Early morning internet problem

[niozza]

We have a problem with our internet which, so we?ve been told, is due to regular early morning maintenance at the BT exchange. We?re wondering if anyone out there is suffering in the same way and can offer any other explanations.

The problem is this: in our household, one of us works slightly unconventional hours and often starts very early in the morning (it can be from as early as 4am). We?re finding that in these early hours, whilst the internet connection appears to be fine (i.e. full-strength symbol showing on the taskbar), it in fact runs incredibly slowly, or not at all ? often a search will instantly crash out, resulting in a ?the server cannot be reached? type screen. It?s not that there is no connection, as if you persist by repeatedly refreshing, it will eventually struggle along and connect to the page you were looking for. Effectively though, for any serious work, it?s completely unfit for purpose.

Typically the problem occurs at any point between 4am and 7am, although on average we?d say the worst time is between 5 and 6/6.30, and on occasion it can still be intermittent up until 7.30! For instance this morning, between (approximately) 5am and 6.45, the problem occurred, with service especially restricted between 5am and 6am.

Our broadband internet provider is PlusNet. We live in Homestall Road.

Any feedback/ideas?

[Sue]

I'm with Plusnet and although I'm rarely online at those times, I haven't noticed any problems if I am.

Have you asked Plusnet about it? Their customer service is good in my experience.

Also, could it be a WiFi issue?

[ianr]

Are you satisfied that it affects all data paths/ Are, for example, this forum and http://www.bbc.co.uk equally affected. What does http://www.speedtest.net/ say about your speeds?

Are you on ADSL? I have noticed on occasion that, on first booting my modem, it syncs to the exchange at 2 Mb/s rather than the expected 9 Mb/s or so. If that happens I simply restart it, which usually resolves it.

[Penguin68]

The fact that this problem occurs at a regular time (and as far as I gather isn't an issue at other times) may suggest some local timed contention issue - do you have back-ups to the cloud scheduled then (perhaps just happening then, if it's scheduled to happen after so many hours of inactivity) - if something is happening in the background in your network that could do it - as in fact could something not in your control - maybe your computer is part of a bot-net which operates 'out of hours' so as not to be noticeable?

It is quite unlikely that this is a symptom of 'regular early morning BT maintenance' - although I suppose if there was a major back-up going on at that time it could be eating bandwidth - but not I would have thought on your exchange line specifically.

I wonder also - is this a wireless thing and do you have a smart-meter installed which might be competing for bandwidth at that time? - maybe you are hitting wireless signal contention - if you have a dual router it may be worthwhile trying a different wireless band. Remember that, in so far as it tells you anything at all, the full strength signal on the task bar is telling you about the signal you are getting to your server, it tells you nothing about signal clash, nor about any issues 'on the other side' of the server, nor indeed what else the server may be handling.

[Ruskin]

The problem I have with BT is not so much an early morning outage or slow-down but regular router re-boots throughout the day.

[niozza]

Thanks for all your replies so far, haven't solved it yet but we'll get there!

[nxjen]

This was a problem I used to have, very slow early in the morning. I hesitate to pass on any advice as I know very little about the workings of computers but I'll pass on what worked for me.

I thought it might be a regular task being carried out by the computer, perhaps my security software undergoing a scan. It was set to scan when the computer was in hibernation or standby mode, I cannot remember which. The hibernation or standby modes were set to kick in after about 5 minutes inactivity so I changed the settings so it didn't kick in for about an hour. And the slowness disappeared. I don't think it's anything to do with the early hour, more perhaps that it's happening when the computer is first used during the day.

Hope changing the setting works for you but not offering any guarantee!

[Sue]

What do Plusnet say about it?

Would they not be your first port of call for help if they are your broadband provider?

I have found their technical people very helpful when I have (very rarely) had problems.