I’ve been researching different ISPs across multiple states and noticed mixed experiences with throttling especially during peak hours.
Curious to hear from you guys:
1) Are you seeing consistent speeds during 7–11 PM?
2) Any specific ISPs where performance drops significantly?
3) Is this more common with cable vs fiber?
Is ISP Speed Throttling Still a Thing in 2026? Real User Experiences?
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frankxavier
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Re: Is ISP Speed Throttling Still a Thing in 2026? Real User Experiences?
There is often a speed drop after 6pm as people start watching IP TV and streaming HD video content.
Residential ISPs often oversubscribe the capacity they have by 20-25 times, they cannot provide Gigabit speeds to all customers at once. It is more pronounced when you're using bandwidth to servers that are outside of your ISP network and further geographically.
It is more common with Cable than fiber, as the last part of the network is shared, and there may be some signal interference.
Residential ISPs often oversubscribe the capacity they have by 20-25 times, they cannot provide Gigabit speeds to all customers at once. It is more pronounced when you're using bandwidth to servers that are outside of your ISP network and further geographically.
It is more common with Cable than fiber, as the last part of the network is shared, and there may be some signal interference.
Re: Is ISP Speed Throttling Still a Thing in 2026? Real User Experiences?
Backhaul to your neighborhood can be a factor as well.. If they only feed say 2 strands of fiber to feed 50 houses with 1 gbps per strand then that can quickly become over saturated.
The next town over can have a 10gig backhaul and not see the same issues. With almost anything- it depends.
Cable is one of those technologies that you really need to keep up with your ISP's latest technological advances to have the best chance. If you are on cable and not running a later model DOCSIS 3.1 modem you will have fewer channels to bond and will be using the same channels that everybody else with an older modem are using. Usually those with problems complain the loudest so research is generally going to sway to the side the troubled.
Believe it or not there are still some neighborhood DSL DSLAM's that are fed by up to 8 bonded t-1 circuits (about 1.5mbps each) that will split up to 20 or so households. Do the math and you can see why several of those customers watching streaming video at the same time will choke all 20 of those dwellings to a crawl. Usually these areas can easily be identified because the DSL provider will only have the slowest speed tier available in this neighborhood.
My neighborhood is on Astound Broadband. I use a recent DOCSIS 3.1 modem. We are apparently fed by a large backhaul to our node. I do not see the slowdowns that another customer just five miles away from me does as an example. He runs a similar modem as my household here does. In my case I get OFDM channels up and down (lastest tech) and the guy five miles away does not. I would conclude from his lack of these types of channels that they still do not have the speed getting to his neighborhood quite yet.
Im not sure Id call it speed throttling though.. More like someone trying to fill three bathtubs at the same time.. your gonna run out of both hot water and pressure.
The next town over can have a 10gig backhaul and not see the same issues. With almost anything- it depends.
Cable is one of those technologies that you really need to keep up with your ISP's latest technological advances to have the best chance. If you are on cable and not running a later model DOCSIS 3.1 modem you will have fewer channels to bond and will be using the same channels that everybody else with an older modem are using. Usually those with problems complain the loudest so research is generally going to sway to the side the troubled.
Believe it or not there are still some neighborhood DSL DSLAM's that are fed by up to 8 bonded t-1 circuits (about 1.5mbps each) that will split up to 20 or so households. Do the math and you can see why several of those customers watching streaming video at the same time will choke all 20 of those dwellings to a crawl. Usually these areas can easily be identified because the DSL provider will only have the slowest speed tier available in this neighborhood.
My neighborhood is on Astound Broadband. I use a recent DOCSIS 3.1 modem. We are apparently fed by a large backhaul to our node. I do not see the slowdowns that another customer just five miles away from me does as an example. He runs a similar modem as my household here does. In my case I get OFDM channels up and down (lastest tech) and the guy five miles away does not. I would conclude from his lack of these types of channels that they still do not have the speed getting to his neighborhood quite yet.
Im not sure Id call it speed throttling though.. More like someone trying to fill three bathtubs at the same time.. your gonna run out of both hot water and pressure.