AOL slow fluctuating speeds eh

Hello I have a strange issue with AOL broadband. I,m not sure what package I,m on as I signed up ages ago and I think at some point it was upgraded to "up to 8Mbit/s" as I do get speeds of about 7Mbit/s at times.

However often the speed falls right down in the evenings, to less than 1 Mbit/s. The same happened last night then it sped up to 4.5 Mbit/s at about 10:30, then dropped again to 1.5 at 11pm before picking up to 7 at 12:30am. This morning I checked at 8am and it was 7 still, then it dropped at about 9am before returning to 5.5 a bit later and now it's hovering around 2Mb.

I know others also find it slow in the evening but why is it fluctuating so much late at night and even occasionally during the day? I called AOL tech support but they just said the usual stuff and it didn,t help. My line synchs at full 8128 and there are no errors according to my router stats. Also don't get any regular disconnections. Could it just be congestion on AOL's behalf?

Obviously my line profile is fine as I do hit 7Mb late at night but if it's not AOL where else could the problem be? Could the router be at fault? It seems to much of a coincidence that things are at their worst during late evening which is why I suspect it's not at my end. Could the filter on my connection be faulty? I'm not sure it could as as the attenuation and noise margin are remaining steady when I check the router stats.

My exchange is a small non-LLU one but it's not showing as congested when I looked it up on the Plusnet and nildram congestion checkers.

Edited by PieCoolio (Fri 18-Dec-09 12:50:52)

Change your ISP to a decent one; the chances of the evening speed drop being anything other than 'throttling' by AOL is remote from what you report.

When an ISP (AOL in your case) have insuuficent bandwith capacity for the numbers of consumers they have, they slow down everyones connection. Peak evening hours are the most likely time that consumers want to use the Internet and what bandwidth they have is 'shared' out.

ISP's such as NewNet; Zen and there are others, do not need to do this as they have the capacity, but you tend to have to pay more per month.

Cheap broadband has its downside and 'throttling' is a major one.

You get what you pay for - like everything else in life.

Except I'm not paying cheaply for it, it,s £20 a month (as it is for most if not all non-LLU users of AOL)

It's good to know that it's not likely to be things my end. It's often slow all day on Saturdays and Sundays which further points to congestion. I assume the slowness I've had today at times is probably because people are starting their Christmas breaks, schools/colleges/unis are finishing, people are staying at home because of the snow etc.

Edited by PieCoolio (Fri 18-Dec-09 14:26:37)

For around another £5 you could get a far better consistent speeds from Zen or NewNet and both have 1 month contracts not the 12,18 or 24 months as with AOL

Take a look at the 'comparisons' made by people who use this site and are current customers of the ISP's listed and compare AOL, NewNet and Zen.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/isp/compare.html?isp_3...

I have been with Zen for over 4 years and my throughput has been around the 6 - 6.5 megs all day/all week; never really varies, except for minor fluctuations.

Don't know how long your contract is for but I would give serious consideration to moving as soon as you can.

AOL are dearer that I thought; I had probably seen the LLU prices somewhere.

You're not the only one PieCoolio that's for sure, there's a 10+ page thread in the AOL section which started off about the chap auth. problems and is now about the recent speeds.

For me, my speed drops by about half to ~300KB/s which is still pretty good yes, but for me the main problem is the packet loss that comes with it as I like to online game a lot. It's definitely not anything on my end as during offpeak hours my connection is brilliant. I go from 45ms on a french server to 190+ms at peak times, it's unbearable.