Why Does Your Internet Slow Down at Night? (Not with Yomura)
Streaming stutters. Downloads crawl. Video calls turn into pixelated modern art. If your internet grinds to a halt after work, you’re not imagining things – it’s peak hour, and your ISP is struggling to keep up. Too many networks aren’t built to handle the sudden traffic surge when users flood online after work. But not every provider buckles under the pressure.
The Problem with Peak Hours
For most ISPs, evening hours equals congestion. When households settle in for their evening routines – you know; Netflix, gaming, remote work and all that – the demand skyrockets. If an ISP hasn’t planned for the rush, speeds take a nosedive.
Here’s why:
- Limited bandwidth shared among too many users
- Insufficient network capacity to handle spikes
- Overloaded infrastructure causing delays
- Providers prioritizing certain types of traffic over others
Why Yomura doesn’t Slow Down
Unlike ISPs that scramble to accommodate fluctuating usage, Yomura assumes that peak demand is constant. This means:
- The network is over-dimensioned to prevent congestion
- Infrastructure is scaled to handle continuous high traffic
- No throttling – users get consistent speeds – both day and night
Covid
When the world suddenly shifted to remote work, many ISPs crumpled under the pressure. Peak hours weren’t just in the evenings; now daytime usage surged too. Networks collapsed and speeds plummeted – followed by frustration. But not at Yomura. Thanks to its always-on peak-capacity model, Yomura handled the sudden traffic explosion without any congestion events.
Major ISPs were Struggling to Keep Up
Even today, many providers still suffer from network strain. If your internet is slow at night, it’s likely due to:
- Oversubscribed networks with too many users
- Underinvestment in infrastructure
- Limited scaling
- Legacy systems failing to keep up with modern traffic patterns
Internet slowdowns are a direct result of outdated network planning. Most ISPs still operate under old assumptions, treating peak hours as a temporary spike instead of the new normal.
Yomura predicted this shift. Industry estimates (like Cisco and Statista) showed the U.S. reaching >1 connected device per person around 2012-14, meaning that some people now have 2, 3, 4 or more devices.
By 2020 that number had increased to 7+ devices per person in many homes. That typically includes items like thermostats, fridges, watches and assistants like Alexa, Siri and Cortana.
Business tech devices followed a parallel but steeper curve, driven by enterprise networks, cloud computing, and IoT.
Businesses scaled faster and broader because device growth was often centralized and strategic. It had to be driven by productivity, monitoring, automation, and security. A positive feedback loop emerged as now there was more vulnerability: more devices equals boom in cybersecurity – which in turn, creates yet more online devices.
It was important for Yomura take this scale factor into account when dimensioning our network. The network that would be sufficient for today was in no way going to be sufficient for tomorrow.
We designed our network accordingly – to ensure fast speeds all the time.
