Home Internet Gaming Problem

syaoran wrote:

Try to remember that T-Mobile Home Internet uses the same cell towers that your phone connects to for service.  There will be times when it will switch towers to provide a better connection or to balance out a high amount of traffic on a tower.  When the modem decides to switch towers, you are going to lose your connection momentarily.  

That is not acceptable. Apparently you dont play video games. Loosing the connection crashes the game. Then we have to restart.

Got off the phone with another T-Mobile tech and they more or less said, gamers are screwed and you're better off going with another ISP.  They are aware of all the issues with their service and multi-player gaming. X-Box I guess is the worst.  Issues of Latency over cellular networks are compounded with their Dynamic IP architecture baked into their modems. Their approach is to  work with service providers like Microsoft and other big companies (he mentioned Hulu) to better accommodate their structure rather than the other way around. Good luck with that! Sounds like rearchitecting to accommodate Static IP is a major lift. He didn't mention anything about reverting to a previous state when it was working, but I get the feeling there is no going back. I think they'll need to see a mass exodus of gamers and see the lost revenue before prioritizing/investing in a fix. It a shame.

I've had this issue for the past 3 weeks or so with World of Warships. Been going back and for with their tech support trying everything they suggested. Finally, on their suggestion,  I sent them a Wireshark report (which I have don't really know how to read). They highlight a bunch of IP listings and responded:

In the network diagnostic report you sent, we see that the route to the game server changes very often (almost every second). The route is changed at the nodes of your ISP. Frequent route changes can cause unstable ping in the game and problems with the connection..

I think that it definitely is a TMHI issue with not accepting static IP addresses. Hopefully TMHI gets it sorted out soon. They broke it, they can fix it.

Shankies wrote:

Im not nearly as tech savvy as most in here but maybe this will help( i dont know a fix lol) or make no difference to everyone with gaming problems. We have t mobile home internet(new style tower) and 3 phones 2 tablets all "unlimited". We started experiencing gaming issues around december also but what i have to add to this is somewhat different than what has been discussed. We have issues with our xbox games glitching and lagging but we also run all our phones and tablets on their own internet not the wifi and we have been experiencing the same type of and frequency of lagging and glitching across all devices on or off wifi. Before december we regularly got about 40 ping but now i just tested tonight out of frustration and ookla says 91 idle ping 495 download ping and 1160 upload ping, were 179 down 47 up and basically the same on wifi or mobile data for what all thats worth for everyone.   

Tldr. Not so sure its your modems as it is the service provided to you no point resetting modems lol

I believe it's the modems not transmitting the correct traffic. The only issues I've had besides this for the 8 months I've had the service, is a slight hiccup in connection every once in a while. Just everything will disconnect for a second; discord, steam, YouTube, etc, and then it all comes back immediately.

Since the December update or whatever, this has been a different type of connectivity issue, and much more frequent. It's basically impossible to use the service for multiplayer games now, which isn't what I signed up for. I got no notice or anything that they were changing anything. If they're really going the route of "it's not for gaming", then they should have said that when I initially signed up, or notified me in an email that changes were happening.

It's safe to assume that most people with an internet connection are also using it for online gaming, so it's insane to me that they're just letting this issue go on like this for months. 

I'm rarely home so I can't check every day, but I would have cancelled it already if it was a daily fight to connect to anything. 

Gonna give it another month and see if they fix the problem before switching to a local internet service. Slower speeds but at least I'll be able to actually use the service I'm paying for, because this is beyond frustrating.

Im not nearly as tech savvy as most in here but maybe this will help( i dont know a fix lol) or make no difference to everyone with gaming problems. We have t mobile home internet(new style tower) and 3 phones 2 tablets all "unlimited". We started experiencing gaming issues around december also but what i have to add to this is somewhat different than what has been discussed. We have issues with our xbox games glitching and lagging but we also run all our phones and tablets on their own internet not the wifi and we have been experiencing the same type of and frequency of lagging and glitching across all devices on or off wifi. Before december we regularly got about 40 ping but now i just tested tonight out of frustration and ookla says 91 idle ping 495 download ping and 1160 upload ping, were 179 down 47 up and basically the same on wifi or mobile data for what all thats worth for everyone.   

Tldr. Not so sure its your modems as it is the service provided to you no point resetting modems lol

We've had TMHI for a few months now and since then, my daughter hasn't been able to join any Minecraft worlds she's invited to or any Xbox parties due to strict NATs on her Xbox One, husbands PS4 and my Nintendo Switch. Tried connecting a router and got the DoubleNAT issue. So I'm really shocked a lot of you here have been able to play until whatever the new update did recently. Did you guys have a strict NAT and it worked anyway?

ttyler83 wrote:

Exact same issue. I've been a customer for months and just started seeing this happen after about 30-40 minutes of any multiplayer game. I've tried 2 different Nokia modems, and even went in store to exchange for a different model with an LCD on the front, model FAST 5688W. Support confirmed this new unit is on the latest Firmware. 

We have tried running multiple streaming services, multiple security cameras, but as soon as a game connects the 30-40 minute countdown to loosing service starts. My first ticket into support was in November 2022 and I am still having this issue in January 2023 but they have not been able to connect this issue in the forms to my issue.

Going to try and use Express VPN or something to make a Static IP and see if that helps.

ttyler83, any luck with Express VPN? Our issues are isolated to the X-Box. Gaming on PC works fine.

We are having the exact same problem as all of you. Can't stay connected to any mutliplayer game for more than a few minutes. Began around the first weeks of December 2022 for us. Complained to local store in January, sent us to customer service, and the girl I got just straight up told me that she didn't think TMobile was going to be a good option for gaming from now on. I was in shock. We've been with them since they rolled out home internet, and have all our cell phones through TMobile. It was like "see ya. You were in while it was new (read: good)." I'm glad some of you got a tech rep who has provided a little hope, but I'm wondering if they aren't leading you on due to some deliberate blocking we noticed.

We identified the issue as being the high latency spikes that weren't present previously as the culprit by using a variety of tools. Everything else works, so we bought ExpressVPN hoping it would smooth out the ping. We tried the DNS for the console ExpressVPN gave us but it didn't help. Then we set up a hotspot on a laptop (had to use a third-party app, Dynu I think, in order to register it on Express). Once it was set up, I connected the console, and it was immediately SHUT DOWN BY VPN BLOCKERS. This was proved bc on the laptop we could get any website EXCEPT ones even remotely connected to VPN services. Surf Shark, Nord, even Fubo (!) were all blocked. TMobile is aggressively stopping consoles from accessing VPNs from what we experienced. We felt like we were just given a pink finger.

XCOATX wrote:

gravitynoise wrote:

mattscherer32 wrote:

Markos198 wrote:

Mdizzy wrote:

I've also been having the same problem since mid-December. Doesn't matter the server or the game, I'm kicked within five minutes. I've tried downgrading from 5G to LTE, I've taken my laptop with my mobile hotspot to different locations in order to connect to a different tower with better signal, nothing helps. I even went so far as to buy a new mobile hotspot. The responses I'm getting from customer service border on gaslighting.

I was able to play games just fine for six months on Tmobile's 5G, even with a not-so-great signal, and for five years before that on Sprint with one iffy bar of LTE. Now they're trying to tell me that my issue is simply because of a weak signal or network congestion. It's gratifying to see so many others with the same issue.

It's maddening. I would really love to be able to stay with Tmobile. Until this I've been overwhelmingly happy with the service, it's been a game changer in my rural area, and recommended it to many others. But if this isn't resolved soon, if they can't even be upfront about the existence of an issue, I might have to jump ship.   

It annoying and I wish they could fix this cuz I’m kinda stuck with them for now

Last night I did not experience any issues gaming at all. Apex legends, Oculus pop one, MWW2 no issues. The night before several issues staying in a game. I am hoping a miracle happened and it was patched or it was a one time issue. Is the problem fixed for all of you also? 

 

Same for me, I was able to play last night with no issues at all!

I had one day last weekend where I was able to play a few hours solid of CSGO, but my brother was having issues later on at night. He's on an entirely separate line as well so who knows if it's actually fixed.

 

Been saying it for a while, they should just roll back whatever they did. 

yup, spoke too soon, having issues again tonight

gravitynoise wrote:

mattscherer32 wrote:

Markos198 wrote:

Mdizzy wrote:

I've also been having the same problem since mid-December. Doesn't matter the server or the game, I'm kicked within five minutes. I've tried downgrading from 5G to LTE, I've taken my laptop with my mobile hotspot to different locations in order to connect to a different tower with better signal, nothing helps. I even went so far as to buy a new mobile hotspot. The responses I'm getting from customer service border on gaslighting.

I was able to play games just fine for six months on Tmobile's 5G, even with a not-so-great signal, and for five years before that on Sprint with one iffy bar of LTE. Now they're trying to tell me that my issue is simply because of a weak signal or network congestion. It's gratifying to see so many others with the same issue.

It's maddening. I would really love to be able to stay with Tmobile. Until this I've been overwhelmingly happy with the service, it's been a game changer in my rural area, and recommended it to many others. But if this isn't resolved soon, if they can't even be upfront about the existence of an issue, I might have to jump ship.   

It annoying and I wish they could fix this cuz I’m kinda stuck with them for now

Last night I did not experience any issues gaming at all. Apex legends, Oculus pop one, MWW2 no issues. The night before several issues staying in a game. I am hoping a miracle happened and it was patched or it was a one time issue. Is the problem fixed for all of you also? 

 

Same for me, I was able to play last night with no issues at all!

I had one day last weekend where I was able to play a few hours solid of CSGO, but my brother was having issues later on at night. He's on an entirely separate line as well so who knows if it's actually fixed.

Been saying it for a while, they should just roll back whatever they did.