Question

Google Assistant and Gateway internet

  • 28 February 2021
  • 5 replies
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Curious on why my tmobile home internet gateway won't connect my Google assistant/Home devices. Is it because of competition with Google Fi. I've noticed when it connects to the Google server upload speeds just go to 0 like it is blocking me to send data packets. Even tried getting on the Google Fi website and the internet did not want to let me in. So I turn off wifi on my phone and used data to get on the same site and instantly let's me in. A friend has T-mobile home internet and Amazon's Alexa and says it works fine.I tried testing the home internet with my Samsung TV plus service and said to check network connection. Ran the speed test and everything's fine until i try connecting to Samsung TV then everything drops. I thinking because  t-mobile wants you to get TVision. Anybody else notice or have this issue? What can be done so I can connect my Google home devices? 


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maybe this is due to google trying to use their own dns instead of the t-mobile provided one, if t-mobile is trying to block other dns they didn’t think this through, they better fire the guy stat, come out, and come clean

 

I really hope that T-Mobile resolves this or at the very least allow us to have more advanced options in the gateway WUI. Is there a way to link this thread with a representative in order for T-Mobile to give their take on this and what they are doing to resolve this?

Shortly after the .0168 firmware update all of my Google Home devices disconnected. It was like they were stuck in a boot loop. Did all the usual troubleshooting. Finally called T-Mobile and they sent a replacement gateway with .0143 installed. Everything works as expected. The refurb gateway did not update to .0168. I assume T-Mobile pulled it?

maybe this is due to google trying to use their own dns instead of the t-mobile provided one, if t-mobile is trying to block other dns they didn’t think this through, they better fire the guy stat, come out, and come clean

 

I can’t tell you how thrilled I am having discovered this post! I have lived in two countries and I’m an old geezer. With the benefit of time I have used a variety of technologies: dialup, ISDN, DSL, Fiber, Microwave, Cable and now 5G. I have never before had an ISP whose system punished me when I used a third party DNS. I was beginning to think that the gateway had a hardware latency problem communicating over the ethernet out to my own router. I was just about ready to cancel this service and go back to cable. (frown)

Things were dreadful. I too was having all kinds of intermittent and patchy problems with a variety of Google Assistant based speakers throughout our home. I would request a web page and would be told that I should check my internet connection. (Even on my desktop with an ethernet connection to my router.) A refresh to the web page or a duplicate voice request to the Google Assistant speaker would yield the expected results.

I set my own router to automatically accept DNS and-- sure enough-- things seem to be a lot more stable. It’s only been an hour (and early when bandwidth is at its best in my area). Fingers crossed.

Undoubtedly everyone reading this has run the Speedtest app and seen ping times that are somewhat higher than they’ve experienced with other ISPs. I chalked that up to the wireless technology we’re riding on. My guess is that using a third party DNS server bogs things down enough to result in the kind of latency problems we’re describing.

I cannot be sure whether my latency problems were compounded by slowdowns on Google’s backend yesterday. But speakers were going brain dead with a variety of error messages. I’ve been on the T-Mobile service for about a week and yesterday was the worst. Before that I would periodically have to query the speakers a second time to get results. It was as if it was an old person with an earhorn (look it up) saying “what’s that you’re saying? could you repeat that?”

I the pre-dusk hours I just ran around the house querying the speakers. They seem to have discovered the fountain of youth.

By the way my gateway is running 1.2003.03.0168 firmware.

I really hope that T-Mobile resolves this or at the very least allow us to have more advanced options in the gateway WUI. Is there a way to link this thread with a representative in order for T-Mobile to give their take on this and what they are doing to resolve this?

Has TMobile fixed this? I'll open a trouble ticket and reference these threads. Thanks!

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