Corvid-19 affecting dowload speeds?

[#1]

Hi

Just wondering if speeds have been reduced.  I'm only seeing 40-43Mb/s download speeds = 2.5MB/s max when I was getting over 5 MB/s before this pandemic started.  Game downloads are slower as well.  

[#2]

I usually get 30-40MPS, the last few days i'm getting 2-6MPS.

kids are driving me mad like its my fault!!

[#3]

keeps dropping connection as well.  

[#4]

Same here. Usually I get a massive 4.5mbs (ish), this past week it's dropped below 2mbs,  today I'm getting an unusable 0.1mbs.

Oh and yes the drop outs.

[#5]

Same here.  Broadband was down all of last Sunday, picked up during the week, then down again all of last evening.  OK today (Sat) so far, but expect it'll drop out again this evening. A few words of explanation from Plusnet would be welcome, especially if they can confirm that the problem is down to overloading of the network due to Covid-19, and if only to save us from enduring the laborious, labyrinthine self-diagnosing of our home networks.

[#6]

Guys,Home broadband service have a contention of 50 to 1 This mean that up to 50 customers could be using the one contention back at the exchange. Business offices will generally pay more for internet with a dedicated link of a contention of 1 to 1 thus its all theirs. 

So in the home when more people are getting on line, you have to remember that you may have more people using the one pipe. 

All the best. 

John

[#7]

@bigjohnuk  I believe that contention ratios on lines is no longer relevant in the era of FTTC but is a legacy from the early days of fixed speed ADSL broadband when data capacity was much lower. Of course there can be contention on the SVLAN  exchange backhaul but that is not so common these days as the capacity is usually adequate. There is certainly no fixed figure of 50 connections down one pipe.

[#8]

@bigjohnuk That's all well and good but I'm sure PN stated they had 10 times the capacity and could easily cope with all the extra load of home working etc...

My connection would beg to differ. My Wife is struggling to home work on a line that cannot consistently maintain a decent connection over the past week or so.

Got a speedtest of 0.88 just now, a further test gave this.

Whilst I realise that 1.1 is only just below the apparent spec of my connection, the fact is I could usually get circa 4-5 on a good day with a following wind, but not for the past week or so.

[#9]

My guess would be that there are several factors in play. For example:

 There are many people working from home, others streaming films. Add to this children at home playing games. All massively increasing dara being transferred around the network.

This could cause data overload on lines, there may be no contention in the ADSL sense but all this data will be concentrated onto single fibres along the line.

In addition all this extra data will increase the crosstalk on the analog multicore cables between the fibre cabinet and local distribution points. This will result in speeds having to be reduced at the DLM to maintain an acceptable SNR.

Then of course it might be a fault on the line.

Take your pick!

[#10]

I forgot to add that it might be another family member in another part of the house using bandwidth at the same time as conducting a speed test.

[#11]

Only me and MrsGee in our small cottage so nobody else using the connection. Another occasion  I'm glad we don't have kids, they would be climbing the walls with such poor internet.

Still, Gigaclear are currently digging up all the roads in the vicinity, and are due to go past the end of our lane in the coming week. Should only be a matter of a few more years before we get Fibre to our front door 😀

[#12]

Thanks for all of your contributions, relieved that I'm not going mad after all.