This summer I had viasat installed in a home I’m not living in FT. It’s in the country so there are no fiber or cell towers close enough for a signal. I figured anything had to be better than the DSL I was stuck with through the phone company, which has no interest in running fiber to my home. I’ve been away and just returned to find I am barely getting 1 MBPS some of the time for download speed. I was promised this would be sufficient for streaming, and am about to rent the home for the winter and passed along Viasat’s claim that you can steam w their service. About to call customer service tomorrow. For nearly 140 a month this should be much better.
Hi @karcer09
I’m sorry about this experience you’re having with Viasat.
Upon first inspection, it’s possible that you are suffering from a Wi-Fi issue (when the modem’s signal is not strong enough to reach all devices throughout the house).
I ran a few speed tests on your modem, and it currently has good speeds, so there shouldn’t be any issues with streaming:
When you get a chance, can you please use a laptop or Android phone to run a complete speed diagnosis on https://speedcheck.viasat.com, with the Viasat Browser?
Sometimes we see good speeds on our side from your modem, but this doesn’t reflect your devices’ speeds; so with this tool we have a way of knowing both at the same time.
This will help us get a full reading on the speed situation and allow us to identify/rule out Wi-Fi issues.
You can follow our guide: How to run a complete speed diagnosis – and please let us know if you face any problems while running the tests.
Thanks!
I did a bunch of speed tests last night and the speed varied widely. I was first getting barely 1 MBPS, but a little bit later it was doing better than 25. Last time I was here, the same seemed to happen at night. I did restart a laptop I was using last night and then got a slightly better speed with it, but for a period of time, all the devices were laggy. My phone is fastest with this service, overall.
My brother in law hooked up a router to the receiver/modem which is allowing it to work in a wider area, but with such swings in speeds, is is really possible to consistently stream? And how many devices/users can be on it at once before it slows down? I was here with about 6 family members in August and it was quite slow when all were on. When they went to bed and I was using it, it worked better. No data caps is advertised. Is that really true? There are few homes near us and probably fewer who have Viasat.
Last night it was just me here and a very clear night. There was no good reason for an ISP that advertises 25 Mbps to be barely getting 1, no matter what’s happening. I know we can’t game with your service-- which will be an issue if I move back with my son next year. But for now I just would like to more consistently be able to get what was advertised.
It’s 8:48 p.m. and the same problem as last night. I can’t even load the speed test on my phone, which is usually the fastest device. This is on the Viasat end.
Again, this service costs too much to be this slow. What is going on? Nothing will load. I’m the only one in the home.
Look at this! Terrible. Why does this keep happening at night?
Hi @karcer09
Were you able to run the advanced modem speedcheck?
I couldn’t find results on your account, and I can’t access any of your tests 
The modem vs device speedcheck helps us understand if your modem or network configuration have any inherent issues which could be causing this problem.
Please ensure that you’re logged in and using the Viasat browser when running the speedcheck on speecheck.viasat.com, so that we can have access to the results and more pieces of information to investigate.
Here’s an article with detailed information: How to run a speed test from my modem?
No I just pulled it up from the search. I had trouble remembering my log in. I will try later, am not at the home now till next week. But again, to get such variability on the same device sounds like not a device issue.
Hi @karcer09
Got it, let us know when you’re able to run the full tests!
PS – if you have time, could you run at least 1 test per period of the day?
You mentioned that the speeds get worse at night (and I also received good speeds on your modem during the afternoon), so it’s possible there is some fluctuation happening due to the peak period.