Black Modem

[churn]

I just got a call from a new resident in town who said that DirecTV just installed a black modem for WildBlue service, which he said was supposed to be quite a bit faster. From the chatter on this forum, I didn't think there were any installations, yet. But this sounds like the real thing. I'm going over tomorrow to check it out and run some tests. Will report back. Let me know if I'm getting my hopes up unnecessarily.

[JSheridan]

If it's a black modem with blue lights it's a new Excede modem, even though the dish and modem may be branded 'WildBlue'. The name change was apparently very last minute.

The DirecTV weekly dealer newsletter today said in no uncertain terms that DirecTV will not be doing Excede and is no longer doing WildBlue at all and to refer any and all requests for the new system directly to WildBlue. A DirecTV installer or a local dealer may have installed an Excede system sold directly by the dealer or by ViaSat at your friend's but if it's on his DirecTV bill it probably isn't an Excede system.

Dish starts doing the new Excede on Feb. 1, although the equipment isn't at our distributor's yet.

[ov123]

I'm an installer and we started installing them yesterday but we are still installing the old one too

[JSheridan]

I'm an installer and we started installing them yesterday but we are still installing the old one too

An installer for whom? Dish, DirecTV, WildBlue, a co-op or... ?

[ov123]

for both directv and wildblue

[ov123]

but all the orders are coming from wildblue directly , directv told us that from jan 16 2012 they will not be accepting order for wildblue i dont know what happened their thats all they told us

[JSheridan]

Rumor has it that DirecTV got mad when Viasat signed with Dish for the new system and they cut ties. Rumor also has it that DirecTV will sell Hughesnet in the not too distant future. Now that will be weird because supposedly you DirecTV installers will still be installing the WildBlue systems too. It should be interesting to see how all this works out.

[churn]

It was the real thing. A new black modem that worked very well. Round trip ping times were very consistent at about 670ms. That's well under half the time that I typically see with my gear. My equipment averages around 1600ms and varies widely between 1500 and 2500ms. The lack of congestion on the new satellite probably explains the consistency, but better routing must explain the much lower latency. This is a big deal, in my opinion.

As for speed, it was not nearly as fast as I had hoped. The resident didn't know exactly what he had been sold, but it he should have got at least 5Mb/sec and presumably up to 12Mb/sec. With the typical web-based speed tests I found that throughput was erratic and bursty, and typically reported less than 2Mb/sec. I think this is a software issue where the system is trying to adjust to demand over time. Finally I did a large file download (25MB). Speeds continued to improve throughout the download process, peaking at the end at 3.5Mb/sec.

But even that speed along with the good response seemed to be impressive. I found, for example, that I had no troubles repeatedly watching 720p HD YouTube videos. The video start was not as quick as DSL, but much faster than the older WildBlue. And once the stream began, it always loaded far faster than the playback, so there's was no stutter and buffering.

Web page loading was snappier.

We tried to make a Google Talk call and it barely worked. Not surprisingly, the latency was still a problem. We called a phone in the same house and could hear the second or more lag. Furthermore, the person on the other end said it sounded choppy. I didn't do a particularly careful VOIP test -- in particular I didn't use a headset, so some of the problem could have been clipping. The owner said that he had made a call yesterday and found it clear and useable. My feeling is that it works, but not reliably. Still, that's more than can be said with my existing system where any kind of audio call either fails or is of unacceptable quality.

Anyway, there's my report.

[texexec]

It was the real thing. A new black modem that worked very well. Round trip ping times were very consistent at about 670ms. That's well under half the time that I typically see with my gear. My equipment averages around 1600ms and varies widely between 1500 and 2500ms. The lack of congestion on the new satellite probably explains the consistency, but better routing must explain the much lower latency. This is a big deal, in my opinion.

As for speed, it was not nearly as fast as I had hoped. The resident didn't know exactly what he had been sold, but it he should have got at least 5Mb/sec and presumably up to 12Mb/sec. With the typical web-based speed tests I found that throughput was erratic and bursty, and typically reported less than 2Mb/sec. I think this is a software issue where the system is trying to adjust to demand over time. Finally I did a large file download (25MB). Speeds continued to improve throughout the download process, peaking at the end at 3.5Mb/sec.

But even that speed along with the good response seemed to be impressive. I found, for example, that I had no troubles repeatedly watching 720p HD YouTube videos. The video start was not as quick as DSL, but much faster than the older WildBlue. And once the stream began, it always loaded far faster than the playback, so there's was no stutter and buffering.

Web page loading was snappier.

We tried to make a Google Talk call and it barely worked. Not surprisingly, the latency was still a problem. We called a phone in the same house and could hear the second or more lag. Furthermore, the person on the other end said it sounded choppy. I didn't do a particularly careful VOIP test -- in particular I didn't use a headset, so some of the problem could have been clipping. The owner said that he had made a call yesterday and found it clear and useable. My feeling is that it works, but not reliably. Still, that's more than can be said with my existing system where any kind of audio call either fails or is of unacceptable quality.

Anyway, there's my report.

Frankly, I'm NOT impressed with this. Is it supposed to be downloading at up to 5Mbps or up to 12 Mbps? If so, the performance is FAR below what is "advertised". And presumably, this is on a spot beam with little customer loading on a new satellite?

No wonder they are offering low caps per month service.

[wm4bama]

It was the real thing. A new black modem that worked very well. Round trip ping times were very consistent at about 670ms. That's well under half the time that I typically see with my gear. My equipment averages around 1600ms and varies widely between 1500 and 2500ms. The lack of congestion on the new satellite probably explains the consistency, but better routing must explain the much lower latency. This is a big deal, in my opinion.

As for speed, it was not nearly as fast as I had hoped. The resident didn't know exactly what he had been sold, but it he should have got at least 5Mb/sec and presumably up to 12Mb/sec. With the typical web-based speed tests I found that throughput was erratic and bursty, and typically reported less than 2Mb/sec. I think this is a software issue where the system is trying to adjust to demand over time. Finally I did a large file download (25MB). Speeds continued to improve throughout the download process, peaking at the end at 3.5Mb/sec.

But even that speed along with the good response seemed to be impressive. I found, for example, that I had no troubles repeatedly watching 720p HD YouTube videos. The video start was not as quick as DSL, but much faster than the older WildBlue. And once the stream began, it always loaded far faster than the playback, so there's was no stutter and buffering.

Web page loading was snappier.

We tried to make a Google Talk call and it barely worked. Not surprisingly, the latency was still a problem. We called a phone in the same house and could hear the second or more lag. Furthermore, the person on the other end said it sounded choppy. I didn't do a particularly careful VOIP test -- in particular I didn't use a headset, so some of the problem could have been clipping. The owner said that he had made a call yesterday and found it clear and useable. My feeling is that it works, but not reliably. Still, that's more than can be said with my existing system where any kind of audio call either fails or is of unacceptable quality.

Anyway, there's my report.

Churn, it's very important to know exactly where your friend is located...if you look at the coverage maps I believe you will find that your friend lives in an area not covered by ViaSat-1 but is in the blue map area where customers must use Anik-F2 or WB-1, which uses the Exede5 "agumented" beams and the "up-to" 5mbs.

Keep in mind that these two satellites are still loaded with existing customers using the Value Pak, Select Pak or Pro Pak...the beams are still congested, and will be until enough existing customers that use these two satellites, but live in the green (ViaSat-1) map areas are switched...thus freeing up more bandwidth that can be used for the Exede5 customers.

The reason the ping times are lower is because the new Exede5 and Exede12 services do away with the technology that time-shared (wait for my turn) different speed packages on the same bandwidth...the new services have only one speed and have no time-sharing technology that forces different packages to "wait for their turn".

So, I'm sure your friend is on either Anik-F2 or WB-1 and their speeds will improve as more existing customers can be removed from those two satellites and put onto ViaSat-1. Anik-F2 and WB-1 are still loaded with existing customer using the old plans and the speeds you reported are pretty darn good considering that...and it explains why you see variations...it will get better as soon as current customers leave those two satellites for ViaSat-1..