[Closed] Why does internet go pants?

Because it's an old system?

Hard to comment really without knowing what service you're signed up to. Is it regular DSL?

I have fibre it’s usually pretty good.

However I’ve noticed with more folks working from home the service hasn’t been as good.

Antivirus interference?

Yeah it’s DSL, when we first swapped, it was mega fast and we could watch tv etc, now it’s like being back in the 90’s and we are still paying the same. Can the provider change the service? Is it a big rouze to get us to pay extra for fibre? Should we just change provider again? Should I just get back to work and stop trying to watch Tv? 😂

OK, put the tinfoil down.

First question, has anything changed in your usage? Are you streaming more video than you used to? Teams / Zoom videoconferencing / remote desktop?

How many users are we talking? What service are you supposed to be getting? What does the router say you're getting? Have you done any speed tests?

DSL is cheap for a reason. There is no SLA, no guarantees of bandwidth or uptime, you get what you get. It's sold to a contention ratio (ie, oversubscribed) on the premise that not everyone will be using it all the time. In a (pre-covid) domestic install this could mean that you see a slowdown at peak times as all your neighbours fire up Fortnite. The same would apply during the day if you're in a largely industrial / commercial area. Does it get worse at lunchtime?

It could of course be a myriad of other reasons. There could be a fault on the line. Dave in Accounts could be running a bittorrent client. Etc, etc. A provider doing it deliberately would be highly irregular - why would they, you're not going to upgrade a crap connetion, you're just going to jump ship. Changing providers may help if you have a contention issue, so long as you're not simply swapping one BT Wholesale provider for another. It's not going to do much about Dave though.

Honestly though, DSL is... well, it's shit. It's barely fit for purpose in a modern home any more let alone as a primary commercial Internet provision. Get FTTC at the very least.

There is no SLA, no guarantees of bandwidth or uptime

There is on mine...

Do all providers have to guarantee a minimum speed now? BT does for mine. Looking at it, if you get slower than expected you can get money back or break the contract without penalty.

Are you uploading more than you used to? We used to really suffer from contention on the upload direction (which was only something like 750kbit).

Whenever phones etc. started backing up everything else stopped. I'm guessing that even though the download direction wasn't congested, upstream packets - acknowledgements and requests - couldn't get a look in.

We managed to improve with a router that has QoS settings - through the real solution was moving from 3/0.75Mbit ADSL to 500/75Mbit FTTP.

Worth investing in a decent router that lets you analyse the traffic (Ubiquiti would be my recommendation). And a decent business-friendly ISP too: I'm with A&A and they have lovely graphs showing traffic up/down and what latency is at any point in time. Perfect for spotting patterns.

I’m guessing that even though the download direction wasn’t congested, upstream packets – acknowledgements and requests – couldn’t get a look in.

Exactly this. Saturating the upstream can absolutely destroy download speeds because the TCP ACKs are delayed. Our internet used to become unusable when my wife's iPhone was uploading photos. Completely cured by traffic shaping on the router to limit upload speeds to less than line speed.

But to answer the OP, you need to work out where the bottleneck is. When the connection is slow, is it because you're saturating your DSL line one on other direction, or because of the upstream connection being over contented (i.e. too many customers for your provider's connection). Or is it just lousy wifi to your laptop. Your router maybe have some basic traffic monitoring options that will help answer this.

Another vote for Ubiqiti here, lovely routers and equipment.

The rubbishness could be contention issues on your local circuit. If a lot of people near you have all started working from home, then you'll have more people using the available bandwidth (especially if they all use the same underlying provider). I see it a lot in the internet at the apartment; kids come home, bandwidth drops, performance goes to shit. Out at the house, we have very few people nearby and no real issues with connecting during the day. Unless the renovation means we have to turn the electricity off, then I play UPS-roulette.

Hi again we have one laptop connected to the internet and nothing uploading etc, when we are worked up, we just want to watch the news etc but we get it in about 5 second chunks and then a break for ten mins and then another 5 seconds!! Might be best way to watch it on second thoughts as it’s all bad anyway! We are connected to the router using a cable so it’s not the wifi and doing the speed tests shows no problems. Must just be rubbish.

The trouble is it could be one or more of many things. A friend of mine had dodgy woring in his phone circuit that gave him shitty bandwodth for years, so "it's complicated"

Start with the basics:
Is the router connected to the master socket (the one where the broadband enters the house)?
Is your broadband FTTC or FTTP (Fibre To The Cabinet or Premises)? The latter should give you fewer problems as you won't be using copper for the last stretch of the connection.
Has your connection dropped out at the router a lot recently? This can impact how the upstream network assigns bandwidth to you.

It may actually be worthwhile calling your ISP support line and getting them to test it. I did this when I had a Plusnet FTTC conneciton (which started off shit) and they overrode some settings and got it working really well.