Troubleshooting

Why Is My Internet Slow at Night? (And How to Fix It)

Updated 2026 · 5 min read

If your connection crawls every evening but works fine during the day, you're seeing a classic pattern with a few possible causes.

1. Network congestion (the usual cause)

Evenings are peak internet hours. On cable connections, you share local capacity with your neighbourhood, so everyone streaming at 8pm slows the whole node. Fibre is far less affected.

2. ISP throttling

Some providers slow certain traffic (like streaming or torrents) during peak times. Test at different hours to spot a pattern.

3. Your own household

More devices are active in the evening — everyone's home streaming and gaming. Check what's running.

How to diagnose it

Run our speed test at different times of day and note the numbers. A big evening drop with high bufferbloat points to congestion. Consistent packet loss points to a line issue worth reporting.

What helps

Go wired, schedule big downloads for off-peak, enable QoS, and if congestion is severe and constant, consider a fibre plan that doesn't share local capacity the same way.

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