Slow internet in the evening

Do any of you have problems with the internet slowing down in the evening? Lately, both of our computers are slow-er-than-muhlasses in the evening only. Next morning it'll be lightning fast again. Nothing else is slow in the computer, just the net. The hard drive isn't running extra fast like it does if it's being loaded down by some junk. We're going to call the company tomorrow. We're paying for high speed, not something that's slower than the seven year itch!.

It's always been slightly slower in the evening when the kids are home from school and blogging away, but now it's downright irritating. Jim

You on Cable or DSL?

do you live close to a university or somesuch?

DSL. I'm in NW Iowa and far from a major university. Jim

Its the number of people on the web. it doesn't really matter location. Just an overwhelming number of people are on at the same time. Just takes longer.

Could it be that more poeple are streaming movies and playing interactive online games in the evenings and on weekends?

Bad weather?

Run a speed test to see what your DSL speed actually is.
DSL/Cable Speed Test

Many internet service providers WAY oversell their service to customers. Their back-end links to the internet are far below the total aggregate capacity of all the "high-speed" links that they sell to every house in the community.

So, when everyone gets home from work and the kids get home from school and start playing on the internet and downloading music, etc, it like a "rush hour" traffic jam on the "virtual highway".

Howard

While, these tests give you an idea of what"s going on, you need to watch the numbers while it"s running because it just shows the peak number. My sevice is suppose to be 1.5, but if you watch the numbers through the test it use to run most of the test at 1.0-1.10 so these tests should give an average number instead of a peak. A test I just ran was all in the 1.30s but it hit a one time peak of 1.52 so it showed how great of service I"m getting at the 1.52.

BC, thanks for the link. This morning it's running at 1.06 meg. We pay for 1 meg service. We'll see what she does this evening. Jim

It isn't as bad as it used to be at all, although one can seem to tell when the workers in New York and California get home and log onto their home computers.

Before 2000 I would often just quit using the Net for awhile and then stay up late to do my research and surfing after others had gone to bed. I'm not married and have sort of been a night owl anyway so it didn't matter if I stayed up late.

The genealogy sites used to be as slow as molasses until folk went to bed and quit using them for the evening.

Interesting...I pay for 2.5 Mg, "high speed internet", but got only 1.43

We used to get the cheapest service the provider had, and that was 1/2 meg. Watching youtube was frustrating at best at that speed so we finally dug deeper into our pockets and went to 1 meg. One grain marketing website is a little slow loading yet but I think that's on their end. They load slow on my cell phone too. Jim

They would probably call you good at anything over 2.0 because of variables, as long as you hit in the upper numbers once in a while, but that"s too much missing.

remember the usable info in installed in packets that add to overhead so the actual speed on the circuit is usually 10 to 12 % faster than the file transfer tests show. The tcp/ip is trimed off and the user data is then pulled out and measured for a file transfer test. TCP/IP data has the to ip address and from ip address. Tcp/ip data also has the to mac address and the from mac address in it. Tcp/ip has the packet type and number to total bits in it. Tcp/ip packets also have a check sum and packet sequence number embedded in them. Plus you have a extra bit for a check sum on the 8 bit words that can also add to overhead on file transfer. So again you test speed will almost always show less than the true line speed of all the bits your computer is sending out. Some folks try to sue over it but its a fact of life. But the provider/carrier is advirtising the max speed of all the trash your computer is sending out, not just the part the operating system trims out and uses for the actual file or display. Some speed tests take this in consideration, others only measure the actual part that is trim out, so again, you usually never see the true speed of all your packets, bits, and bytes.

your provider had oversold the bandwidth on your dsl line...i hope you dont have Frontier service...i useta run tech support for a friend's web site in central IL...all was good on his end...it was the link up thru Frontier that was the problem...after 3 years of fighting with the he shut down the site,and went back to dial up to check his email.