TMobile Home internet

BouseBill wrote:

Well, I’m totally confused now.  2:45 in the afternoon

SNR Primary = 23  Secondary = 33

Three speed tests:

1. Ping 83  Jitter 227  Download 1.85  Upload 31.8
2. Ping 139  Jitter 208  Download .81  Upload 35.9
3. Ping 86  Jitter 487  Download .88  Upload 6.97

The NOK 5G is in the same location as this morning.

Still waiting for Tech support to call.

Will be interesting to see the results tomorrow morning.  The article in PC mag gives some hope...but we’ll see.

It’s the same as your problem from Day 1 -- download speed way too low during the daytime.

T mobile basically says that the for the areas that are eligible for their home internet service, they’ve been tested at providing at least 25Mbps download. So you’re getting less than 1/25th that speed if your download is less than 1.

Here’s the statement on speed from their website:

We anticipate some T-Mobile Home Internet customers will see average download speeds in excess of 100 Mbps, and all eligible households will see average download speeds of 25 Mbps or more. Speeds can vary depending on location, signal strength and availability, time of day, and other factors.

Even considering your “average” speed, it is less than 25. And your speed shouldn’t be falling to below 10 at any time of day, no matter the traffic.

When I read back through some older posts on this board, people with the speed problem being very low, under 20, there aren’t a lot of happy endings. But there aren’t a ton of posts about it either. As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, for one person 70 was too slow for a download speed. For rural users though, the standard of what we’re used to is much lower.

This is where being an early bird user with problems isn’t good. There aren’t enough people participating on the board who solve their problem with the tower being tuned, getting a gateway replacement, putting their gateway up in the attic, or whatever. Once there are a couple million users, maybe patterns will emerge of what to do when. And as I’ve mentioned, as 5G phone use becomes more common, at least people with 5G phones will be able to test and know when it is a problem with the gateway. That is their phone will have good speed and work fine, but the gateway, when connected to the same tower, has a slower speed or keeps disconnecting on them.

Well, I’m totally confused now.  2:45 in the afternoon

SNR Primary = 23  Secondary = 33

Three speed tests:

1. Ping 83  Jitter 227  Download 1.85  Upload 31.8
2. Ping 139  Jitter 208  Download .81  Upload 35.9
3. Ping 86  Jitter 487  Download .88  Upload 6.97

The NOK 5G is in the same location as this morning.

Still waiting for Tech support to call.

Will be interesting to see the results tomorrow morning.  The article in PC mag gives some hope...but we’ll see.

BouseBill wrote:

SNR at 08:30 

Primary Signal  24dB

Secondary Signal 36db

Well, that is some great SNR! No problem there.

I read an article from PC Magazine four days ago, on the author’s experience with T Mobile Home Internet. I will link it at the bottom. This part, however, made me think that if T mobile has done what they can do on their end, a new gateway could be worth trying.

From the article linked below:

I really struggled with my first month of T-Mobile service. Google and Yahoo web pages would stall out. Video calls kept being interrupted by latency spikes. Sometimes the network would drop out entirely for minutes at a time. When I went looking for more information online, I found many similar complaints from T-Mobile Home Internet customers on Reddit.

I spent a week talking to support techs as they made network-side adjustments that didn't make any difference. Then T-Mobile swapped out my modem and everything got better, so I'm comfortable blaming the hardware rather than T-Mobile's network.

https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/t-mobile-home-internet

SNR at 08:30 

Primary Signal  24dB

Secondary Signal 36db

BouseBill wrote:

OK, this morning at 5:45 a.m.  on my 4G phone  with 4 bars showing on the NOK 5G

1.   Ping 34ms  Jitter 7ms  Download  24  Mbps   Upload 40.2Mbpb 
2.   Ping 39ms  Jitter 8ms  Download  28 Mbps   Upload  37.1 Mbps
3.   Ping 36ms  Jitter 14ms Download 25.9 Mbps Upload  40 Mbps

On the laptop   ping  59    Download 19.37   Upload  37.11

It’s Monday. Maybe your calls about your poor daytime download speed made them put out a service ticket and they’ll tweak or tune the equipment at the tower. They aren’t going to do that on a weekend. And they might not do it at all if you’re the only person in your area reporting an issue with very slow download speeds.

Your ping and jitter are both fine, quite good. That is not your problem. A person responded to a comment of mine telling me their ping was 800, and their connection is slow and not working right, not even loading a web page.. Well, that’s a problem. Any ping over 150 is bad, but 800 is a disaster.

A reading you haven’t given me can be found in the GUI at 192.168.12.1 and clicking on “Overview” on the left and the dropdown arrow for Primary signal and Secondary signal, and writing down what the SNR is on both.

SNR is Signal to Noise ratio. My signal to noise ratio tends to be around 10db, which isn’t very good. An SNR higher than 25db is desirable.

But since my SNR of 10db works fine for me, I suspect the real problems can happen when you have an SNR of more like 1db to 8db. The NOISE part of signal to noise is the erroneous background transmissions that are emitted from either other devices that are too far away for the signal to be intelligible, or by devices that are inadvertently creating interference on the same frequency.

So when your noise is too much, it interferes with the signal and it lowers your speed or gives you a bad connection.

OK, this morning at 5:45 a.m.  on my 4G phone  with 4 bars showing on the NOK 5G

1.   Ping 34ms  Jitter 7ms  Download  24  Mbps   Upload 40.2Mbpb 
2.   Ping 39ms  Jitter 8ms  Download  28 Mbps   Upload  37.1 Mbps
3.   Ping 36ms  Jitter 14ms Download 25.9 Mbps Upload  40 Mbps

On the laptop   ping  59    Download 19.37   Upload  37.11ing on the

I’ll try it again later this afternoon and we’ll what happens then :)

BouseBill wrote:

you are correct Tim LOL, I didn’t call them for the gateway movement, but the status of the cell tower.

My problem with working the unit outside is, being the Arizona desert the temps in the shade are over 100 degrees this time of year :) so outside is not an option.  Still working the situation on the inside a little every day.

It has been hot. That’s for sure. If you get nighttime temps that are like a low of 85, the A/C is probably running 24 hours a day. Air conditioning units, I assume even the whole-house ones, can sometimes interfere with a wifi signal if you are anywhere near it. To cover all bases, you might try turning that off for a few minutes and do a speed test.

Another way to test and see if it is anything wifi related instead of cell related, you could try to connect the gateway to your computer using the included CAT 5e cable to the ethernet port. That bypasses the wifi and gives you a direct connection to the modem. My new laptop doesn’t even have an ethernet port, because it’s a netbook.

But your whole house and property might be in a semi-dead zone. That can happen even close to a tower.It’s probably a good idea that you’re trying it for a few more days though, because what if they turned down the power on your tower, or are doing some maintenance, and it just happened to coincide with you getting your equipment, and it’ll be done on Monday.

you are correct Tim LOL, I didn’t call them for the gateway movement, but the status of the cell tower.

My problem with working the unit outside is, being the Arizona desert the temps in the shade are over 100 degrees this time of year :) so outside is not an option.  Still working the situation on the inside a little every day.

Niapegar wrote:

I had great speeds etc until recently.
Now I can only seem to get 4 MB/s.

No matter where I put the device it only seems to get 2-3 bars out of 5.

I’m walking distance from a 5G tower...

So a few questions first. What constituted great speeds for you, on average, and how many bars were you getting when you got those great speeds? For how long were you getting the great speed? Are we talking about this speed drop happening a few hours ago or days ago?

For how long have you been getting this horrible 4Mbps speed?

Have you ever looked at the GUI at 192.168.12.1 selecting Status at the left and clicking on the dropdown arrows to the right of Primary and Secondary, and seeing what bands you are on? If you are only on a Primary band, with no Secondary showing, then that accounts for your snail speed. I have had this snail speed happen to me. But I had it only at first, and for only 5% of the time. I haven’t had it in days and I figured out how to avoid it.

While there is a remote chance they are doing some upgrade on the tower, and put you on some lousy equipment, or shifted you to a tower that is farther away while doing this work, there is also a chance you are connecting to a dreaded 4G-only (Primary signal only) band, that just works terribly compared to your 5G connection.

Forget the signal strength for a moment. I get speeds of up to 190 and I am five miles from the tower, on a two-bar signal strength. To understand why I use a two-bar signal location for my gateway instead of a three, you’ll need to read some of my other posts, which you can find by clicking on my “badge,” the circle with the T in it to the left of this message.

By understanding what bands you are connecting to, using a tower mapper to make sure you aren’t being shifted to a tower farther away from you, you can at least learn a lot of information which might be helpful when contacting a T mobile service person.

If you have a 5G phone or know someone who has one and can try it at your house, then that goes a long way in knowing if it might be a gateway issue. But most of the time, from what I’ve read, it is not a faulty gateway, because the gateway people often get as a replacement will do the same thing.

Bill, you do not need technical support to move the gateway, or reboot it. I’m not getting the inch by inch moving, when you could just unplug the thing without touching any buttons on it, move it to the other side of the room and put it on the floor maybe, plug it back in, wait three minutes, and try another speed test. It’s that simple. It reconnects automatically. No passwords to enter, no icons to click on. You’ll need to close your browser or speed test app and restart it. That’s all.

The battery in the gateway has your configuration stored. And you can always put the gateway back where it was before if you, for example, get no connection when it is placed in another place. I just think you need to try it in at least one other very different place from the window, ignore the signal strength and just do a speed test.

Four or five bars of signal strength is excellent and can’t be your problem. I’m on two bars, and get speeds up to 190. I just went back and checked some posts on this board of people about the same distance as you from the tower on the less desirable 5G band n71 also, and they can get 100Mbps.

I’m just thinking if you’ve only tried the gateway in one place, the window, what if something freaky is going on there in that one specific spot, or that one specific line, if you draw an imaginary line that runs from the tower to your gateway? You’ll never know unless you get it out of the window and try it in another place many feet away but in the same room. It’s a long shot but worth trying.

Also, your upload speed is good. It’s almost as if the transmission from your gateway is working quite well, and the receiver, which receives the download is faulty. Or it could be a bad signal from the tower. Or it could be one of the things I mentioned in my novella-length post.

I tried my gateway in 30 different places. Even with 2 bars in all but a few places, I got terrible speeds in some places with two bars, and good speeds in other places with two bars. I ended up opting for a 2 bar location rather than the few places I get three bars, because of some other issues.