I got an idea but I expect it may be too complex of a request.

Is it possible to only use users who have plotted speedtest's across off peak and peak?

My theory for the higher peak time results is simple, people with higher sync speeds are testing more often during peak. Also notice the average result is pretty low and people with lower sync speeds wont feel it as much.

Possible but unsure sample size will be enough

You might also benefit from getting info on typical user habits, such as streaming or P2P. Perhaps a simple poll. I'll wager that over time Plusnet have discouraged the heavy users elsewhere.

Or maybe their traffic management systems really are that good...then why isn't BT using them?

A simple poll has many flaws in that respect as it will draw in people from other providers, and even if you say vote if only a PlusNet user others will - experience tells me that.

Then how do we know that poll of people is representative of the PlusNet user base.

Of course everything is possible, just a case of effort versus payback and having lots of other things that need doing that will help a wider body of people.

Having thought about this for a bit I've just come on here to make exactly the same suggestion. Unless you do that the results are absolutely useless at telling if there is a peak time slowdown as you've no way of knowing if it is a valid comparison.

At a guess, I'd suggest that many of the people who are prepared to pay for for a higher speed connection are working and hence would only be at home running speed tests during peak time.

Explain Virgin Media result then?

I'm not familiar with their speeds or pricing so I couldn't comment.

If you'd said there was no noticeable difference between peak and off-peak I'd have believed it. But, when the Plusnet graphs (before Plusnet pulled them) always showed far higher traffic levels during the evenings, higher peak speeds only make sense if the people running the tests during peak times have higher speeds to start with than the people who typically run tests during off-peak.

It may be the mix of customers is different on Plusnet to Virgin.

Edited by jelv (Sat 25-Jul-15 21:48:16)

Another point. If users were experiencing slower speeds during the day than during the evening don't you think we'd have seen posts to that effect?

perhaps VM has enough congestion that it overides or is some other reason.

But I very much doubt the higher peak results are anything to do with what plusnet or BTw are doing, thats clearly down to who is doing the tests at specific times of the day.

For some reason tho you not keen on showing results for a small subset of users.

So for this reason to give credibility to time of day results you should only be showing results for users who are across all the time periods you want to analyse.

Give me 200 PlusNet users willing to leave a PC on that will run 20 seconds of testing every 30 minutes so long as browser window open.

Only did the original plots because people kept saying the speed test results would show the problem.