Slow Internet After 8pm!

[#1]

I do a lot of overtime and online gaming and recently we've noticed some really degraded performance with our broadband after 8pm at night. I understand information will be required but I'm kind of unsure what I can provide to give me a starting point. 

I moved into my new home in December and our broadband was fine for the first month or so but at night it's now really meh to the point where It's pointless having playstation plus.

Any suggestions / starting points would be most helpful! 

[#2]

You'll be suffering contention; ie. lots of users in your locality using broadband bandwidth at that time of day.

[#3]

Have you considered upgrading to fibre? Put your phone number in here to see what's available: https://www.dslchecker.bt.com/

[#4]

As others have suggested, try following the troubleshooting guides. There are a lot of possible causes (WiFi, bad wiring, etc.) other than contention - and you can actually do something about those. If it is contention it may not be something that Plusnet can solve.

However, I suffer from contention somewhere in the network in the evenings (which is irritating when watching Amazon Prime, iPlayer etc.) so contention is a possibility.

Daytime is generally fine, and I have top-end equipment (I work in IT from home), the connection is stable and I sync at a higher rate than BT suggest is avaliable for my line, so I believe it is just network contention. As Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc. become more popular the traffic is likely to increase rapidly - and ADSL isn't likely to continue to cope. My exchange was upgraded to ADSL2+ las November, and I had hoped to have a better experience (I even signed up to Amazon Prime), but although it is much better, there is still frequent buffering.

[#5]

Possible reasons:

1. Wi-Fi interference with your neighbours -- try using different channels
2. At night, noise increases on the phone line, causing errors, which will cause buffering -- try power-cycling the router after sunset
3. Peak-time congestion at your exchange -- ask Plusnet to report congestion to BT Wholesale

[#6]

When I had ADSL Max the upload was a problem - when that got saturated then downloads would stop. A mitigation was to use QoS to limit the upload to 70-80% of the maximum. I'm not sure how many routers let you do this, but it may be worth a try, especially if the upload rate is low.

As for exchange congestion on ADSL exchanges, I doubt any complaint by Plusnet or any other ISP will have any effect - the backhaul is unlikely ever to be upgraded (particularly in Market A areas like mine, which are uneconomic for any improvements at all - areas that are economic for upgrades probably already have FTTC available).

ADSL congestion may get better as more people migrate to FTTC/FTTP (where available), but will get worse as more people use on-demand video services - which of these factors wins over time will vary from area to area.

[#7]

+1 to QoS-limiting the upstream traffic to avoid bufferbloat. On my Billion 7800NXL, the optimum value seems to be 95%, but "your mileage may vary!"

We seem to have lost the OP. Do we know if they're on a Max/20CN service? Many of the smaller exchanges have been upgraded to 21CN, and I believe the vast majority of the rest are planned. But migration of an existing 20CN connection to 21CN might not be automatic, so OP might need to request it.

[#8]

When my 20CN exchange was upgraded to ADSL2+ last November the migration was forced by BT Wholesale, as the exchange was too small to accommodate the ADSL Max and ADSL2+ equipment at the same time. I suspect most if not all of the remaining 20CN exchanges are similar.

Strangely, for my exchange the on-line checkers still list 21CN WBC as unavailable, although most say ADSL2+ is available. Whether that is just an admin delay/oversight (4+ months?) or whether it implies that they haven't added 21CN backhaul, I have no idea.

[#9 · Accepted solution]

Sorry to hear you're having issues.

Our tests are showing a external fault on the line so we'll get that raised for you.

[#10]

Thanks everyone for your suggestions, I honestly wasn't expecting the amount of responses I got and I do apologize for not responding sooner. The fact Plusnet got someone out so quickly after seeing an update on a forum thread (an engineer fixed the problem on Friday) has really been a positive.