Severe throttling during peak times of certain services?

[#1]

I'll start off by saying I'm a very happy Plusnet customer - on my 8th year now and have absolutely loved my FTTC service since we very fortunately got it really early in our area around 2011.

Although the service generally amazing quick and consistent, recently I have noticed that certain services (specially streaming video) seem to be heavily throttled during peak times recently.

My partner and I love watching the Overwatch League (https://overwatchleague.com/en-gb/videos) by during peak times watching the best 720p / 60fps quality buffers like crazy killing the enjoyment when it stops to buffer every few seconds.

Tonight has been the same yet if I pop off to do a speed test at the same time, I get a solid 70Mbps down, 18Mbps up which should be more than sufficient to watch these videos at best quality:

http://www.speedtest.net/result/7179844626

I can only presume that there must be some aggressive traffic management going on at peak times - has anyone else noticed this recently?

[#2]

Plusnet do not intentionally throttle speeds, you need to look elsewhere. Are you using wireless or Powerline devices to connect to your TV? If so that should be your first port of call. I had no end of buffering issue with both, I solved them all with an Ethernet cable between my TV and router. This would always be my recommendation for any streaming device.

If you use Wifi then use a wifi sniffer app (I use Wifi Analyser on an Android phone). With this you can see both your wifi channel and your neighbours. Try at both the TV and Router positions. If there are other users on the same channel as you then log into your router and manually change the channel. If you need more help with this then just ask.

If you use powerline devices then I'm afraid that there's interference being injected from some other electrical appliances that's causing the problem. These may be inside or outside your property. All you can do is try switching other devices off and see if it improves.

If you're already using an Ethernet cable then I'm stumped!

[#3]

Just to add regrading WiFi.

The 2.4 GHz band is not regulated by use. Many different products and systems use the band, including video transmitters, baby monitors and microwave ovens etc.

These do not show up as WiFi signals on the WiFi analysers but can have a significant effect on WiFi performance.

Richard

[#4]

Appreciate the replies folks - many thanks.

For reference, this is a 1Gbps wired Ethernet connection into a desktop PC - no WiFi or Powerline involved.

As you can see from the speedtest, the connection is a solid 70Mbps download at the time of the fault.

To be honest, I'm just testing the water - the issue may well be at the other end with this particular site but was wondering if anyone on Plusnet had similar experiences.

I had a feeling I read that there was a degree of traffic management at peak times and was wondering if this could be potentially impacted as a result.

[#5]

You will find posts from people suffering slow downs at peak times who think that they are being deliberately being throttled by traffic management but this is normally caused by overloaded BT infrastructure such as a 'hot SVLAN'. However if this was the cause of your problem then you would expect this to show up in the speed test.