HughesNet Gen 5

[EarDemon]

I know it's only been out a week or two, but does any one have any experience with it yet?

I noticed my internet was crawling and looked over and saw that my cable modem somehow got unplugged and I was running on satellite. Ran a speed test and this what I got at 9:30 pm on the 10 x 1 plan.

The whole point of getting Hughes was incase I had to work from home and the cable went out. Can't do much of anything with those speeds. With all of the new Gen 5 plans supposedly at 25 x 3 combined with a lot less users accessing Jupiter 2, I'd be interested to see the real world results during prime time as these speeds on Jupiter 1 are useless to me if I had to rely on it.

 

[stardust3]

That's pretty bad. I do know gen 5 is supposed to help alleviate the traffic on gen 4, but it's gonna take some time. You may be able to do an upgrade, I've heard retention can offer it for free. Might be worth the call.

 

[EarDemon]

The thing is I'm a little wary about is the new modem/gateway. I read something about not being able to put it in a full bridge mode like my cable modem gateway is. My cable gateway has wifi, NAT, firewall, IPS, DHCP, et al disabled since I use my own dual WAN wired router and WAP. In the limited research I've done, it was made to sound like the wifi on the new Hughes gateway can be disabled, but not some of the other features. I know leaving them enabled can increase latency, of which is already pretty high.

Also not a fan of the modem lease fee going up to $15, especially if I will not be using the additional features beyond it being a dumb modem.

 

[Shicks4]

Well, the local guy here that is a hughesnet dealer posted these results yesterday afternoon. I havent talked to him face to face but when i spoke with him via chat he said its the real deal.

 

[Jim S.]

And how much is that speed supposed to cost? The only plans I've seen listed anywhere are 25M -- not that I'm seriously considering any of it since it's still capped...

 

[Shicks4]

Apparently its all the same speed, you pay for the data amount you want. Once you reach your limit it throttles down. When i was talking to him about it via facebook chat he claimed that even throttled it should be fast enough to stream sd video. Im hoping to get into his store early this week to have a look. Ill grant you that its not for everyone but if those speeds are real then it will open a lot of doors for rural folks that are stuck with speeds demonstrated earlier in this post or worse. Ill bet the cost is kinda steep though considering its satellite internet.

 

[EarDemon]

HughesNet is going the way of Exede. One speed, packages are determined by the amount of data you want.

Exede's service is 12 x 3 on all plans, with the option to upgrade to 25 x 3 in some areas for $10 more per month. Hughes is 25 x 3 on all plans.

Not sure if it's area dependent but
$50 - 10 GB
$70 - 20 GB
$100 - 30 GB
$130 - 50 GB

Add the $15 modem lease fee (up $5 from Gen 4) if you decide to lease rather then pay ~$400 upfront. Plus 50 GB between 2 -8 AM

Personally raw speed on satellite is not a concern for me. That 45 x 5 looks pretty sweet right now. Let's see what it's like in 6 months. I have 100+Mb unlimited cable. But in the event I get stuck at home and I lose the cable connection, I need to be able to work. Off peak hours I can get 20-30 Mb down on Hughes and I'm paying for 10, but I can't get no where near that in prime time. If Sprint's rates were more reasonable and if my router could support failover for my particular hot spot/USB modem, I'd be golden. I could survive on a solid 5 x 1 connection, if I had to for a few days to get work down, even with 700+ ms latency, I cannot survive on what is essentially a 1.5 x 0 connection.

Here's my other two sources of internet at 8:30 on a Monday night.

 

[KE4EST]

 

[Jim S.]

I'm still lost... Why are they advertising 25M if they're selling 50M?

 

[EarDemon]

Nice! Thanks for sharing. Kind of neat to see what satellite is capable of. Maybe when I'm off in the Fall I'll look into upgrading.

As for why are they advertising so low. Simple, CYA for when then Gen 5 beams get more populated and the speeds start to drop. Just about all ISPs over provision their connections for this reason. Better to over-deliver then over-promise. 25 is probably the magic number since the stupid FCC defined 'broadband' to mean at least 25 Mbps down. Which is stupid. Who cares what some idiotic government organization calls it legally on paper. ISPs will just call it high speed internet instead. I wouldn't expect to continue to get those 50 Mb speeds as more subscribers migrate over.

HughesNet Gen 4 is over-provisioned as well. Despite my horrid speeds during the day, during non-peak hours I can get around 30 x 1.5 on the 10 x 1 plan.