Sunday Evening, the New Web Rush Hour

Barence writes "For anyone who assumes weekday evenings are the worst time to enter the online scrum, it may be a surprise to learn that the peak internet rush hour, when average web speeds slow to a crawl, is in fact Sunday between 5pm and 6pm. This surprise fact came out of Ofcom's recent research that also told us the blindingly obvious news that actual broadband speeds are less than half of those advertised by the ISPs."

SO do the Brits have a consumer Affairs

body they can complain to?

Just curious.

The speed thing alwasy pisses me off

I have 3 MB/sec DSL, and I get about 50 kbs downloading. Maybe up to 100 on a really good day. They really need to regulate what they can claim as far as speed with real world random sampling, or let you pay according to whatever speed you can actually get in your area, or something.

Re:

I have 3 MB/sec DSL, and I get about 50 kbs downloading. Maybe up to 100 on a really good day. They really need to regulate what they can claim as far as speed with real world random sampling, or let you pay according to whatever speed you can actually get in your area, or something.

It's based off of your areal, however I would bring it up with them if you haven't already.

I technically should get 20mbit, but I only actually download at 12mbit. It's all based off of your neighbors downloading if you're on shared lines, like I am, or if they start shaping your traffic, like Comcast does.

Re:

Area, not areal.

Re:

The only thing my aerial receives is TV and FM. I never tried internet. ;-)

I have Verizon DSL which advertises 750 kbit/s, and that's exactly what I get (100 kilobyte/second downloads). I don't know if I'm sharing my line with anyone else or not, but I've always been satisfied with the service I get. It's a great bargain at just $15 a month.

I also have Netscape Dialup for $7 a month.
That too provides the full 6 kilobyte/second bandwidth.
Good service to have when traveling.

Re:The speed thing alwasy pisses me off

Back when I had Verizon's 3mbit DSL my speeds would be relatively close to the promise. Sure, some websites could max out quickly, but overall I was close to my limit. The same would go for if I downloaded multiple files simultaneously, their combined speed would be close to 3 mbit.

Now with Verizon Fios, I am once again hitting my speed (or very close to it) more most of my downloading.

Re:

It sounds like there is a problem with your line. Call them up and bitch. If it's a problem, they might be able to fix it and get you the full 3Mbps. If the line is fine, that's all they can deliver you. You might as well switch to a lower tier. No point paying for 3Mbps, when you're only getting about 1.

Re:The speed thing alwasy pisses me off

Unlike cable, with DSL the bandwidth between your house and the CO is not shared with your neighbors. If that's where the problem is, the phone company may be able to fix it.

If the problem is between the CO and your ISP's POP, well, that shouldn't happen - it means the LEC screwed up pretty badly somewhere.

If the problem is between your ISP and the Internet, then your ISP sucks ass and you should find a better one. Your phone company probably doesn't advertise this fact, but most likely, it is possible to choose from many local ISPs. Again, this is unique to DSL.

Re:The speed thing alwasy pisses me off

If the problem is between the CO and your ISP's POP, well, that shouldn't happen - it means the LEC screwed up pretty badly somewhere.

Or a very bad case of too much acronyms.

Re:

Theres nothing worse than a bad case of TMA.

Re:The speed thing alwasy pisses me off

I have 3 MB/sec DSL, and I get about 50 kbs downloading. Maybe up to 100 on a really good day.

Are you getting that number from your web browser? Both IE and Firefox express speeds in KiB/s (bytes, and in base 2), whereas network line speeds are expressed as bits per second, in base 10. 3Mb/s is 3,000,000 bits per second, 375,000 bytes per second, 366.2KiB/s.

That's still a far ways between your numbers, but it does explain some of the difference. There is some protocol overhead at various levels to deal with, but those are relatively minor. Your best option is to use something like SPeakeasy's speed test [speakeasy.net], which will test your speeds, and report back in Kb/s (bits, base 10), and take protocol overhead into account, to see if you're actually getting close to advertised speeds. That way you're not comparing apples to oranges.

(If you are actually getting 50 kilobits per second, I am sorry, both for making assumptions, and for your sub-56k modem-ish speeds.)

Kids

It's probably kids doing their homework before school the next day.

From TFA:

On weekdays, there is a sharp decline in speeds between 3pm and 4pm (school finishing time) followed by a levelling-off between 6pm and 7pm, which can perhaps be attributed to people leaving their computers for dinner (a similar resurgence in speed is seen on Sunday evening at the same time).

Not News to Ebay or TV watchers

Nope, not just the kids. The whole family.

"Primetime is Sunday between 5pm and 6pm" is not news to Ebay sellers or people who watch TV ratings. The reason why virtually every network or cable channel schedules their best shows on Sunday night is because almost everyone is at home that evening. Take Sci-Fi Channel for example. Or FOX. They moved Battlestar Galactica and X-Files from Fridays to Sundays, because they knew they'd get more eyeballs.

And Ebay sellers have known for a long time that Sundays net the most auction views. I schedule my auctions to end 9 p.m. Eastern/5 p.m. Pacific because I know I'll get the highest number of bidders during that time, and therefore higher sale prices.

Re:Kids

1 person watching youtube videos could probably outdo 25 people surfing around for school.

Mom: Tommy, go do your homework!
Tommy: Okay Mom!
Tommy then sits down on the computer and watches Youtube.

Home alone.

"For anyone who assumes weekday evenings are the worst time to enter the online scrum, it may be a surprise to learn that the peak internet rush hour, when average web speeds slow to a crawl, is in fact Sunday between 5pm and 6pm. "

Naturally. For most people the weekend is their time away from work. Sunday is also a slower day than Saturday. Plus since Monday's around the corner one has to get in their last bit of relaxation in before the weekly grind.

Re:

The Asian economy is the powerhouse of the globe. Anyone who is involved in finance is going to be paying attention to it.

What time is it in Asia when it's Sunday evening in the UK? Monday morning.

Ok, where's the obivous answer?

"I knew that nobody would watch " + $show_aired_between_5_and_6.

But seriously, maybe just the TV program sucks around that hour? It seems like that perfect little area between afternoon anime ending and pre-primetime sitcoms, when kids are already at the computer and adults are still.

TV Program?

Oh, you mean that thing they used to have, kind of like Youtube with feedback turned off? Does anyone still use that?

Online Gaming too

When I used to play WoW, the login queue for my server would always appear on Sundays between 5pm and 11pm, server time.

Between 5 and 6?

That would be all day and all night Sunday, since it's between 5 and 6 somewhere.

eBay users already knew this

I would have said Sunday evening was the heaviest time of use, just based on my experience selling items on eBay - it was always best to end an auction sometime Sunday night.

Re:

Well that's a little different. Plenty of workplaces block access to auction websites during the working week.

And people are likely to be out during Sat evening. On Sun however, work tomorrow morning, you know? Easily explainable.

Physical world still king

Even with all the digitization & virtualization, the physical world is king. People get home from whatever they were doing at 5pm on Sunday. People have to physically be commuting in another few hours. Packages are not physically shipped on weekends, so people wait until the last time they can place an order before the next shipment.

For those who didn't read the second article

That second article is for the British Telecoms not telecoms in general. While I might be tempted to believe this for American or Canadian Telecoms, the article makes no such claims. So, as usual, the summary is inflammatory and deceptive.

It's nice to know reporters on the other side of the pond make the same arrogant mistakes Americans do when they assume everyone has the same experiences as they do.

Re:

Fully concur with your first paragraph - the summary doesn't mention that key fact; the article is about British telecomms only.

How that leads into your second paragraph, though, is quite beyond me. Whoever posted (or edited) the summary was stupidly vague, but the article itself - and the reporter - is quite clear about the location of the services in question, even though it's a UK tech-site to begin with.

I'm not suggesting reporters on this side of the pond never make the arrogant mistakes to which you