Hi Ben, thanks for the reply. Tried syncing on 4G mobile network and first sync timed out, 2nd sync was slow but ultimately successful.
I find it curious that the issue started so dramatically on 1/1/2026 though – wasn’t sure if the cloud service was suspended midnight on 31st Dec 
But seriously, could it be a routing issue from Australia? Tracert on PC through my broadband connection shows a lot of very slow hops (see text below) and on mobile network isn’t much better (see screenshot, one extra hop but perhaps a few milliseconds faster)
Tracing route to ankiweb.net [142.132.136.176] over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.2.1
2 * 1 ms 1 ms n175-33-128-2.sun22.vic.optusnet.com.au [175.33.128.2]
3 * * * Request timed out.
4 * * * Request timed out.
5 * * * Request timed out.
6 * * * Request timed out.
7 18 ms 17 ms 17 ms 59.154.57.74
8 15 ms 15 ms 15 ms 22bt-c93-ig-02-net-lo0.optus.net.au [61.88.33.47]
9 176 ms 176 ms 174 ms 203.208.131.65
10 170 ms 171 ms 172 ms 203.208.149.58
11 * * 385 ms 203.208.183.45
12 386 ms 385 ms 404 ms 203.208.158.205
13 386 ms * * 203.208.183.90
14 * * * Request timed out.
15 396 ms 396 ms 396 ms ae1-2014.nbg40.core-backbone.com [81.95.9.14]
16 435 ms * * core-backbone.hetzner.com [5.56.20.254]
17 436 ms 436 ms 444 ms core22.fsn1.hetzner.com [213.239.254.233]
18 436 ms 446 ms 436 ms ex9k2.dc18.fsn1.hetzner.com [213.239.254.246]
19 437 ms 437 ms * sync11.ankiweb.net [142.132.136.176]
20 437 ms 436 ms 436 ms sync11.ankiweb.net [142.132.136.176]
