Unlike cable internet, which can slow down when lots of folks in the neighborhood are on the Internet at the same time, DSL is dedicated directly to your home, so it's not affected by other households.

Do you have your computer's maintenance tasks (Windows updates, antivirus updates, defragging, etc.) scheduled for the evening?

DSL can be affected by your neighbors- We are the very last on our "line" and we do get slow during peak hours. Happens about 7 pm almost every evening. We notice it more during the daytime when the kids are out of school.

Trish in SC

my dsl has been out again since friday afternoon. i used to have dial up which im using right now, the lady i talked to insisted theres no way i can have dial up. go figure, anyway the techy guy is coming back tomorrow this will be the third modem since june! dsl stinks here. i was better off with dial up... but one good thing is you can request a credit mines 25.00 a month and sorry i tried explaining to the lady i can get dial up but i cant get everything she said impossible! so what do i do now? i feel like im cheating, i even gave her the local dial up number she still said its impossible!!! hello im using it? she checked.. still impossible! please hello im using the phone line trying to be honest she wouldnt believe me!! so i give up the guy will be here tomorrow to replace the box and thats a whole nother story...hey hes got a cute tush lol (yes hes married and has a daughter) i know this because having dsl on a mountain is a pain in the poop so we know our "guys and gals"

I have to giggle loggerbaby because it is the same thing here! We know every single repair guy! I love our DSL guy. Can't say that I have paid much attention to his tush, but he has often stopped by our house to fix issues on his way home! That is only one of the blessings of living in a small rural town.

Trish in SC

Lydia, how strange. It has been the same with me here over the last week. I'm on during the day and it's fine, but at night It takes forever for pages to load. I was trying to shop at Overstock the other night and I was getting so frustrated trying to search through that site. It took forever. It is like the old dial-up days. I did a disc clean up and defrag, and virus scan. It is only slightly better. It really seems to bog down at night around 9-ish.
Wonder why.

I have always wondered if the server company (is that what it's called?) is doing its maintenance at night, which would be day in India. There are times mine slows down and as a matter of fact, it has been slow the last few days/nights. Also, having email in my box that is picture-heavy slows things down for us too, until we delete it.

I've just been thru DSL$%%$#
we had a lot of rain today and the DSL went out the co said no other reports (I don't believe it) I just now got back on line and stayed one for a bit also AOL Downloaded a newer version and messed up my computer everytime I signed on the computer shut down. DS finally did a system restore back to Dec 15th and My old version 9.0 AOL cam up and I'm back in business. I hate these kinds of problems

There is a little reset button on the back of your modem too just in case

It is speedy once again... maybe my neighbors decided to watch the dance show that is on tonight instead of surfing the net? lol

I did a google search and it seems this is a problem for a lot of people. I will have to do another search... couldn't get any of the pages to come up for me awhile ago. I'll let you know what I find out.

Some ideas I found from various sources:

"I had alot of tech support calls similar to this where it turned out to be an improperly grounded halogen street light outside the home cause the noise margin to narrow to around 5-6db."
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Not really sure what all this means...
"I do think that is has to do with your DSL provider. These days and even previously I am sure that they .. meaning Telco's.. are oversubscribing the their CO DSL equipment. That is the most logical reason for the slowdown / dropped connections.

I would ask your DSL provider to switch your cable pairs to a less used piece of equipment in the CO. You may go down for part of a day while they process the order / make the change. I would also ask them what the CIR - Committed Information Rate, BC - Burst Committed, and BE - Excess Burst is on your DSL line.
The plan that you are paying for for your DSL speed should = the CIR - This is the bandwidth that their switch has been programmed to always give you. It could be that your DSL line has been configured wrong.. ie the CIR rate. During non peak times.. you are getting your CIR + BE (the excess burst) ... which is giving you the max bandwidth.

Then during peak times.. since more people are using their CIR... it cuts away from the Excess Burst from you. Remember that the advertised speeds that you were sold are not "guarnteed"... but their should be a minimum in your agreement."
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"I once spent 2 weeks trying to figure out the same problem you are explaining. I tried replacing the router, Inside wire, phone jack, out side phone cable. I simply couldn't figure it out. Finally I figured it out. There was a timer switch plugged into an electrical outlet across the room. Every evening the timer would kick on and turn on a light on an end table.
I don't know how or why, but, that darn timer messed up the dsl router plugged into a different outlet across the room. It only happened at night and in the morning the timer switched off and Dsl would work. It is an extreme long shot, but do you have anything like that at your place."
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I'll have to do some thinking tomorrow and see if I can figure out what the problem is.

I used to go through my cable company and found that after supper, the internet dragged like crazy. Why? Because with cable you share the main line with your neighbours. The more of them who have cable internet and are online at the same time, the slower your internet. I switched to DSL through my phone line. You don't share that, it only goes through your phone line. The closer you live to the 'box', the faster your internet. I live a few blocks from the 'box' so it's usually pretty quick. I know when I haven't done a system clean up (defrag, scandisc, etc), my computer lags a bit. Sometimes a simple reboot does the trick too.

As I said in my original reply (the first) to the OP:

"Unlike cable internet, which can slow down when lots of folks in the neighborhood are on the Internet at the same time, DSL is dedicated directly to your home, so it's not affected by other households.

Do you have your computer's maintenance tasks (Windows updates, antivirus updates, defragging, etc.) scheduled for the evening?"

When you get too much noise on the line, the transmission rates do slow down, and error correction consumes a lot of bandwidth. At my location, an all day rain will affect the quality of my phone line. It happens when the soil gets thoroughtly damp and soaks the phone lines.

I have recently switched to DSL from dial-up. There is one thing that might be bothering your connection depending on the features of your gateway or router and its security. My gateway supports both ethernet and wireless connections to the in-home computers, as does several other brands. It is possible that a neighboring computer can "see" your wireless gateway and can log onto the internet through your gateway. The more computers using your connection, the slower each connection will be because they must share the bandwidth. My particular gateway guards against this as it is not an "open" connection. One must have the serial number and my password to connect. It is my understanding that some gateways, when first initiated are "open", that is, it will accept any computer until its security has been setup. Check the instructions that came with your router/gateway. Look for ways to secure your router, i.e., shut out intruders. But of course, none of this applies if your router does not support local, short range, wireless.

If your instructions is skimpy, maybe you can go to the web site of the maker of your router/gateway and download instructions from there. (Don't know the URL of the manufacturer? Use goggle to find it.) Also, most of these sites have forums and/or FAQ (frequently asked questions). I have found helpful hints at these sources.

The other possibility is your phone company. Since you live in a samll cluster of people, the local exchange may not have adequate equipmnet to handle the traffic during peak periods.

Do you have more than one computer in your house that can use your connection? If so, the connection slows down as each computer connects and creates traffic. I am uncertain about how the speed is affected if the extra computer(s) is connected, but idle. I do know that the numner of active computers do affect the speed.

Sorry Lindsey I was not ignoring your post. "Unlike cable internet, which can slow down when lots of folks in the neighborhood are on the Internet at the same time, DSL is dedicated directly to your home, so it's not affected by other households.

Do you have your computer's maintenance tasks (Windows updates, antivirus updates, defragging, etc.) scheduled for the evening?" "

I found this on a dsl site "DSL users are not likely to be affected by localized peaks and valleys in data traffic, though DSL connections can be affected by heavy traffic within the phone company network. Your DSL connection is a private line (your phone line) between you and the phone company, who hands off your traffic to your ISP via a high capacity frame relay network, making it a generally smooth ride."
So... it could be heavy traffic within the phone company network??

We do have an additional router for a laptop that belongs to my DD, but she is at college now and not living at home.

Nothing new that is scheduled at night.. the 'slow down' hours vary too. Usually I have problems starting at 8 pm. Last night they started at 5pm and by 8pm it was running smooth again.

It could be Centurytel maintenance I suppose as sjerin suggested.

Thanks Jemdandy for your ideas too.. I will check into that later.

"I once spent 2 weeks trying to figure out the same problem you are explaining. I tried replacing the router, Inside wire, phone jack, out side phone cable. I simply couldn't figure it out. Finally I figured it out. There was a timer switch plugged into an electrical outlet across the room. Every evening the timer would kick on and turn on a light on an end table. I don't know how or why, but, that darn timer messed up the dsl router plugged into a different outlet across the room. It only happened at night and in the morning the timer switched off and Dsl would work. It is an extreme long shot, but do you have anything like that at your place."

It's not a long shot at all. Read up on *power line communication*. You may have your communication running through your house electric wiring and not been told that they did it this way. I know it sounds crazy and I thought so too when I first heard about it.

The storyâ I ordered cable internet. When the guy showed up he blabbed techno jumble about how it could not be done with the house location, my satellite was using both cables already, yada yada. Then he said he was going to run CABLE SERVICE through my electrical wiring in my house. I thought he was crazy and called a friend who was an engineer who said "Yes" cable can be run that way!

Anyway it was awful. It seemed that when things like the fridge kicked in it affected the computer. I cancelled cable internet service. Back to what I had before now.

I have read about power line communication and although it is not the norm it does have widespread application.

Here is a good quick article for you to read about it. Then Google for more:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_line_communication

Here is a link that might be useful: Power Line Communication