Home Internet Gaming Problem

Actually I have to expand on my initial statement since this seems systemic with users and not anything rare. I am a network engineer by trade, held multiple CISCO certifications and was a global network lead for a fortune 100 company. I am working remotely from a Hotel so I took my 5G router with me, it is my second internet connection at home for my elderly parents who don's use it much. In any case tried gaming, no joy. So I connected to the free hotel wifi with all the warnings about speed, limited downloads, and only two devices, plays WOT just fine. On T-Mobile 5G wifi router, cant even log in. They need to fix this or T-Mobile will not be a viable option for most people as customers will only be frustrated. It is not because 5G is not meant for gaming. I have another providers 5G router that works flawlessly even when kids are streaming and I am gaming. I guess this will have to go back. The only thing I might try is hooking up a wifi router behind it but since several reports have LAN connected drops as well I suspect this is a traffic shaping / packet consistency issue in the infrastructure.

Melech1 wrote:

I have the same issue. Unfortunately this will mean I cannot use T-Mobile internet.

I have the same issue. Unfortunately this will mean I cannot use T-Mobile internet.

Had the service for about a year no major issues other than some slight slow downs in the evening until the Past couple months random disconnects for 20- seconds and reconnects could be 5 min could be 30 hrs between instances. Happens while watching youtube or especially when playing COD, complain 2 weeks ago they supposedly updated my firmware and I had no issues for 11 days, problem returns, app show gateway losing all bars when disconnects happen, network stays connected to all devices but everything wired or wifi loses internet connectivity. Complain again they send me an Arcadyan to replace my Nokia now I'm at 1/10 of the speed and can't even connect to a match at all without timing out. About fed up!!

frustratedgamer505 wrote:

Having the same issue mentioned here. We had the gray/white trash can for about a year with nearly NO ISSUES. Save for a little spottiness on occasion, which is expected in our rural-ish area. No big deal.

I was trying for a WFH job that required 10mb upload speed minimum. We were hitting maybe 5.5-6 with that router. So obviously we went to our local store and asked for help. They recommended the next model with was the sagecom or something like that. The black trash can. This was roughly a month ago. It worked, but it was even slower internet. Download and upload speeds dropped. Didn't get that job, obviously. Streaming TV is how we roll, and up until the big black trash can, we'd dealt with very minimal buffering. Not only did it begin to buffer, we were losing connection completely several times a day. We dealt with it. Gaming hadn't been affected yet.

Then two weeks ago, the gaming connectivity started having issues. My main is Fortnite, and like others, I load up just fine then get into a match and start lagging/dropping connection. Mine is instant, whereas I've seen other get a couple minutes up to forty-five. Regardless, this is unacceptable. Two days ago I'd had enough, so upon contacting tech support, she said coverage in my area is great - I'm in the MAGENTA area so internet should be perfect. But it's not. So it's a router issue. We're gonna send you a new router and that'll fix your problem because on our end, everything looks great. 

Yesterday, we received the router, the Arcadyan (smaller black trash can) and last night it worked with minor lagging. I was at least able to play for a short-time without freezing every 20 seconds. Then last night before bed the internet shut off completely. Tried again today and now it's having the same issue. Freezing every 20 seconds then completely disconnecting me. Though every other device is running smoothly on the internet. As long as we're not gaming.

Here's the rundown from the two tech support calls today:

-Hard reset router and uninstall/reinstall TMHI app. Try adding a second network set to 2.4Ghz and run the gaming off that. Because gaming works best on 2.4Ghz. That didn't fix it, what do I do? Try it out for a couple days then give us another call.

*5 minutes later, frustrated as all get out, I call back*

-TMHI is not meant to handle gaming, but rather basic internet needs such as streaming and web surfing. Seriously? I'm just being upfront with you, I don't want to mislead you in any way. So what do we do? There are a lot of people in your area connecting to the towers, so speeds will be slow. Let's try some more troubleshooting. *instructs to reset everything, verifies SIM card is correct and working, suggest using an ethernet connection* Still no change. I hate that you're having this issue. Here are phone numbers for the manufacturers so you can contact them about your issues. Manufacturers for what? Your consoles. We've done everything on our end possible and connection looks perfect from here. It's probably a manufacturing issue with your Nintendo Switch and Playstation. So my Playstation and Switch both became faulty at exactly the same time after switching routers...and they're the problem? This is everything we did today. I'll give you a follow up call tomorrow to see how things are going.

*drives to McDonalds and connects to their free Wi-Fi and plays Fortnite with NO ISSUES*

I am disgusted and frustrated. T-Mobile, if you don't care about your gaming customers, JUST SAY THAT. Own up to it. You lowered your prices out of greed knowing everyone would flock to you and now you can't support the influx of usage. You put an update out on the routers and your customers are telling you it's broken....yet you do nothing. There is an issue here with YOUR service. I will be switching ISPs due to your negligence and unwillingness to provide for all your customers. 

FYI, Vicky, Richard, and Rachel...it's not you. It's your employer. You all were great and very helpful. As best you could be with what you've been taught. 

This is my exact situation! 

Stopped working about a week or so ago. And called 3 different times. 

They told me the speed looked perfect on their end, told me to reset the tower, check to see if the games I was trying to connect to were down, connect an Ethernet cable and pretty much every other option.
(we have 2 towers over here, tried both - both didn’t work and its the same situation)

I told them that I could use the hotspot on my phone with my PC and it worked better then the Home Internet System and they still weren't sure what was wrong. 

Strangely enough two days ago it worked for that 1 single day, and now its back to disconnecting after 20 -30 sec again. I really want to like T Mobile, we have add their home internet for ruffly a year and this was never a problem, but now we are being told their internet isn't meant for gaming when we have been gaming on it the whole time we been using it. xd

 

Having the same issue mentioned here. We had the gray/white trash can for about a year with nearly NO ISSUES. Save for a little spottiness on occasion, which is expected in our rural-ish area. No big deal.

I was trying for a WFH job that required 10mb upload speed minimum. We were hitting maybe 5.5-6 with that router. So obviously we went to our local store and asked for help. They recommended the next model with was the sagecom or something like that. The black trash can. This was roughly a month ago. It worked, but it was even slower internet. Download and upload speeds dropped. Didn't get that job, obviously. Streaming TV is how we roll, and up until the big black trash can, we'd dealt with very minimal buffering. Not only did it begin to buffer, we were losing connection completely several times a day. We dealt with it. Gaming hadn't been affected yet.

Then two weeks ago, the gaming connectivity started having issues. My main is Fortnite, and like others, I load up just fine then get into a match and start lagging/dropping connection. Mine is instant, whereas I've seen other get a couple minutes up to forty-five. Regardless, this is unacceptable. Two days ago I'd had enough, so upon contacting tech support, she said coverage in my area is great - I'm in the MAGENTA area so internet should be perfect. But it's not. So it's a router issue. We're gonna send you a new router and that'll fix your problem because on our end, everything looks great. 

Yesterday, we received the router, the Arcadyan (smaller black trash can) and last night it worked with minor lagging. I was at least able to play for a short-time without freezing every 20 seconds. Then last night before bed the internet shut off completely. Tried again today and now it's having the same issue. Freezing every 20 seconds then completely disconnecting me. Though every other device is running smoothly on the internet. As long as we're not gaming.

Here's the rundown from the two tech support calls today:

-Hard reset router and uninstall/reinstall TMHI app. Try adding a second network set to 2.4Ghz and run the gaming off that. Because gaming works best on 2.4Ghz. That didn't fix it, what do I do? Try it out for a couple days then give us another call.

*5 minutes later, frustrated as all get out, I call back*

-TMHI is not meant to handle gaming, but rather basic internet needs such as streaming and web surfing. Seriously? I'm just being upfront with you, I don't want to mislead you in any way. So what do we do? There are a lot of people in your area connecting to the towers, so speeds will be slow. Let's try some more troubleshooting. *instructs to reset everything, verifies SIM card is correct and working, suggest using an ethernet connection* Still no change. I hate that you're having this issue. Here are phone numbers for the manufacturers so you can contact them about your issues. Manufacturers for what? Your consoles. We've done everything on our end possible and connection looks perfect from here. It's probably a manufacturing issue with your Nintendo Switch and Playstation. So my Playstation and Switch both became faulty at exactly the same time after switching routers...and they're the problem? This is everything we did today. I'll give you a follow up call tomorrow to see how things are going.

*drives to McDonalds and connects to their free Wi-Fi and plays Fortnite with NO ISSUES*

I am disgusted and frustrated. T-Mobile, if you don't care about your gaming customers, JUST SAY THAT. Own up to it. You lowered your prices out of greed knowing everyone would flock to you and now you can't support the influx of usage. You put an update out on the routers and your customers are telling you it's broken....yet you do nothing. There is an issue here with YOUR service. I will be switching ISPs due to your negligence and unwillingness to provide for all your customers. 

FYI, Vicky, Richard, and Rachel...it's not you. It's your employer. You all were great and very helpful. As best you could be with what you've been taught. 

Last week, I complained online and suggested trying a newer router. I was able to exchange my Nokia gateway for the Arcadyan gateway. Unfortunately, there has been no improvement. It seems the downloads are slower and the upload slighty higher. I should have kept the Nokia gateway.

I’ve been using the TMobile home internet, with the grey Nokia device, for almost 2 years.

It use to be a great service, but not anymore.

For over a month now, I've been experiencing the same disconnect issues as other people in the forum. VPN for work and gaming on Oculus and PC has constantly disconnected after a minute or two. The issue is even happening at 4 am in the morning! I've been forced to use a Verizon hotspot instead.

TMobile has broken something, because until recently, gaming and VPN worked fine!

Unfortunately, TMobile is the only available unlimited whole house ISP in my location.

Hopefully, within a year, fiber will be installed so I can join the 21st century.

Do a test on speedtest.net.  Observe not just the up/down speeds, but also the ping values during the test.  If in general, if you see ping values under load is higher than 1 second (either upload or download), your internet service may not be adequate for gaming, regardless of speeds.  The only way that I know of to improve latency is to install an external 4x4 MIMO antenna.

XCOATX wrote:

mbyte78 wrote:

Sounds similar to mine. I watched my UDP in the game and it worked fine at first then dropped till my game crashed every time. I did talk to tech support and he told me UDP wasnt supported. I have been waiting until the problem is fixed to switch back to T-Mobile.

Idk what they're telling people now, but the service worked flawlessly up until December. Low ping, fast downloads, until they changed something.

I just talked to tech support. UDP port forwarding is not supported with their boxes. He could not tell me when if if its going to get fixed. He is forwarding my concerns to the engineering team. Is quite disappointing because T-Mobile internet has the best pricing for internet. Ill wait it out while my current internet keeps going up in price.

My disconnect issues have magically fixed themselves also.