Slow and unreliable broadband in the evening

[Cliveawalsh]

I've seen some posts about this , but they seem to suggest it's been fixed. Been with Vodafone since October and finding now that the speeds and reliability are poor in the evenings. Watching off iplayer and it will suddenly stop and pause for around a minute, several times. Really annoying. It's fine in the day. I've jumped through some hoops already, like changing from my own tplink router to the Vodafone one, made no difference. Also the tv is connected to the router direct with Ethernet cable and the tech person said to change the WiFi channel. When I explained that I didn't see how the WiFi channel would effect the wired connect she ignored it and insisted I change the channel of WiFi. Anyway. It's still happening. When I do a speed test while it's happening it can be anything from 1 to 15 mbps when it's usually around 35 to 40. Any help or advice?  I think it's due to more people using the internet but not sure. It's jumpy tv when using iplayer or itv hub, or Plex built in to the tv, but if I chromecast plex it seem ok which is odd. Help please

[Jayach]

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@Jayach wrote:

I was using Nord when I tried it last night. I will try again tonight with PIA.

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I tried tonight with PIA and no appreciable difference, but it's hard to tell for sure as the results vary a great deal from one test to the next with the VPN on or off. But that is what I would expect from just too many people trying to use an overloaded broadband service.

Of course although we all seem to have the same problem of slow broadband at peak times, it doesn't mean we may not have different causes.

At any time out of peak I have a solid low 70's on my sync of 80, and a little slower via VPN, as I would expect.

[mrbluesky]

Nordvpn worked a charm for me, as in my iphone and ipad speeds on wifi jumped from 5mbps back to like 50 in the evenings. That helped me disprove Vodafones excuse of ‘wifi results are outside of our control’ rubbish! You can get a weeks free trial i think. It got me up to almost normal speeds in the evening, but it doesn't work with my netflix/iplayer streamer, also paying an extra £10 a month for vpn to get almost normal speeds is just ridiculous. 

I moved to BT for £30 a month which is more expensive but at least my speeds are consistent at all times of day on all devices. (So far anyway)

Vodafone are lying to their customers, pure and simple. They appear to have serious problems with their network and have resorted to throttling people deceptively rather than investing in better servers. I expressed my concerns to the complaints department after a month of stressful ‘customer service’ runaround, and said if they could no longer offer the unlimited service that I had signed up for I wanted to leave without penalty else I would escalate it to Ofcom. They agreed to let me go without penalty, no other solution offered.

I’ll never use or recommend a vodafone service again. By the way I don’t have any affiliation to either BT or Nordvpn just writing this to help others disprove the bull****. 

GOOD LUCK

[Jayach]

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@mrbluesky wrote:

also paying an extra £10 a month for vpn to get almost normal speeds is just ridiculous. 

I signed up to Nord a couple of years ago on a 3 year plan via Quidco and with the cashback its well under £2 a month.

Currently they have a 2 year deal that works out at £2.74 a month plus 70% cashback.

https://www.quidco.com/nordvpn/

Every now and then they have 100% cashback on VPNs, which is why I've now also got PIA ,gives me a chance to compare them.

[Migwire]

9pm comes, and my download speed which was 62mb at lunchtime is a whopping 2.4mbps.

Via VPN it is 24mbps.

[mrbluesky]

Thats a good price, I’m not knocking vpns by the way they are super useful, but customers shouldn't need to pay for and use one to get better internet speed when they have paid for ‘un-throttled’ and ‘unlimited’ internet service.

Checked my receipts and I bought a single month to try it out for £11.20. Cheaper plans are there if you want to pay up front.

[mrbluesky]

Oh also I had an account with IVPN but wasnt seeing better speeds in peak times but tried Nordvpn after reading a user post on this forum and it made a huge difference

[Migwire]

Curiously, I mentioned this issue to my brother last night who lives at the top of my street. He sent me a screen shot of his Speedtest. He's with Sky. I was getting 4mb at the time and so was he. I'm currently getting 29mb, he's just checked, 29mb. 🤔

[Jayach]

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@Migwire wrote:

Curiously, I mentioned this issue to my brother last night who lives at the top of my street. He sent me a screen shot of his Speedtest. He's with Sky. I was getting 4mb at the time and so was he. I'm currently getting 29mb, he's just checked, 29mb. 🤔

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It could be congestion/contention in your cabinet if he is on the same one.

You can see what cabinet no. you are one here:

https://www.broadbandchecker.btwholesale.com/#/ADSL

[GJ_DAN]

My speed seems fine now, it comes back about 60mb at peak times, but there is still an issue with websites taking a while to load, a speed test taking a while to start, etc. Seems to be major lag when connecting to things. This is only at peak times though, as in the day, it's fine. 

I may try changing DNS server to see if that makes a difference but the problem lies down to Vodafone being overloaded I guess. 

[sully1311]

I changed my dns settings to Google’s and that’s resolved all of my issues. Websites load quickly now and I don’t have any issues with video apps anymore.