Home Internet Goes Out Every Couple of Hours

djdeluca wrote:

This is noon Sat., 9/11. This shows a before and after I rebooted the Gateway:

Well, I intended to paste  copies of photos of my internet speed. But apparently this site can't handle it. Before I rebooted it was 0.74. After rebooting it went up to 62.0. An hour later, it is 54.0. Why does this happen? The T-Mobile tower is less than 2 miles from my and a straight line from my window.

Try rotating inch by inch and/or elevating the gateway in your window, even repositioning it side to side a few inches, and and after each position change turning it off and on by the button on the side, each time trying for the highest speed you can get on a speed test. It should take two minutes to reconnect automatically after each restart. The trick is to find a position where you consistently get your highest speeds and avoid a position where you get the unusable speed.

If you have an attic or 2nd floor, that is also worth trying as a gateway location also, but it is very good that you have a window that faces the tower. 

It is normal for speeds to fluctuate on T mobile home internet. I get downloads between 90 and 350, and I'm 5 miles from the tower, but I'm also lucky to have the more desirable n41 instead of n71 signal on the tower. The max speed (if you're less than a block from the tower) is 225 on the n71 whereas the n41 can carry a speed up to 800.

Before I got this, given that my 4G connection here is quite slow, I thought I would be very happy with anything over 30 on 5G. So I know how lucky I am because, obviously, that my lowest speed would be a dream for the people who are getting much less, and sometimes the really low speeds don't even work for people. If you fluctuate down to 1, that means you are very likely to get zero some of the time and have no connection. 

If you want to get the details of what signals you are receiving, whether you are even on 5G, you can see this at the GUI by typing in the following number in your browser’s address box: 192.168.12.1

I bookmark that page, so I can return to it easily.

Select “Status” in the left column, and click on the dropdown arrow to the right of Primary and Secondary, noting the “Band” you are on for each one. 

If you are getting 5G, you  should see a B band in the Primary and a n band in the Secondary signal, because 5G is a non-standalone signal pair, 4G/5G.

If you are getting 4G alone, then you won't have a signal on the Secondary at all, just blanks. That can account for your speed being in the lower range of 50 to 60. 

Selecting in the left-hand column, "Overview," that will show your signal strength on both Primary and Secondary, assuming you're getting both signals, and the drop down arrows near the signals will show data. But just in the basic view of that, you're looking for a gateway placement that shows the most bars on both Primary and Secondary.

You may wonder, if this is a 5G gateway, how is it possible that some people get only the older, slower 4G LTE. Well, some do, because there is something about their house or location that is quirky, and they're not getting the 5G signal.

A minority may actually get a better 4G signal at their house, and that's their faster speed. That's why looking at the GUI is good to know.

Like a cell phone, the gateway switches to towers and band combinations on those towers dynamically. There is no way to lock on to your fastest speed range, other than trying to encourage it by finding the best placement of your gateway.

Don’t be discouraged if you find you are on the n71 instead of the n41, because chances are good that in the next year or two, your tower may get the faster n41, or maybe something even newer and faster that T mobile comes up with. 5G is just in its infancy and improving rapidly.

They should be coming out with a new firmware (software) update that will be pushed out automatically (installs by itself) to your gateway, and that might help some people's speed and/or connection stability. It was due last month but I suspect may be delayed for several weeks. You can see what version you have in the GUI, with "Overview" selected on the left, and by looking at the number near the gateway "Software" the last four digits which will probably be 0178, but the new version is 1609 or higher. I haven't gotten it yet.