instructions in this thread or direct me to a link?

Thanks!

PS - I'm glad to read about at least one Mac / iOS user who is happy. I have had nothing but problems with Gen4. I am hoping the terminal patch can resolve the issues with the MacBookPro. I have no idea however how it would (or could) help with our iPads. Thanks again! -- Rique
hughesnet123
join:2012-11-08

hughesnet123

Member

Yes, here are my instructions I posted over at Hughesnet forum.

Here is how you do it. The search bar at the top of your computer, type terminal, or you can manually go into your apps and go into utilities and find the terminal app.

Load that up, paste this in there

sudo sysctl -w net.inet.tcp.delayed_ack=0

After that it will ask for your password. Type in your password, you will not be able to see your password and the cursor won't move so it will look like you aren't typing anything. Then hit enter. And it is done.

You will only need to do this again if you restart or shut down. It will take about two seconds, copy the code down on a note and save it to your desktop so you always have it.

There is a way to make it permeant which you can google. But doing it every time is not much of a hassle either.
mr_rique
join:2012-11-10

mr_rique

Member

hughesnet123, thanks for the instructions! Very easy to change, just as you said.

Sadly, it does not seem to have helped much, at least based on Hughesnet and Speedtest's test results.

HN tests (DL speeds) 10852, 2783, 3993 (UL speeds) 84, 881, 1014
Speedtest (DL speeds) 3400, 3680 (UL speeds) 340, 410

For downloads, this is a modest improvement, as I sometimes would get ~ 1000 - and obviously, if that 10852 was consistent instead of an outlier, I would be happy. Nonetheless, speeds ~3000 - 4000 falls far short of what I had expected from Gen4.

As this fix is designed to (in part) address performance issues with Mountain Lion, I doubt it will resolve another major problem we have been having with wireless connections. We use an Apple Airport Extreme. We can typically resolve the issue by re-starting the Airport Extreme and/or the HT modem and/or WiFi and/or... (you get the picture). Needless to say, this is a major hassle.

Yesterday, even our wired connection (Mac Mini) failed. When we have this connection issue, it presents in the same way every time it fails, we cannot acquire an IP address. Renewing the DHCP lease does not resolve the issue.

In addition to the above connection issues, my MacBook Pro and iOS 6 devices have been slow (which is why I wanted to try the terminal fix). There has been no difference whatsoever between the performance I am getting with my iOS devices now (except for the fact that they frequently cannot connect) and what I had been getting with the 9000. Perhaps the terminal fix will help performance for the MacBook Pro somewhat, but it can't really benefit the iOS devices.

So this is extremely disappointing. Whatever changes Apple made with Mountain Lion and iOS6, unless they are not in compliance with existing standards, I think it is up to Hughes to correct this. There is a large community of unhappy Apple owners and our numbers will grow as more and more of us upgrade or purchase Gen4.
hughesnet123
join:2012-11-08

hughesnet123

Member

I would be disappointed also. Although, I still am not having that issue.

This is what I have noticed, using speedtest with satellite internet. It seems as though it comes in burst. For example, I watch the meter on speedtest.net. My internet is almost always over 10MB down. But sometimes the final result can end up being 3MB and I have to keep testing it to get it to catch it at 10MB.

This is because it comes in, "burst," where it will be 10MB and then a second later be 3mb and then the next second be 12mb.