HughesNet .. lessons learned

I'm going to keep this simple but I can't resist from complaining about HughesNet to start. But if you are like me, maybe you found yourself with a satellite internet connection that isn't working. In my case, it was a cut wire. Seems easy enough to fix, but it turned into a lengthy process. Before I describe everything you'll need to know to fix a cut wire, let me tell HughesNet how terrible your customer service center is. Your outsourced call center to India is the absolute worse. You cannot understand them, at all. When you ask a simple question, every single rep wanted to explain to me, "It's like a car, a car without wheels, without wheels it won't move" for EVERY single question I asked. Is that all they know to say?

Here is THE SITUATION (if anyone thinks Jersey shore you are as pathetic as me). We had 24 inches of snow up on Blue Mountain in very rural Linden, Virginia. The snow didn't stop my internet, the plow that was pushing 2 feet of snow cut the wire that I neglected to bury. My first call, to the local office that installed it. They were more than willing to come out and run new coax for only $1/foot. Come on, this is rural Virginia! You know my dish is 250 feet or so from the house! For a great value of $250 plus some other fee's, they would run a new one. I don't think so. A spool of coax with ground (500 feet) is only $82 (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0015MARNM/ref=oss_T15_product)

So, I ventured and bought the cable, using my Amazon prime, it arrived in 2 days. I spent $8 at Lowes to get connectors, and $14 for a crimper.

Total cost thus far: $104

Cabling:

1. Ensure you properly label ends of your cable for transmit and receive. A sure shot method is to use the side with the ground as the transmit and the other side with no ground as receive.

2. Go to the panel on the outside of your house, where the cables terminate, before they run inside. Disconnect the old cables, pull the ground out, and keep the box open (you will need a phillips head scree driver).

3. Go to the dish (in my case I had to climb up) and disconnect the cables and the ground. You will need a pair of dikes to cut the cable ties.

4. Put your spool @ the bottom of the dish (Use a metal rod in the middle, anchor it down, and the spool will spin).

5. Run your cable from the dish to the outside of the house (the box) and give yourself a few extra feet on both ends.

6. Carefully put the end going into the house through the box, terminate each end, and put your ground in place.

7. To terminate, pull the cables apart. Use the crimper tool to cut the cable for the RG6 connection. Once the black is off (about a quarter of an inch) go ahead and cut down to the inside wire. Once done, put your end cap on and crimp it really tight. The termination should be secure. Wrap electrical tape on the end to keep any thing out or for added protection.

8. Pull your ground cable out of the wrapping and put where the previous ground was.

9. So the same for the other end.

10. In my case, I wanted to make sure my connections were solid. I did this the country way .. lick your tongue, get it nice a wet, and lick the end of the cable that will screw into the satellite dish. If you feel a tingle, your terminations are good.

11. Go ahead and screw the transmit and receive in and place your ground.

Now, your cables should be ran.

Next, reset your modem and a few minutes later it should get connection.

The big lesson I learned here was:

If your cables are cut between the modem and the dish the modem admin panel WILL NOT LOAD (192.168.1.1) and your devices WILL NOT get an IP. HughesNet would not tell me this so I thought for a second I needed a new modem, before I ran the cables. Even though I lease the service they wanted to send me a new one at $260!

All and all, if Hughestnet would of came out it would be been:

$250 cabling
$260 modem
$120 service call

Grand total: $630

It cost me 3 hours of time and $104.

Not a bad savings.

If you have any HughesNet hardware issues, contact me (jason@jamz.net) seriously, I don't want you to go through the pain of this call center in India.