Research conducted by Top10.com has shown that, on average, customers can see their broadband speeds vary by up to a third over a 24 hour time span.

Measuring over 250,000 speed tests on its website over 90 days, Top10.com calculated average speeds every hour of the day for customers across every major broadband provider in Britain, identifying peak times for the fastest and slowest speeds.

Interestingly, the fastest time for surfing the web is 2am with the average speed reaching 7Mb. The slowest time for browsing is 8pm where a comparatively laboured 4.73Mb is achieved.

Of course, broadband speeds vary for a number of reasons. Evenings see a high network demand which in turn slows down the average speed in comparison to those reached during the day.

Most providers adopt the practice of ‘traffic shaping’ in order to control what speeds their customers can receive. This method stops heavy users taking up a majority of the available bandwidth.

Alternatively, ‘throttle’ broadband is also used to ensure that customers receive a consistent service whilst browsing the web.

One day we may see consistent speeds become the norm but until then, you may wish to save your web surfing for the early hours when optimum speeds are available.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 25th, 2010 at 10:00 am and is filed under Business Broadband. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.