Why does my Wi-Fi get bad every night around the same time?

There’s something weird going on here.

The Wi-Fi is great during the day, but as soon as evening sets in (somewhere between 8 and 10), the internet starts to really slow down. And then in the morning, everything’s flying again.

I checked: there are no downloads, the network doesn’t drop at all, but there’s a noticeable lag. Especially in the evenings.

Before I start replacing stuff, what would you check first?

You definitely shouldn’t “solve” this by throwing in a random extender unless you already know the issue is weak coverage.Buffers often simply simulate a poor Wi-Fi connection, especially if the real problem is network congestion, not range.

The first thing I’d check is if the airwaves are overloaded. From experience, this is the most common problem: everyone comes home in the evening, turns on their routers, and they simply start interfering with each other on the same frequencies.

@Subject-Gap-4864 How do I check that?

Use a Wi-Fi analyzer. NetSpot is a good option — easy to use, and it’ll show you channel overlap, nearby networks, and signal strength. What channel is your Wi-Fi using? Is the device that gets laggy on 2.4 or 5 GHz? And what does the signal actually look like in dBm, not just bars?

Also make sure it’s actually Wi-Fi and not your ISP choking at peak hours.

@Subject-Gap-4864 Fair. I’ll test wired tonight and run a scan.