HughesNet and Downloads

[Cordeelya]

<p>We've been playing EQ II over a HughesNet satellite connection for about eight months, and although it's laggy, it works pretty well except for some problems in grouping, which we don't do all that often anyway. We live in a rural area and don't have any other option for Internet access except dial-up.</p><p>The biggest problem is when we have to download a major patch like the recent Shadow Odyssey update.</p><p>As some of you probably know, HughesNet has a draconian Fair Access Policy that limits downloads to a certain amount per day, ranging from 200 to 500 megs. If you go over your allotted amount, you are penalized by having your access speeds slow to an unusable crawl, slower than dial-up, for the following 24-hour period. There is no warning when you're about to go over your allotted download amount. You have to monitor the number of actual megabytes you're downloading, because just putting a timer on it isn't safe depending on how fast or slow your connection is at any given moment. The average amount of time that's usually "safe" to download is about a half hour. At that rate, it can easily take five or more days to download an entire huge patch.</p><p>I have been trying to download the latest EQII patch for over a week. I violated the FAP once accidentally, which means we didn't have Internet access at home for the following 24 hours. I am ready to scream. Apart from not being able to play the game, everything I had on the broker will have been removed by now since I haven't logged in in over a week.</p><p>Oh--HughesNet does have a period around 3:00 a.m. when you can freely download without violating the FAP. But who's up at that hour? Not us, for sure, and I can't bring myself to get up at that hour just to do a download. HughesNet suggests a download manager, but I don't know whether that would work with EQII?</p><p>We played Lord of the Rings for awhile, and LOTR had a way of posting big patches as compressed files on their web site that we could download on a portable drive at our office and bring home to install. I've looked, but I don't see where EQII does anything like that. And I suppose we are in the minority and this issue is not a problem for most people, so it would not be a priority for the developers to make the updates available as a separate file that could be downloaded on another computer.</p><p>If I'm missing something, please let me know. If you're dealing with similar problems, please let me know that, too. Otherwise, I really just want to come here and vent. And now I'm going to go see if I can download the rest of the patch without violating HughesNet's stupid FAP. (How hard could it be for Hughes to figure out how to give people a warning before they run over the FAP limit?)</p><p>Thanks for listening.</p>

[TSR-DanielH]

<p>Greetings,</p><p>I'm sorry to hear that you're having so much trouble with the download.  Regarding the download manager suggestion, the launchpad probably wont support the kind of download manager he's referring to.  The launchpad is a download manager already in that it checks what has been downloaded and downloads any missing files. </p><p>If you are able to download the patches at work then that may be a good option.  There wont be an archived file to download but copying your EQ2 directory from one computer to another works just fine.  Granted, thats a pretty large file, but it may work better than trying to get through the download limitations.</p>

[Kailet_Morgan]

<p>I'd suggest looking into Starband satellite internet as an option, they may not have the fap that hnet has and there's also wildblue to look at as well as one other that escapes me at the moment.</p>

[Seidhkona]

<p>I also live in a rural area and for a long time put up with the [deleted][rude][impolite][vile] that is HughesNet.</p><p>I just ended up setting my alarm clock, getting up, and starting te download. Then I set my alarm again for 15 mins before the end of the wee hours window. I also resorted to visiting friends or family who had faster connections and downloading there, then burning myself a DVD of the files and installing from that.</p><p>Luckily, Time-Warner finally put cable down my road, and WOO HOO no more HughesNet.</p><p>Once you do get it all downloaded, burn yourself a backup DVD... if you have to reload it will save you a lot of time.</p>

[TSR-DanielH]

<p><cite>Sigrdrifa@Lucan DLere wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I also live in a rural area and for a long time put up with the [deleted][rude][impolite][vile] that is HughesNet.</p><p>I just ended up setting my alarm clock, getting up, and starting te download. Then I set my alarm again for 15 mins before the end of the wee hours window. I also resorted to visiting friends or family who had faster connections and downloading there, then burning myself a DVD of the files and installing from that.</p><p>Luckily, Time-Warner finally put cable down my road, and WOO HOO no more HughesNet.</p><p>Once you do get it all downloaded, burn yourself a backup DVD... if you have to reload it will save you a lot of time.</p></blockquote><p>Ouch... At least your story had a happy ending, though!  I use Time Warner myself and they seem to have a pretty good service.</p>

[Gohbhine]

<p><span style="font-family: arial black,avant garde;">EQ2 has become unplayable on dialup speeds and before I quit, I would like to know if playing on satellite broadband is feasible and enjoyable ( able to participate in raids, etc).  What are the caveats?  Equipment/services to get/avoid?</span></p>

[Wingrider01]

<p><cite>Gohbhine wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><span style="font-family: arial black,avant garde;">EQ2 has become unplayable on dialup speeds and before I quit, I would like to know if playing on satellite broadband is feasible and enjoyable ( able to participate in raids, etc).  What are the caveats?  Equipment/services to get/avoid?</span></p></blockquote><p>connection will work fine, the latency for teh connection will make things really rough in almost any situation</p>

[Gohbhine]

<p>hey! thanks for the info.  Have not heard too many good reviews of anything satellite, especially since they started ripping people off with their fair use policy.</p>