Usenet download slows after midnight - huh?

[#1]

I'm in the middle of a usenet download (from an external server).
Before midnight I was surprised and please to see speeds of around 60kB/s - fastest I've seen before midnight. I look at the speed on either side of midnight, expecting to see speed ramp up, but it went down, to around 20k B/s!
Why would that happen. It was clearly aligned with the midnight changeover to supposedly unthrottled speeds.
It is now sitting at 10kB/s at 20 past the hour.
Any idea what is going on?

[#2]

That's actually pretty normal.
Think about how many people will use schedulers to allow usenet/p2p downloads to start at midnight.  At midnight, the rate limits on the speed are removed, but the prioritisation of the traffic remains.  As the downloads finish, the speed improves as there are less people running the downloads.

[#3]

Thanks - makes sense.