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i used to have WildBlue and i requested help on here before. recently, i moved and switched to HughesNET and for the first few weeks it worked great. BUT, for the past 2 - 2 1/2 weeks, my speeds have sucked really bad. what i mean is everything starts out okay in the morning and then BAM... at about 2 in the afternoon my speeds drop very hard and stay slow until just about 3 am which is when the "free" period begins (from 3-6am). i have the Pro package at 1Mbps (128kB/s) 256Kbps (i think around 30kB/s). during these slow times in the day, instead of being able to surf real quick and download at 130kB/s, i get about 16kB/s MAX and surf speeds are like dialup. i have called support several times and had no help other than that same ol' "well sir, HN has one ultra-high speed bandwidth that all our customers share who are on that satellite, so during the peak hours and afternoon you may experience a slight decrease in speed as there may be high traffic." well i understand that, but for weeks it was fine and speeds were consistant throughout the day everyday. it is most frustrating when you pay $70 a month for "High-Speed" internet and get dialup speeds most of the day.

now i have read other posts about clearing out spyware and such, defragging, and resetting the modem. i have done it all and it has no impact. plus, it happens on all other computers i try with.

also, does anyone else with the same package as i find the FAP very easy to break and EXTREMELY slow when capped? it says on their site that you may notice a decrease in overall download speed and in some cases, a slight degredation in browsing speeds. well that does not cover it...my browsing speed when capped is unbelievably slow, most often 1-2min load time in a full page, and a d/l speed of about 0.9 - 2kB/s. and most downloads larger than 200kb with fail before they finish.

like i said, i have the:
Pro Package 1Mbps (128kB/s) 256Kbps (i think around 30kB/s)
HN7000S Modem

thankyou in advance!

i dont even really have to do anything bandwidth intensive for it to slow down. for example, a short youtube video would load almost instantly; just shoot the bar accross and it was loaded. now, during 2pm - 2am they will load about 2 seconds of video and pause for a while, load another 2 seconds or so and wait for a while again. they seriously load as if i was using dialup.

i just ran a test at 3:30PM and here are my results (very close to what i get everyday from 2pm - 3am:

::::::::::.. testmy.net test results ..::::::::::
Download Connection is:: 16 Kbps about 0.02 Mbps (tested with 100 kB)
Download Speed is:: 2 kB/s
Upload Connection is:: 57 Kbps about 0.1 Mbps (tested with 97 kB)
Upload Speed is:: 7 kB/s
Tested From:: http://testmy.net (Main)
Test Time:: 2008/04/11 - 1:28pm
D-Validation Link:: http://testmy.net/stats/id-UG23INVRF
U-Validation Link:: http://testmy.net/stats/id-9IC3672MK
User Agent:: Opera/9.23 (Windows NT 5.1; U; en)


sick...

In my experience, most service providers are more interested in billing rather than providing service.

All except the super high $$ ISPs over commit service significantly at every point of their connectivity.
Only very few service contracts have I seen had any 'non-performance' clause in them.

When I had WildBlue, they were pretty good about giving refunds for 24 hour blocks AFTER I reported an outage.
When it was out for over 4 weeks and I called every day they finally got someone to come out and make it work again.
(One installer messes it up, then none were in the state, then they brought one in from two states over.  Now there
are two within 5 miles but we are using SprintWireless card (slower, but less propagation delay, so my sensitive
test (wife) says it feels faster.  So this is what we do!)

During that time WildBlue also gave excuses that my transponder was out on the satellite, I suggested they put me
on another transponder but that was 'impossible'.  They said my earthstation downlink was out, basically weather in New York state...  Why in the world do you EVER put a critical earth station in an area where there are known recurring weather issues
(i.e. SNOW in the winter)? .. Oh yes, that added to the propigation delay, because it went through about 6 routers before it got
dropped onto the open internet in Colorado? ... At least they could have dropped me on the internet in, oh say, NYCity!  But nooooo, their network guru's were to smart to do something 'reasonable', so they PAID to have ALL the traffic dumpped to Colorado over land lines. ... Grumble, whine, ... These were my reasons for leaving Wildblue and going to ANYTHING that worked.  Sprint wireless cards are by no means perfect, but it works.  And yes, I wish I could get real bandwidth too (less than 2 miles from DSL access, $25,000 install fee if we want cable, or $650/mo for a T1 (not bad, but out of my price range)).