Forum Discussion
T-Mobile Home Internet ... decent for casual use, not ready for 'prime time'
This is my 2nd attempt at using T-Mobile Home Internet. ~2 years ago, I tried the T-Mobile 4G LTE Home Internet, and .. it wasn’t bad.
4G LTE modem:
The good:
- Low cost ($50)
- Decent performance
- Battery backup
- Had ~200Mbps on 4G LTE
Downside:
- Phone jack that didn’t connect to anything (would have been a seller for rural)
- Roku - Hulu live wouldn’t work (issues with lack of GPS, and geotagging of modem)
- No real diagnostics:
Move ahead to 2022… 5G Home Internet (Arcadyn )
The good:
- USB powered - with external charge port (meh)
- 5G n71/n41 connectivity
- ‘capable’ of higher speed
Downside:
- 5G / 4G LTE don’t play well. Speed is typically slower than older 4G LTE modem was, I suspect in part due to picking up ‘weak’ n71 or weaker ‘n41’ over LTE
- Many disconnects with SSH/RDP/Cisco VPN
- Buffering at times on YouTube/Hulu
- Latency is all over the place -50ms to 400ms typical
- No diagnostics beyond 4G LTE / 5G signal readout
- Double NAT’d gateway (all RFC 1918 style network)
- Using a cloud NAT GW for service ? Kind of similar to a walled garden approach.
Most likely will return and keep Charter at least for another year. 200/20 on Charter ≈ $25/month more, but stable. T-Mobile isn’t quite ready for serious use yet. For casual (and less expensive) - I’d recommend it
I haven’t gotten rid of my Charter/Spectrum, and of course, speeds were just bumped from 200Mbps to 300Mbps (based package), which I’m sure will mean ‘rate increase’ soon enough.
I work from home, and T-Mobile ‘is ok’ where I am for most items, but reliability isn’t there yet, and neither is 5G (5G is deployed at sites ~1 mile away, giving weak n71 on this device), closest site ~1200’ is still B2/B4/B12 LTE which works quite well, and my area isn’t oversubscribed.
That’s why I stayed with Cox cable. My wife works from home and needs a stable connection.
