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Do you want your home broadband to work at the speed advertised by your ISP? Then set your alarm and log on at 4am, according to a new survey that tested connections speeds across the UK at different times.

The worst time to start streaming TV programmes is 9pm as demand for data across the country peaked - and download speeds fell by 28 percent to 10.72Mbps on average in the 50 densely populated areas measured by net comparison website USwitch.

The national average speed hit 14.83Mbps at 4am, according to the research. Presumably because only insomniacs, depressives and shift workers attempt to get online at that hour in the morning.

Geographically, Aberdeen and Swansea had the worst luck with the average speed in the Scottish city being only 6.08Mbps at 9pm. In Swansea city it was 6.99Mbps.

Birmingham and Middlesbrough had the fastest average speeds at peak time: 12.88Mbps and 12.87Mbps, respectively.

Certain regions suffered a more severe drop-off of speed than others during times of high demand. As one might expect, built-up areas pushed network capacity close to the edge or over it. Dudley suffered a 60 per cent fall from 31.81Mbps at 4am and 12.62Mbps at 9pm.

The survey by uSwitch used the results of 2.3 million speed tests across the UK. Click over to the next page to see top 20 areas in terms of bandwidth drop-off. ®

Agentless Backup is Not a Myth

Next page: uSwitch's 20 places ranked in terms of off-peak to on-peak drop in connection speed