extra 2mb in two mins - now browsing seems painful

[#1]

I thought general browsing was a little slow, so did a speed test (on mybroadbandspeed as I keep getting told other ones's are unreliable)
This was 23:59

and this was 00:01

Is there really that much of a change at the ISP at midnight?  I doubt everyone is suddenly logging off.  So, what goes on at midnight for it to jump that much.  Can I have that speed in the evening please? 

[#2]

Yesterday from about 3.30pm was bad for me too; lots of variation in speed and lots of stalls too. It would be interesting to know how BT manages/monitors their backhaul performance & problems. Is there a NASA-style control room somewhere (only joking!). Do any of the PN gurus know?

[#3]

No idea at all I'm afraid.

[#4]

Seems anything anyone would use during the evening is running like a three legged dog.  Hotmail, MSN, Facebook, Amazon.co.uk, Ebay.co.uk, Apple App Store etc seems to take a good 10 second to fully load.
If I tracert to hotmail, and amazon, and ebay, they seem to stumble at the same place, ip4.tinet.net
Tracing route to amazon.co.uk [87.238.85.129]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
  1    1 ms    2 ms    6 ms  192.168.0.1
  2    52 ms    83 ms    92 ms  lo0-plusnet.pte-ag1.plus.net [195.166.128.64]
  3    78 ms    69 ms    63 ms  ge0-0-0-403.pte-gw2.plus.net [84.92.4.2]
  4    57 ms    52 ms    52 ms  vl23.thn-gw2.plus.net [212.159.4.20]
  5    51 ms    56 ms    70 ms  xe-1-1-0-0.lon10.ip4.tinet.net [213.200.78.69]
  6    64 ms    64 ms    64 ms  so-0-0-0.dub10.ip4.tinet.net [89.149.187.38]
  7  amazon-ireland-gw.ip4.tinet.net [213.200.67.30]  reports: Destination net
nreachable.
Trace complete.
C:\Users\Carl>tracert hotmail.com
Tracing route to hotmail.com [64.4.33.7]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
  1    2 ms    2 ms    2 ms  192.168.0.1
  2    57 ms    61 ms    68 ms  lo0-plusnet.pte-ag1.plus.net [195.166.128.64]
  3    88 ms  207 ms  161 ms  ge0-0-0-403.pte-gw2.plus.net [84.92.4.2]
  4    57 ms    72 ms    55 ms  vl23.thn-gw2.plus.net [212.159.4.20]
  5    53 ms    56 ms    53 ms  xe-1-1-0-0.lon10.ip4.tinet.net [213.200.78.69]
  6  150 ms  140 ms  146 ms  so-3-3-0.was11.ip4.tinet.net [89.149.187.138]
  7    *        *        *    Request timed out.
  8    *        *        *    Request timed out.
  9    *        *        *    Request timed out.
10    *        *    ^C
C:\Users\Carl>tracert ebay.co.uk
Tracing route to ebay.co.uk [66.135.200.23]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
  1    1 ms    1 ms    1 ms  192.168.0.1
  2    56 ms    79 ms    68 ms  lo0-plusnet.pte-ag1.plus.net [195.166.128.64]
  3    55 ms    89 ms    60 ms  ge0-0-0-403.pte-gw2.plus.net [84.92.4.2]
  4    60 ms    58 ms    54 ms  vl23.thn-gw2.plus.net [212.159.4.20]
  5    64 ms    70 ms    87 ms  xe-1-1-0-0.lon10.ip4.tinet.net [213.200.78.69]
  6  124 ms  127 ms  125 ms  xe-0-1-0.nyc20.ip4.tinet.net [89.149.187.242]
  7  140 ms  135 ms  138 ms  192.205.36.113
  8  210 ms  217 ms  209 ms  cr2.n54ny.ip.att.net [12.122.81.70]
  9  216 ms  237 ms  211 ms  cr2.wswdc.ip.att.net [12.122.3.38]
10  218 ms  213 ms  219 ms  cr1.attga.ip.att.net [12.122.1.173]
11  212 ms  218 ms  235 ms  cr2.dlstx.ip.att.net [12.122.28.174]
12  211 ms  211 ms  211 ms  cr1.dlstx.ip.att.net [12.122.1.209]
13  214 ms  248 ms  217 ms  cr1.phmaz.ip.att.net [12.122.28.182]
14  215 ms  210 ms  234 ms  12.123.206.129
15    *        *        *    Request timed out.

[#5]

Quote from: Griff

If I tracert to hotmail, and amazon, and ebay, they seem to stumble at the same place, ip4.tinet.net

Traces are the same for me but the eBay one doesn't appear to be timing out at the same place as the others (which isn't necessarily a problem). Most of the content on the sites you refer to will be hosted with one of the big CDN's like Akamai or Limelight Networks. Depending on your package, these 'Download Sites/Servers' may be rate limited at this time of night.
Having said that, it should really be noticeable. Things don't seem to bad here on pcl-ag04.

[#6]

Surely the rate limiting should only apply to file downloads though Bob and not website traffic?

[#7]

so it is said

[#8]

Is this related to my thread on ebay timeouts: http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,79919.0.html

[#9]

Quote

Having said that, it should really be noticeable. Things don't seem to bad here on pcl-ag04.

I was on pcl-ag04 before I reset my router. Doesn't seem to be much better this evening.  Although gaming did seem to go back to what I normally see.
Funny enough, I was just on Facebook and most of the page appeared straight way. It was just the images that took a while appearing.
I am on the older Premier Option 1 account, but don't see why that should slow down the loading of images.  Is there some throttling, or possible problem with some known image hosters, or maybe some ad sites?

[#10]

It's possible that the images were being served by Akamai, which we rate limit.

[#11]

I suspected as much.  I tried to update my version of java too, and just to download that took 35 minutes. 
{I wonder if that's hosted on the same place, probably}

[#12]

for anyone looking at this, it's worth looking at this thread too, as it's probably the same issue.
http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,79576.48.html