Once again peak time comes and speed drops like a stone

[#1]

I usually get around 6Mb download speeds during the day and early hours, but as soon as it hits 18:00 I have to pretty much give up playing games, watching Youtube etc cos everything goes to pot:

I've tried jumping to numerous gateways but nothing seems to alleviate it, and I'm guessing it's down to my exchange being Amber with no sign of a fix from BT.

[#2]

MIne drops massively in the afternoon onwards too. This isn't what I expected when I signed up, Ive got much less speed than I was told on the order and come night time it crawls

[#3]

I'm not one to complain - for what I need, my usual 3.2-3.5 speed is OK.
BUT because I've been having recent problems with my noise margin of an evening, I'm checking my stats/speed occaisionally, & have noticed the past two nights that speed after as you say around 1800 suddenly drops.
This has ONLY happened since Monday, prior to that I've had reasonable speed when my SNR was on or above 3dB but tonight I got around 1.4, and last night 0.9 ish.
Methinks BT/Plusnet have a major problem on their hands.

[#4]

Go to samknows.com and check your exchange for congestion.
Usually that is what causes the slowdown on adsl connections.

[#5]

http://postimage.org/image/vqqvx39yn/full/
Same problem
not sure what to do.

[#6]

Thanks HB - checked, but deffo not congestion - all green ticks. 

[#7]

I wouldn't trust the BT info on exchange congestion - a lot of green status exchanges have been suffering congestion (mine included).

[#8]

OK Andy - who would you trust? 

[#9]

PN.
If there is no line fault and PN say they have no bandwidth issues, then it pretty much has to be down to your exchange/BT's 21CN network. Btw, I found that the most congested times were 9:30-10:30, 14:00-14:45, 16:15-17:15 and 20:00-21:30. If you are seeing slow downs then (like I was), I would say it is BTs network.

[#10]

Understand what you are saying.
However - I see very little new building in this area (theres very little space left for it - and I'm guessing most people already have BB, so I don't quite see how the exchange can be having more lines put in on tthe BT equipment.

[#11]

Is your exchange 20CN/21CN? Fibre enabled?
I think the uptake of fibre has been so fast, that BT's network has been caught out in areas. Also the change of BT Infinity to an unlimited service a few weeks ago would surely have out more pressure on their network.

[#12]

Fairly certain it's 21CN & yes it is fibre enabled so maybe  you are right - but as I think I saw somewhere else,it's strange how these slow downs happen at almost the SAME time every night??

[#13]

I think it is just the busiest period for the network. It would be interesting if you could do a speed test around 16:30 as this was a big slow down for me (which I guess is all the school kids on the net after getting home from school).

[#14]

I'll do that if I'm home.

[#15]

How long does it take for BT  to sort out an Amber exchange, mine has been like this for months:
http://usertools.plus.net/exchanges/?exchange=Thornley&exact=2367&plugin=vp
To be honest though I only started getting this crappy evening performance in the last few weeks.