Forum Discussion
T-Mobile Home Internet Review
I have been using T-Mobile Home Internet for a couple of months now. I recently upgraded to the 5G Gateway, which has made my WiFi much better Vs. the LTE Gateway which sucked and had a lot of restrictions. The 5G Gateway is sleek, easy to use, and comes included with your Home Internet Plan! My experience has been exemplary, apart from a few issues.
I have the following issues with T-Mobile Home Internet:
•No UPnP Option which causes issues using XBL.
•No Port Forwarding which causes a Moderate NAT on XBL
•Some VPN applications do not work.
•The Online GUI is limited and watered down. T-Mobile should really fix these issues, as it’s bothering other Customers as well. Overall T-Mobile Home Internet is great for those who don’t play on XBL, PSN, or PC or require a VPN to be used for work or personal use.
I’m surprised that T-Mobile blocks inbound unsolicited IPv6 connections. Xfinity doesn’t have this restriction. If I’m not mistaken, that would go a long way in mitigating the port forwarding issues.
Thank you for the detailed reply. That helps me better understand what is happening with their home internet gateway. I will try to be patient while they make their system more functional for all of us! :-)
Unfortunately, it goes deeper than just allowing you to set forwarding rules in the router... be that manually or via UPnP.
Unsolicited inbound traffic is not properly passing through the forward facing layer. It is a problem inherent to the 464XLAT approach they implememted to support dual IPv4 and IPv6 addressing.
Until they switch to a better method of managing IPv4 traffic through their IPv6 only network, there will be issues.
I have found a solution with one VPN provider, but the extra features to make it work would cost an extra $16/month--and that is at their best annual subscription rates (one year of static IP plus 2 years of VPN) Windscribe is the only one that I have been able to confirm they have a strategy to do specifically what is needed to truly get around this mess.
One of the core issues is bound to the fact that the public IP you wind up with is not actually JUST your IP--it can still be shared with others using the same service. So basically, you need to be securing that public IP for your use in order to forward ports properly. This is what ramps up the cost at Windscribe.
Many offer P2P support through the paid side of their VPN services, but it only works partially... basically where you can use stateful inspection and such. It gets around issues with BitTorrent and such... but does not necessarily work for unsolicited inbound connections, which can break some P2P communication with games--especially if that game is running on a console.
The TLDR: until TMO restructures their core network topology for the service to more properly support dual-stack IPv4/v6, problems will persist regardless of what is going on with their modems.
I’m still waiting for T-Mobile to add Port Forwarding to this device. I returned the unit I bought and I cannot purchase this home internet service with the lack of Port Forwarding…
Are you listening T-Mobile…???
I use a VPN all of the time and I have had no issues with it other than a minor slow down in connection speeds, which is to be expected. I didn’t have to make any setting adjustments to make it work. The only thing that was needed from time to time, is that you might have to use specific VPN servers for certain applications or websites to work. But this is a common problem most have when using a VPN regardless of isp.
The only issue I had was with my voip phone modem. When connected directly to the gateway it had a tendency to drop calls. I then connected my old router to the gateway and then connected the voip modem to it and the problem went away.
*EDIT* I meant to say “or DONT require a VPN for work or personal use.”
