Hughesnet “Fair” Access Policy
There hasn’t been much to write about this week. Most of my time has been spent in yard work so I haven’t even had time to finish some posts about short trips we took recently. I have also spent considerable time fiddling around with my computers at home. I don’t consider myself a computer geek even though I am a software engineer. For me it’s just a job and I, unlike some of my colleagues, don’t spend much of my free time playing computer games or “hacking” (not to be confused with cracking) for fun. Whenever I do spend time with the computer at home is because I have a problem or I am trying to set up some new program or peripheral.Â
My friends and relatives are always asking about computer problems they have but the truth is that most of the time I don’t know how what they are talking about. When I have a computer problem, I google the symptoms and starting working from there using trial and error. Sure, my experience with software means that I understand some basic concepts that would be beyond the average lay person but it is still hard. I guess it’s the same way with mechanics or doctors.
Just the other day, our internet connection was becoming painfully slow. We live in the middle of nowhere and our options for high speed internet are severly limited. We eventually got Direcway, which is now Hughesnet. For the first few years this worked like a charm. I was even thinking of taking the system on the road using one of those tripod mounts that some RVers now use. (BTW: This use is not officially approved by Hughesnet but they generally look the other way.)
However, as our internet usage increased and we started using more web applications, things began to slow down substantially. Part of the problem is that Hughes has this “fair access policy”. It basically means that if one exceeds a certain threshold rate of download or upload, they will slow your connection down to a crawl. It use to be that they would only put you on “timeout” for a few hours but recently Hughes changed their policy and increased the threshold but also increased the amount time your connection would slow down to 24 hrs.
Despite the company’s assertion that the threshold level is “well above the typical usage rates”, I can think of many circumstances where one could download more than 200 MB in an 24-hour period (routine software upgrades being one example). So far we have hit the threshold twice and it is a pain to have to wait 24 hours before our connection speed is restored. Besides this, it is very hard to track download rates when you have several computers and other devices going at the same time.
The other day I decided to look into why our connection was so slow. Even though I should know better, I had never tightened down the access to our wireless router. Being so far out in the country, I figured that nobody would be within range of our connection. When I finally checked the DHCP clients table on the router, I discovered that there were several unauthorized computers connected to our network. After limiting wireless access to only the computers and devices we own, things started to speed up, except for every time we hit that magic threshold and everything grinds to a halt.
