A method to manage the secure download of data (102) to a very large number of network connected client devices (104, 110, 112, 114, 116, 118, 1120, 122) distributed within large geographic areas. The method provides adaptive data throttling and makes optimal use of network data bandwidth. The method can be advantageously applied for managing simultaneous data downloading to millions of network connected remote devices (104, 110, 112, 114, 116, 118, 1120, 122) via private networks, public networks and the Internet (124). A close-loop download regulation algorithm achieves the highest download capacity for the files without exceeding the maximum network capacity and without degrading the transactional and operational traffic performance between the server and the connected client devices.