why is my broadband very very slow at night time?

alfa beta

Just wondering why it is that my BB speed is much much slower at night than in the day time.

I'm with eircom and to be honest daytime speeds are no great shakes - lucky to get 200kB per sec coming in - but that's fine for what I do - emails, boards, a bit of fb etc.

thing is, at nighttime, the speeds drop right down - sometimes you're talking bytes rather than kb per sec and quite often you get a thing on screen saying there's no DSL connection to the exchange (usually a refresh gets you back online) but things are seriously slow.

so, question here (before i go getting in touch with eircom) is why the difference in performance between day and night - i wudda thought one line, one approx speed and that the time of day would make no difference - but I ain't well up in this stuff.

ta

SterlingArcher

alfa beta wrote: »

Just wondering why it is that my BB speed is much much slower at night than in the day time.

I'm with eircom and to be honest daytime speeds are no great shakes - lucky to get 200kB per sec coming in - but that's fine for what I do - emails, boards, a bit of fb etc.

thing is, at nighttime, the speeds drop right down - sometimes you're talking bytes rather than kb per sec and quite often you get a thing on screen saying there's no DSL connection to the exchange (usually a refresh gets you back online) but things are seriously slow.

so, question here (before i go getting in touch with eircom) is why the difference in performance between day and night - i wudda thought one line, one approx speed and that the time of day would make no difference - but I ain't well up in this stuff.

ta

It depends on the service provider really , but during peak times yes the broadband can be congested just like traffic on a motorway at rush hour.

If you are really dissatisfied with your speeds inform the company (unfortunately this usually ends with them trying to fob you off and do anything but admit you would be better off with another provider) especially if you are not in any way tech knowledgeable.

So the other option is to switch provider. As far as I know Digi Web don't throttle your speeds like other providers. But you need to see if they provide bb in your area. My two bros have Digi web neither ever have complaints.

alfa beta

thanks sterling

i did attempt to switch to vodafone last year but that was a disaster - eight months after signing up i was still getting bb from eircom - so now i was paying line rental to VF and BB to eircom - which was working out dearer (and obviously there was no improvement in performance!)

VF's customer service was unbelievably bad and after being fobbed off a multitude of times as to why i had yet to be fully switched over I gave up and wrote to them to tell them I was cancelling my DD - that was the first time someone from their end actually picked up the phone and spoke to me!

so that was my switching experience so far!!

Thing is, if a provider says they can give you 3Mb on a line (which they say they can) and you only ever see download speeds that don't get above 2 or at best 300k per sec, do you think it's worth ringing up and saying, 'this ain't what I'm paying for' - or is that just a waste of time?

SterlingArcher

alfa beta wrote: »

thanks sterling

i did attempt to switch to vodafone last year but that was a disaster - eight months after signing up i was still getting bb from eircom - so now i was paying line rental to VF and BB to eircom - which was working out dearer (and obviously there was no improvement in performance!)

VF's customer service was unbelievably bad and after being fobbed off a multitude of times as to why i had yet to be fully switched over I gave up and wrote to them to tell them I was cancelling my DD - that was the first time someone from their end actually picked up the phone and spoke to me!

so that was my switching experience so far!!

Thing is, if a provider says they can give you 3Mb on a line (which they say they can) and you only ever see download speeds that don't get above 2 or at best 300k per sec, do you think it's worth ringing up and saying, 'this ain't what I'm paying for' - or is that just a waste of time?

They usually have some "up to " before any mention of speeds. To cover the inevitable drop off or serious lack of service being provided. Get onto one of the eircom reps on boards.ie .they at the very least will look into it for you.

Vodafone hmmmm. I would not have expected any kind of bb quality from them to be honest never mind customer care.

uncle_sam_ie

It's network congestion and switching provider won't really help because they all share the same DSL infrastructure. Whereabouts are you living?
Eircom has been upgrading the network to eFibre http://www.eircom.net/efibreinfo/whatisefibre/ If your area gets upgraded it will help things. Also, if you're lucky to live where they have UPC you could try them. I went with a fixed wireless company called, Nova Broadband, http://www.novabroadband.ie/w/, last year because of the DSL congestion at night( was getting less then 1Mb and over 350ms). It made gaming impossible. This is what I'm getting now http://www.speedtest.net/result/3383733095.png
Be carefule though some fixed wireless companies are not great.

yoyo

Moved from Comp & Tech.

OneEightSeven

It's a congestion issue: http://community.eircom.net/t5/Broadband/Slow-speeds-at-peak-times/td-p/60996

alfa beta

Thanks Uncle Sam - living Waterford Countryside - unfortunately no efibre rollout due here yet. (Nor is upc an option.)

I'm amazed at the difference between day and night though - during the day I get download speeds of between 150k and 300k per second - a hell of a lot slower than what I'm told the line can provide but for my use that much is just about ok.

At night though (and its usually late at night that I notice it (like now around midnight) I'm down to anything between 10kb a second and often just hundreds of bytes - so you're talking seriously slow - I'm downloading a film now from itunes and the current estimated time remaining is 8 hours (even though it's more than half downloaded.)

I suppose I may as well give eircom a shout and see if there's anything they can do - but I'm sorta guessing I'll be fobbed off.

Must have a look at nova too - thanks.