How to Cope with Peak Hours and Fair Access Policies – Globalcom

How to Cope with Peak Hours and Fair Access Policies

Satellite Internet may be a huge help, especially if you live in rural areas and where Internet hot spots are scarce, but it does come with certain limitations. For one thing, your connection speed is sure to be slower than usual during peak hours and weekends. More importantly, if you end up violating any of the Fair Access Policies prescribed by your service provider, your already reduced connection speed could be further diminished for a specified period of time.

What is the Fair Access Policy for?
Originally, the Fair Access Policy was used by Hughes Net to ensure that downloading speeds was fairly and properly allocated amongst its users. In time, the policies prescribed by the company were adopted by other satellite Internet service providers and may be included in their terms and conditions for Acceptable Use.

The Fair Access Policy basically gives every user a daily quota for downloading. If the user exceeds his daily limit, connection speed provided for the user’s account will be reduced to connection speed that’s virtually as something you’d expect from dial-up Internet. Reduced speed due to violation of Fair Access policies usually lasts for 24 hours but this could be extended if the user commits subsequent violations.

Fair Access Policies have been created to deter the minute percentage of subscribers that make “heavy use” of their Internet speed and consequently affect other users.

Violations of Fair Access Policies
Are you guilty of violating any Fair Access Policy prescribed by your service provider? If you’re not so sure, here is a list of activities that such violations commonly involve.

Downloading
Full-length movie and large file downloads will put you at risk of violating Fair Access Policies. Simultaneous file downloads as well as extensive downloading of Usenet Newsgroups and use of BitTorent applications are also commonly discouraged.

Hosting
If you are using your connection to host computer applications and other service devices, these may also make you liable to violate a Fair Access policy.

Online Gaming
Possibly, too much hours and too much bandwidth consumption spent on online gaming could constitute as another violation.

Limits Prescribed by Fair Access Policies
As HughesNet was the first company to develop such policies, not to mention their being the largest service provider in the country, the limits they prescribe for their subscription plans may be considered as industry standards.

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