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5G home internet keeps dropping

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iTinkeralot
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Right now the RSRP on the n71 is reported at -79 dBm, which is about the best I have seen it. The T-Mobile engineers upgraded the tower on Monday and since then mine has been working well.  With a little change in the exposure of the 5G antenna it really made a nice difference here. I found the router spin a little at a time to be beneficial. I still would like to have an external MIMO antenna.

iTinkeralot
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I commonly have 15 devices reported as connected to this GW and have had around 23-24 reported when I was setting up additional clients. I can't say I have seen significant heat for sure. This one is hardware version 3TG00739AAAA. I don’t know if maybe it is a hardware revision that might be responsible for the behavior maybe. I have never seen this one report an alarm for over temp. I even put it out on the back porch in 88 degree weather for hours and it ran warmer but did not report any issue with over heating. It was warmer than what I have seen it but it continued to run. I see no evidence of a fan but there are two pretty good sized heat sinks on the components. Too bad the HTML software does not have any reporting for temperature. The software seems to be missing many necessary troubleshooting features currently.

T
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I’m having a problem with T-Mobile 5g home internet that has not been resolved despite many calls in to the help line.  I’ve had T-Mobile 5g home internet for almost a month now, and the short version is that every so often the gateway drops the network.  When I say “drop the network,” I mean to say it throws everything off of the Wifi that it’s broadcasting, and anything plugged in via ethernet says “no network found.  (To elaborate this point, cell phones switch to cellular data because wifi is gone for them, and computers hardwired into the gateway think that they are no longer plugged into anything.)  Turning off the gateway and turning it back on resolves the issue, but doesn’t prevent it from happening again.  Whatever is happening doesn’t seem to affect our connection speed/strength when the gateway IS providing signal to devices in the home, but due to the nature of our work, we need a connection that won’t just disconnect randomly.  

 

To address this, T-mobile has so far run a bunch of tests on their end, and seem to have ruled out a tower issue (which makes sense, as the tower shouldn’t have anything to do with whether or not the devices on the gateway’s wifi or ethernet connection get thrown off of the network.)  They’ve sent me a replacement gateway, which is experiencing the exact same problem (3 times in the last 36 hours, in fact).   I’ve noticed that the device gets pretty warm, so I set up a computer case fan as a cooler to force air through the device, thinking that perhaps it’s an issue with the device overheating.  However, while the gateway is notably cooler than it was without the fan, it has not prevented the issue from persisting.  The last thing that I can think to do (and my most recent attempt at resolving this issue) is to plug a router into the gateway via ethernet, and allow the router to handle the wifi/connections w/ devices in the house, and to disable wifi from the gateway all together.  Maybe the gateway is simply too overburdened with connections and gets somehow overwhelmed and shuts down, and having the router handle the “heavy lifting” of taking care of all of the individual device connections will resolve it?  I don’t have a great deal of faith that this will fix the issue (as the gateway also kicks ethernet things off of the network when it experiences this problem), but I’m running out of options/ideas of what to do in order to just get a stable, constant internet service.   

 

Is anybody else having this issue, has anybody resolved this issue, or does anybody have any advice or feedback regarding how I might get this resolved so that I can get back to having stable internet?

I am having the same issue and I'm glad I am not alone. 

N

4 days with the T-Mobile 5G Home Internet router, with about 5 hours uptime. Initial setup went smooth added about 5 devices to test.  I moved the device to another location and fine for a couple hour and everything disconnected .

What i noticed was that the battery was 100% charged when it disconnected, after reboot the device came back on says was connected, but was not.   Reboot several times same issue (connected but not). No w-fi broadcast or direct router to PC connection working.

Overnight left router on discharged to 85%. Next afternoon. Turn off for 1 hour, reboot same issue.  and once plugged in to power, the battery did not show a charging status.

Discharged the battery down to 77%, powered back up and got a message as in the initial setup. The battery status showed charging and was able to connect with direct connection to PC. My setup rename was still there and was able to connect my other device to WiFi.

Once the battery charge status hit 100% everything disconnected once again.

 

B

I was so relieved (and bummed) to do a Google search and find this forum and verify that I'm not the only one having the gateway drop issue after a few days. Yes, turning off power for about 2 minutes and then turning it back on and waiting another 5 to 10 minutes before it fully connects again is not an acceptable "solution".

i permanently work from home now and use this for connecting to a VPN and I'm very successful. The only time this thing seems to drop is within 3 to 4 days and it's usually between 8pm to 9pm (EST) at night. I'm on day 7 of my 14-day "trial" before it officially gets billed to my account, and I'm thinking very strongly this isn't going to make it past the 8th day (tomorrow) as I may be returning it and have to bite my tongue and continue with crappy Spectrum. I strongly agree with @freckle527 that us consumers should not have to go through this song and dance to STAY connected. On the other hand my 5G T-Mobile service has been impeccable for my OnePlus Nord 200 that is basically a "free" phone (bill credits). I think they were so eager to roll this out to America they didn't seriously do enough thorough QA before rolling out this "trash can". At least that's what I'm noticing.

F
Userlevel 1

Reading through this thread and having the same issue with Trashcan disconnecting daily there is only one resolution that worked for me…. Cancel service and stay as far away from T-Mobile as far as I can.  Terrible service, robotic responses and sales agents that flat out lie.  Toss this experience as lesson learned. T-Mobile sucks!

 

If a customer has to work this hard to stay connected, then the company should pay them, not the other way around.

T

Update: I can now confirm that if I leave the trashcan off for ~5 minutes, the netgear does not need to be powered off during trashcan’s startup. 

F
Userlevel 2
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This is more of a poor device design then anything else. Others have noted the same thing that T-Mobile needs to design a better router with better hardware and more efficient software. This is a poor design of a router that T-Mobile rushed out the door. The FCC should hear about this company and how they refuse to address the problems they constantly keep having.

C

If you can't get any help from T-Mobile's support staff, take your complaint to the FCC (see my signature for a link to their complaint department). If the FCC accepts it, they'll forward your complaint to T-Mobile who has to respond to your issues. I'm still in the middle of my own complaint without much change in T-Mobile's behavior, but it did give me a chance to speak with someone from T-Mobile's Office of the President. Still waiting to see the results of my pestering, but if they think they're going to blow me off that easy, they're underestimating the stubbornness of a pissed off consumer, haha. 

Love this idea of the FCC!

T

I also have the black trashcan and can confirm ~daily disconnects. 

Overheat may be an issue, but I can report other factors that don’t seem to be heat related:

(FYI, I used 192.168.12.1 to identify issues below)

After a disconnect, warm reboots do not solve the issue. Disconnecting power for ~3 minutes (even though trashcan has “partial” battery backup, this seems sufficient) allows it to reconnect cellular. However, it does not reconnect its secondary connection unless I first turn off my netgear WiFi router (it’s about 10 feet away) while I reboot the trashcan. 

(Also, I do not see a way to disable WiFi completely on the trashcan. Best I can do is reset WiFi channels to “auto” and reduce their power transmission to 12%. )

On power up, trashcan then reconnects primary and secondary connections (channels b2 and n41 respectively) and speeds and ping are excellent (~180 down, ~25 up, 15 ping). Approx 2-3 bars, mostly 2 bars. Then I can restart the netgear and all is good.
 

Then, wait ~1 day, disconnect occurs, rinse and repeat.

(One reason I don’t think my issues are heat related is because I put the trashcan on the roof (shaded by a cardboard box) and it performed well on a 90* day with no disconnects and 50gb of download). 

F
Userlevel 2
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@jtheiss Thank you for the reply. I’ve started a new thread to collect information from users like us who have experienced degradation after some period of operation. If you’d care to participate it can be found here:

 

FJ
J
Userlevel 5
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@jtheiss - I’m curious to know if both the gateways behaved identically. That is, were you running the cooling fan on both of them? Same exact failure mode, etc? Even if not, there are enough variables in any design that if the problem is with a voltage regulator, for example, many other components “could” be affected differently due to varying component sensitivities to low voltage conditions. This could lead to a difference in failure modes in something as complex as a combination gateway / wireless router. The fact that a Tech Support person offered the fan solution and was surprised that it didn’t fix the problem is significant. I’ve worked in companies where products have known and fixable design issues and management decided to ignore the issue after a cost / benefit analysis. And of course we’ve all heard the horror stories about the auto industry. Thanks for your input.

FJ

Sorry, I missed this message and never responded.  So, the first and second gateways behaved similarly, yes.  I didn’t think about cooling when I had the first Gateway, so it went back without testing for airflow.  Both would work great (speeds reaching 215 down and 35 up) until they didn’t, failing in the same way.  Only after the second one ran for 6 days w/o problems and then faced the exact same issue as the first did it occur to me that heat might be a problem, as the odds of being sent two gateways with the exact same problem were pretty slim unless it was a design issue that all units of that type would be plagued with.

M

Clearly not a tower issue.  After several calls to Asian tech support, using the direct number they gave me because the 611 IVR doesn’t understand “home internet support”, when the latest agent continued questioning my ability to wire an effective home network, he finally got the picture when I wired my laptop directly to the trash can and received the same dismal Speedtest that the iPad confirmed wirelessly, then disconnecting iPhone 7 from WiFi and Speedtest next to the trash can yielding >150Mbps down.  My wired Bravia with severely pixelated and buffering YouTube TV was clearly not a sufficient indicator.

F
Userlevel 2
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@jtheiss I like your suggestion that we document our experiences on one thread in as detailed a way as possible. One idea would be for users using additional airflow to record the mean time from reboot to failure both with and without such airflow. I'm convinced its a heat issue, but know from experience that trying to get action on this through bottom tier tech support in Mexico is futile. Nothing speaks louder than hard data, and the possibility of exposure through a major publication. I intend to make this case to T-Mob management directly, and it will be very helpful to have a user group compiling this data to point to. Thank you for your efforts.

FJ
J
Userlevel 5
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Yeah, I suspect that having tons of devices hooked up will make it work harder (and potentially get hotter), but in the end for me I disabled wifi all together and had two Ethernet cables connected to my router and smart things hub respectively, so connection wise it was pretty unburdened. Some people have discussed moving it downstairs or on top of an AC vent. I would highly recommend starting to take notes about when the gateway fails, when you tried different interventions and so forth. While well meaning, I dont get the sense that the folks at Tmobile can do much besides check the connection on their end and make the same suggestions you're already getting. Seems like the people that have found success have done so by figuring out how to keep the unit cool. 

 

On that note, I wonder if placing it on a timed switch to manually cut the power every overnight would also help, as it would give it 6-8 hours daily to just cool off, but in my opinion the customer shouldn't have to work so hard around a poorly designed product. 

N
Userlevel 1

I’m having a problem with T-Mobile 5g home internet that has not been resolved despite many calls in to the help line.  I’ve had T-Mobile 5g home internet for almost a month now, and the short version is that every so often the gateway drops the network.  When I say “drop the network,” I mean to say it throws everything off of the Wifi that it’s broadcasting, and anything plugged in via ethernet says “no network found.  (To elaborate this point, cell phones switch to cellular data because wifi is gone for them, and computers hardwired into the gateway think that they are no longer plugged into anything.)  Turning off the gateway and turning it back on resolves the issue, but doesn’t prevent it from happening again.  Whatever is happening doesn’t seem to affect our connection speed/strength when the gateway IS providing signal to devices in the home, but due to the nature of our work, we need a connection that won’t just disconnect randomly.  

 

To address this, T-mobile has so far run a bunch of tests on their end, and seem to have ruled out a tower issue (which makes sense, as the tower shouldn’t have anything to do with whether or not the devices on the gateway’s wifi or ethernet connection get thrown off of the network.)  They’ve sent me a replacement gateway, which is experiencing the exact same problem (3 times in the last 36 hours, in fact).   I’ve noticed that the device gets pretty warm, so I set up a computer case fan as a cooler to force air through the device, thinking that perhaps it’s an issue with the device overheating.  However, while the gateway is notably cooler than it was without the fan, it has not prevented the issue from persisting.  The last thing that I can think to do (and my most recent attempt at resolving this issue) is to plug a router into the gateway via ethernet, and allow the router to handle the wifi/connections w/ devices in the house, and to disable wifi from the gateway all together.  Maybe the gateway is simply too overburdened with connections and gets somehow overwhelmed and shuts down, and having the router handle the “heavy lifting” of taking care of all of the individual device connections will resolve it?  I don’t have a great deal of faith that this will fix the issue (as the gateway also kicks ethernet things off of the network when it experiences this problem), but I’m running out of options/ideas of what to do in order to just get a stable, constant internet service.   

 

Is anybody else having this issue, has anybody resolved this issue, or does anybody have any advice or feedback regarding how I might get this resolved so that I can get back to having stable internet?

I’m having the same issue. I thought it was because we had too many devices (Xbox, firestick, 3 iPhones). I plan to contact T-Mobile tomorrow. 

F
Userlevel 2
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@jtheiss - I’m curious to know if both the gateways behaved identically. That is, were you running the cooling fan on both of them? Same exact failure mode, etc? Even if not, there are enough variables in any design that if the problem is with a voltage regulator, for example, many other components “could” be affected differently due to varying component sensitivities to low voltage conditions. This could lead to a difference in failure modes in something as complex as a combination gateway / wireless router. The fact that a Tech Support person offered the fan solution and was surprised that it didn’t fix the problem is significant. I’ve worked in companies where products have known and fixable design issues and management decided to ignore the issue after a cost / benefit analysis. And of course we’ve all heard the horror stories about the auto industry. Thanks for your input.

FJ

FJ
J
Userlevel 5
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Yeah, I still suspect it’s possible the issue was heat related.  The one person I talked to at Tmobile that was most helpful (“Haley”) suggested that putting a fan on it is her #1 suggestion, and was surprised when my setup w/ fan didn’t resolve the issue.  My gateway (well, both as I was sent a replacement within the first couple of weeks) was out of direct sunlight, sitting in a 3d printed stand which really forced air through it w/ an attached PC case fan constantly on high, and the issue still persisted with complete loss of function multiple times a day.  Despite the fan, I could still feel a small amount of constant heat coming off of the top of the unit, so I question what kind of poor design is happening as no modem/router/cell phone I’ve ever had has shut down due to heat quite like that… I really question if actually COOLING the unit (ie, colder than ambient air) is the only way to make it viable due to the design, or putting it in a basement where air is naturally cooler (but signal would be poorer).   For me however, I ended up sending it back and signing up with a competing ISP.  I hope Tmobile gets their stuff together, as I’d love for some healthy competition to show up in neighborhoods without any other options!

F
Userlevel 2
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I think it's a thermal issue, and that's likely why T-Mob hasn't fixed it. My gateway had required a reboot almost daily. It behaved similarly to other accounts here in that my connection speed would drop to almost nothing (say 400kbps down) which to a person used to over 50mbps would look like a hard crash, but I haven't seen that yet. My best speed is 60mbps down and I'm delighted if I can sustain 10. Per speedtest, when the problem manifests I see a slight increase in latency but a massive increase in packet jitter, sometimes approaching a full second. Rebooting the gateway clears this condition. Now, thanks to a couple of astute posts here, I decided to test the heat theory. Placing a hand over the unit during normal operation I didn't detect much heat coming out, but when I placed it over an A/C duct directly beneath the sill it had been on, I felt a gush of almost hot air come out the top. This is extremely suspicious and tells me that the convective cooling the EE's had counted on isnt happening.  My gateway hasnt required a reset since i moved it to the top of that a/c vent 4 days ago. There's probably a good reason the installation manual mentions not placing the gateway in direct sunlight and I wonder if the manual's been edited in that regard. I hope others here will replicate and report the heat test. Perhaps then T-Mob will stop stonewalling this issue.

FJ
J
Userlevel 5
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Well, it's now disconnected for the 3rd time today, which is a record. I have a 12v computer case fan that's running 24/7 in attempt to cool the device, and I can't imagine trying to intentionally lower the speed of the modem to try to get it to cooperate. As it is, we don't do online gaming or 4k streaming, so it's not like we're even really pushing it to perform. I guess T-Mobile 5g isn't quite ready to roll out in our area, which is very unfortunate as our area is otherwise ruled by a monopoly by spectrum. 

jlillard
Userlevel 4
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It sounds like you’re getting a 5G signal which might mean your device is running even hotter...especially if the signal is not the best.  Someone linked to this YouTuber before but he’s got a lot of great videos on this device.  This one shows that adding some weather stripping can cool the device even more.

There are several other videos that cover getting a better signal.  I remember him saying that some people get a better signal with the device on its side.  What I’m remembering for your scenario is that in one video I believe he talked about covering the device with aluminum foil in order to block your device from connecting to a particular tower or signal.  I’m wondering if you could use that technique to block the 5G signal and stick with a 4G signal instead.

J
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@jlillard it fluctuates. Anywhere between 60 and 220 down, and 8 and 35 up.

jlillard
Userlevel 4
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@jtheiss Forgive me if I missed it but what does a speed test show when it’s working?

J
Userlevel 5
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So after another hour and 45 minutes on the phone, it was another “turn it off and back on,” more promises that they’re going to fix it right away, and yet another mention that the engineering team should get back to me about it very soon.  It’s pretty obvious that they don’t really know what the problem is, and may not be capable to fix it at this time.  I suspect I’ll have to pursue another ISP if I want stable internet.

R
Userlevel 1

I'm having the same problem.  The first month we had no issues.  We had great service and connection quality.  For the last two weeks we have had a lot of problems without changing anything.  Throughout the day we reset it the unit more than hourly.  Our phones have great signal but the internet unit drops out.  It's very disrupting and if it persists, we will need to change providers.  We will get service from the provider that give us good service.

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