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Internet Speed Slows Down During Evening Hours

My internet speed slows down significantly during evening hours. I pay for the gigabit fiber 1000mb/s w/ unlimited data plan. If I use ATT's speed test to check my speed in the morning, my internet speed is fine at around 940mb/s, which is expected. However, if I use the the same speed test to check my speed during evening hours, my internet speed is only 95mb/s, which is a tenth of what i'm paying for. This happens routinely every night, and is unacceptable.

Things I've Checked/Tried:

I have restarted tried restarting my modem/gateway. It did not have any effect.
I have ensured that no other programs/downloads were using bandwidth during the speed test.
I have double checked to make sure that no service outages are occurring in my area.
All speed tests performed were done on a wired internet connection.

Responses

tonydi

ACE - Guru

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9.9K Messages

4 years ago

Are you in an apartment complex or a regular house? Prior to lockdowns, that evening slowdown would almost certainly be blamed on an overloaded fiber because usage would go up at night when everyone was home. Since lockdown I haven't seen anyone mention night time slowdowns since there's a ton more Internet access during all hours of the day and night.

Understand that a typical residential (single family home) fiber connection is shared with up to 31 other nearby customers and that shared line has a total capability of 2.4Gbps down. Normally that's not a problem but these aren't normal times so it's entirely possible for everyone on that line to bring it to its knees at times. I don't know how the apartment fiber is provisioned so it may be the same.

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jemo91

New Member

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2 Messages

@tonydi I'm almost positive an overloaded fiber line is not the case here. The speed slows down to the same exact speed every night (95mb/s) with almost no variation. If the line were overloaded, it would be safe to assume that there would be a wider variation in speed in correlation with the fluctuating amount of users at any given time. I am consistently seeing the same low speed each night.

To further prove my theory that it is not an overloaded fiber line, I just ran the ATT speed test again now at 2:20am, and received the same 95mb/s speed. I believe it's highly unlikely that there are the same amount of active users at 2:20am than there were at around 10:00pm, when I took my original test.

It almost seems like my internet speed is being downgraded to one internet package below (100mb/s) what i'm paying for (1000mb/s) during evening hours for whatever reason.

(edited)

Like

4 years ago

0

Davy49

Mentor

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155 Messages

@tonydi

Hi,

Your comment was very interesting:

"Understand that a typical residential (single family home) fiber connection is shared with up to 31 other nearby customers and that shared line has a total capability of 2.4Gbps down." Of course I'm not a technical expert, but doesn't your statement really depend on your location ? To me though it's really food for thought, of course the bad thing is depending on your location, as a user some location's don't offer many provider's to choose from.

David

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4 years ago

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tonydi

ACE - Guru

•

9.9K Messages

@jemo91

Yes, based on your additional information it doesn't seem like it's an overload situation. The next lower profile is/was 300Mbps but regardless, in order to switch profiles they have to reboot the ONT and Gateway so if what you suspect was true, you'd see the entire connection drop for a few minutes and you haven't mentioned anything like that.

If you reboot the Gateway when the speed tanks like that, does it come back up at the same lousy speed or is it back to normal for some period of time?

Also, when the speed drops, using your computer's browser go into the Gateway at 192.168.1.254 and click the Diagnostics tab. Then click Speed Test, then click the Run Speed Test button and see what speeds you get.

@Davy49

Sure, overloading is totally dependent on where you live, how many people around you have AT&T Fiber and what sorts of things they do with their connection.

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*I am not an AT&T employee, and the views and opinions expressed on this forum are purely my own. Any product claim, statistic, quote, or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer, provider, or party.

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4 years ago

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jemo91

Internet Speed Slows Down During Evening Hours

tonydi

jemo91

Davy49

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