Maximizing Your Satellite Internet’s Data Usage

For the best online experience, its highly recommended to stay within your Priority Data usage, but whether you have a plan with 100 GB of data or 200 GB, you can maximize it using with the following tips:

Avoiding Peak Hours:

Online Peak hours are those which the internet is being used most heavily – usually falling between 4pm and 10pm. With a surge of users during these hours, congestion occurs and results in slower speeds for internet users.

To combat against this congestion, satellite internet providers incentivize by offering bonus data (previously referred to as Hughesnet Bonus Zone 2am-8am) to your plan that can be used at certain times of the day during off-peak hours. Generally these hours are from late night to early morning when most people are sleeping. To best utilize this with Hughesnet, use the off-peak time from 2am to 8am for data and bandwidth intensive things such as software updates and music/movie downloads. By downloading these updates and files late at night you can have them saved to your computer and ready for use when you wake or for any point in the future.

Downloading On Off-Peak Hours:

Scheduling downloads for off peak hours is extremely simple and only requires the use of a web browser. Search for a download scheduler add-on/extension to install that will give you the ability to schedule file downloads at a later point. For example, on Mozilla Firefox there’s an add-on called Download Scheduler that lets you set up downloads in a calendar style format. Use this for files you know you will need or want to view in the future and have them downloaded while you sleep.

Remember: Online activity between 2am and 8am doesn’t count against your Priority Data amount. A download schedule will help you make the most of this time without breaking into your Priority Data amount or staying up too late at night.

Monitoring Your Data Usage:

Commonly overlooked, but the easiest way to maximize your data is simply to monitor it. Often times people understand that their online activates are tied to data usage but never know that exact number.

Provided free with your Hughesnet® service is a Status Meter that allows you to track data usage by seeing how much data you have used on your plan, and the amount you have left.

Activates such as downloading music files and streaming video take up much more data than browsing the web or checking emails, but by understanding exactly how much you can successfully budget your data and get the most out of your plan.

Purchasing Tokens:

It takes a lot of work to exceed your Priority Data usage, but in the case that you do, Hughesnet has you covered.

In order to restore your Hughesnet service to its normal speed you have the option to purchase tokens to add additional data to your plan.

If you want more Priority Data, you can always purchase a Priority Data Token. A Priority Data Token doesn’t expire and is available as soon as you need it.

What Activity Is Likely To Make Me Surpass The Download Usage?

Data-rich activity is best scheduled for off-peak hours. Here are a few downloads that could threaten your download usage:

• Full-length movie or video downloads or streaming
• Hosting Web-cam feeds or other host computer applications
• Large-file downloads
• Web-based data backups to a central server:
• 2 hours of video streaming
• 300 photos uploaded
• 200 streamed songs
• 1,024 web pages loaded
• 2,000 emails sent or received

In general, activities like downloading large files and streaming video take up more data, while browsing the web, checking email and social networking take up relatively little.