Hughes Satellite Internet

And why it’s not as modern as its marketing suggests.

I recently found myself in a situation where I needed a faster internet connection in a remote location (other than an ADSL line) and had to look at options. The DSL line is 1.5mb and is being used as a comparison to the satellite. I weighed the various different satellite internet subscription options, and after reading hundreds if not thousands of reviews decided on HughesNet’s Gen4 PowerMax plan.

Speed

First off, the speed when it’s available is quite fast (1gb in 16 minutes) compared to ADSL 3mbps lines. During daily summer thunder storms it’s not completely off, but it does have quite a degraded signal. The internet satellite providers such as Hughes limit the speed of their connection. These limits come in a couple of forms, one of which is the physical limitations set on the unit itself. Having a 10/100 ethernet port, this would be the expected limit. The connection marketing suggests that the limits are set to 15mb/s however in our tests we’ve noticed around 10mb/s the unit shuts itself off and then synchronizes after about 30 seconds. If the connection doesn’t approach the system speed limits, it appears stable for a time.

Allowances

I’m not entirely sure about their reasoning, but Hughes sets a limit on the amount of bandwidth with what they call “allowances.” These allowances are really the downfall of the system. The timeframes for the allowances are between 2am and 10am for businesses with 20gb available during normal business hours and 25gb after hours. Any real business is not going to wait for the late night download period once they’ve exhausted their bandwidth for the day. For personal accounts 2am and 8am are the bonus hours and 8am to 2am regular hours with limits of 20gb each. The units do not provide consistent connections during “bonus hours.” This suggests that the system infrastructure needs to be upgraded to handle all of the requests for downloads overnight… that or Hughes knows this and is causing this limit on purpose. Either way it’s bad. In contrast, most high-speed internet connections such as DSL, Cable, and Fiber have much higher limits on the amount of suggested bandwidth.

A limit of 40gb per month seems as though someone could download quite a bit of data. The internet has changed however, so modern users who download multi-gig software updates and service packs and use something like IMAP to access their e-mail accounts on multiple devices (iPads, iPhones, computer e-mail, etc), will find themselves running out of bandwidth rather quickly. Most electronics do not allow downloads to happen overnight. While some plugins exist to schedule downloads overnight for PCs, in our tests we’ve noticed the system becomes unstable overnight and never completes a download (or upload) over 500mb after 2am. If IMAP is downloading the same e-mail on multiple devices at once there is a significant hit. Additionally sending an e-mail is also a multiple hit because the bandwidth limits are imposed for the SMTP transmission of the message to the mail server, the copying of the sent message to the IMAP folder, and the downloading of the sent message onto other devices on the connection. Web mail seems to be a good solution for this if you a strong web mail client is installed on the mail server.

Additionally during our first month we realized that poorly programmed web pages that constantly refresh data with meta refreshes and AJAX consume the bandwidth at an astronomical rate. Internet videos such as YouTube and Lydia.com seem to download reasonably well by downloading a cache and then playing. Streaming connections such as VoIP and Video conferencing dos not work well at all and additionally obliterate the monthly allowance for the connection. VoIP communications are clear in-bound but sound like "someone talking through a fan" on the other end.

DNS, caching, and other smoke and mirrors tricks

In the remote location I’ve resorted to running a DNS caching server over the ADSL line because the initial 30 second delay between typing in a domain name and waiting for the HughesNet Gen4 system to return an answer was painfully slow. Also this connection’s caching server has to run over the ADSL in my situation because any requests to the Root Servers from the system are blocked by the satellite’s firewall unless you use the service's default DNS servers. Additionally things like SSH and PPTP protocols also appear to be filtered and blocked. Any attempts at SMTP over port 25 are also blocked, but SMTP over SSH or TLS work. The Gen4 uses its own caching system to deliver pages seemingly quickly, however these pages aren’t always up-to-date, so they may need to be reloaded (requiring twice the bandwidth because they still penalize for the serving of the cached page).

IP address changing

Having to connect with the unit to any website or connection where a whitelisted IP address is required is excruciating. Over the course of one attempt at communication with a remote server I received no less than 4 different IP addresses in different ranges from my unit. These 4 ranges appear to be the usual addresses for the connection and have not changed over the course of a month. Also by whitelisting the reverse look-up domain name I was able to save myself some trouble, however this opened up the servers where the whitelists exist to worse security for the duration of the connection.

Tech Support

HughesNet’s extremely polite telephone tech support staff are not familiar with the units at all. The person we spoke with on the phone was not familiar with what a satellite dish was, much less the setup. They were only reading from a script. In our situation someone accidentally moved the dish, which prompted a Saturday afternoon call to their support staff (in India). Upon the initial interchange it was made clear to the satellite support staff that the dish had been moved and that we simply needed the angles and settings for realigning the dish. The support staff after 45 minutes of trying to determine why they couldn’t access the device remotely suggested that we enter a hidden interface on the unit ourselves (192.168.0.1 click the little gray “i” in the header) to retrieve the information from the unit. After seeing this information I was able to use the tools on the transmitter itself for realigning the dish (with physical socket wrenches)… which took another 45 minutes. Connecting to the transmitter using a cell phone over wifi made the process of dish alignment much simpler.

Final Notes

Overall, my experiences with the satellite have been somewhat different from most of the users who have a satellite alone since I am able to rely on the DSL in the event the satellite is down. Since I quickly exhausted my monthly allowance, had I not had a DSL line at my disposal I would have been dead in the water. I would suggest HughesNet Gen4 only as a last resort when all other options (cellular included) have been exhausted. For the brave, the speeds are immense and there is some level of anonymity since it’s not directly tied to a physical location.

Apple's new iOS7 - Location Services Required

Apple’s new iOS 7 is bundled with so many features it’s not even funny. One of the features, (and I’m not laughing about this one),  is rather than using the NTP servers to get Network Time based on preferred TimeZone, the geniuses at Apple decided to tie this to Location Services. If you don’t enable location services because you’re using multiple networks at once (like Satellite and DSL) or because you’re using a proxy server around the world, Apple is kind enough to set your location to the Pacific TimeZone. So now if you’re in Eastern Time and use your new iOS 7 alarm clock without noticing the change in TimeZone, you can get 3 more hours of much needed (but unexpected) sleep. 

To fix this feature, you can either enable Location Services (bad idea), or you can go into:

Settings > General > Date and Time

I’m a little bit of conspiracy theorist because of the things I notice in my job. One of the things I’m not in favor of is when a company, in this case Apple, tries to force me to use their data collection engine to get what once were standard features. In their new “operating system” iOS 7, when I enable Location Services I’m allowing Apple to track my every move and I’m sharing that information back with them. They can tell what my habits are, where I’m going, where I’ve been, and at some point this will all be tied to advertising and marketing (if it’s not already being used to pick locations for their new Apple stores).  Additionally, I don’t want Apple knowing that we’re running 3 WiFi networks and how many machines (and what types) are on our networks.

From Apple's privacy policy:

Location-Based Services

To provide location-based services on Apple products, Apple and our partners and licensees may collect, use, and share precise location data, including the real-time geographic location of your Apple computer or device. This location data is collected anonymously in a form that does not personally identify you and is used by Apple and our partners and licensees to provide and improve location-based products and services. For example, we may share geographic location with application providers when you opt in to their location services.

Some location-based services offered by Apple, such as the “Find My iPhone” feature, require your personal information for the feature to work.

I see a problem with this legal distinction because the data is not collected anonymously. They know who I am and what I do. I have a single device that contains everything from email accounts to passwords for services to all of the locations I've been at where I was around either a wireless network or a cellular signal. It's only shared with their servers anonymously (or so we're told)... unless you opt into cloud services. 

We may also disclose information about you if we determine that disclosure is reasonably necessary to enforce our terms and conditions or protect our operations or users. Additionally, in the event of a reorganization, merger, or sale we may transfer any and all personal information we collect to the relevant third party.

It's all getting foggy

Another trend with all of the newer services is the integration with the “Cloud.” Cloud is another way of saying “we’re storing your information on a server on the internet… somewhere.” If you want all of your contacts, photos, text messages, and e-mails stored on some server that is THE server people want to get into to collect all of the information in the world, then store everything on the cloud. After all there is safety in numbers, right? 

I myself am not in favor of cloud services because I like to control my own data, and I like to control who has access to it. If I enable cloud services and rely on them, now not only can I be charged to get to my own data, but at some point when I need this data if I’m not willing to pay I can lose all of my data. Also in the fine print, sometimes when I share data with companies they can share my data with their partners or use it to offer me better services. I know this because my clients frequently ask “how can we get more information or feedback from our customers?” What happens when someone unexpected gets this data? #ios7