HughesNet Satellite → New Gen-4 Customer....

and NOW i Feel like a sap...wow.....was way to busy working 60-70 hours a week to do any research here and we are on the edge of town with no ATT nor TWC only HN Gen4 and GVEC wireless....

HN says up to 10Mbps GVEC the electric Co-op says 4Mps wireless well after 47 minutes with Tech Spt.(HN Gen4) and speed testing in safe mode the figures below show not even close enough for a cigar....

I will talk to the co-op and see what real world download speeds are. I can't ask any of my neighbors or family members cause as soon as you ask such a question they look at you like a goat with 2 heads so this has really become a frustrating experience.

Question for you more seasoned folks is 3-4 Mps wireless more dependable then this Gen 4 stuff .....oh and the wireless has NO data caps and I'm only in my first day of using HN Gen4 and already have buyers remorse, regrets, PTSD, boils, pimples, with acne on top, and a , mild case of the red a** with the reality of product delivery versus marketing which I really and truly believed ATT owned that title......

ATT & TWC cable said we are in a new housing area and they they had no idea when they may be interested in providing any service in our area if at all.....and so.....I poor sweat and money out my boots....

Thanks for letting me vent but now that I have some semblance of internet service I did the research and discover to my dismay.....sigh....

Date/Time Down(kbps) Up(kbps)
12/19/2013 22:25:06 1744 56
12/19/2013 22:20:31 1221 554
12/19/2013 21:33:38 1261 983
12/19/2013 21:32:09 1562 1012
12/19/2013 21:23:49 1461 622
12/19/2013 21:22:00 1305 530
12/19/2013 21:20:18 1613 769
12/19/2013 21:09:03 1371 637
12/19/2013 21:06:05 1316 565
12/19/2013 15:40:59 4394 394

Since you've got 30 days to cancel without an ETF, let me explain, and then provide you with much more data.

Gen4 works as advertised for some, yet it does not work well for others. HughesNet's research indicates that this is usually the customer's fault, and their research is no doubt sound. I know that's not the case in all cases.

Consider forum member pvtpilot94. His profile indicates that he is a "Telecommunications Cable Technician". Next, review these topics:

»My GEN4 Speeds beam 23
»Gen4 upgrade reviews?
»Question to those who cancelled their HughesNet service

Next, there's me. I am a retired Computer Scientist / Mathematician who has been a HughesNet customer since April 2003.

In this topic, I posted some raw data and performed some data extraction and reporting while I was actually to go watch Doctor Who : »HughesNet vs Verizon 4G LTE with Speedtest video I did..

This evening, I have done some more data extraction and reporting.

First, I will summarize my computational experience with »consumer.performancetest ··· net.com/ using HughesNet Gen4's Power Plus plan ("up to" 10 Mbps down / 1 Mbps up):

Gen4: Oct. - Dec. 2012
Download mean (kbps) / sample standard deviation (kbps): 6939 / 2666
Upload mean (kbps) / sample standard deviation (kbps): 898 / 126
total speed tests: 27

Gen4: Jan. - Dec. 2013
Download mean (kbps) / sample standard deviation (kbps): 3817 / 3618
Upload mean (kbps) / sample standard deviation (kbps): 793 / 191
total speed tests: 148

If you visually examine the raw data which I posted, you can see that I was getting decent performance from Gen4 until 2013. That's when the sub 1 Mbps download speeds began appearing.

Last night, I was getting sub 1 Mbps speeds with Gen4 during "prime time" on testmy.net (which is often more generous with speeds that is HN's own test). I happened to wake up at 4:30 AM PST, and Gen4 was zipping along at just over 10 Mbps. At around noon, I was getting around 3-4 Mbps with Gen4. If you'll observe this evening's speed test with HughesNet, I got 374 kbps, as usual.

I think that HughesNet has a problem with Gen4 which they either can't acknowledge or fix. Since you are one of us getting unacceptably slow speeds with Gen4, I would be looking at alternatives while you have the time.

I'll let others advise you on your wireless option.

Now I've got to go watch 3 GB of HD TV before my Exceed-o-meter resets.

Thank you for the detailed reply, as soon as I'm done with my coffee will read the info to the links provided. Looks like bandwidth demand auto throttles the performance and since I'm no longer on night shift it is of little benefit to me.

I will see what the wireless users have to share compared to the sat. dish. 3-4Mps will have to do but the wireless is about 12-15 bucks less per month, sooooo......I'll be standing by for the other guys.

Appreciate the links thanks again.... C-man....

Oh BTW I'd be happy to learn how it is normally the customer's fault...as in what are WE doing wrong with the computer settings......I'm running W-7 64bit with last SP as of early this year. Just set up unit after 6 month storage.

The quality of service from fixed wireless/WISP systems can vary widely depending on the provider, what equipment they are using, how well they maintain their infrastructure, and whether they are purchasing enough bandwidth to meet the needs of their subscribers. The only way to find out what the quality of service is with the provider that you have access to would be to talk with other customers who have the service.

While I don't know anything about your electric co-op, I can make some general comments as someone who had Hughes satellite service for 5 years and who has had a WISP connection for a little over 3 years.

While I had the Hughes service, there were a couple of WISP providers in my area, but they did not have towers with line-of-sight to my house because I'm tightly tucked into the woods. When one of the providers built a tower that did have line-of-sight to my home, I happily signed up for their service. Browsing was very fast compared to the satellite service because of latency in the 30-40 ms range with the WISP connection compared to 800-900 ms that I had been getting with the satellite connection. Additionally, with the WISP connection, it is very nice not to have daily or monthly bandwidth usage limits. Further, the WISP connection works flawlessly with the VoIP phone service that I now have. Between the fact that my WISP connection costs me half of what I was paying for the satellite service and because the VoIP phone service costs about half of what I had been paying for my POTS land line phone service, I'm saving quite a bit per month in combined internet and phone service. Still, another advantage of the WISP service is that I get 90% or more of my advertised plan speeds virtually 24/7, and, in the 3 years I've had the service, I've only had a handful of usually very short service outages, and I don't have to worry about a severe storm taking out my service. Lastly, with the WISP service, I don't have the slowed down speeds that I used to have with the satellite service with secure connections and with FTP transfers.

At the time when I first got the WISP service, their fastest available speed was 2 megabits per second. A year or so later, they had 4 megabit service available. A year or so after that, 6 megabit service became available, and, for the last 6 months or so, I've been able to get 8 megabit service. But, even when the fastest available speeds were at 2 megabits per second, because of the reduced latency, browsing was faster than satellite and the system was better to use than the satellite system ever was. While I would love to have a 20 megabit or 50 megabit connection, my 8 megabit WISP connection allows me to do just about anything I need to do.

excellent summary. ... good solid feedback thank you......

That's a novel and accurate way of describing the problem! Most ISPs (including HughesNet) refer to that as "prime time slowdown". With metered Internet, appropriate data caps, and an industrial engineer or two (whose job would include suggesting the data caps), "prime time slowdown" shouldn't be *that* much of a problem. (Or in the case HughesNet, in my opinion, an excuse for some other problem.)

The reason that I found those URLs for you was to document that HN does have some sort of problem with Gen4 with certain customers, and there's nothing that we (or apparently, "they" can do about it). Rather than fix the problem, HN spends their spare money sending out cards like this to non-existent addresses:

I had Pro-Plus HughesNet plan for 3 years. The variable download/upload rates occurred with that system just like james1979 stated is happening with the current Gen4. (Good at weird hours, bad in the heavy-use hours.) In June of this year, I decided to try Exede-12 instead of Gen4. Exede-12 works as advertised. I get 10 to 20 mbps down and 2 to 3 up.... any time of day or night. After 3 years with Hughes, I was shocked. The major downside of satellite is the latency and low data caps. If you can find any service with decent speeds (5 to 10 mbps down, 1 to 2 up) and is reliable with no data caps, that's much better than satellite. For me, satellite is my only option. For my broadband needs, Exede-12 has been perfect. If there is a 30-day trial period on another option, I recommend trying it first, then try Exede-12. However, I do not think Exede-12 offers a trial period.

Thanks for the detailed reply ...well here goes..... presently using a Belkin N600DB N+.

I would be interested in better quality router and we just moved into a 2 story house and the first floor facia is Austin Limestone from the Hill Country and the sheathing for the roof is a radiant barrier and the walls are thermoply. Hopes this helps as well.

Let's see if the cut-n0paste works out here:
System Information
Identification
System Assigned Identifier (SAI) 650436
Chassis Part Number 1503568
Radio Serial Number 501327302615
Radio Part Number 1502938
LAN MAC Address 00:80:AE:27:64:CF

Software Application Software 3.0.0.30
Fallback Software 3.0.0.29

Satellite
Beam ID 5
Outroute ID 32
Gateway ID 12

We now live in zip code 77954 DeWitt county (have not updated profile, moving in is all we can do...barely ha!)

I will look at the NetGear routers after the holidays as well.

Cheers !

Chinookman....

I forgot to ask, what modem do you have? I assume that it is an HT1100. I asked because other than swap out out my modem and transmitter, there's not much else that can be done for me.

Also, I decided to "stay up late" last night, and I watched 4 GigaBonusBytes of HD TV with my Gen4 system. But at 6:45 PM PST, I'm getting a 0.855 Mbps download speed. And as I accidentally discovered and documented earlier, HN obviously recently did a mass mailing to everyone in my ZIP trying to put more customers on this beam.

HT1100 Rev. G Yes good guess!.....and the more I read and educate myself thanks to the contributors looks like I will give them a few more days to get me to the "acceptable" range of 6Mps per the tier 4 support informed me. If they cannot get there then looks like I will go the wireless route. Here is what they offer:

Cut-n-paste did not go well so it is in the word doc. For the price of 64.00 for the plan I have I can get the 5Mbps and have reliable low latency speed until the new sub-division gets ATT or Verizon or TWC in here...

Good dialogue here!, you folks have a pleasant evening....

C-man....

Just to demonstrate that I am not shilling for Exede, in my effort to use up my 3 GB with Exede-12 before the meter reset last night, after watching 1080p Netflix for an hour, I went to check out much data that used. I don't recall the exacting wording, but I got an "Oops, our meter is broken again!" error. About 15 minutes later, my Exede system "went out completely", and it didn't resume functioning until after midnight (in the LNFZ).

And that's the main reason that I still have Gen4. (I am not actually retired, I just have a job that requires reliable Internet. Even though I'm often at 1/10th of my "up to" speed, Gen4 has been quite reliable.)

While it would be optimal for you to speak with existing customers, just post the name or a URL of the potential WISP. I would definitely be looking into that "Extreme" plan with "up to" 8 Mbps for $60 / month.

I have these same specs as you (Blanco county west of you I think) and just did another test, getting 10.3Mbps down and 844Kbps up which I get almost always. And this while it's gloomy & rainy this morning and I still have 115 sig strength.

Assuming you're pointed right I can't imagine why your poor speeds--I don't think it would have anything to do with your router though.

Good to know.
The tier 4 spt. guy mentioned thatdue to it being s day old install a tech will come back out to take a second look atthe set up.....since this thread started the speed test at HN and DSLR have been @ 4Mbps or so butthe HN guy said that minimum shljld be at leat 6Mbps.......if thye cannot resolve within a week or so I will move to wireless.

My job is 2 hours east near Matagorda bay andwife is not a techie but it is her source of communications. So I'm pressed for quality in a tight time frame. To HN credit they are trying so this hopefully will not be misunderstood as any bashing. Like the ad says you mileage may vary lol well same here and I get that......thanks to all the feed back it looks more like the wireless service......and

I did look up the Netgear routers the 6300 v2 so this has been very fruitful. thank you all and have a greaf weekend.....I will update after the tech comes back out.........

Here is the link for the wireless service.

»www.gvec.net/residential ··· ans.aspx

I have spoken to a few users but they are not tech folks and I get the same "oh its just wonderful" lol so thus far it has been of little value......Yeah the Nuclear industry ruined me and now I expected so much more from people then the "oh wonderful" replies I get....ha...ha.....oh I hope I can learn to decompress and relax and enjoy my pending retirement....lol....

For all of the reasons that I stated in my earlier post, even if Hughes is able to get your Gen4 service working with advertised speeds, if I had the option of a reliable WISP connection at 8 megabits or 5 megabits per second, I would choose the WISP connection without hesitation. For me, with my 8 megabit WISP connection, I wouldn't think of using a satellite connection even if they could offer me 30 or 40 megabit per second speeds. While I'm sure that, for most Hughes users, Gen 4 is significantly better than the 7000 and 9000 systems, there are just too many downsides to a a satellite connection, regardless of its speed and regardless of whether it is reliably working at advertised speeds.

During the 5 years that I had Hughes service, there is no question that it was, by far, better than the alternative of dial-up, and I was happy to have the option, but, like most satellite users, I was even happier when a viable alternative option became available. Again, I can't speak for how well your electric cooperative implements its WISP service, but, unless they are doing an especially poor job of providing their service, I can't imagine that it won't be better, in many ways, than the satellite connection.

In addition to the advantages of the WISP connection that I talked about in my previous post, another advantage is that, on the rare occasions where I've had an issue with the WISP connection, when I call for support, I am connected immediately to someone who is only a handful of miles from me and whose native language is English, and that person is capable of actually providing support, unlike calling Hughes support and talking with someone in the Near East whose only support can come from reading a script off of his/her computer screen.

Thus, with the WISP option, my suggestion would be to move in that direction while you still are within the 30 day window and able to avoid an early termination fee.

Well that was a pretty good summary that touched upon many points that I completely agree upon......

I will post a final summary of the HN service and speeds as it happens but it looks like I will have to swap over to wireless. I will get a few "I told you so" but humble pie don't taste so bad after a few bites anyways...

Qos being enabled in your router (Intellistream in a Belkin) has been known to really raise problems with a Hughes connection.
Have you tried disabling that and/or doing a direct connect to the modem then running more speed tests ?

Have you opened the modems SCC and to check system status, FAP status and any listed error codes.

Have you tried "toggling" Web Acceleration to see if that helps ?

Just a couple of additional thoughts.

If the WISP service that you have access to is being offered by the electric cooperative, I would have a higher level of confidence that the quality of the connection is going to be good than I would have if the service was being offered by 3 guys down the road who got together and thought that they could easily make a few bucks by putting up some towers and selling the service to others in the area. And I'd also be more confident about the long-term availability of the service if it is offered by the cooperative. Electric cooperatives generally do a very good job of making sure that they have evaluated the need for services in their service area and of making sure that, once they invest in creating an infrastructure, there will be a demand for their service in the long term.

Also, besides the advantage of much lower latency, one of the things that I find to be a real advantage of my WISP connection compared to the Hughes connection is that, if I wanted to watch 3 or 4 on-demand movies from DIRECTV in the same day, I don't have to worry about having used up a major portion of my monthly bandwidth. While I'm not a heavy bandwidth user and while I could easily get by with 20 GB per month, there is a peace of mind that comes with not having to monitor my usage.

Finally, even among the most satisfied of Hughes customers (and I was one of them), I think you would have a hard time finding many who could honestly say that they would not choose a reliable 5 megabit or 8 megabit WISP connection over the satellite connection if they had the opportunity to do so. I know that the word "reliable" in the previous sentence could be a big "if", but, again, I'd have a higher level of confidence in a WISP connection being offered by an electric cooperative than I would one being offered by an independent company hoping to quickly make a few bucks. To me, the making the choice between even the best satellite connection and a reliable WISP connection is a no brainer, and, when evaluating the two, I would have a hard time finding any upsides at all for the satellite connection.

I count myself among the (few?) deliriously happy HN customers but would never recommend satellite instead of a ground-based alternative. An exception to this might be if you depend on the internet and need backup and have no alternative e.g. no other WISP other than sat.

I have HN and also VM which is on the Sprint 3G network and I keep them both so one backs the other up, though now that HN has leapfrogged VM in both speed and bandwidth, it has become my primary ISP and mostly blows VM away.

But note Hughesnet service will IMO never be able to overcome two limitations: latency and thunderstorms! Even in the best of weather, HN's "delay after clicking" will always be there, and is especially noticeable with secure (https) sites w/apparently lots of back/forth checking going on.

What you describe was one of first very pleasant things that I immediately noticed when I got my WISP connection. I was actually able to pay bills, do on-line shopping, etc. without the slowdown to dial-up level speeds that comes with secure connections and satellite service.

Yes, you are correct in saying that the problem with secure sites via satellite is the many back and forth transmissions that are required with secure sites, and, no matter how fast the speeds that a satellite connection are capable of providing, every one of those back and forth transmissions needs to make the 45,000 mile round trip from the earth to the satellite and back, and that takes time. If you are willing to pay for a very expensive enterprise level connection, my understanding is that, with those connections, more sophisticated web acceleration technology can be used to shorten the time it takes for transmissions to and from secure sites, but, with any relatively affordable consumer or small business level satellite connection, dealing with secure sites can become painfully slow.

Even with non-secure sites, latency can, in a way, be more of a factor than it was just a few years ago. With the way that websites have become so much more complicated and they are getting their page information from multiple sources and often contain multiple ads, gathering all of that information with a high latency connection can often take more time than it seems like it should take. And that is a big part of the reason why, say, a 5 megabit terrestrial connection can seem like it is faster than a much faster satellite connection during normal browsing.

When I got my WISP connection, I was actually very lucky. My home is virtually completely surrounded by dense timber, and the very hilly terrain with lots of tall rock ledges blocks line-of-sight virtually in every direction. When the WISP provider put into service the tower from which I'm getting my signal, it was in the very only narrow opening through the trees that I have in any direction. Had the tower been 100 yards in either direction from where it is or had my house been 20 feet in either direction from where it is, I would not have line-of-sight to the tower. If, at some point in the future, the trees in that opening grow enough to block my line-of-sight to the tower, I would certainly go back to satellite, but I wouldn't be happy in doing so. That is why my suggestion to the OP is to forget about wasting time working to try to get Hughes to maximize performance of his Gen4 system. Instead, I'd suggest confirming that the electric cooperative's service is, in fact, reliable and consistent, and, if it is, moving immediately to their service.

If I had initially recognized that by "wireless" you were referring to a WISP, I would have just told you to save time and money for yourself and HughesNet and just cancel your contract before the ETF applies. I thought that you were referring to some type of coverage through a mobile phone carrier, and I have no experience with that. I do have a relative with a WISP, and we both much prefer a WISP over HughesNet Gen3. And I would take a 5 or 8 Mbps WISP over any satellite service currently being offered. (I would go with the "up to" 8 Mbps plan if you want to watch HD TV, due to the prime time slowdown issue.)

While both Gen4 and Exede-12 perform much better in adverse weather than my older Hughes systems, there is also the weather at the NOC to consider. (That's probably why Exede went out on me a couple of night ago.)

On the Wildblue side, I have already mentioned the problem with secure websites being very slow since they can't be "accelerated". And that problem is just going to get worse as there are well intentioned efforts to "make everything https". But that would cripple browsing with a satellite ISP, and I would probably just move if that happened.

I would definitely cancel Gen4 while you still can and go with the WISP. If the WISP is just broken or whatever, then I would have Exede-12 installed. (The primary problem with Exede is that their team of engineers either can't figure out how to meter data usage or they're not trying very hard. DirecPc/DirecWay/Hughes/HughesNet probably invented metered Internet, and they've got that down well.)

Before you do cancel Gen4, have you tried the speed tests while bypassing your router (i.e., with an Ethernet cable directly into your computer / device)?

laserfan: thanks for sharing that info. I was just sure that he was on an overstuffed beam or it was some gateway problem. Hmm.

James my apologies for the misunderstanding guess my novice approach to all this was pretty transparent.....as one of my professors once mentioned in his NT class....always look for the preponderance of evidence before making a judgement call.....so thanks to everyone here that has been patient in dealing with a novice and providing great technical information that helped my decision making process. Monday I will be talking to GVEC and have them come over an install their WISP system and have HN come take their equipment back.....

As a recap on one question yes the Level-4 TS and I did run the average 5 tests directly from the modem w/o the router and had the same results.....

Now I will venture into my first On-Line banking experience and see what happens....lol...

Have a pleasant Sunday.....C-man....

Moderator Action
The post that was here (and all 1 followups to it), has been moved to a new topic .. »Gen-4 Slowdowns Continue

Chinookman....
Hi, here is a speed test of our Obomacare Recovery Plan speeds... should be 7-8Mbps down a 1-2Mbps up... on Exede ...


Our Exede setup has been smoking since we started over a yr and half ago...I can run hulu at the same time my wife is on World of Warcraft...without buffering of video..

It does depend who you are. For me, Gen 4 works as advertised. I get 15MB down and sometimes above that. I prefer it over my 3MB DSL. The DSL is unlimited but it hard for me to get work done as my work involves uploading large photo's from the Canon 5D as well as some video.

There is nothing wrong with having two services. I have Verizon 4G LTE because I travel with my business. But I also use it at home. It is by far the best internet service I have. Low ping times, around 25mb down and the upload speed is faster than anything I've had before. I do pay a premium for 20GB a month though.

Living out in the country sucks. But I own my own home so I have no rent. On internet alone, I pay about 300 dollars a month. That does include my iphone though. If I had to pay rent, I would not be able to afford that.

I do miss the days when I lived in an apartment and could have fast cable internet for only 19.99 a month with a 250GB cab. But those days are over.

What all do you do? I'd keep the HN if you can justify it. The 10MB plan you have shouldn't be too expensive. You might can afford both. Unless you aren't someone like me who's on the internet constantly.

Well looks like HN was not a good fit for us.....I know your mileage may very right?

So we got WISP and the 4 Mbps with 43 to 92 ms latency is much better then 500 to 750 msec.which is what we got....yep yours maybe better or not I get it.... So, now I can log in at work via VPN and not get kicked out or have log in locked out........it's still not as good as cable but we live with the hand dealt and well this pleasantly enough will do until someone decides to service our new neighborhood.

Thank you everyone for your knowledge it sure was an experience one had to live through no doubt.........have a great week all.