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Strange drop off in speed every evening

Madmac
Grafter
Posts: 28
Registered: ‎04-02-2015

Strange drop off in speed every evening

Lately I have been noticing a marked drop in speed every evening recently and am really scratching my head here as to why.
The router is connected on ADSL2+ with a good 17/18mb down and 1mb up and during the day is working absolutely fine. However every evening around 6pm the speed tanks to about 3-4mb.
What's interesting though is that the line remains stable and no change in sync or errors.
Additionally I have the pro add-on for completeness.
As an example this morning I pulled down a 2gb file in about 40 minutes or so.
From the same server (single IP no load or regional balancing) took 4hrs this evening...
The only thing I can think of is contention upstream from my connection.
I am on the home unlimited product, but cannot remember the contention ratio.
Any ideas/help appreciated.

Line Statistics
   
Downstream rate: 18589Kbps, Upstream 1084Kbps
SNR Margin 6dB , Attenuation 18dB
10 REPLIES 10
adamwalker
Plusnet Help Team
Plusnet Help Team
Posts: 16,871
Thanks: 882
Fixes: 221
Registered: ‎27-04-2007

Re: Strange drop off in speed every evening

Hi there,
Don't worry about contention as that hasn't been an issue for years.
Diagnostics aren't showing me any problems so I was just wondering if you were connecting over WiFi or ethernet?
Can you test over ethernet tonight if you haven't already please?
If this post resolved your issue please click the 'This fixed my problem' button
 Adam Walker
 Plusnet Help Team
Madmac
Grafter
Posts: 28
Registered: ‎04-02-2015

Re: Strange drop off in speed every evening

Thanks for the response.
All testing on this has been conducted directly connected via Ethernet to the router which is on the main house socket, and I have also plugged directly into the test socket for comparison.
I'm an IT consultant so fairly certain that there is nothing wrong on my end and I have been monitoring traffic to make sure there is no unusual things going on here.
I can remember though a 'cludge' being applied to my line to stop the exchange  SNR margins etc. might be a cause when noise goes up on B-end, might be worth a look  and remove it as was not a problem prior to this.
cedlor
Grafter
Posts: 687
Thanks: 2
Registered: ‎02-04-2015

Re: Strange drop off in speed every evening

Anything in your house switch on around that time - water heater - aircon- solar panel functions  list is endless really? 
Have you stayed up and tested to see when it improves?
How long has this been going on for?  days - weeks- longer
Madmac
Grafter
Posts: 28
Registered: ‎04-02-2015

Re: Strange drop off in speed every evening

Nope nothing out of the ordinary and for the purposes of testing I disconnected everything other than my laptop on the router, wireless was shutdown.
No disturbance in electrical power across the house.
Only seems to have been going on for a couple of weeks. Thought it might have been down to engineering work, but that would not have gone on this long.
It's definitely upstream of my connection as have tried with a different router as well and get the same effect.
General window for the effect is 6-11pm everyday, have not measured at weekend yet but will do this weekend.
zapto
Grafter
Posts: 32
Registered: ‎15-12-2014

Re: Strange drop off in speed every evening

Quote from: Madmac
It's definitely upstream of my connection as have tried with a different router as well and get the same effect.
General window for the effect is 6-11pm everyday, have not measured at weekend yet but will do this weekend.


Sorry to high jack a thread. However I wanted to add weight onto this. I have exactly the same issue. I have gone ot the point of using the old AM Trick to detect noise. Turned everything off bar the router and bam just after 5.30PM the speed / page load times rocket. around midnight they return to normal.
I am 99.99% certain that it isn't my line as I am a recent subscriber to PlusNet and my line was near perfect with my previous ISP. (I can see my exchange from my bed room window and a number of BT engineers have confirmed the line length is less than 500mtr).
MatthewWheeler
Plusnet Help Team
Plusnet Help Team
Posts: 8,896
Thanks: 1,506
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Registered: ‎01-01-2012

Re: Strange drop off in speed every evening

@Madmac
Can you try running a BT Speedtest when the issue happens? http://speedtest.btwholesale.com . If the first test fails you'll have the option to run what's known as a TAP3 test which goes straight to the exchange rather then ourselves.
@zapto
We're seeing a high amount of upload traffic coming from your line which will most likely be causing issues with your download speeds. If that's a live ping graph in your signature the high upload has caused your average pings to shoot up. Can you try running a test with nothing running in the background?
If this post resolved your issue please click the 'This fixed my problem' button
 Matthew Wheeler
 Plusnet Help Team
Madmac
Grafter
Posts: 28
Registered: ‎04-02-2015

Re: Strange drop off in speed every evening

Matt,
Have run the BT Speedtest tool but cannot get to the TAP3 test as from BT's perspective there is no fault on the line....
That said though I have now run a series of different speedtests including the BT one and they all have the same result.
During the day, I get a perfectly clean service with  - 15.03Mbps down, 0.93Mbps up with ping latency of 25.25ms - BT Wholesale Speed test service
yet after ~7pm the speeds drop to - 4.33Mbps down, 0.66Mbps up with ping latency of 159ms - BT Wholesale Speed test service
This is with no change in line profile, router still connected and reporting a good service.
For comparison all testing has been completed with me physically connected to the router and all other devices disconnected/WIFI off at router.
This is an upstream issue as without any intervention the speed will return ~11-12pm and the router remains connected without loss of service or line reset.
Also updated screen name to match user name for ADSL service for the purpose of resolving this.
Madmac
Grafter
Posts: 28
Registered: ‎04-02-2015

Re: Strange drop off in speed every evening

Bumping to see if I can get some progress as issue still coming up.
Additional information that shows dropped packets which is also backed up by resend logs on the router, again only during evening hours.
cedlor
Grafter
Posts: 687
Thanks: 2
Registered: ‎02-04-2015

Re: Strange drop off in speed every evening

I would try reading up on REIN  There is some information in My Thread  and some on Kitz  ( just type kitz in your browser) - I have been suffering for months!!!
Chris
Legend
Posts: 17,724
Thanks: 600
Fixes: 169
Registered: ‎05-04-2007

Re: Strange drop off in speed every evening

Quote
Have run the BT Speedtest tool but cannot get to the TAP3 test as from BT's perspective there is no fault on the line....

That sounds like the first test didn't come back with low speeds? It's worth giving it another go when the issue is occurring and it should let you go through to the second test at that point.
I've checked the exchange reports and there are no reported capacity issues there. If it continues I'd suggest opening a fault ticket so we can dig further.
Former Plusnet Staff member. Posts after 31st Jan 2020 are not on behalf of Plusnet.