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Slow home internet even with extender

  • 30 June 2022
  • 8 replies
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K
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I have t-mobile home internet. It was slow from the gitgo, but this is literally the only service I can get out here. I can't even get DSL. 

 

I decided to try an external antenna to see if that would help. I cracked open the modem and hooked up the external antenna on the ports on the inside of the modem. The highest speed I can get is 7mb down and 3 up. Does anyone have any ideas how to help? I'm desperate I need this to be faster. 

 

On a side note, I know exactly where the closest tower is and have the external 2 band mimo antenna pointed right at it. Any help is greatly appreciated. 

 

 

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Best answer by Cali Cat 30 June 2022, 00:11

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8 replies

C
Userlevel 5
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You have two problems:

  • You have no 5g connection. This gives the best download performance.
  • Your LTE connection is B71 which is 600 MHz for distance instead of bandwidth plus your signal quality is so so.

Are you sure you connected the external antennas correctly?

K
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I'm fairly technically inclined, so I'm pretty sure I got them on there right. Here is the setup.

 

 

I realize it will probably always be 4g because the tower is like 8 miles away. I randomly connected to 5g this morning for like 15 minutes i noticed and was getting like 15mb down. No idea how that worked our. 

D

In my experience with T-Mobile Home Wifi I've gotten results close to yours.  I don't think it's my set up, due to the fact that day one and most of the first week I was getting great speeds and connectivity. 

I've logged my stats for the past month.  I'm now at two straight weeks of only getting above 20mbps on two occasions.  I'm cutting my losses and dropping service after this period ends.  I'm sorry you're in a situation where it's your only option. 

C
Userlevel 5
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I'm fairly technically inclined, so I'm pretty sure I got them on there right. Here is the setup.

 

 

I realize it will probably always be 4g because the tower is like 8 miles away. I randomly connected to 5g this morning for like 15 minutes i noticed and was getting like 15mb down. No idea how that worked our. 

Since you were able to sign up for 5g home internet and you are unable to connect to 5g, I would take this up with Tmobile and if they can’t fix it, drop down to a 4G LTE plan if it’s cheaper.

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Home internet is the same regardless of 4 or 5g. The only reason I picked t mobile was because we use A LOT of data and this is unlimited without throttling. No other service offers this. 

C
Userlevel 5
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Home internet is the same regardless of 4 or 5g. The only reason I picked t mobile was because we use A LOT of data and this is unlimited without throttling. No other service offers this. 

One more observation - from your photo, the external antenna appears to be tilting towards the ground. You might try to at least make it parallel or even slight tilt up. Not sure what elevation your house is versus the tower but generally speaking, cell towers tend to be higher up than surrounding areas.

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Have you looked at Nater Tater’s Youtube videos? There is some great info available there. I went

with the 4 antenna MIMO setup and it works pretty well. We’re about nine miles from the tower. The

best time to check speeds is the middle of the night to see if network congestion is slowing your

speeds down or if you have an antenna issue. TMHI isn’t pefect for me but the alternative is

Hughesnet, which we already tried.

S

What would an entry level antenna run me? I need to do something like ya'll are with those external antennas 

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