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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."
body they can complain to?
Just curious.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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Everyone knows the busiest hours for Americans at 9am-5pm, weekdays.
From TFA:
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
"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.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
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.
Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.
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.
Area, not areal.
Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.
"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.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Less than half? Get a new ISP. I'm able to max out my cable modem consistently regardless of time of day, day of week, or direction.
Most high bandwidth usage friends are able to do the same.
I won't give them a penny for TV but the cable company in my area has the best net connectivity by far.
I find being offended by me offensive.
I find this story confusing as it contradicts another study that the best time to post a new blog post is Thursday - http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/new_study_shows_best_and_worst.php
While the worst time is on the weekends.
"During My Service In The United States Congress, I Took The Initiative In Creating The Internet." -Al Gore
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.
When I used to play WoW, the login queue for my server would always appear on Sundays between 5pm and 11pm, server time.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
With hundreds of millions of broadband subscribers, any lawyer here want to make a few billion dollars?
Bloody British! I think CST is what, 6 hours behind GMT? I think not so much in the US.
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
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.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
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.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
That would be all day and all night Sunday, since it's between 5 and 6 somewhere.
Free Martian Whores!
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
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, 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.)
I have Time Warner in Dallas and live in a older poorer neighborhood (so probably oversubscription is limited), but the rich neighborhood is only a couple blocks away. I pay $50/mo for 10 mbps service with the 16 mbps temporary speed boost. I actually see 3.5-4.5 mbps consistently or 35%-45% of the advertised nominal bandwidth, and I never see the speed boost.
This is the fastest advertised residential internet option in my neighborhood. There are 2 other options. AT&T fastest offering is 6 mbps for $35/mo plus the required $15/mo landline which I don't need. And of course I could get slow and expensive satellite. Those are the ONLY residential options.
Don't think I haven't considered switching to AT&T, but I suspect their speed wouldn't be a whole lot greater. And with cable internet I get free local stations because they don't bother filtering them. Cable modem performance depends entirely on your service provider policies and their plant investment and maintenance. You're lucky.
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.
Have you tried contacting your DSL provider to see if there's a problem with your line?
I've had DSL in 4 locations over the past 13 years (tested it for Bell Atlantic in 1996) and Cable in 2 locations. The only times I didn't get advertised speeds was at certain times of day with the cable accounts (not surprisingly). Otherwise, they could hit peak most of the time, and I've always been able to hit peak with my DSL lines.
This guy's the limit!
Oh, you mean that thing they used to have, kind of like Youtube with feedback turned off? Does anyone still use that?
Yeah obvious that we get LESS than the speed we pay for. I've asked the ISP about that once. They guarantee "UP TO" whatever speed I'm paying for, so if I get less, it falls within the guarantee. I should become an ISP and guarantee speeds UP TO ten googolplexes of yottabytes per Planck unit of time. In the fine print it would explain the guarantee as follows: "We promise your speed will never be greater than the above mentioned speed, or your money back. In other words, the guarantee is NOT that you'll get super fast Internet. Rather, it is a promise that your speed will never be greater than the maximum stated speed. In order to make sure we are well under that limit, the actual speed may vary, will always be less than the maximum as guaranteed, and will probably be so slow that Google's home page will take 999 quadrillion millennia to load."
Or a very bad case of too much acronyms.
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
now is that 5-6pm PST, CST or GMT?
TOP DSLR Cameras Reviews of the top DSLRs
I'm on 8Mbps and have peaked at 1MB/s downloads so almost 125% of rated bandwidth. This after a free upgrade from 6Mbps, and upload went from 300Kbps to 1Mbps which is great for torrents and VoIP. I like my ISP when my AP department sprung the requirement on me to get a detailed bill to pay for my internet service they overnighted me the detailed billing report after I explained to someone at the head office the situation, Wide Open West (WOW) rocks. The only knock I have on them is their default DNS service is of the hijack variety but they do have ones without the feature as well as allowing DNS out to anywhere (I used L3's as I have never seen them go down in a decade of use, they must be a well run transparent cluster).
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
When I was in college and using dial-up (mid to late 90s) in L.A., CA, USA, I noticed higher pings and slower speeds on Sunday night on Netcom and EarthLink.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
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.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
And I thought I was getting a bad deal when my 8mbit only managed just under 800k/s.
That sucks.
This raises the obviously question of why are you paying for 10 mbps with a 16 mbps gimmick upsale if you never see that much speed?
Why don't you downgrade to a lower speed and you get the same thing for less money.
I find being offended by me offensive.
Monday through Friday are obviously for working. Friday and Saturday night are for partying or Chuck E Cheese with the kids, depending on fate, a little quality time with the significant other on Sunday morning (or church I suppose), the big game on Sunday afternoon and there you are: a hour of internet before preparing for another work week.
Aren't there plenty of movies that put the American rut in perspective?
What time zone? Or is it in every time zone?
I never thought it would be possible, but I am really happy with my Comcast business-class cable connection. It's advertised as 16Mbps/2Mbps. In reality, it is usually faster. Obviously, YMMV...
NATURALLY, the week after I got Comcast, Verizon flyered my street announcing FIOS was coming. But that was 6 months ago and they haven't even started trenching.
Are you sure they have to trench?
For some neighborhoods (like mine) they just use the existing telephone phone poles, so maybe they did yours already.
They did my entire street in a day or 2, and you wouldn't have known unless you drove by them or saw them doing the length in front of your house. Personally I'd rather they went the trench route, but oh well.
In any case, it's always refreshing to hear a happy Comcast customer. It's such a rarity (or at least was back when they were my cable company).
I's from Brizle and I's tells you, it's areal.
Like an idiot I didn't test my cable connection speed for a while before upgrading. It's possible the download speed is a little faster than I had at their next to top tier. I've only had the top tier since Christmas. I figure I'll give it a month, contact them once if no improvement, and after another month downgrade to my old package if it is not better.
The gamer knows exactly when peak times are as well. For at least 7 years I have noticed that on Sunday nights, I have noticeably more lag whenever I am online. Nobody ever schedules anything that requires skill and reflexes on Sunday evening.
I could believe this.
The AmericaFree.TV traffic almost always peaks for the week Sunday evening. But, that is because we are a video service and most people watch from home (6:00 PM to 10:00 PM, local time, is the general peak audience for any time zone).
I would assume that that is true for most video services, so, if video dominates bandwidth usage, then it would be reasonable to assume that Internet bandwidth usage does peak on Sunday.
(If you are actually getting 50 kilobits per second, I am sorry, both for making assumptions, and for your sub-56k modem-ish speeds.)
The OP doesn't understand the difference between MB, Mb, and mb. I think it's safe to say he wouldn't be able to tell whether his actual speed is what he's paying for.
"Sorry, your request cannot be processed at the moment."
Appropriate.
Using the Internet these days frequently reminds me of working on a green screen terminal attached to a mainframe over a slow modem twenty five years ago. Hurry up and wait...Between mislabeled bandwidth, simply inadequate bandwidth, overloaded servers and badly built Web sites with huge front pages loaded with images and connections to even slower ad servers, it's a wonder we connect at all.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Theres nothing worse than a bad case of TMA.
There are no overhead telephone wires in my area, and I know that they have trenched some nearby streets. I don't think it's in yet, but I guess I can't be sure. I figured I'd get some junk mail announcing it, but I am on a Comcast contract for a while yet anyway.
BTW Comcast business-class internet has a steep cancellation fee. You owe them 75% of the fees for the remaining contract period! Ouch. Now here's hoping it doesn't get flaky.
Home from church, straight to the pr0n!
To take that into account, I divide by 10 rather than 8 to convert bits to bytes. It is both easier to do in your head, and gives you a more realistic expectation of the throughput to expect. In the old days it was actually accurate, as you had stop and start bits as overhead on every byte.
Well. The problem is the little "up to" before the bandwidth number. So in fact, they could give you one bit a month, and be ok with it.
What they really should sell is a minimum guaranteed bandwidth. And as soon as someone comes with an ad, saying that they are the only ones, guaranteeing a minimum bandwidth above 0 kb/s (hinting, that with the others, you could end up with nothing for your money), this will change. It only needs a little company with a good marketing department.
So if you know such a company: Tell them to advertise this way. Tell them to "hint" (you know... the way they always say but not say something in ads), that the others give you nothing, guarantee you nothing, and wanna rape you in the ass with their contracts, and think of the children and all that! ;) It's unfair. It's evil. But hey, why should the big companies be the only one being evil and unfair. Let's fight them with their own weapons. :D
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Same here, yesterday I was getting 30mbps down and 3 up; I pay for 16/2.
Toy bandwidth tests are not all that useful. It is very easy for ISPs to allow full bandwidth for short sessions but throttle long running ones. Try downloading an Ubuntu CD if you want to see what your real bandwidth is.
Anon
In ecommerce, it's Sunday and Monday that have the heaviest traffic days. Friday and Saturday are the lightest. Oddly enough, it seems although Sunday may be a heavy traffic day, it's not a day people like to buy on - they'd rather buy on Monday, which is why you'll see most of your spam marketing on Monday. This is unlike other non-ecommerce web sites I've worked with, when it's more of a browsing web site for information or entertainment it seems like Thursdays are better... don't take my experiences as science though, I'm just a small fish in big surf.
With DSL, the speed is affected by two main factors, 1 your distance from the DSLAM (normally at your local telephone exchange) and 2 the quality of the copper between the DSLAM and you. The further out from the DSLAM you get the lower speed you will get. For ADSL1 this is 5.5 KM. For ADSL2+ RE I think it is 7.5 KM. After about half of the distance speed tends to drop rapidly. Please look at this graph for more details (courtesy Internode). In older areas it gets worse as the copper laid in the 60's and earlier is not typically of the highest quality. ISP's in Australia have to advertise that service will be degraded by environmental factors, most ISP's don't advertise the how much they will be degraded relying on adding the words "up to" before mentioning the maximum theoretical speed. I get "up to" 24 Mbit on my ISP (iishaft) but because there is about 4 KM of copper between me and the exchange I realistically get 5 Mbit.
But you have a good point, this should be better advertised so people know what they are getting.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
the long dark ping time of the soul
rewriting history since 2109
When I download a huge file, I always, always do it on sunday, because my ISP caps the bandwidth at something like 10 gigs a week, they reset the amount used at midnight on sunday, when a new week starts and bandwidth goes to 0 no matter how much you use.
I'm on Sky Broadband's "up to" 8 meg package, and until last month was getting around 1.5 meg. When I could be bothered to troubleshoot this I realised it was down to my crappy wiring - had a new master socket fitted with an ADSL direct socket on it, phoned up Sky and got them to see how fast they could profile my line. Got up to 13.5meg before it started to hit its limits.
My point? a) It's not always someone elses' fault, and b) there's a reason that ISPs say "up to" - no-one would be willing to pay for 1:1 contention ratio on DSL for domestic purposes.
Sorry If I need my Top Gear/Final Gear fix.
This Sig for rent.
BBC iPlayer was 5% of UK internet traffic back in April. It's got a lot more popular since - I would be surprised if it was not 10% by now.
Late Sunday afternoon is a good time to be thinking about grabbing something to watch that evening. iPlayer downloads are very fast so you don't need to think about it any earlier than an hour before you want to watch it.
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything." (attrib. Joseph Stalin)
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This doesn't explain why my Comcast connection goes down for 20 minutes, every single day, at 10:30am. Without fail. You can set your watch by it. Modem doesn't lose sync, but I get 100% packet loss from 10:30-10:50, every morning. My assumption is that somebody on my cable segment is running a scheduled transfer or something...
Don't forget that with DSL the quality of *your* wiring is important. In the UK, British Telecom are responsible for all cabling up to the "master socket" inside your house. You're responsible for the rest of it, which is fair enough.
Good call! The concept is the same here in the US; there's usually a gray plastic box installed by the phone company called the NID (Network Interface Device), MPOE or DMARC (see demarcation point). Anything on your side, you're responsible for; anything on their side, they're responsible for.
I highly recommend installing a DSL splitter at the NID, and running a dedicated cat5 line from the DSL side of the splitter to the DSL modem. Then connect the rest of your house wiring to the telephone side of the splitter, and you can get rid of all those annoying little filters.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
I try to browse all my pr0n before confession. I guess I could start going to midnight mass.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.