5G Home internet keeps dropping!

EJSimpson wrote:

This started happening to me back in July.  I ultimately had to cancel my T-Mobile home Internet because it just wasn’t working for us.  It was nearly flawless for the first seven or eight months of service.  Easily over 300 Mbps for all of our (20+) devices.  It was a dream replacement for our cable Internet that was just getting more and more expensive.  However, no Internet just doesn’t work, so we replaced it with Verizon 4G LTE which is admittedly MUCH slower.  Slower, but reliable and always present.  That works for us.  I am very sad that T-Mobile quit on us.  It was great while it lasted.  I think that our usage got us bumped off.  We routinely used in excess of 1,600 Gb of data monthly.  Interestingly, though, during this time our phone’s 5G failed to provide Internet for us.  To get an Internet connection with our phones, we needed to downgrade to LTE.  5G would connect, but it wouldn’t provide ANY Internet access.  That is clearly unacceptable for a home Internet solution.

This continuing modem dropping issue is very frustrating especially when we’re out traveling and our security system isn’t functioning. The only way to get it back up and operating is to unplug the modem, wait for a few minutes and then plug it back in. Should this continue, we’ll be closing our “T-Mobile” account as well. We can’t afford to have our security and monitoring systems compromised. 

If it requires a reboot that often I would be inclined to believe the gateway has a problem and a replacement might be needed. I think you should bring the behavior up with support. If you can do so at a local T-Mobile store that might be helpful. 

I’ve been using T-Mobile 5-G for about seven months now. At first I was having to restart the gateway several times each day. Then for a while between Thanksgiving and Christmas I didn’t have to restart it at all. I had read about the problems with overheating so I’ve put the gateway on a shelf under an end table where there are no other heat sources near by. Since New Years Day I have had to restart the gateway on average once or twice each day. It’s really frustrating to be in the middle of a movie or a football game and have to restart the gateway. 

Yes, that information has been out there for a while. When there is congestion the phones have priority over the home internet gateways on the same cellular frequencies. The voice traffic is more sensitive to interruption than data traffic so increases in cellular calls over the same cells can lead to this. 

Building the solution with sufficient capacity for bandwidth to reduce the need for the prioritization for the cell phone traffic is the goal of any good network architect. I am sure there are areas where the cell density and bandwidth is not as robust as is required to provision sufficient bandwidth for everything. Hopefully T-Mobile will be able to overcome the challenges and also restrain from over subscription. 

Acceptable wrote:

I see some comments here that are questionable. Now to be clear, I don’t think T-Mobile is perfect by no means, but the disillusioned people that consider high dollar Verizon the “only” way to go, and the unreliable AT&T farce, T-Mobile certainly stands out. I switched to T-Mobile way back when they were a nobody and began the no contract(un-carrier) craze that forced every carrier to follow. They were definitely the best value, they had you assigned to a fixed customer support location( I live in SC and mine was in Charleston) which was great, and always answered immediately with an English speaking rep. I have never before or since experienced such great support from any company hands down. Now, due to their growth and merger with Sprint, they can(understandably)no longer provide this personal support now, but it will take a lot to get me to move away from them. Now if you wish to pay more and go to a no better solution, all power to you. T-Mobile has the largest 5G network (although others lie about theirs being the largest and the best), the best deals and prices on their service, and my commitment through these growing pains. I only have 3 bars on my Nokia Gateway bust get as high as 700-800/60 speeds. My bill is constantly the same amount(unlike every month different with AT&T) and constant problems with Spectrum even though they had sufficient speeds. Never tried high dollar Version but I have service when others with Verizon sometimes don’t. I too am seeing some problems with internet that I didn’t see at first, but I fail to believe it is intentional by throttling but I could be mistaken. Anyway, life is full of frustrations, and we become more and more inpatient and feel like we deserve the very best with no interruptions. However, sometimes “we bite off our nose to spite our face” and have regrets later. So, if you’re new to T-Mobile, I am aware that you are unfamiliar with how they really stood out at a period in time, but hang in there, I don’t think you will regret it. If you are a longtime customer, maybe you can confirm what I think. By the way, I do not work for T-Mobile. I have no incentive to bragg on them. I just have been there through the ups and downs and am confident they have saved me a considerable amount of money. Remember, Apple used to be the most expensive phone by a long shot, but look at the prices now on others, ie:Samsung, Google, OnePlus, etc. So I’m staying with Apple also but not because I’m diehard Apple. They just happen to provide some very reliable equipment. Thanks for letting me sound off!

I have been with T-Mobile for almost 12 years and switched to the home internet. I spent 3 full days with great speeds. Now I experience sporadic drops in connection all the time. It's them definitely throttling speeds as home users have lower prioritization on the network. Don't advertise this as a home internet replacement when it doesn't behave like so.

HoHoHo5 wrote:

Looks like Tmo deprioritizes home internet users. I found this article on the Internet

Speed claims

It wasn’t all rosy for T-Mobile. Charter argued that because T-Mobile Home Internet customers share the same network as mobile users but are prioritized last, consumers may experience much slower speeds than advertised during times of congestion. 

HoHoHo5 wrote:

Looks like Tmo deprioritizes home internet users. I found this article on the Internet

Speed claims

It wasn’t all rosy for T-Mobile. Charter argued that because T-Mobile Home Internet customers share the same network as mobile users but are prioritized last, consumers may experience much slower speeds than advertised during times of congestion. 

 

This is starting to feel like a class action lawsuit waiting to happen. You can't offer a home internet service that is highly unreliable without some blowback.

If it is a company machine they may have to do so as many do lock down the clients so the users don't have administrative access. At HPE we did have administrative privileges and for our job it was imperative as we were doing network troubleshooting and remediation for customers. To run WireShark in its full capacity you really need to have administrative access. It may just be that T-Mobile has the traffic controls set where throttling of the traffic is a bit aggressive and that leads to the problem. 

If you can get the cellular metrics reported from the gateway it might help. Knowing if you have a strong signal is not enough. Knowing the RSRQ, signal receive quality, and the SINR, signal to noise ratio are actually important to know. If the signal is clean, i.e. good quality with low signal to noise ratio, the performance is usually better as there is less packet loss and/or damage. The session flow is smoother as there are fewer retransmits and better utilization of the bandwidth available. A stronger signal is a good thing but if it is dirty well it will not perform well. If you have the Sagemcon or the Arcadyan gateway the only way to get the metrics reporting is with the T-Mobile home internet mobile application on your phone. The bars on the LED screen are very generic and do not tell you much as you probably can tell. If you get 3-5 bars that would be best. Lower well, it is not much to write home about. Knowing the cellular signal band is helpful for understanding and expectations as well. We are rural in east TN and when they bumped us from the n71 to the n41 I had some concerns at first as I have seen numerous users writing about how the n41 was great for a month or so and then went horrible. So far it has been working extremely well. I think they do a better job with the n41 deployments in the rural areas than in a densely populated urban area. In some markets they need more cells than they probably deploy and tend to overload the cells and try to get by with more bandwidth controls. Just my thoughts. 

iTinkeralot wrote:

The cloud based application and the client most likely do not use the normal TCP ports for the session once established. You could load WireShark and take a packet capture of the client to server session communication to determine how they communicate. If there is heavier traffic load on the cell there is probably some traffic throttling taking place which might lead to delay and the interruption to the established session. If there is packet loss or retransmissions the capture with Wireshark could help determine what it taking place. If there is packet damage or loss then there would be evidence to the effect in retransmissions. The expert analysis in Wireshark can help pick it apart provide clues.

Thank you for this idea. I am talking to an IT friend about doing this for me.

The cloud based application and the client most likely do not use the normal TCP ports for the session once established. You could load WireShark and take a packet capture of the client to server session communication to determine how they communicate. If there is heavier traffic load on the cell there is probably some traffic throttling taking place which might lead to delay and the interruption to the established session. If there is packet loss or retransmissions the capture with Wireshark could help determine what it taking place. If there is packet damage or loss then there would be evidence to the effect in retransmissions. The expert analysis in Wireshark can help pick it apart provide clues.

I am in a rural area and the T-Mobile service has been a godsend. It does drop out on occasion but it is much better than the AT&T 2MB service which is simply unusable. I also agree that it was better six months ago than it is now.

I am having a problem though with cloud based programs. For example, I utilize a company that hosts their software in the cloud and I will repeatedly get disconnected from it and have to sign back in every couple of minutes. It seems like there are momentary spikes of interruption that are enough to disconnect the service. This does not appear during normal web browsing, although it could be happening and is just not noticed.

Has anyone experienced this with an online service and have you found out any method of troubleshooting it?