Slow download speeds from 8:15pm to middle of the night?
beatle1
Newbie

For the past 3 nights in the DC area, my internet speed (200/200) has been crushed to less than 30mbps down, starting around 8:15-8:30.  I go to sleep around 10 with the speeds still slow.  When I get up around 5:30 they are fine.  This continues even after rebooting my router and ONT.  This is all on CAT6, not wifi, and LAN speeds  between machines on my network are all fine at 1Gbps.

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Re: Slow download speeds from 8:15pm to middle of the night?
gs0b
Community Leader
Community Leader

@dslr595148 wrote:

So what about IPv6 when it comes out? I heard/read that with IPv6 there is no NAT for it.

A router is still needed.  Remember, routers existed long before NAT.  Their job is to... route.  As in move packets between different networks.

NAT is a hack that was added for IPv4 to allow multiple devices to share a single public IP address.  It is needed because 4^32 IP addresses are not enough for all devices.  NAT is a function that is most often installed in an end-user router.  In the early days, NAT was a separate function.  Back in the 90's I purchased NAT software for one of my computers so I could use it to share the single IPv4 address I got from my pre-DOCSIS cable provider (a blazing 1Mbps!)  I had a dedicated machine with two Ethernet ports and NAT software to create my two node wired LAN (my home computer and my work laptop.)  I thought it was great when I purchased my first router with built in NAT.  That was the bees-knees!

Anyway, don't forget that NAT is not a firewall.  It's just a hack to save IPv4 addresses.  With IPv6, a router is absolutely required to route traffic between the internal LAN and external WAN.  And end-user router should also run firewalls and other security software to protect the LAN, independent of IPv4 or IPv6 traffic.  The Verizon routers and any recent consumer router have good firewalls for both protocols.

If you do some googling, you can find lots of good articles about this stuff.

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Re: Slow download speeds from 8:15pm to middle of the night?
Cang_Household
Community Leader
Community Leader

I am thinking some neighbors may binge stream/game late at night, saturating the optical network line.

I would recommend you to contact official technical support to take a look at your shared PON line saturation.

Re: Slow download speeds from 8:15pm to middle of the night?
beatle1
Newbie

This wasn't a gradual degradation of service as people start to wind down for the night.  It is a hard slam down to 20-30Mbps, and increasing latency to over 1000ms by 9pm.  This has now occurred 3 times like clockwork.

I attempted to contact tech support last night but Verizon's login page refused to display itself to allow chat with a real person, and their call center closes at 7pm.

When running a speed test on Verizon's page, it says to use the "Feedback tab on the right side of the screen" to report problems, but there is no such thing.

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Re: Slow download speeds from 8:15pm to middle of the night?
beatle1
Newbie

Last week I chatted with support but they were not of any help.  They wanted me to reset my Ubiquiti USG router to defaults which was pretty ridiculous.  They did officially increase my service to 300/300.  (It was previously 200/200 but I always got 300/300 speeds anyway.)

Performance still starts to tank around 8:30pm, and if I check performance around 9:30 it is appalling - sometimes 10Mbps or even less.  It starts to go back up to normal around 10-11.  Clearly the overall network is saturated at that point, likely from people streaming.

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Re: Slow download speeds from 8:15pm to middle of the night?
Cang_Household
Community Leader
Community Leader

The official support cannot check any PON statistics unless you use a VZ router. The tools at their ends are literally locked if you don't use a VZ router.

So swap in a VZ router and wait a while for the problem to reappear, then contact them.

Re: Slow download speeds from 8:15pm to middle of the night?
beatle1
Newbie

What if you don't use a router?

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Re: Slow download speeds from 8:15pm to middle of the night?
gs0b
Community Leader
Community Leader

@beatle wrote:

What if you don't use a router?


That would be a very unusual use case.  Without a router, you're subject to the following issues:

  • Only one device can be connected to the Internet
  • The device is exposed to full internet traffic - no protection from a network firewall, SPI or other security basics.
  • The device will need to meet very high security standards to prevent security risks and hacks.

While it is sometimes appropriate to connect a device directly to an ONT for testing, this should never be more than a few minutes.

Re: Slow download speeds from 8:15pm to middle of the night?
beatle1
Newbie

It was somewhat rhetorical in the sense that a Verizon router shouldn't be needed to troubleshoot.  Not sure why they intend to troubleshoot an individual connection when it is time related and likely their network being saturated.

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Re: Slow download speeds from 8:15pm to middle of the night?
Cang_Household
Community Leader
Community Leader

VZ router is always needed for troubleshooting anything. This is spelled out in the Terms of Service.

ONT-OLT do store logs, but is not persistent. A power cycling or time out would erase the logs. So the majority of broadband related logs are still stored on VZ routers after the ONT.

Re: Slow download speeds from 8:15pm to middle of the night?
gs0b
Community Leader
Community Leader

This is the one issue with using your own router - Verizon will not and does not provide any support beyond basic connectivity to the ONT.  While your point that they should be able to do some diagnostics without their router is valid; the bottom line is it's their network and this is how they run it.  Their diagnostic systems simply don't work well with non-Verizon routers.  Complaining about their system design won't solve the problem.

Do you have a Verizon router?  If so, plug it in and run their speed test during the slow time period.  If it shows slow speeds to their router, you'll have data Verizon support will review.

If you don't have a Verizon router, consider buying used G1100 online.  The going price is around $40.  Try local "yard sale" or "marketplace" sites, too.  Or see if you have a friend with a spare.