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Why is my monthly allowance gone before the month is half over?

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nickysduck2
New Poster

Why is my monthly allowance gone before the month is half over?

I feel I am paying too much for internet that I can only use for a couple week per month. I have read lots of post from others having the same issue. I can understand the monthly allowance being gone if a person is streaming movies,watching youtube and uploading lots of stuff but I don't do any of that and I can never get past half a month without all my allowance gone. Its seems to me Hughes is pulling something in an attempt to get us to purchase bonus tokens and make more money. I am no longer under an agreement and am free to go elsewhere and I plan to if this is not resolved.I use email,google stuff,use facebook and visit forums Im a member of. This activity should NOT drain all my monthly allowance in a week when I am not uploading movies or anything that requires an enormous amount of data.I have contacted Hughesnet about this in the past and they were unwilling to help reach a satisfactory conclusion to this. I feel the least Hughesnet can do is provide an extra 2g of bonus tokens free we can use each month. This is the only thing that will make me consider remaining a customer.Im so mad that this continues to happens month after month. I have been a loyal customer for several years and am so done!
16 REPLIES 16
Gwalk900
Honorary Alumnus

Please describe the devices that you connect to your Hughes service.

Router? (brand and model)

Operating system(s)?

Wired, wireless or both?

If wireless what level of wireless encryption do you have enabled?

What Hughes system do you have? (HN7000s, NH9000, HT1xxx)

What plan level do you have?
williamtobler
New Member

There are many things around that may connect via the WiFi of your router, assuming you have one.  Your smartphone is one which will preferentially use the WiFi over the cell tower.  And typically there are a lot of Apps on your phone that might use it if you allow it.

A few months ago, we replaced one of our DirecTV receivers with a Genie.  Movies on demand and other things work via your internet ISP instead of the DirecTV satellite, which in your case is Hughes satellite. My other receiver is connected via RJ45 which never caused a problem, but the new Genie receiver is not located where I have cables installed. And so I enabled its WiFi capability to enable the "good features".  I have two ISPs for various reasons, one is Hughes and the other is DSL (which is uncapped and not metered).  Fortunately, I only allowed the Genie to connect to the DSL WiFi.  After a couple of weeks, I noticed the WiFi light on the DSL router showing a LOT of activity.  I tracked it back to ONLY the Genie, which was accessing it almost continuously for its own secret reasons.
After a Google search, I learned that this is a Genie bug which some people discovered after they received a $1500 monthly bill from Verizon for excessive Data utilization.

I could only stop this "unauthorized" WiFi utilization by disabling the WiFi connection, which was not really easy to do, at least from the Genie menu.  What I ended up doing is changing the WiFi password on the router and after a day or so, the Genie gave up and disabled its own WiFi feature.

So what to do with your Hughes modem?  For one, you can look at the blinking lights on its front panel which should not be blinking much at all except during activity.  If they are blinking, then you should try to find out why.

morrownr
New Poster

I have been will Hughesnet Gen4 for about 3 months now. It took me until about 2 weeks ago to get all of the devices in this house under control. I thought I had a good idea what everything used but I didn't.

Our desktop computers run Linux and were easy enough to set to manual update. I then manually update them about once per week during the bonus time. I also have some system doing Boinc processing. Boinc has a scheduler so I set it to only send or receive data during the bonus time.  This was all easy enough but I initially missed some things:

Playstation 4 was set to automatically update. This cost me 10 gb in a single day of Anytime data. Now it is set to not update automatically.

I use a Chromecast device. I don't use it to streams videos from the internet, I use it to stream local videos to our main TV. I found out the hard way that the Chromecast is a data pig. If it is doing nothing, it still pulls about 100 mb per hour streaming its background images. The Chromecast was retired from service. I found other ways to do what I was doing.

I had to turn all of the smartphones to manual update. We just update them during Bonus time.

After this work, we now have plenty of data. It just takes work to find the data pigs.

My only complaint at this point is the show upload. I'm on a plan that says 2 Mbps up but it isn't that good.
williamtobler
New Member

I rarely get 2Mbps.  Closer to 1 is normal.  I also do not use Hughes for a large upload to Vimeo, as the likelihood of success is not high.  Vimeo does not provide for restarting an upload at the failed point.


williamtobler
New Member

Hughes is faster than my DSL (10 down, 1 up), and the DSL is not without its own reliability issues.  I would burst without internet for two or three days.  Hence two ISPs dramatically improves the overall reliability.


nickysduck2
New Poster

Because I live in a rural area and Hughes is one of only 3 satellite internet providers that offer service in my area. I also was not thrilled with the idea of switching and paying a new installation fee with a different company. Money is tight. Thats why im pissed at paying $61 per month for internet I can only use for haf the month. It took hours just to get this webpage to load so I could even respond to these posts. Thats ridiculous.
nickysduck2
New Poster

I don't have any devices that use my wifi. My cellphone is set to use data and not wifi and I have direct tv service and don't use any streaming service. I also have a password on my router and am certain none of my neighbors are stealing wifi.
nickysduck2
New Poster

Thanks for the tips
williamtobler
New Member

It is possible that the 3 satellite providers all use Hughes capacity.  So switching might not help.

It is too bad than ANY of the providers DO NOT require the installers to confirm that adequate performance was obtained.

Nickysduck2:  unfortunately it is left to you to determine where your download quota is going to.  Too many, I think, assume that it is Hughes fault.  Maybe, maybe not.  As I stare at my DSL modem, the WiFi LED is flashing like crazy (which is not Hughes' fault).


nickysduck2
New Poster

I use a netgear wireless router that is password protected.I have no idea what wireless encryption level it has. My hughes system is HT1100 and I have the 10GB plan. I did'nt have problems like this until about 7 months ago.
williamtobler
New Member

The range of WiFi is not much.  Maybe a couple of hundred feet.  So that is easy to determine whether neighbors are connecting.


On my DSL modem/router, I can log in and determine what is connected.  There was ONLY one WiFi connection, and that was the DirecTV Genie receiver.   It was downloading 24/7, who knows what.


williamtobler
New Member

I guess Genie has subscribed to various XXX movie channels.


williamtobler
New Member

If you find something useful, please share.


Amanda
Moderator

Hi nickysduck2,

Welcome to our community and thank you for your post. I hope that our wonderful members were able to provide you with some kick-off tips to get down to the bottom of this issue. I do agree with William that you should double-check to make sure one of those three satellite providers is not someone who leases HughesNet capacity if you are unhappy with the service. The slow speeds you may be experiencing as referenced in your comment just a few posts above could be the result of having exceeded your monthly download allowance. 
It should not take hours to load one webpage - we'll run some diagnostics on your system to make sure there is no connectivity issues. 

Thank you
Amanda
Gwalk900
Honorary Alumnus

There is always confusion with the Dish/Directv resellers to say nothing of VAR's such as Montana Satellite.

 

nickysduck2
New Poster

No its not