Internet contention

My internet usage should not be constrained by other people.

Pylons striding the landscape

I live in a small apartment building containing eight flats. I have an ADSL line with PlusNet and a contract for an 8MB, uncapped connection, which, until a few months ago was fine. Recently however, it’s felt more like dial-up. My connection speed is dreadful (hitting ~4MB at best but typically seeing 1MB and under), downloads take ages, and given that my wife also uses the internet heavily, life in general is bad.

I can only assume that someone has moved into our building and is using the internet very heavily when they get in from work, since we see a definite increase in speed late at night when someone might have, for example, gone to bed.

What shall I do? Be the weirdo who knocks on everyone’s doors and asks them if they use the internet a lot? Downgrade my internet package to something cheaper? We plan on moving as soon as the house prices drop slightly/we stop being so lazy, so I don’t want to switch to a cable provider and be tied in for 12 months.

Update: A big thank you to Ian Wild and Kelly Dorset from PlusNet who both got in touch (via blog comments and email) and explained what was actually going wrong and what I could do about it.