Lost the Ethernet connection from my router to my main but was a simple fix once I thought about it. I figured that it was just out as that has happened before but, as it turns out, it MAY have never actually been out.

This time it dawned on me to check my bedroom system which is also connected via Ethernet to the router and it was fine. So I decided to unplug and plug back both ends of the main's cable and suddenly all was fine again. Since the cable is around 11 or more years old and has been connected and re-routed several times I should probably replace. I likely have one somewhere in my tangle of extra cables, just need to dig through. LOL! I REALLY need to organize that tangle of cables but everytime I start I chicken out as it is pretty bad. If I ever get going on it I'll probably end up throwing half of it out.

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This reminds me that i need to get in touch with my ISP (VodaFone) to try and find out what caused my really strange ethernet specific issue that started about a month ago.

If you recall, i wasn't the only one in my city that had the issue, indeed another city 130 miles north of me (Aberdeen) was also reporting similar issues in the same time specific window (5pm to midnight) every night.
Following the repair work that was carried out at my local street cabinet...i'm not claiming it was a street cabinet that caused the issue across the east of Scotland but it does seem odd that within 24-48 hours of that repair the 'time of day' specific download speed issues were suddenly resolved across the east coast of Scotland... within a day or two all reports of slow speeds between 5pm and midnight stopped on the ISP Forum.

Prior to whatever the issue was/is others had been speculating it looked like a routing issue but i don't know enough about how an ISP handles routing so didn't speculate on it.
What i have noticed though, and what others in Edinburgh and Aberdeen have also noticed, is that the Gateway has changed for most of us.
e.g. Despite VodaFone having a server centre in Edinburgh, my Gateway ever since joining them was always Manchester in England, it's now approx 100 to 150 miles further south, in Watford in England.

There are reports, that i see as well, that latency has taken a hit because of this re-routing from Scotland via England (or in my case, further into England) but as i don't play online games i don't really notice a difference because of that.

Anyway, i must remember to phone them to try and find out what the issue was that casued ethernet to have the issue, yet wireless wasn't.

Hope that you get your answers.

Just tested something else. My download used to be ~100Mb/sec that was supposed to go up to 300Mb/sec a while ago but I had never seen the difference through speedtest.net and was getting ~85Mb/sec when I used to get ~116Mb/sec. After re-doing the Ethernet cable I now get the following and it is pretty consistent across several testings. Could it be coincidence? Sure but seems unlikely that it would just happen at the same time. Actually upload speed has doubled but still VERY throttled. Download speed is MUCH higher that the 300Mb/sec advertised. While much higher speeds I'm still going to switch to Blue Peak fiber ASAP. As per another thread last month Spectrum raised my rate by more than stated in a letter and they refused to correct. Now they have raised it again this month by another $8.00 USD. LOL! I have a dental office next to my apartments that I could just use with a download speed of 70-80Mb/sec for free as they have a guest account that doesn't even need a password. Was using it for a while earlier today when figuring out what was going on with my connection.

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I hope they're better at extracting teeth then they are at securing their network

Oh, they are just fine as to their local network. The access I mentioned is not their actual office network. It is like wireless in a fast food place where you can connect to their internet. This is totally separate from their internal network. I can do the same thing with my Belkin router as in setting up guest access. I used to do this but stopped as I just don't normally have visitors that have the need. Give the guest access a name and anyone can connect without actually having access to your local network. Connect to the connection and it throws up a web page asking for a password if one has been setup. If no password is setup it still brings up a webpage but you don't have to enter anything but can use the internet as you wish. When I had this setup with my router I used a password to prevent others within range to constantly leech off of my connection.

Many home routers don't have the features of my Belkin as it is a fairly high level router. For instance I can list all devices that can or have connected and individually setup hours that a connection is denied which could be handy with kids in the house. I can also setup 2.4 and 5GHz access with separate login codes. LOL! It even has a function to act as a media server. Never really messed with the media server aspect as I have no real need but it seems that I could connect a USB drive holding the media and it would act as a server for that media drive.

My Belkin Router seems to be more of a business router than personal. I totally lucked out when I got it 6-8 years ago as Gb/sec routers were still not all that very common at the time if memory serves. I don't remember exactly how long ago I got it but 6 years is a conservative minimum. At the time this Belkin router was listed at a retail price of around $250.00 USD. I got it reconditioned via either Tiger Direct or New Egg for ~$20.00 USD. Since it it is still running just fine after the years I figure that I did a pretty good buy.

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I didn't think it would be their office network, but that said, if they are lax enough to allow someone like you to access those speeds while you sit in your apartment troubleshooting your network connection issues then who knows what might be possible lol

As for routers, up until i signed up with my current ISP i always bought my own for the additional security and other features but from what i've read it can be a bit of a nightmare to get the required login details from my ISP to use a 3rd party router with so i've avoided that path so far.. add that a certain pandemic came along and we know how that turned out for me... i'm still playing catchup

A bit like you, i've got a a 20M cable that's been sitting in it's packaging since late 2019 that i bought in anticipation of potentially needing to upgrade from cat5e to cat6 for FTTP.
Previously i was FTTC at 500Mbps down and i think 30Mbps up, i couldn't find out if the ethernet cable after upgrading to a 1G FTTP network would be able to cope or not so my intention was to upgrade the cable.... add that my current cat5e cable isn't actually long enough to run from the new ISP hub to my PC so has a 4-port switch in the middle with a second 2M cat5e cable for the last few feet with nothing else connected to the switch.

It turned out i didn't need the cat6 cable as cat5e works just fine, also the new hub only has 2 LAN ports so i coud really be doing with replacing the cable so i can plug the 4-port switch directly into the hub to expand the LAN ports on the hub from 2 to 5.
e.g. My main TV is currently connected to the hub via wireless because my PC uses one port and my TV set top box the other. I don't necessarily see that as a big issue but if i can get it off wireless i'll feel better about it... i really don't trust wireless on devices i have no control over so if i can get them off wireless i do.