Internet grinds to a halt at 9pm ish

Is there a reason for this it works fine up until then, this has only been for a week.

Anything I can try, I'm using a macbook and BT homehub if that means anything.

is this a case of bandwidth contention during peak hours?
most if not all ISPs use "throttling" software/hardware to peg back individual bandwidth during peak hours.

All the local dads have put the kids to bed and are now looking at porn.

So is 9pm peak time? I'm not to fussed about slow but it actually stops. so short of me paying more I'm ****.

Other causes for slow speed/broken connections include environmental factors (e.g. heating thermostats, neighbour's car and house alarms, bloke at the end of the street with an old school TV pumping out tonnes of RFI next to the telegraph pole from which all the drop wires come).

No-one ever believes that these sort of things can make a difference, but they do.

Or… your computer is part of a botnet and 9pm is peak hour for it to be distributing spam/porn.

😆 @ Andituk

if you pre-download your filth before peak hours you can just watch it off your hard-drive.

Or… your computer is part of a botnet and 9pm is peak hour for it to be distributing spam/porn.

how would I know?

if you pre-download your filth before peak hours you can just watch it off your hard-drive.

Shit that's hardcore, most would use their vdu

ourmaninthenorth – can you explain how a car or house alarm interferes with telephone wires ?

Does this also mean that if my car is being nicked or my house broken into I'll have to switch the alarms off before I can phone the police ?

Kev

Kev – I'm not a geek (but I work for a large ISP and know plenty who are). I'm told RFI is a big factor.

Until we all get fibre-d up, then we have to rely on copper and its vagaries*. Lots of people have connection issues that may not be network originated.

*Except those people who live in Cumbria, and have to rely on super shonky aluminium cables – OK for voice; hopeless at data.

had massive problems with BloominTerrible, keeps dropping the broadband connection outside my home, somewhere in their local wiring, and never been fixed after multiple complaints. Grrrrrr

Just found out today I'll never get fibre to my home where I live, but will be able to get it to the cabinet. Assuming the cab's close enough, that ought to mean 30+ meg. From the end of this year. Happy happy!

Basically, your answer is what 404 said.

Issue 1 is contention. ADSL connections are shared at the exchange, so when lots of people use it at once, the speed drops.

Issue 2 is your ISP playing silly beggers with the connection to help minimise the effects of issue 1. They'll do things like "packet shaping" and artificially restricting your bandwidth so that the heavy users don't cause the light users to disconnect completely.

The solution in part is LLU. Most traditional ADSL reuses BT's equipment, so whether you go with ISP A or ISP B, you're essentially buying the same product that they've bought wholesale from BT. LLU providers user their own kit, so they're not tied to BT's technical restrictions (or their pricing models).

Have a look at the checker on http://www.samknows.com and it'll tell you what LLU providers are available in your area. Some are better than others, and there's opportunities for bundle bargains (eg, O2 give you a discount if you already have an O2 mobile, Sky discount if you have Sky TV, etc.) If you report back here, I can perhaps advise further.

The other thing is to make sure your home wiring is in order. DIY phone extensions can have a massive negative impact on your broadband performance for instance, but this is a topic in itself and probably should be another post.

(note to techies, I've intentionally oversimplified here for clarity)