I’m Cody Jackson, a computer science major at CSU Sacramento, and boy, do I love tinkering with computers and network hardware. I’ve learned most of my computing knowledge through research and hands-on implementation (and, on occasion, by picking up the pieces after an experiment goes sideways). I’m a dedicated student and a volunteer tutor for the Computer Science department.
I’ve used various Linux distributions over the past decade. Currently, the farm is running CentOS 5/6, (X)Ubuntu 12.04.3 and 14.04, and OpenSuse 12.3. I also have Windows XP, Windows 7, and Windows 8 on a few computers. And I finally have a Mac! (Finally!)
My hobbies and interests include music (particularly jazz and blues, but anything will do), creative writing, and art. I play electric blues guitar in my spare time and am slowly learning to paint in watercolor.
I often write about my shiny HughesNet modem, but I am not affiliated with HughesNet in any way other than being a customer.
Hello Cody,
Thanks so much for your clear writing that even a lay person can (somewhat) understand. I found your site a few weeks ago when I was trying to figure out how to stop buffering during a live webcast. Now I am sad I did not print out all the info I read in various places because I can’t find it.
As a musician, I have a feeling you may understand my plight. We are huge Phish fans and are trying to figure out how to watch live webcasts with no buffering. We signed on to Hughes Net exactly one year ago this month and we watched our first webcast for four nights over New Year’s 2012. It worked flawlessly for four nights. I don’t know what changed but this summer every time we tried to watch a live webcast, it would buffer at the worst possible moments during the show. Sometimes it even became unwatchable. Would using Google DNS or Open DNS solve that problem or are there more steps I need to take? There is another four night New Year’s Eve run coming up in a couple weeks and I want another flawless couch tour!! BTW, if you haven’t tuned in, I highly suggest doing so, while Phish isn’t for everybody, most music lovers can find something they like about Phish.
I should also mention, that a few weeks ago we successfully watched an entire show after I switched us to Google DNS. This show however was in our “stash” online. It was not live. So I am guessing that probably makes a difference.
Many thanks for any help you can provide.
Thank you for the kind words!
I don’t know if changing DNS servers would necessarily help. (It might!) My first instinct would be to try turning off Web Acceleration. I’ve found my modem’s performance falls drastically when Web Acceleration is enabled. It’s under the “advanced” page of your HT1x00 modem, if that’s what you have. I think the HN9000 series calls it “Turbo Page”.
Annoying as it is, you could also try reducing the resolution if the webcast supports it. (Each time the resolution is doubled, you need four times as much data!) What kind of webcast system is it? Is it a website? My knowledge of streaming video ends at YouTube.
I’ll check out the band. :) Let me know how it goes.
Merry Christmas Cody!
Here is the site from which we will purchase the webcast http://livephish.com/phish/New-Years-2013-MSG-Webcast.asp It says that HD is available but based on your earlier comment, it sounds like that would not help our situation at all but probably make it worse? So I guess we’ll stick with SD.
I will try turning off Web Acceleration. If memory serves me, did I read in your blog that you leave that off all the time and that’s it fine to do? I will let you know how it goes. For now I guess my plan of attack is to clear browsing history, reboot the modem and router, hard wire the MAC laptop to the wall rather than rely on the wireless router, try the google public dns, disable the web acceleration as you suggested and call Hughes Net now before the shows start so we can hopefully preemptively solve this issue. The first show is in 2 days.
Phish is all over YouTube. If you haven’t checked them out yet, here you go… http://www.youtube.com/results search_query=phish&sm=3
Let me know what you think and I’ll let you know how it goes. Many thanks.
Sorry about that — http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=phish&sm=3
Cody:
I cannot thank you enough for sharing your HughsNet BitTorrent experience. The same thing happened to me on the Exede 12 satellite system but more extreme. I have a remote site running 3 cameras (no PC) that have not changed in 2 years, usually run 12 Gb a month of upload video (1 frame a minute). All of a sudden I run out of my 15 Gb a month allotment in 20 days. I shut down my cameras and I was still uploading 84 megabytes an hour…that is 48 Gb a month (19 hours a day)! Many phone calls to Exede to explain that all was shut down except my router and it could not generate 84 Mb an hour of data. They were not impressed…so sad, too bad. Now your explanation fits what happened. I turned off all equipment at the site and turned it back on recently. I see my router has a different WAN IP address and NO phantom packets! I am back in business with an understanding of what happened.
Thank you,
Sean