Thread: Hughes Net
View Single Post
Old 01-30-2008, 07:51 AM   #5
wa8yxm
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Nov 2007
Location: Mobile, on the road
Posts: 1,139
Send a message via AIM to wa8yxm Send a message via Yahoo to wa8yxm Send a message via Skype™ to wa8yxm
Default

I use hughesnet when I'm on the road, AT&T DSL here at home. Speeds are comparable (low end ADSL) with download around 700K and upload in the 120-200 range for the most part. That said however Hughes is making changes, The system I have is Ku band. the new customers are being positioned on Ka band satellites. Thus there are improvements.

Of course. the more you pay, the more you play (You can pay more and get higher speeds)

The major issues with ALL 2-way sat providers are the chance of signal interference, IE: Solar outages, which normally are short and not too often, or storm outages, which may or may not be a problem (I've been on line during some fairly strong storms, and I've had storms take me off line) and PING TIME, Your fastest ping time is over 1/2 second, Can't beat the speed of light and it's 22,500 miles up, 22,500 miles down and 89,000 miles round trip, that's 1/2 second at light speed.

Hughes does use a pre-fetch proxy to attempt to speed this up a bit, and it is fairly good, however if you are doing HTTPS instead of HTTP, it can mess you up making on-line financial stuff a serious pain in the browser... That said, i've always been able to pay my bills electronically using Hughes when I'm on the road again.

That said. I'm concerned about the new Ka sats.

All the above applies equally to Hughes and to Starband, another nation wide service, Both use ConUS beams (Continental US) Hughes new customers though are being put on Ka band.. I truly don't know much about Kz band yet save for Wild Blue

Wild Blue uses Ka Band, as noted above this has some interesting features, however Wild Blue is not using ConUS beams, they are using spot beams, Over a dozen of them, What this means is if you are a mobile user, and we are nothing if not mobile, you get too far from home you have to re-comission on a different beam. Where as with Hughes or Starband Ku service, you are good to go from Maine to California and beyond

Thus I'd recommend either Hughes or Starband.

Also you have your choice of a roof-top automatic mount or a ground-tripod mount

Neither Hughes nor Starband officially supports tripod users (Your installer/dealer does) this can, on occasion be a pain.. I had one problem took me 8 hours on the phone with Cuss-some-more non-service and then I gave up, Mailed the defective part back to my installer, he has better support folks, got it approved and it was another hour on the phone to fix the resulting mix up at Hughes and get the new modem comissioned. (I should have called Ron up front)

Roof top mounts are made by http://www.motosat.com They cost in the 5000-6000 range to install, and start at I think 60/month (or 70) 10 bucks more than I pay when I'm active, You can suspend service up to six months a year if you park the motor home

Advantage of a ground mount... lower price, and work around for the signal eating tree

Advantage of a Datastorm Roof Mount.. .push button, wait (normally) 2-minutes or less, On line

If you are interested in Hughesnet I can refer you to an installer, he's mobile so if you are not in a hurry he can come to you IN fact I have 2 or 3 of them I can refer to.
wa8yxm is offline   Reply With Quote