Mine started out as Direcway Satelitte, but then it changed to Hughesnet or something like that. From the beginning, it's been a disapointment. They sub out the installers and the first ones out couldn't get it to work. Then the next guys out figured it out and had me up and running. But it wasn't reliable. They came out again, and said it was my computer. I spent hours and hours on the phone with customer support. They are in India, but are very helpful and do a good job of documenting what's going on, but you still have to work your way up techs until you get to one who can figure anything out. None of there solutions lasted.
I was building my home at the time, so I just dealt with the problems at that place. To relocat the dish and get it hooked up was $190 if they took down the dish, or $100 if I took it down and they just installed it.
The guy who put it up was with a different company than the first two. He got me up and running, but than I had the same problems again. After a few months of dealing with the technicians, they sent out another guy from a fourth company to figure out what was wrong.
He replaced every single piece of equipment and the cables. He was very **** and spent as much time bad mouthing Direcway as he did the previous guys and companies that were out here. When he was done, I was up and running faster and better then ever before.
He said one of the problems was that the dish was never grounded and that was a problem. He also said the other installers had used the very cheapest connectors on the cable and that was causing me problems. There might have been a problem with my modem too. I'm on my third one.
A few months after he left, I started having a new problem. The system would slow down, freeze up or just stop working. I posted a thread here and got some suggestions to check out some other forums. At one of the forums I read about static electricity building up and causing my problems.
I pulled the cables off my bodem and touched the tips to some metal. I got blue sparks. I'd do this until the sparks disapeared and then everything worked great for awhile. I kept doing this until I figured out the problem. In this case, it was partially my fault. I have two electrical panels in my home totally seperate from each other. One is where the power for my computer and modem is on, the other is where I had grounded my satelitte dish.
You cannot use two different grounds on a system. I still don't understand why this is, but it just is. I cut the ground wire from the dish and since that day, I have not had one problem.
Neither tech support or the installers figured this out, but I don't fault them since this was totaly unique and something I didn't realize or mention to anybody.
Now that it's working like it should, I have fast downloads and my uploads are not too bad. I email pictures to friends and family all the time and most of the time a dozen pictures on an email takes just a few minutes to send.
Rain will knock out internet satelitte much faster than TV satelitte. We rarely lose the TV signal on DirecTV, but will almost always lose it for the internet. It's not so much the rain, but the clouds. Sometimes it will stop working on cloudy days. I'm told this is impossible by the experts, but the reality is different then what the experts tell me.
If you have no other options, then it works to a degree. If you can find another way to get high speed interent, go for it. I'm constantly looking for a different solution to get off satelitte. When I can find one, then I'll change in a heartbeat.
Good luck,
Eddie
