1. Router placement is working against you
Your router broadcasts a radio signal. Walls, floors, furniture, and other electronics all interfere with it. A router in a corner behind a cupboard is losing a huge chunk of potential speed. Move it to a central location, raise it off the floor, and keep it away from other electronics, especially baby monitors, cordless phones, and microwaves.
2. Peak time congestion
Your broadband is shared with other households in your area. Evening hours, particularly between 7pm and 10pm, push network capacity. This is especially pronounced on older copper-based FTTC connections. Full fibre networks handle congestion significantly better.
3. The router just needs a restart
Turn it off at the wall, not standby, actually off. Wait a full 30 seconds. Turn it back on and give it two minutes to fully reconnect.
4. Background apps consuming bandwidth
Cloud backup services running large syncs, Windows Update downloading gigabytes, streaming services pre-loading content. All consume bandwidth invisibly. Schedule big syncs and updates for overnight.
5. Distance from the street cabinet on FTTC
If your house is more than about 500 metres from the green street cabinet, you will get slower speeds than neighbours closer to it. The only real fix, if full fibre is available, is to upgrade to FTTP.
6. Old or faulty equipment
A five-year-old router may not support modern WiFi standards. Faulty microfilters on older FTTC connections can also cause intermittent issues and are cheap to replace.
