I use Windows Defender on my notebook computer, and it often updates very slowly. I think it's just Windows servers. Sometimes Windows updates themselves seem to take forever, even though they should be going a lot faster. It took over an hour for the Windows updates to download for me tonight, and they were less than 400MB, yet my actual Hughesnet speed is very good and the updates should have been over in less than five minutes.
As for ITunes, it seems to be a problem for a few people.
There very well have been some changes made by Apple in regards to the way servers respond. Usually latency is at the root of this.
There is nothing that Hughes can do to increase the speed of light or reduce the distance to the satellite in orbit.
There very likely are things that can be done between Hughes and Apple after the Holiday weekend.
Kevin,
If you have having speed issues, please create an account at testmy.net, and while signed into that account, and with a single device connected directly to the modem (NO ROUTER), run some download tests using the manual 12MB test size. Then create a new post, explaining your speed issues, and post the link to your speed test results at testmy.net. Again, please create an account and run the tests under that account. It keeps al of the speed test results on a single page.
Well, considering that a file size of 400MB would download in less than five minutes at the normal speed that I average around that time in the evening, a time of over an hour simply demonstrates that there are other factors in play, with Microsoft's servers definitely being one of them. Of course, with that said, if a company's servers have to "serve" millions at any given time, I can understand them slowing a tad. Had I been using the "update from more than one place" option, I'm sure it would have been much quicker.