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Internet connetion constantly dropping

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I just signed up for the Home Internet this week and everything installed fine and I tought it was working.  My set up is the Arcadyan KVD21 5G gateway with a Nest Wifi mesh system.  I connected the Nest wifi to the gateway so I would not have to set up every device in my house.  The internet connection on the Nest Wifi will not stay on, it constantly drops and I am getting really frustrated with this.  I had high hopes I could finally get speeds at my house higher than 25Mbps and when it works, I do (150+).  What good is home internet if the connection constantly drops?

Furthermore, they promote you get a year of Paramount+, which I already have through my phone service.  I can’t even watch Paramount+ when I do have a connection cause it tells me I am using a VPN, which I am not.

Might be time to just bite the bullet and send this back as it seems it is not ready for prime time.

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Best answer by kfite13 27 April 2022, 21:30

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T
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My set up is the Arcadyan KVD21 5G gateway with a Nest Wifi mesh system.  I connected the Nest wifi to the gateway so I would not have to set up every device in my house.  The internet connection on the Nest Wifi will not stay on, it constantly drops and I am getting really frustrated with this.

 

If your gateway itself is not dropping internet, then your Nest is probably at fault.

 

Realize that the gateway does not have true pass-through or bridge mode, and that double NAT and DHCP errors can occur.

K
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It’s 2022, this should not be an issue at all.  I am extremely disappointed in the lack of settings in the gateway.  

M

Here is what I would do. Move your tmobile arcadyan centrally to your house and directly connect with tmobile wifi. Disable or turn off, unplug nest wifi. See if that solves your disconnection issues. If you are able to watch paramount without any issues with directly connected to tmobile home internet router/gateway then nest is the issue. If not, then return tmobile device.

K
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Here is what I would do. Move your tmobile arcadyan centrally to your house and directly connect with tmobile wifi. Disable or turn off, unplug nest wifi. See if that solves your disconnection issues. If you are able to watch paramount without any issues with directly connected to tmobile home internet router/gateway then nest is the issue. If not, then return tmobile device.

Again, still should not be an issue.  Defeats the whole purpose of already having my mesh system set up. Not to mention the time it will take to reconnect every single smarthome device and other items I have (probably 40).  Also, that would drasitically reduce the reach of my wifi.  I have a basement, so pretty sure it’s not gonna suit my needs when it comes to wifi range doing it this way.

iTinkeralot
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Per Lifewire:

Mesh networks are meant to replace your current router, but you can use them with existing routers if you need to. It's generally recommended you remove your existing router when installing a mesh network. Using a router with a mesh network will disable some of that network's features.

If you can put it into bridge mode to leverage the T-Mobile GW you may miss some of the features you depend upon so research in advance before you go deep. 

Another part of the equation is you would want to disable the wireless radios upon the Arcadyan router so reviewing Nater Tater’s YouTube video is a must unless you are software savvy. The Nater Tater video provides the information on how to turn the T-Mobile Arcadyan router’s WIFI off to prevent conflicts with signals. It is not hard to do but is MORE effort than with the Nokia gateway due to the lack of control via the management interface GUI. 

If you do go there do your homework and determine if it is for sure the solution you want. If your gateway is connecting to n41 or n71 on 5G that is a good starting point to KNOW. From the description of your speeds so far I would guess you are seeing an n71 signal. If it is a nice stable signal and you have good solid signaling from the tower it would be worth working on it. If you are seeing a weak signal and there are obstructions between you and the tower where the signal source is then you need to evaluate things carefully. You can get the signal information out of the Arcadyan router with the commands that Nater Tater provides in his video. Once you KNOW more about your signal then you can make a better decision about what path you want to take.

iTinkeralot
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I agree 100% with MAMU that you need to isolate where the source of the drops are. If you see signal loss but the cellular still shows connectivity then it could well be due to a local wireless conflict. If you run the T-Mobile gateway and its wireless for a period of time and see stability without the Nest mesh then you have a good datapoint. If you then add the mesh and have double NAT and do not put the mesh router into bridge mode then expect multi-media delivery to be a possible issue. The problems with double NAT solutions are known and there are plenty of hits to be found on the internet regarding the topic. Cellular internet delivery via a router as such is a little more effort than a hard line connection to the ISP. In some cases it is great or just fine. In others not so much. It all depends upon location and exposure to a solid cellular signaling. In troubleshooting the drops to get community help post more specifics as to activity engagement and be specific about the types of traffic that drop. Post data and specifics and then community users will be able to respond with more helpful responses.

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Ok, seems it is not a problem with my Nest Wifi.  I tried turning the wifi off with the instructions from Nater Tater (actually found it before your reply 😁)  and that didn’t really fix anything.  Turned the wifi back on and connnected a couple devices to the gateway.  My PC is hardwired to the gateway and I had to try 4 times to load one webpage.  My Roku I connected wirelessly and it took me several attempts to get a baseball game on the MLB.TV app to play, kept saying I newtork error or I had no connetion.  Based on these results, I can almost certianly say it is the gateway itself and not my Nest Wifi.  Getting the signal info and it stays pretty much identical to this even when my devices are saying they is no connection.

"5g": {      "bands": [        "n71"      ],      "bars": 5.0,      "cid": 0,      "gNBID": 0,      "rsrp": -78,      "rsrq": -5,      "rssi": -72,      "sinr": 10

Any thoughts?

iTinkeralot
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"rsrp": -78, ← This is in the excellent range for strength    "rsrq": -5, ← This is also in the excellent range     "rssi": -72, ← Power strength indicator, I dont have a table for this.     "sinr": 10 ← This is in the medium range, still not bad.

The SINR relates to signal to noise ratio so a value say >=20 db is excellent. If your positioning of the router/gateway can improve upon the SINR value greater than 10 db that would be good but this might be hard to do without an external antenna. If there are trees, hills, buildings, trains, power lines, etc.. between you and the tower signal or other towers about the noise may be hard to improve upon. with an external antenna at times, given topology and tower location in relation to external sources the SINR can be improved upon by using the house to shield the unwanted noise to get a cleaner signal from the tower. More money to do that. With an n71 signal a 2X2 MIMO external antenna from say Waveform.com could make a difference. If you have a cleaner signal you will have better performance. Adding an external antenna is possible, see Nater Tater’s video on this as well. Expect to be in the ~$350 range for making that happen with a 2X2 MIMO antenna and lightning arrestors and well the cabling required. 

You can take the same measurements from the router after repositioning and see if there are improvements to the signal to noise ratio value. If the RSRP drops a little but the SINR is up a bit you could still see some improvement to performance. The reason is that when there is packet loss then there are retransmissions so things take longer for a session to complete due to the wait for damaged packets to be retransmitted.

 

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Ok, Finally had time to find the spot in the house with the best signal.  I spent an hour walking around with my phone looking for the spot with the best SINR value and wierdly enough, it was not next to a window, it was against a wall in my bedroom.  

5g": {      "bands": [        "n71"      ],      "bars": 5.0,      "cid": 0,      "gNBID": 0,      "rsrp": -69,      "rsrq": -5,      "rssi": -64,      "sinr": 13

So that is what I came up with, it fluctuates a little but seems more stable.  Still get a drop here and there, but it’s much better.  Also played around with streaming devices for my TV and found that the Roku just doesn’t want to work well, even with the better signal.  My Chromecast with Google TV works the best and I can get Parmaount+ working by connecting my Wireguard VPN oddly enough.

iTinkeralot
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When I first positioned my Nokia and received the best signal in our upstairs kitchen window I also found a curious behavior where IN the window was not as good as what one would assume to be a lesser placement in relation to the tower. My theory on the behavior was reflection of the signal off the opposing cabinet. It made little sense other than signal bounce. When facing the window the and looking E/NE, the tower is due North. If the router was to the left of the window the bars would go up by one, usually. If the router was placed to the right of the window where line of sight to the tower exists the bars would drop by one. So, I can only theorize that signal bounce may play a part. I am not a cellular expert but I have done a fair amount of research on the matter and I have a background in networking support for 22 years so hopefully this helps out.

  • rsrp dBm: -69 ← Is in the excellent range (better value/representation for strength of the signal than RSSI)
  • rsrq dB: -5 ← Is also in the excellent range
  • rssi dBm: -64 ← Reflects the signal strength received (Good)
  • sinr dB: 13 ← Is top of Medium or bottom of Good range

So, signal to noise ratio is not bad but not stellar. What the RSRP and RSRQ do appear to reflect is that the tower must be fairly close to your location. The signal to noise ratio tells us that there are factors that cause noise for the signal. If the SINR were >=20 dB it would be excellent. Value of 13 not great but not bad.

So, with respect to the signal drops. If you run continuous pings to say quad9s 9.9.9.9 or Google 8.8.8.8 if the “drop” takes place the loss of the responses from the Quad9s and Google DNS servers would be apparent and would tell you the cellular has dropped. With the command to get the values out of the Arcadyan server for the cellular metrics would reflect if both the 4G LTE and 5G NR signals dropped or if only say the 5G NR signal dropped. I found if the 5G signal dropped the transition to 4G LTE was interrupted and was not very dependable. Once T-Mobile finally ironed out the operation of the equipment on the tower then those problems have pretty much gone away.

If you are getting drops that repeat multiple times in a day it is still worth making a call to T-Mobile support to ask if there is work being done on the tower equipment. They tend to do so during normal business hour in the day. If that equipment is being upgraded or worked on or just is having problems if others on the same tower DO call in then it is more likely to get attention and a response. Sure they should have monitoring of the equipment but unless someone sees the alarms, if they are set up, then nothing will be done. 

Regarding the Roku. It is worth looking at other conversations in the T-Moble community for ROKU as it is a Roku thing. T-Mobile does not establish a static external IP address for the router connections. So if the external NAT address of your router changes, for one reason or another, then it causes problems for a Roku. From what I have read that has to be worked out with Roku support. Some users may have resolved the behavior with the use of a VPN. However, if you changed from another ISP to T-Mobile and now are seeing the Roku not work then contact Roku support and ask about this. I believe, from what I have read in threads, that they can refresh the server end for the account “connection” to the IP on your end and get it working again. Of course that could change again so well you would know the drill. Hopefully T-Mobile will establish a practice that either extends the DHCP address duration to infinity. They don’t want to have to maintain static IP addressing as more administrative overhead. If you make a long lease time for the IP addresses in the pool then it would have less impact on the end users.

Another good source for answers or clues is on reddit. There is a subreddit just for T-Mobile conversations and there is a great many conversations going on. Some good and some just rag sessions. Go for the conversations with helpful content and just ignore the trash talk. Well, that is my take as that gets you no where and the content with answers is what helps out.

iTinkeralot
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OBTW: https://www.tmonews.com/tag/t-mobile-home-internet/ When it comes to firmware updates sometimes you can get a bit more about changes via the tmonews.com page via the home internet section.

K
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So, signal to noise ratio is not bad but not stellar. What the RSRP and RSRQ do appear to reflect is that the tower must be fairly close to your location. The signal to noise ratio tells us that there are factors that cause noise for the signal. If the SINR were >=20 dB it would be excellent. Value of 13 not great but not bad.

 

Best SINR value I was able to get with my phone was 16 in the spot where I placed the gateway.  Getting 11-14 with the gateway, so that is the probably the best I can get.

Do I need to be concerned with the 4g stats at all?

4g": {      "bands": [        "b2"      ],      "bars": 4.0,      "cid": 1,      "eNBID": 71252,      "rsrp": -89,      "rsrq": -10,      "rssi": -79,      "sinr": 5
iTinkeralot
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Well, I sort of ignored the 4G LTE and took focus on improving the 5G NR signal. I went so far as to rotate the Nokia router to see if exposing the antennas on one side of the router to the signal wash was better than the other side or area. It did indeed help with the Nokia gateway. I made it a point to improve the 5G signal 3-4 dBM and ignored the 4G LTE values. When I did get improvement for 5G then my tests with speedtest.net did reflect improvement. 

All your 4G LTE values are higher than mine so even your 4G LTE signal is not bad. If you see the PCI value in the data from the router you can locate the tower. The PCI is the physical cell identifier. With that value you can use cellmapper.net to locate T-Mobile towers with the various cellular radios. If you filter by 5G NR then you can reduce the field down a bit and locate the 5G cell where your signal comes from. You can do the same with 4G LTE but there are commonly many more hits so it takes a little more focus. If you find the 5G NR signal source the 4G LTE signal may be on the same tower. My 4G LTE and 5G signals come off the same tower. For me in the end I found having the router in a window in the basement with line of sight to the tower 5.3 miles to the north was better than upstairs with the window in the kitchen having the same exposure to the tower. I think it has to do with the deck/porch upstairs having the roof overhead where as the window below has no roof overhead in that location. Getting the router in an optimal placement is really trial and error. With an external antenna the location of the router in the house is then about local WIFI coverage vs getting cellular connections. With cellular internet that becomes a trade off or just another puzzle to solve and improve upon. 

K
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Welp, I think I am throwing in the towel and sending this piece of junk back.  I have tried it for a week and I just can’t deal with the constant drops, I need internet that works ALL the time, not just some of the time.  Today has been the worst, I have not been able to do much at all since 5:30 today.  Glad I didn't cancel my much slower speed internet service.

I mean, it is even worth my time trying to call them?  From what I have read all over the interwebs, they will just tell me they are working on the towers or what not.  Frustrated does not begin to describe it, I had so much hope for higher speeds, oh well.

iTinkeralot
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Keep in mind it is very true that BAD NEWS travels much faster than good news. Most people who are satisfied and happy with the solution seldom visit the forums. The cellular home internet solution does not work in ALL places. You might just be in a location where there are too many obstacles to have a clean signal delivered. The cellular metrics you posted for the 5G  and the 4G were not bad though. If T-Mobile engineers are indeed “working on the tower” it might be prudent to ask T-Mobile to suspend the home internet account and notify you when they get the tower solution worked out. If you could get them to do that then later when the tower is stable you would still have a reservation on the tower. If you give up and send the GW back and close the account it might be hard to get another spot on the tower once it is working. They only load a tower with as many users as it can sustain for proper delivery. Once it is stable it is a darn good solution for the price. One week is a short trial but I do get it. When you need your internet to work and it repeatedly drops out that is annoying. Whatever you decide; the best of luck to you. 

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Thanks!  I am going to let it sit the weekend unplugged and I will give it another go next week.  Will also try an give them a call as well.

iTinkeralot
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I went to a live chat yesterday with a T-Mobile agent to confirm an answer about a specific question a customer presented. That chat was more on the marketing side for accounts vs the support side. If you login to your account and get the chat with a support person that is there to not fix the gateway but to make sure customers are happy that is where you will probably get better results. I got with a live chat pretty quick, say 3-4 minutes, ok so not super fast but still not bad. I got the answers and they were very willing and helpful. YOU just need to get them to understand you are not happy and want them to help turn it around. Customer retention is going to be more helpful.

iTinkeralot
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When you hit the pages where you are looking at the T-Mobile services they know you are there to consider their service so they pay attention. Nothing gets attention like $$$s. 

K
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So just wanted to update.  I never did call or message support, but I finally got around to plugging the gateway back up this week and decided that I would just put it in the basement by a window. not worrying about SINR values or anything.  Well that was 3 days ago and I haven’t had a single issue (knocks on wood).  Roku is working, Paramount + is working, MLB.TV is working, no dropouts so far.  

Technology is just dumb sometimes, that I all I can figure.

iTinkeralot
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The cellular solution for all the various frequencies & practices required to implement the solution is pretty sophisticated really. I can only speculate that there was still work being performed on the cellular tower equipment. When the T-Mobile field engineers were working on the tower here it was rather unpredictable and had similar episodes. Your cellular signals, when last you posted were actually not bad at all. You may have improved the signal with noise reduction in the new location. A house can shield unwanted noise from other sources and this can lead to better performance as a result. Maybe the gateway can no longer receive a signal from another source so it stays locked on the one it now is upon. Without knowing the PCI values from before and after the change it is hard to know. The PCI is the physical cell identifier which tells which cell the signal is sourced from. 

It really does not matter too much. If you are getting a good solid signal and 150-200 Mbs down then it will be pretty good. That is pretty much where ours is on the n71 signal here. I am glad you were able to work it out. I found the T-Mobile home internet solution to be a great solution here. I had no other options I would even consider so it was a big win for us.

G

I just signed up for the Home Internet this week and everything installed fine and I tought it was working.  My set up is the Arcadyan KVD21 5G gateway with a Nest Wifi mesh system.  I connected the Nest wifi to the gateway so I would not have to set up every device in my house.  The internet connection on the Nest Wifi will not stay on, it constantly drops and I am getting really frustrated with this.  I had high hopes I could finally get speeds at my house higher than 25Mbps and when it works, I do (150+).  What good is home internet if the connection constantly drops?

Furthermore, they promote you get a year of Paramount+, which I already have through my phone service.  I can’t even watch Paramount+ when I do have a connection cause it tells me I am using a VPN, which I am not.

Might be time to just bite the bullet and send this back as it seems it is not ready for prime time.

SOMETIMES PHONES OR MICROWAVES OR OTHER DEVICES WILL KICK YOU OFF OF YOUR INTERNET  CUZ THERE PROBABLY TRYING TO ACCESS YOUR INTERNET...LIKE FRIENDS OR FAMILY DEVICES

T

Over the last 4-6 months, I’ve noticed that my service is getting worse. I live in Brooklyn and work in Camden, NJ a few times a months. My phone service is either non-existant or it goes to the Edge network. I’ve been doing this for 3 year and bad service is creeping beyond Camden. Is T-Mobile suddenly downsizing certain areas or am I delusional and it’s always been bad?

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