Satellite internet questions.

Brian@work

Original poster
Member
Dec 5, 2011
14
Is anyone on here familliar with HughesNet Satellite internet service? My wife and I just recently got it and I was wondering how others liked it? Speeds are alot better than dial up but still not all that fast but what gets me is the limits per day. 3Gig per day sounds like alot but it gets chewed up quick.
 

The_Roadie

Lifetime VIP Donor
Member
Nov 19, 2011
9,957
Portland, OR
I don't have it, but when I retire, my RV will surely have something similar. More discussion on RV forums than here, I bet. I have a few friends who work at ViaSat, and their satellite was launched with this service in mind, and they plan to undercut Hughes. Not sure when you can start buying it though.

3 Gig is sort of huge for surfing, but maybe you're chewing it up with Netflix streaming? I think they don't want you to be doing that.
 

navigator

Member
Dec 3, 2011
504
My dad has it and it beats dial up but it is slow even compared to my former <1MB DSL service.
Maybe it was just his computer.
My brother had it as well and ended up just cancelling the service and tethering to his cell phone instead.
 

Brian@work

Original poster
Member
Dec 5, 2011
14
I think the 3 gig limit will be more than adequate for most of our online needs. The first day it was turned on my wife did Windows updates on our laptop and a couple of hours of surfing and we were down to I think 46% of our limit. With dial up we turned of the automatic updates because it was to big of a PITA to do them, we could start an update before bed and sometimes it would still be downloading when I got home from work the next evening. It was so slow I wouldn't even get online at the house. I would wait until after work to catch up on internet stuff, once you get spoiled to true high speed internet you just can't deal with the aggrevation of dial up. Now that we have tolerable speeds we can do the updates regularly and not have as many updates to do at a time so that will help with the 3 gig limit. We don't have any streaming services and for now we aren't planning on starting any, but after we get used to our regular usage we may consider it. I work too much to watch movies online. I travel quite a bit for work so when I'm home I have entirely too much that needs done to sit and watch movies.

Right after it was installed I ran a speed test on it with my work laptop just to see what it was and I got a respectable 1.03MBPS down and 0.48MBPS up, but when your fastest speed ever on dial up was 19KBPS that is a MAJOR improvement. Our average speed on dial up was 14KBPS. At the office I get between 3 and 5MBPS both ways so to me it seems slow but to my wife it is flying. For us we couldn't even tether our cell phones because all we can get is Edge network with AT&T and that is even iffy inside the house. I'm lucky if my cellphone gets service for calls at the house.

I am hoping others will see this and chime in about service quality/reliability stuff. I have asked everyone that I know but nobody that I know has satellite internet.
 

blazinlow89

Member
Jan 25, 2012
2,088
My mother had it for over 6 years, and while it worked (about 75% of the time), it was more of a PITA than it was worth. Speed was terrible, daily cap at the time was 200MB per day, shortly after it was moved to 400MB per day. Which with 4-5 people surfing that did not last very long. Not to mention it was very expensive for the service she received. She canceled it and went with the VZW mobile hotspot. 10GB a month, which is almost double the amount they used to get. Not to mention speeds upwards of 4-5MBPS with 3G, and with 4G on the way the speed will only go up. She is much happier and it is about $10 cheaper per month.

I would not recommend it based on my experience with it, but I know sometimes you have no choice. Metrocast wanted $9500 to run cable from one side of the road and over $13k to run cable from the other side. They say that the potential customer base is not worth the initial investment, (from one end is a huge Amish community).
 

blazinlow89

Member
Jan 25, 2012
2,088
jimmyjam said:
whats the latency? just curious :confused:

As far as webpage load times?

If that is the case, some days it could take a few seconds to load a page, others it could take a few minutes. Also depending on the site. Youtube, forget it, constant buffering. It really did vary as far as that went. Late at night like 2-5am it was pretty quick, during other times its ridiculous. But like brian it was either dial up or hughes net, hughes net was faster but it comes at a premium.
 

jimmyjam

Member
Nov 18, 2011
1,634
a simple icmp ping test... speedtest.net etc

just curious as to the minimum round trip time bouncing off of a satellite

if you're saying it is varies with time of day then that is just shitty backbone probably
 

blazinlow89

Member
Jan 25, 2012
2,088
jimmyjam said:
a simple icmp ping test... speedtest.net etc

just curious as to the minimum round trip time bouncing off of a satellite

:crazy: Sorry my younger brother would know that info, he used it more than I did. I know it was not very astounding, I do wonder what Brians is though.
 

Brian@work

Original poster
Member
Dec 5, 2011
14
I don't remember exactly what the latency was but I do remember it was pretty high maybe 100+ms. I'll test it again this evening and get back to you. For us there is no cable tv service within 5 miles of our house and no plans of adding new lines anytime soon. The phone company has been upgrading thier stuff for more remote locations but doesn't have anything planned for my area for at least a couple of years. The guy I work for lives about 5 miles away from me, he is farther out into the country than I am and gets DSL from the phone company. His speeds at home are as fast as we have at work. A couple of the guys I work with have fishing camps in some of the most remote locations in WV and can get DSL for cheap at their camps but can't get it at their house. For me satellite is my only option for TV and internet.
 

jimmyjam

Member
Nov 18, 2011
1,634
100ms would be amazing, i'm guessing its somewhere around 750ms
 

Brian@work

Original poster
Member
Dec 5, 2011
14
jimmyjam said:
100ms would be amazing, i'm guessing its somewhere around 750ms

I did another speed test last night and the latency was 815ms! Oh well it still beats dial up.
 

jimmyjam

Member
Nov 18, 2011
1,634
geosynchronous orbit is 22.3k miles from the earth, thats almost a 90kmi round trip that ping has to make before it hits the rest of the internet. not much you can do about the speed of light
 

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