Forum Discussion
T-Mobile Home Internet shows 4 bars but keeps dropping signal
Hi. The last month or so, a problem is occurring - the gateway/modem shows 4 bars and has been sitting there for well over two years now. Randomly, I keep getting disconnected from a game server, remote sessions halt, streaming audio stutters, everything.
I also have phone calls (from Samsung S22 Ultra) disconnect on me if the phone is using wifi mode for phone calls. If I disable wifi on the phone, phone calls still remain stable. At least for now. I sometimes still have issues with audio stuttering in regular 5G mode, and even testing a game server I got booted off with an error citing connection loss. Whatever it is, the loss is brief since connection comes back quickly.
Speedtest shows low ping and low jitter, which surprised me.
I logged into the Admin console. Is there an option to switch from 5G mode to 4G, just to rule out some possible causes of this? That sounds dumb since I have 4 bars on the modem and 5 on my phone (which generally connects to the modem's built-in wifi.) I haven't tested disabling 5G on the phone, but with 5 bars this really seems odd. Why would the phone show more bars and stronger signal strength when it's the smaller of the two devices?
I turned the modem ("silver can" in shape) off and unplugged it for 30 minutes. I'd heard this forces a firmware check and upgrade. This did not make a difference.
I keep a small fan running by the air inlet on the modem to help prevent overheating. That hasn't helped either.
The built-in battery also seems to waver in percentage; always going from 65 to 78%. It used to read 100% in the past. I think that's a separate issue.
I am having no power outage issues.
unless work is being done on the tower that normally covers that area or issues..wonder if adjustments were done to the direction the antennas are pointing or were pointing compared to now?
have you contacted TMO to put in a network ticket yet?
no worries. have them put in a network ticket for you.
you might even opt to use their social media route like Facebook or Twitter..contact them through their direct message since they’ll need you to verify who you are...this also lands you with tier 2 support instead of the call in tier 1 support agents.
I had not yet contacted TMO, wanting to rule out everything on my end's nodes first. The friend's phone is from another carrier so they're probably leasing the same towers.
It's probable that some tower was worked on or an element is failing, but iI'd be surprised if nobody else had called in already. Still, one person calling over a minor blip isn't as minor if other people report the same issue. I should look up the number and call. Something's definitely off with a tower somewhere; I can't think of anything else at this point to try.
¡Gracias!
unless work is being done on the tower that normally covers that area or issues..wonder if adjustments were done to the direction the antennas are pointing or were pointing compared to now?
have you contacted TMO to put in a network ticket yet?
It's weird, since phone reception has been 4 or 5 bars and no dips downward. But as the problem is only recent and I've had no problems for a couple years prior to now, and there are no new buildings or new trees put up, I don't think reception is a factor if I have 4 or 5 bars but horrible ping time, ping, jitter, and stuttering.
if you look at a map of your place are you by chance surrounded by a bunch of tall buildings/trees etc or down in a bowl where there are higher areas surrounding you? like once you are outside and leaving at what point does your reception start to improve?
A friend stopped by with his phone - his is from a different carrier. He had similar sluggishness problems as well, perhaps worse as Speedtest took several times to perform a successful test without bringing up about a Sockets error. From what I could see, that pretty much rules out a lot of, if not all of the problems on my end. His phone/service also ran slower (4G), so whatever's going on isn't exclusive to 5G…
Great question! Both current location and the one on the other side of the house are right next to windows. Actually, if I loved the cylinder close to the window in the room where it's at right now, it would go down to 3 bars…
When testing for the optimal position, the side of the house closest to the tower had no spots better than 3 bars, even directly in front of windows where the cats would be inclined dop what they want to do on the laptop if given a chance -- and that would be for them to curl up and take a nap around it due to the heat it generates. :-D
is it by chance near a window on that side of the house or no? if not try getting it closer to a window and see how much it improves.
One other side note - the closest tower is on the opposite side of the house. The funny thing is, when setting up the modem on the wall nearest to it, I got a solid 3 bars. Moving it to the other end of the house gave me 4. If it makes sense to try moving the modem to the side closest to the tower, despite whatever interference is reducing reception to 3 bars, I will try it. It just makes no sense that these issues have only started up roughly a month or so ago. (The phone call issue being very rare, but internet streaming drops are frequent.)
¡Gracias!
I forgot to add, when using Wi-Fi mode, Speedtest from my modem did fail, saying network connection issues.
Also, when I ran Speedtest on my phone, in 5G mode (4 bars), I get averaged ping of 40/919/340, jitter 4/91/78 when in idle/download/upload respectively, with 0% packet loss.
On my phone using Wi-Fi mode connected to the Wi-Fi gateway, I get ping of 31/453/333, jitter 25/78/76, when in idle/download/upload respectively, with 0% packet loss.
On my desktop using Wi-Fi to connect the same gateway, results are comparable to my phone's test while using its Wi-Fi, though the results table only shows a general ping - not differentiated between idle/dl/up. These read 31/261/95 at the time of the test. A retest shows 31/968 (averaged from results showing as low as 266 or as high as 4000 ping)/85 for jitter.
Rerunning Speedtest in both environments shows frequent significant changes in the ping and jitter values between tests, which also include occasional percentages of packet loss. Generally, I get 0% for packet loss, but a couple times had shown up to 15.1% in tests.
With 4- and 5-bar signal strength, should ping and jitter be this high on both phone and gateway and desktop connected to gateway?
I’ve not had problems until recently, but I’m hesitant to think there’s any issue on my phone and desktop specifically.
