In reply to a post by RobertoS:

I'm getting slightly confused now, about the timing of how you connect/connected.

I think you are saying you are now permanently using the test socket, and there is no problem?

Correct

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

In which case there looks to be something odd about the faceplate, which I think has no wires attached at all, which only shows up at night. Extremely wierd.

If you replace the faceplate now, does it start going wrong again? If so, get a new one.

It used to. It seems to have settled down again, though, so I'm plugged into the master socket now and it's working fine. We can't get it to misbehave any more. Maybe the source of the interference has been removed.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

If not, I would suspect someone has been leaching off your wireless in the evenings, possibly a visitor to the area who has now departed. Change the password on it to something complex, or disable it if you don't need it.

I've ruled out the wireless possibility, because the problem occurred with the wireless turned off while connected to the master socket (but no problem when connected to the test socket). I did suspect a wireless leach earlier and changed not only the wireless password but the router password.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

In the latter case, the swapping from faceplate to test socket could have broken anything streaming, and if it was unattended you would be fine until the next evening. Way-out unlikely scenario, but I await anyone else's theory . The fact that this would have caused the problem the next evening even using the test socket is there, but then we are talking about what happened historically - re the first line of this post.

Good thinking...except that I'd have the problems in the early mornings too (e.g. pre-6 am). That doesn't mean someone wasn't using it then, but not likely, especially since the speed would be slow even with wireless turned off.

Amazing, how posting a problem here can magically solve it .

Let's hope it doesn't recur. Good luck.

Yes, I agree. I'll drop it now, as it hasn't been misbehaving for over a week now. During half term break it was misbehaving consistently. It's a mystery.

In reply to a post by SmallLight:

Yes, I agree. I'll drop it now, as it hasn't been misbehaving for over a week now. During half term break it was misbehaving consistently. It's a mystery.

Maybe a clue lies in that.