Why does my broadband drop at the same time every day?
A drop with a timetable has a cause with a timetable. How to tell a line management reset from electrical interference from a neighbour's equipment, and why repeatedly rebooting the router makes the underlying problem worse.
- Difficulty
- intermediate
- Time
- 30 min
- Read
- 4 min
Short answer
Write down the exact times for a week before doing anything. A drop at the same minute daily is usually equipment — a timer, a light, a device switching on. A drop in the small hours is often the provider's line management resyncing. A drop at busy times is congestion, not a fault. The pattern names the cause, and the pattern is the evidence a provider will act on.
Intermittent faults are the hardest kind to get fixed, because by the time anyone looks the line is working. A timetable turns that around completely: it converts an unrepeatable complaint into a testable one, and a provider given three weeks of timestamps behaves very differently from a provider told the internet keeps going off.
Step by step
- Log it properly for at least a week.Date, time it went, time it came back, what the router lights showed, and what was happening in the house. A note on a phone is enough. Guesswork at this stage wastes weeks later.
- Check whether the router itself restarted.Most routers log their uptime and their last resync. If uptime resets each time, the router or the line dropped. If uptime is unbroken through the outage, the router stayed up and the problem is further out or on your wifi.
- Separate a wifi drop from a broadband drop.If a device connected by cable also loses the internet, it is broadband. If only wireless devices lose it, the radio is at fault and the cause is more likely interference or the router's own wireless.
- Look for a device with a timetable.Anything on a timer switch, an immersion heater, an electric shower, security lighting on a photocell, a heat pump defrost cycle, a pond pump. Interference on the mains or the line from a specific appliance switching on will track its schedule precisely.
- Test by removing the suspect.If a candidate exists, unplug it for a few days and keep logging. This is slow but it is proof, and it is the only way to convince anyone else.
- Consider line management if it happens overnight.Providers on copper-based connections run automated line management that adjusts speed and error correction based on errors seen. A resync in the early hours is often that system responding to a genuinely noisy line, and repeated drops cause it to reduce your speed as a protective measure.
- Stop power-cycling the router repeatedly.Every reboot is recorded as a line drop by that management system. A household rebooting three times a day teaches the system the line is unstable, and it responds by lowering the speed and increasing error correction, which is exactly the opposite of what you want.
- Report it with the log.Give the provider the dated list, say what you have already ruled out, and ask them to check for errors on the line over that period. This is a completely different conversation from an undocumented complaint.
Tips
- Do not turn the router off at night. On copper-based connections the line management system reads it as instability and can permanently reduce your sync speed. The energy saved is negligible.
- If you have a smart plug on the router, disable any schedule on it for the duration of this investigation. It is a surprisingly common self-inflicted cause.
- A drop that lasts exactly the same length of time each occurrence usually means an automatic process, not a random fault.
If it doesn't work
Drops every evening between six and eleven
Cause: Congestion rather than a fault — Fix: Test speed and latency at those times and compare with the small hours. Consistent evening degradation across an area is a capacity issue and worth reporting with the figures, but it is not a line fault.
Drops when it rains, or after rain
Cause: Water in a joint or a damaged external connection — Fix: This is a classic copper-line fault. Report it explicitly as weather-correlated with the dates, because that pattern points an engineer straight at the external work.
Router restarts itself at the same time
Cause: A scheduled reboot setting, or a power supply fault — Fix: Check for a scheduled restart in the router settings — several providers ship one enabled. If there is none, suspect the power supply or a socket shared with something switching heavily.
Drops when someone uses the phone or the doorbell chimes
Cause: Interference or a faulty extension on the line — Fix: Test from the master socket with all extensions disconnected. If the fault clears there, the extension wiring is the problem and it is yours to fix.
Questions people ask
Should I keep rebooting the router when it drops?
As little as possible. Note the time, wait a few minutes and see whether it recovers on its own. Frequent reboots distort the line's own history and can cost you speed permanently.
Does a nightly resync mean my line is faulty?
Not necessarily. A single resync during the quiet hours can be routine. Repeated resyncs, or resyncs followed by a lower speed each time, indicate the line is fighting errors and is worth reporting.
Is it worth buying my own router to fix this?
Only if the evidence points at the router — for example, drops with the router restarting while the line stays in sync. If the line itself is dropping, a new router changes nothing.