Day vs. Night–Dramatic Internet Speed Variations

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Level 1

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Day vs. Night–Dramatic Internet Speed Variations

During sleeping hours my wireless network (Airport Extreme, 2 Airport Expresses) delivers the same Internet speeed as my ethernet wired connections (~250 KB, 2,000 kbps Upload; Download 78 KB, 600 kbps). However, during the day the wireless speed drops to Upload 236 kbps, 30 KB; Download 491 kbps, 61 KB) while a direct ethernet connection has an Upload speed of 224 KB/sec transfer rate, 1,792 kbps; Download 84 KB, 673 kbps.

I have repatedly checked for any sources of inerference and found NONE. I have tested this with only one computer connected or several with no change.
All my phones are 5.6 GHz. iStumbler shows 0 noise. We live in a rural area with neighbors far away. There are no other changes between day and night to explain interference. I experience the same day vs. night difference on my PowerBook G4, MacBook Pro and several other laptops.

I would very much appreciate any recommendations. Happy New Year.

Gary

PowerBookG4, MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Posted on Dec 31, 2006 12:24 PM

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Answer 1

Tesserax

Level 10

158,274 points

Dec 31, 2006 5:13 PM in response to windycreek

It is possible that the issue isn't with your local network, but with the Internet itself? It is not unusual for Internet speeds to drop significantly when is it most heavily used, typically during the day.

Here are some links for Internet speed tests/status you may want to try:

- http://speedtest.net/
- http://www.dslreports.com/tools?r=64
- http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/
- http://www.internettrafficreport.com/

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Answer 2

windycreek Author

Level 1

0 points

Dec 31, 2006 8:35 PM in response to Tesserax

Thank you for your response. However, during the day when the wireless speed drops to Upload 236 kbps, 30 KB; Download 491 kbps, 61 KB) if I connect directly to my router via ethernet, the Internet connection I get is quite fast wtih an Upload speed of 224 KB/sec transfer rate, 1,792 kbps; Download 84 KB, 673 kbps.

Right now (9:30 p.m.) if I connect to the Internet using Airport, I get a very slow transfer rate of 54 KB (433 kbps) Download and 113 KB/sec (901 kbps) Upload. When I Turn Aiport off on my computer and instead of a wireless connection plug in directly to my router, I get a Download speed of 265 KB/sec (2117 kbps) and Upload Speed of 97.4 KB/sec (779 kbps). I experience a 5x faster connection right now NOT using Airport. If I try this same test at 6:00 a.m. the wireless speed will be the same high speed as the wired connection ~2,000 kbps.

Happy New Year

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