I've had 5G home internet service for about two months, after two weeks it started acting up. For about five times a day all my devices connected to the Arcadyan KVD21 gateway lose internet yet stay connected to wifi, I've tried everything! Do I need to replace my gateway? Very frustrating.
+8
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.
Does your gateway drop when you are not using the internet. When on computer and I stop to do something else it drops the internet after 10 to 15 minutes ??. If the tv is streaming it stays on. I think there is a timeout built into the system. I have old cell phone connected to my wifi plays music all day seems to keep internet connected.
My connection was generally good until yesterday. Tech support have not been able to help, in part because my calls (through a T-Mobile MNVO keep getting dropped). To me this suggests problems with the tower--but what do I know? One tech asked me to do a factory reset (no luck). Another tech on a subsequent call asked for my IMEI and said that they did something, though it didn’t work either. I just tested my Up/Down on OOKlA 18 Mbps down and 24 Mbps up.
I am in the San Fernando Valley, so overheating could be an issue, but the problem began in the evening and when I had WiFi turned off via script.
I got a 120 MM fan that has rubber feet for a stand, and then used hot glue to stick the modem to it. (Look up Marame 120mm 5v USB Powered Fan with Speed Controller on Amazon for something similar) they’re out of stock on the one I bought two years ago). And I got a USB-A to C adapter and plugged it into the back of my trashcan for power. Still working after two years, can turn it from low to high on a hot day, still quiet on medium or low. And I don’t need an extra power cable. Oh, and my trashcan hasn’t crashed that I know of anymore two times I can remember, I often get 45+ days of uptime on the thing before dns resolving starts to slow down.
For what it’s worth, I’ve had the newer SAG FAST5688W gateway for about 2 months now and it is having the same drop issues, so I would doubt the issue is with the various gateways. The longest connection sustained so far has been a little over 2 days, and the worst has been multiple reboots per day. That said, when the service connects, I do usually get over 50Mb throughput (it’s using the N71 band). Being in rural Virginia, this is great for us.
To help make the constant rebooting less aggravating, I did see in another thread a device called Keep Connect - $50 on Amazon. Installed it yesterday and it has already automatically rebooted the device once, so now I don’t have to manually intervene. We’ll see - gateway has now been up 16h 38m 19s.
It’s unfortunate that T-Mobile can’t/won’t fix their software to do what the Keep Connect device does - automatically detect connection failure and restore it. Funny how you never have to reboot your phone.
It looks like the stores are no longer stocking Nokia 5g gateway. I spoke with another representative and said the tower is going to get a capacity upgrade 4Q2022. There is a capacity issue at the tower at the moment.
According to my Sagecom Gateway, I only have access to the N71 band (low band low capacity) connection.
I assume if and whey they upgrade, Tmo will add the N41 band (mid band higher capacity). Is everyone experiencing the frequent drops only connecting to the N71 5G band?
We tried the 5G TMobile Internet for a month free trial in August 2023. We got 3 bars which apparently is “good”, and for our use was fine, we have 1 streaming device, 2 computers 2 phones, don’t stream the world all day, do need reliable service though for Zooms, etc.
The first month was great, so we dumped our previous internet provider, who wanted to increase our rates yet again, promising shiny more bigger better faster bandwidth than we would ever use. Little did we know.
Now its November, and for the last 3 weeks our internet service has been slowly getting worse, to the extent where the connection drops constantly, several times an hour, which has disrupted work zoom calls, and daily convenience. It has dropped twice while typing this reply.
Signal is down to 2 bars no matter where we place the gateway. We feel we have been conned by a bait and switch scheme, and are being used by TMobile as guinea pigs, paying for a substandard service while we pay for their 5G upgrades.
Its not going to continue like this. We told TMobile customer service we wont pay for substandard service, and we would be going back to our previous provider, despite the additional cost, because at least we received what we paid for.
All of these obscene profit making tech companies treat customers like they’re stupid. Most people don’t care, they just pay through the nose, ignorant of the grift. We work in tech, I’m calling on 5G until these companies step up and fulfill the hyped claims. My iphone doesn’t even register 5G most of the time and we live in Los Angeles
Still an issue. Like most here I had decent internet for months, and now for about the last month it just drops randomly. Usually not for long, but consistently at least once an hour some times more. It’s not “throttling” as I work most the day and honestly barely use my home internet that much, why I tried to get the cheapest plan I could with this.
As others have said I guess it’s just too many people in my area buying the plan, either for home internet or phones. There are a lot of apartments in my area, so a lot of people around a small area. Though I will say there are 3 towers within sight of each other in my area, so it’s pretty sad they are still over loaded, and Tmobile keeps selling more plans.
Support is nice, but generally unhelpful. You get told to turn it on and off, factory reset. They do a little “test” on their end, say every thing is fine and shrug. It’s almost always considered “your fault” some how, despite the gateway being in the same location for a year or more, it’s now suddenly a bad spot. It is also winter in my area, I highly doubt it’s over heating all the sudden when it worked fine in the summer where it was 90 degree’s or more in my room.
I just almost wish it was slow speeds, as I said I don’t use it for much. But the dropped connections really mess with even just browsing web pages and they constantly fail to load. Let alone watching movies or anything like that.
I had finally had enough getting 5-6 keep connect resets a day, Tech support remotely checked out everything as ok, we did a factory reset didn't help so went into the store to return in their words the "silver garbage can" and replace it with the Sagemcom Fast 5688W Gateway. Signal strength was much better and no more keep connect resets. Problem solved.
My impression is that cellphone data does trump home internet data, and that may explain why, at least here, the drop outs mainly seem to occur during rush hours. Still very annoying and IMO this service is only usable for non-critical apps or as a backup, which is how I use it here when my business-class Comcast goes on the fritz.
Like so many others, same situation. TM just doesn’t care. Just cross your fingers you get another option for internet access soon, or bite the bullet and pay for Starlink if there is nothing else. Here are my stats today. They insist nothing is wrong….
Please read and respond if the link helps you.
I did my homework before I even decided to get the home internet.. i always have a computer fan placed under it running 24/7.. so unfortunately this isn't a case of overheating.
+8
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 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.
+8
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.
I live in a tourist area where the summertime we get an influx of people. Same problem occurs. Drops all the time. First thing in morning works fine till people start getting up and using internet. Then it starts. I think the bandwidth just gets ate up causing the drop lines. T-mobile needs to put more towers out.
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.
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.
Too bad the “Gateway” modem can’t be restarted and back on line without physically unplugging and rebooting it. Does help where no one’s available?
Started happening for me on the Nokia after their latest “stability” update. Does T-Mobile actually have proper engineers that know how to test? The trash 1.2204.01.0101 update ruined my connection and made my time-consuming antenna installation useless. It now seems to connect to the tower with the worst signal. Really, you want to connect to a tower with a -119 RSSI / -2 SNR instead of the one that I was connecting to before with a -97 RSSI / 15 SNR. Idiots.
Awful company run by incompetents. Just about ready to jump ship to Starlink. Haven’t heard stories with this degree of absurdity from their customers.
And I absolutely hate the gaslighting of customers with tower upgrade nonsense. I’ve completely given up on contacting customer support because I already know what they are going to say.
This happens. I started off with Metro and went to T-Mobile but all together 8 months. Unfortunately, this will happen due to the fact that software engineers are working remotely to keep their towers in check. I will get what you experiencing 1 or 2 days every 2-3 weeks and sometimes the episode will last under an hour or longer. I’m still happy with the move I made. It still beats my former cable provider.
May have found a solution!, Forgive me for not knowing the technical terms. I too have experienced the speed and dropped connection. Worked great for first week or two, then 200 mbps would go to 3.0 mbps. My signal is good to very good.
Today I moved the unit to the side of the house the tower is on knowing that I couldn’t receive a signal to the other side of the house, but then I remembered I had installed a Unifi access point about a year ago to connect to my Spectrum service. Fired it up and wow! Speed is 240mbps down, but then I went back to the unit and my phone lost the access point signal and connected direct to the T-Mobile unit. Speed test was 25 mbps. Obviously the problem is the WiFi inside of the unit. Try connecting to the Lan connection!
Also the signal strength is unchanged from where the unit was originally located.
I am having the same trouble-do you think the transition to 5G in rural areas is a factor?
My internet wifi tmobil home es basura .Ya que no tengo lo que ellos dicen que es de 500-mbps.Y lo que tengo es download 69-Mbps.y de Upload es de 20.87Mbps.Es solamente es una Mafia para conseguir clientes.No han resolvido el problema de la senal del sistema.Wifi tmobil home internet.Ate--Tito cuevas de New York
The problem is that this is a wireless connection and not a normal land connection like fiber optics. It all lies in the security protocol where they are using a dynamic IP address which assigned to you by your internet service provider (T-Mobile) and is subject to change. This means that your IP address can and will change each time you connect to the internet, or while you are connected which causes the issue. This makes it a bit harder for criminal hackers to monitor your online habits. Until they switch over to a static IP this issue will continue to happen. Nothing you do on your end will solve the problem as you will see by reading the other posts.
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.
It looks like the stores are no longer stocking Nokia 5g gateway. I spoke with another representative and said the tower is going to get a capacity upgrade 4Q2022. There is a capacity issue at the tower at the moment.
According to my Sagecom Gateway, I only have access to the N71 band (low band low capacity) connection.
I assume if and whey they upgrade, Tmo will add the N41 band (mid band higher capacity). Is everyone experiencing the frequent drops only connecting to the N71 5G band?
Same issue on N41.
Update 2/23/23: installed a Keep Connect 1/19/23. Since then 16 resets. Of those 1 DNS failure, 2 TCP/TLS connection failures and the rest Unknown loss of internet. Resets have been at random times day and night. At least now we don't have to manually reset the gateway and therefore don't notice it.
How to find which band we are connected to on our modem? “Thanks.”
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