xplornet contact or any experience with their satellite service?

A friend of mine just recently got Xplornet satellite service at his rural home. I'm well aware of the latency issues with satellite although frankly his latency is much better than I had feared it would be and is around 600-700ms. But what seems to be worse than the latency is the "burstiness" of the traffic and I am just wondering if that is normal/expected for satellite service in general, and/or expected from Xplornet's service, or if what I am seeing is not expected at all (i.e. not an artifact of the satellite signal but rather a network management issue). Here's iperf3 for 30 seconds sending data (i.e. upload speed): [ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate [ 5] 0.00-1.21 sec 12.9 KBytes 87.4 Kbits/sec [ 5] 1.21-2.00 sec 6.47 KBytes 67.2 Kbits/sec [ 5] 2.00-3.00 sec 22.0 KBytes 180 Kbits/sec [ 5] 3.00-4.00 sec 41.4 KBytes 339 Kbits/sec [ 5] 4.00-5.00 sec 41.4 KBytes 339 Kbits/sec [ 5] 5.00-6.00 sec 55.6 KBytes 456 Kbits/sec [ 5] 6.00-7.00 sec 69.9 KBytes 572 Kbits/sec [ 5] 7.00-8.00 sec 89.3 KBytes 731 Kbits/sec [ 5] 8.00-9.00 sec 120 KBytes 986 Kbits/sec [ 5] 9.00-10.00 sec 86.7 KBytes 710 Kbits/sec [ 5] 10.00-11.00 sec 133 KBytes 1.09 Mbits/sec [ 5] 11.00-12.00 sec 184 KBytes 1.51 Mbits/sec [ 5] 12.00-13.00 sec 186 KBytes 1.53 Mbits/sec [ 5] 13.00-14.00 sec 159 KBytes 1.30 Mbits/sec [ 5] 14.00-15.00 sec 0.00 Bytes 0.00 bits/sec [ 5] 15.00-16.00 sec 0.00 Bytes 0.00 bits/sec [ 5] 16.00-17.00 sec 93.2 KBytes 763 Kbits/sec [ 5] 17.00-18.00 sec 264 KBytes 2.16 Mbits/sec [ 5] 18.00-19.00 sec 124 KBytes 1.02 Mbits/sec [ 5] 19.00-20.00 sec 157 KBytes 1.28 Mbits/sec [ 5] 20.00-21.00 sec 120 KBytes 986 Kbits/sec [ 5] 21.00-22.00 sec 86.7 KBytes 710 Kbits/sec [ 5] 22.00-23.00 sec 369 KBytes 3.02 Mbits/sec [ 5] 23.00-24.00 sec 197 KBytes 1.61 Mbits/sec [ 5] 24.00-25.00 sec 90.6 KBytes 741 Kbits/sec [ 5] 25.00-26.00 sec 193 KBytes 1.58 Mbits/sec [ 5] 26.00-27.00 sec 192 KBytes 1.57 Mbits/sec [ 5] 27.00-28.00 sec 189 KBytes 1.55 Mbits/sec [ 5] 28.00-29.00 sec 193 KBytes 1.58 Mbits/sec [ 5] 29.00-30.00 sec 179 KBytes 1.46 Mbits/sec - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - [ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate Retr [ 5] 0.00-32.20 sec 4.41 MBytes 1.15 Mbits/sec 388 sender [ 5] 0.00-30.00 sec 3.57 MBytes 998 Kbits/sec receiver which averaged the overall prescribed "upload" speed, but notice that it's not 1Mb/s in any kind of a steady stream but rather bursts of higher than 1Mb/s speed followed by low/no speed. At one point it was 2 seconds with no transfer at all even. and here's receiving (i.e. "download"): [ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate Retr Cwnd [ 5] 0.00-1.35 sec 46.6 KBytes 283 Kbits/sec 0 12.9 KBytes [ 5] 1.35-2.00 sec 0.00 Bytes 0.00 bits/sec 0 12.9 KBytes [ 5] 2.00-3.00 sec 67.3 KBytes 551 Kbits/sec 0 37.5 KBytes [ 5] 3.00-4.00 sec 46.6 KBytes 382 Kbits/sec 0 40.1 KBytes [ 5] 4.00-5.00 sec 105 KBytes 858 Kbits/sec 0 44.0 KBytes [ 5] 5.00-6.00 sec 88.0 KBytes 721 Kbits/sec 0 54.3 KBytes [ 5] 6.00-7.00 sec 141 KBytes 1.16 Mbits/sec 0 69.9 KBytes [ 5] 7.00-8.00 sec 124 KBytes 1.02 Mbits/sec 0 101 KBytes [ 5] 8.00-9.00 sec 186 KBytes 1.53 Mbits/sec 0 146 KBytes [ 5] 9.00-10.00 sec 248 KBytes 2.04 Mbits/sec 0 206 KBytes [ 5] 10.00-11.00 sec 311 KBytes 2.54 Mbits/sec 0 257 KBytes [ 5] 11.00-12.00 sec 0.00 Bytes 0.00 bits/sec 43 194 KBytes [ 5] 12.00-13.00 sec 0.00 Bytes 0.00 bits/sec 75 199 KBytes [ 5] 13.00-14.00 sec 435 KBytes 3.56 Mbits/sec 0 199 KBytes [ 5] 14.00-15.00 sec 0.00 Bytes 0.00 bits/sec 34 114 KBytes [ 5] 15.00-16.00 sec 0.00 Bytes 0.00 bits/sec 34 140 KBytes [ 5] 16.00-17.00 sec 373 KBytes 3.05 Mbits/sec 0 149 KBytes [ 5] 17.00-18.00 sec 0.00 Bytes 0.00 bits/sec 0 162 KBytes [ 5] 18.00-19.00 sec 373 KBytes 3.05 Mbits/sec 0 168 KBytes [ 5] 19.00-20.00 sec 0.00 Bytes 0.00 bits/sec 0 171 KBytes [ 5] 20.00-21.00 sec 373 KBytes 3.05 Mbits/sec 0 172 KBytes [ 5] 21.00-22.00 sec 0.00 Bytes 0.00 bits/sec 14 141 KBytes [ 5] 22.00-23.00 sec 0.00 Bytes 0.00 bits/sec 0 120 KBytes [ 5] 23.00-24.00 sec 373 KBytes 3.05 Mbits/sec 0 131 KBytes [ 5] 24.00-25.00 sec 0.00 Bytes 0.00 bits/sec 1 146 KBytes [ 5] 25.00-26.00 sec 0.00 Bytes 0.00 bits/sec 14 104 KBytes [ 5] 26.00-27.00 sec 0.00 Bytes 0.00 bits/sec 0 104 KBytes [ 5] 27.00-28.00 sec 373 KBytes 3.05 Mbits/sec 0 107 KBytes [ 5] 28.00-29.00 sec 0.00 Bytes 0.00 bits/sec 0 119 KBytes [ 5] 29.00-30.00 sec 373 KBytes 3.05 Mbits/sec 0 123 KBytes - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - [ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate Retr [ 5] 0.00-30.00 sec 3.94 MBytes 1.10 Mbits/sec 215 sender [ 5] 0.00-30.80 sec 3.13 MBytes 853 Kbits/sec receiver Again, very bursty with periods of 1-2 seconds with no transfer. As you can imagine, the bursiness of this makes for horrible video conferencing since that cannot "buffer" the way single-direction streams like streaming video can and the codec ends up using the "worst case" dips as the speed of the connection and encodes for that. Cheers, b.