User Guide

What is HFN?

Highlands Fiber Network (HFN) is the community organization charged with managing the Issaquah Highlands' Fiber to the Home network. The Highlands Council maintains a close relationship with Highlands Fiber Network making HFN a 100% community owned fiber network. The Highlands Fiber Network Board of Directors and GigabitNow (HFN's operator and Internet service provider) work to shape the network and find the best ways to meet the communication needs of the Issaquah Highlands community. The Highlands Fiber Network (HFN) delivers fast fiber-to-the-home Internet, up to a gigabit per second, with no bandwidth caps or speed throttling. HFN serves Issaquah Highlands residences and businesses, providing homes, condos, apartments, shops, restaurants and offices with Internet services. Internet connectivity, in turn, can be used for web browsing, streaming TV and video, Wi-Fi and more.

HFN users receive higher-quality Internet service for two important reasons. First, HFN delivers faster speeds, up to a gigabit per second. That's 1,000 Mbps, more than 10 times faster than the national average. Second, HFN never throttles uploads, the way most Internet service providers do, or caps the amount of data you can use. Your Internet never slows down the more you use it and you are not charged more for too much use.

What Can I Do With It?

Whether web browsing, listening to music, watching a movie or playing video games, fast gigabit fiber makes it easy to use multiple devices all at the same time. Share data and download large files. Fill your home with smart appliances and digital assistants. Play video games or watch TV and movies in different rooms. Thanks to fast gigabit fiber everything works seamlessly and you can do it all at the same time. Almost every aspect of running a modern business relies on Internet connectivity. Community businesses use HFN for banking, marketing, reservations, sales and more. The list goes on and on, which is why businesses using HFN are elated that their Internet service delivers more data and bandwidth than they ever use.

Before you start using HFN at its full potential it is important to understand how the network is designed and configured (Read more about the importance of personal Firewall and Routers).

In addition to Internet, HFN offers low cost telephone service for homes and businesses. Keep your existing number or get a new one.

Learn More

• The Importance of Home Routers
• Web Browsing
• Telephone
• TV and Video Streaming

Internet Speed Expectations

Depending upon how you use the Internet (web browsing, reading email, watching movies, downloading music, playing games), you may notice how fast the network is running. You can verify whether your connection is running at full speed by running a speed test in your web browser at http://hfnet.us/speedtest.

Here are some typical speed test results for different speed plans:

• Quantum 10 = About 10 Mbps download and upload
• Quantum 100 = About 90 Mbps download and upload
• Quantum Gig = 100+ Mbps download and upload

HFN Speed Plans in more detail:

• For Quantum 10 customers, the maximum download speed is 10 Mbps.
• For Quantum 100 customers, the physical connection has an inherent maximum of 100 Mbps. However, since 100 Mbps includes diagnostic traffic, and other overhead, the observable download speeds show up slightly lower than 100 Mbps (we have seen speeds in excess of 93 Mbps in field testing).
• For Quantum Gig customers, special equipment is used to allow a resident to have a 1,000 Mbps connection to the network, however there are very few Internet sites or services that will allow more than 100-200 Mbps of throughput. Throughput results from community subscribers to the Internet vary greatly ranging from 200 Mbps to 900 Mbps depending on their destination, general congestion, and other Internet traffic within their residence.

The Download Connection of HFN plans refers to the maximum speed to and from your home.
Download Speeds refers to the data rate that is lower than the maximum physical connection speed.

Helpful Tip: The best way to confirm your actual HFN speed is to connect directly to the HFN gateway in your home, not over wireless or through your personal network, as these can degrade your HFN connection in varying degrees. If your speed test results show a lower than expected network speed, we have a checklist for troubleshooting potential problems (in order of most likely to be of issue):

1. Check your computer
2. Check any home network equipment
3. Check the home router and Wi-Fi
4. Check HFN network equipment (HFN Support)
5. Check HFN fiber (HFN Support)
6. Check HFN gateway (HFN Support)

The most common causes for speed issues on high speed networks are #1, #2 and #3. Home networks are often wireless, and home Wi-Fi routers are vulnerable to a lot of radio noise that interferes with the speed of data transmission. Home routers are also a common problem, since many of them are not designed for more than 100 megabits of traffic. HFN technical support will work with you to try to isolate which of these problems may be affecting your Internet speeds.

If your router is not optimized to take full advantage of Quantum speeds, here is a link to a review by a third-party of high-speed Internet routers for home and home office use. One of these routers may work better for your network. http://hfnet.us/fastrouters