Huge drop in broadband speed

[wassam]

Hello, I will start by saying my broadband speed is never amazing! I live at the en of a long road in a rural area, I connect through a wireless network connection, and also the house I am in is shared by multiple people often attempting to use the internet at the same time, however, I am usually able to at least reach an average download rate of around 500kb/s and when everyone else is in bed I can even reach near to 1mb/s, i very rarely have issues with streaming YouTube videos and buffering isn't that much of an issue.

However, it must have been a few days ago everything suddenly turned to shit! it will take me over an hour to load a 10 minute YouTube video and my speedtest gave me a download rate of 0.15mbps which is frankly bad for even dial up internet! I have checked around the house to ensure nobody is trying to torrent a few hundred films or something and nothing out of the ordinary seems to be happening. This is basically restricting me from doing anything online, even connecting to mumble gives me a ping of over 800! I assumed the drop was just a weird drop but it has lasted a good few days now

Does anyone have any idea what could have caused this? I'm starting to think our internet is being used to DDos or something, if anyone has any idea what could have caused this please could you help as it's really starting to drive me insane! If you need more information just ask and I will try my best to answer!

Thank you

---------- Post added 2012-08-27 at 12:54 PM ----------

To add some more information, I have ran a virus scan on my computer, restarted my modem and wireless router multiple times and this has not helped. And just to confirm my whole household is struggling so the issue is not confined to my computer

[Erous]

Is there a bandwidth usage cap on your ISP? If so, it's possible your area has reached that cap and is now being throttled. Or, someone who shares your internet has found the joys of streaming as much as you and is hogging your bandwidth.

It's possible it's a hardware/network issue, so can't rule that out, but the above seems more likely.

[Daverid]

Best thing you can do is Borrow a Router off someone.

If you can't borrow one, first try calling your ISP, be ruthless with them and make sure they check every possible network error to do with your connection.

If nothing they do helps, then just take the plunge and buy a new Router/Modem. But yea hopefully you can get one off a Friend.

[lokii]

Also, if your wifi is not password protected I would change that. Your neighbors may be mooching off the wifi. If you have not restarted your WiFi do it as well, I know Cisco\Linksys routers for sure have senior moments all the time which only get fixed with a reboot. If after this you still encounter slow downs run speedtest from your machine as well as from a hard connection; you will need figure out exactly where the bottleneck is at. Also I agree with Erous, streaming vids and music can crush busy connections.

[Milkshake86]

Best thing you can do is Borrow a Router off someone.

If you can't borrow one, first try calling your ISP, be ruthless with them and make sure they check every possible network error to do with your connection.

If nothing they do helps, then just take the plunge and buy a new Router/Modem. But yea hopefully you can get one off a Friend.

This right here, except by ruthless he means your not going to let them just push you aside, do not act rude they want that, you act rude they hang up end of story for them you start all over again. Use courtesy and frankly be soo nice and sweet that it gives em type 2 diabetes.