The Mysterious Incident of the Broardband in the Night-time.

[#1]

During the day my broadband is fine.  However for the last few days I have found it slows down radically at night.  If I run a speedtest in the day I usually get 5-6Mb/s but in the night I’m lucky to get 1Mb/s and it’s more likely that the test will fail to complete.

I am connected to the Beauchief exchange in Sheffield and am wondering if maintenance work is taking place at night, which would make sense as it would inconvenience the fewest people.  The only other thing I can think of is an intermittent fault that only manifests itself as the temperature drops.

If it is down to work taking place I’d be grateful to know how long it will be going on for and if not have things checked.

[#2]

To help nail this down, could you clarify what you mean by 'in the night'?

eg If it's between 8 to 10pm, then possibly it's a lack of capacity in the network. If it's still the same at midnight, then probably not.

As for temperature, seems unlikely as it's been pretty cold in the day too lately.

[#3]

Hi @ThePillenwerfer When you say 'slows radically at night', what time in the night are you talking? I'm on exactly the same exchange as you, and am online anytime up to 10PM - and occasionally in the small hours, and haven't noticed any major slow-downs in the late evenings.

As you say maintenance work would be carried out overnight, but this usually impacts the odd day (or night)

[#4]

Last night it was noticeably sluggish by 10 o'clock and utterly useless by three this morning.

[#5]

It's at it again.  

Here are some test results taken at various times since my last post.

Wed 4 Mar 12:39:23 GMT 2020

Speedtest by Ookla

Server: ASK4 - Sheffield (id = 6513)
ISP: Plusnet
Latency: 31.85 ms (0.50 ms jitter)

Download: 5.21 Mbps (data used: 5.0 MB)

Upload: 0.50 Mbps (data used: 608.6 kB)
Packet Loss: 0.0%
Result URL: https://www.speedtest.net/result/c/74d5110e-a384-4c98-9a7d-f2fa98e4f63b

Wed 4 Mar 23:45:23 GMT 2020

Speedtest by Ookla

Server: IDAQ Ltd - Sheffield (id = 8691)
ISP: Plusnet
Latency: 32.80 ms (0.66 ms jitter)

Download: 1.11 Mbps (data used: 1.4 MB)

Upload: 0.53 Mbps (data used: 586.5 kB)
Packet Loss: Not available.
Result URL: https://www.speedtest.net/result/c/88d5988d-5a40-4aae-bd1a-4271eb65ccec

Thu 5 Mar 01:09:18 GMT 2020

Speedtest by Ookla

Server: ASK4 - Sheffield (id = 6513)
ISP: Plusnet
Latency: 30.95 ms (37.45 ms jitter)
Download: FAILED
[error] Cannot read: Resource temporarily unavailable

Thu  5 Mar 01:17:49 GMT 2020

Speedtest by Ookla

Server: ASK4 - Sheffield (id = 6513)
ISP: Plusnet
Latency: 31.78 ms (0.35 ms jitter)
Download: 2.49 Mbps (data used: 3.3 MB)
Upload: 0.50 Mbps (data used: 633.4 kB)
Packet Loss: 0.0%
Result URL: https://www.speedtest.net/result/c/e15e0ee1-7816-40ad-a99a-93788c5661c6

The final one doesn't look too bad but I've just failed in my attempt to watch a YouTube video.

Now I don't give a monkeys what the speed is so long as it does what I want — I'm not an obsessive checker and only do it when I think there's a problem.  I'm also aware that the figures above are not likely to be accurate but the variance seems suggestive that something is amiss.

I should also add that this effects all devices no matter if they are connected via cable or wi-fi or what OS they are running.

[#6]

It is probably (but don't quote me) something local to you, @ThePillenwerfer  - I run hourly automated speed checks,and up to around midnight last night my figures were within a whisker of 7.75Mb/s, which is normal.

Which router are you using - not that is the culprit, just wondering how easy it is to grab the router statistics when this happens?

I'll leave my laptop running the tests overnight tonight to see if I suffer any speed reduction in the small hours.

[#7]

Thanks for that John.  Mine was back to behaving itself by half past six.

The router that I use is a Huawei HG533.  I have also got a Plusnet Hub Zero and I was planning on connecting that up later to see what, if anything, happens tonight.  I do know how to get at the stats on that one.

[#8]

Strange behaviour 😕

I'm afraid I can't offer any help on either of those two routers, having no experience of either. Maybe a Google search would reveal something?

[#9]

I've manged to find the logs for the Huawei router but they were useless as the times and dates were wrong due to it trying to connect to a dead NTS.  I've now sorted that out so we'll see what develops.

[#10]

It seems only polite to round this tale off.

Prompted by Jab1's mention of the router I thought mine should be definitively ruled out so I swapped it for the Plusnet one.  For all that my internet access had been OK before it was noticeably better with that.

What happened that night I don’t know as I actually spent it asleep.  I do know that all was well in the early hours of today.

So this brings me back to my original idea that temperature was a factor.  Obviously my Huawei router was ill but it seems like it was at least functional when it was at a temperature of around 70° but when the central heating switched off it started struggling.  This would explain why it seemed to get worse as the night passed as by 4 am it’d probably be nearer 50°.  This could be baloney of course but the main thing is that all is now well.

[#11]

@ThePillenwerfer That doesn't make too much sense to me - most electrical gear works better when it's cooler - but I'm glad you appear to have sorted it..

Could be the HG has other problems too, but alls well that ends well.