In order to save many, many phone calls to Exceed when service is slow, why not create a real-time or near real-time status page for Exede users that displays the current speeds users should be expecting as well as congestion stats on a user's beam and gateway.
I see on my Exede Portal the Liberty Plan is enabled and a little graph below it showing the green, yellow, and red time slots throughout a 24 hour period - which mimic the policy documents that can be found online, however I think it would be very much appreciated if this information could be based on real statistics and change with real time as well as provide a history over the last 24 hours or so.
This accomplishes two things:
1. It finally let's users see what is happening on their connections that might be affecting the performance of their internet experience.
2. Goes a long way to give some transparency to Exede.
I see lots of posts about speed issues, or congestion issues, or lots of upset customers wondering why this or that is so slow. I would bet there are infinitely more users that are frustrated by the same things being posted about that either don't know about this forum or don't feel like posting here that feel the same way.
I think this would be a great addition to the user portal in addition to the more granular usage meters we have all been requesting.
I see on my Exede Portal the Liberty Plan is enabled and a little graph below it showing the green, yellow, and red time slots throughout a 24 hour period - which mimic the policy documents that can be found online, however I think it would be very much appreciated if this information could be based on real statistics and change with real time as well as provide a history over the last 24 hours or so.
This accomplishes two things:
1. It finally let's users see what is happening on their connections that might be affecting the performance of their internet experience.
2. Goes a long way to give some transparency to Exede.
I see lots of posts about speed issues, or congestion issues, or lots of upset customers wondering why this or that is so slow. I would bet there are infinitely more users that are frustrated by the same things being posted about that either don't know about this forum or don't feel like posting here that feel the same way.
I think this would be a great addition to the user portal in addition to the more granular usage meters we have all been requesting.
Posted 4 years ago
I too think this to be a good idea - HOWEVER - it might for some further confuse the issues that are out of Exede's control. For intance we were just visiting my daughter's in Nortern VA. She doesn't have a TV service but uses COMCAST for her internet access. We were going to watch one of the movies that we brought with us - a DVD. My daughter insisted on playin JURASIC World through her Apple TV interface. This didn't go well - in fact the movie didn't play at all, so our kids went off and found something else to do. my daughter complained that COMCAST gauranteed her a GOOD speed. In the meantime using her internet and my Amazon Kindle I was able to watch one of my favorite SciFi shows via my Amazon Prime account? I was also able to view other simialr TV shows via her Apple TV interface. Both of these via her COMCAST ISP. The point I'm trying to make here is that our internet speeds are governed more than by the traffic on our BEAM or through our specific GATEWAY but also includes the traffic to and from our GATEWAY and other LOADS put on the OTHER content providers on our World Wide Web. So just knowing the status of our BEAM and GATEWAY may just show us, at times, excess capacity, but our current experience may be SLOW due to the internet HOST we're tryiing to get data (video, gaming, downloads, ...) from maybe be SLOW due to demand from MANY users, ....
Gregory, What you are saying sounds valid up to a point, but I think it is usually pretty easy to see whether the problem you are having involves one site vs. a problem across the board? As you quickly found, the problem that was being experienced wasn't due to Comcast.
And if there were such a visual way to know about congestion on the ISP you are using, wouldn't that in this case have perhaps shown right away that the problem was unlikely to be a Comcast congestion problem?
(Or am I missing something in what you are saying?)
And if there were such a visual way to know about congestion on the ISP you are using, wouldn't that in this case have perhaps shown right away that the problem was unlikely to be a Comcast congestion problem?
(Or am I missing something in what you are saying?)
My daughter was complaining that is was a Comcast problem so that's why I looked a little deeper. In our Exede world I'm sure that the Exede engineers are monitoring their traffic on Viasat1, each beam as well as theri different gateways. I, being a former user of their (first) Wildblue satelite remember conversations with installers and technicans about closing off some of their beams (geographiclal areas) due to being overloaded. This is in no way meant to be critcial of Wildblue/Exede, just to point out that they too are learning about capabilites, capacity, customer service/care and have taken it to a newer level with Viasat1 and who knows what Viasat2 will bring in terms of fexiblity, capability, new plans, ....
Gregory - that is a great point which is why I also suggested a way by which to show users what kind of speeds should users on a particular beam / gateway be seeing on average at this particular time. So my vision would be a very simple guage showing normal, light congestion, moderate congestion, heavy congestion and then the speed that users should be roughly seeing at that particular time under those conditions. I bet Exede could coax a few installers on each beam to install a utility that could periodically check speeds and report back to Exede what they are getting. Basically what I am doing in another thread.
Ultimately I am willing to bet the mysterious men and women who are the engineers running the network at Exede can give a fairly accurate guess as to the speeds users should be seeing based on the current traffic and congestion at a given time.
I get that not all hosts and sites are created equal, however I also feel that if you make it relatively simple and easy to understand, it may save a lot of headaches in the future by heading off calls before they start.
Ultimately I am willing to bet the mysterious men and women who are the engineers running the network at Exede can give a fairly accurate guess as to the speeds users should be seeing based on the current traffic and congestion at a given time.
I get that not all hosts and sites are created equal, however I also feel that if you make it relatively simple and easy to understand, it may save a lot of headaches in the future by heading off calls before they start.
Brian, I agree with the idea of providing this information - put it on the user's dashboard or add a n option on their dashboard to look into this on a last 24 hour basis, a weekly average,... I'd also like to suggest the ability for a user to drill deeper down into their useage such as where is my data being used - Video's (can they tell us where (Amazon, Netflix, ...), software downloads (updates from Microsoft, Apple, ...), software gaming, uploads (to where?) .... I'd also like a "Time Stamp" as to when the last measurement was taken in regards to the "Data Used" # shown on our dashboard.
Steve Frederick-VS1/Beam314, Champion
Gregory, all that you are looking for is already available with GlassWire, a free download.
And all without the need for Viasat to track every movement - many would object to that for privacy reasons.
For now a general categorized breakdown is about the best that can be expected from ViaSat - and I'm pretty sure Exede Alex, Brad, Lindsey, Diana, etc are glad they don't have to be placed in an awkard position of tellling someone's significant other that all of their data was consumed with in an Online Chat with Jake from State Farm who wears khakis and she sounds hideous... ;)
For now a general categorized breakdown is about the best that can be expected from ViaSat - and I'm pretty sure Exede Alex, Brad, Lindsey, Diana, etc are glad they don't have to be placed in an awkard position of tellling someone's significant other that all of their data was consumed with in an Online Chat with Jake from State Farm who wears khakis and she sounds hideous... ;)
And even the categorized breakdown "requires" permission from the user before it can be checked.
I'd also like to suggest the ability for a user to drill deeper down into their useage such as where is my data being used - Video's (can they tell us where (Amazon, Netflix, ...), software downloads (updates from Microsoft, Apple, ...), software gaming, uploads (to where?) .... I'd also like a "Time Stamp" as to when the last measurement was taken in regards to the "Data Used" # shown on our dashboard.In order to get at this information, Exede would essentially track every site you visit and everything you do. I personally don't think I care, however this raises fairly significant privacy concerns.
Nor am I particularly concerned - my life is apparently an open book somewhere over in China after the OPM breach of SF86 information - oh well, now the taxpayers are paying for identity theft monitoring and protection for a ton of us.
And I'm not thrilled with the governments choice of "protection". Yes, lets put all of our bank account and credit card information in one location on the web. I didn't do that, but at least they still did alert me when I took out a loan for a new truck.
I must admit I was quite startled on receiving the first sex offender alert. What the...Oh, you don't mean me...
(Edited)
A technician sent me this last year to explain the congestion in Beam 329. This is one way they had of looking at congestion.
Do you mean that at the points on that chart that utiilization hits 100%, is where problems are seen such as pages won't load, connections dropped that sort of thing (not sure what you mean by "speed impacts"?) and at lower than 100% it would be more like just lower speeds but not necessarily resulting in problems for subscribers?
Lorri - that is what I am surmising. It may be that lower than 100 percent speeds are just fine, but I am guessing the traffic management systems start to kick in and throttle traffic at some point over 70 percent to 95 percent to try to keep it from reaching 100 percent. I cannot know as I am not an Exede engineer so I cannot tell you what is in their secret networking sauce so to speak. Exede has also not really elaborated tremendously on when and how their traffic chaping kicks in and works beyond what is found online. I understand why they dont, but wish I knew.
After talking with Exede last night about the slow speeds we were getting (1.67 up, 0.75 down) on our Liberty 10 plan with plenty of "priority" data left, I wondered why they don't have a real-time network congestion page. Apparently I'm not the only one wondering this.
It's in the works and currently in testing for select users...
I just saw that and have logged into that page. Looks good although it would be nice to have some more detail about congestion in particular. Obviously red is bad, but is there an orange level as well? I don't see any help for that "stoplight"...
Provide feedback on that forum. Be glad you can access it, those of us who subscribe through wholesale channels (NRTC, DishNet) are stuck for the time being with nothing despite the fact the information is there for us too ;)
Have you tried mousing over the indicator for more info or clicking on it? I would but obviously can't.
Have you tried mousing over the indicator for more info or clicking on it? I would but obviously can't.
(Edited)
I've already commented on that forum, and will continue to do so. I hope you get access after they get through beta. :-)
Steve Frederick-VS1/Beam314, Champion
Steve, all the "Stop Lights" have three colors, just like the ones on roadways.
Well, the congestion stoplight is red at the moment although the service seems to be fairly reasonable. What is the criterion for each color of that light, if that's not a secret?
Steve Frederick-VS1/Beam314, Champion
I have no idea about what thresholds they are using to change the colors.
I have "yellow" lights for Antenna Pointing, Signal Quality and Packet Loss. I did get a Green on Signal Quality once earlier today. I have a Rx SNR reading of 6.7, which is what I have been seeing over the 4 years I have had Exede. It sometimes goes up to 7.5, but during bad weather will drop to 3.0, and my internet works just fine, with normal speeds.
Back in early December I had an Exede Tech at my house to change out a modem that was dropping my connection with the big silver bird in the sky 6 to 8 times a day, and when he was here, he checked out everything and didn't see anything that was messing up. So I am not too concerned with those yellow indications, although, I think that there will be lots more calls to the Exede call centers because of the yellow lights that may or may not really be a real problem.
All in all, I think this is a good tool, and with better indications of the data usage, and beam congestion, will help those who want to know this information.
Also, the speed test option is a great idea, since it measures speed between the modem and the satellite, and is not influenced by the computer or router in the home network.
I have "yellow" lights for Antenna Pointing, Signal Quality and Packet Loss. I did get a Green on Signal Quality once earlier today. I have a Rx SNR reading of 6.7, which is what I have been seeing over the 4 years I have had Exede. It sometimes goes up to 7.5, but during bad weather will drop to 3.0, and my internet works just fine, with normal speeds.
Back in early December I had an Exede Tech at my house to change out a modem that was dropping my connection with the big silver bird in the sky 6 to 8 times a day, and when he was here, he checked out everything and didn't see anything that was messing up. So I am not too concerned with those yellow indications, although, I think that there will be lots more calls to the Exede call centers because of the yellow lights that may or may not really be a real problem.
All in all, I think this is a good tool, and with better indications of the data usage, and beam congestion, will help those who want to know this information.
Also, the speed test option is a great idea, since it measures speed between the modem and the satellite, and is not influenced by the computer or router in the home network.
Would you happen to know how much data the speed test uses? I'm trying to minimize parasitic use so I get the most out of my priority data.
Alex, Viasat Corporate Communications
We'll open it up to this forum in a few days.
cloverdavid
Brian Shackelford
Old Labs (VS1-329-L12FZ)
Some discussion of releasing a subscriber version over in the other forum.
Some of us were invited to participate in a beta that has yet to materialize and appears it's hung up in an administrative approval process.
So the only question is will they? FWIW ViaSat, transparency is actually a good thing.