Internet connetion constantly dropping

When I first positioned my Nokia and received the best signal in our upstairs kitchen window I also found a curious behavior where IN the window was not as good as what one would assume to be a lesser placement in relation to the tower. My theory on the behavior was reflection of the signal off the opposing cabinet. It made little sense other than signal bounce. When facing the window the and looking E/NE, the tower is due North. If the router was to the left of the window the bars would go up by one, usually. If the router was placed to the right of the window where line of sight to the tower exists the bars would drop by one. So, I can only theorize that signal bounce may play a part. I am not a cellular expert but I have done a fair amount of research on the matter and I have a background in networking support for 22 years so hopefully this helps out.

• rsrp dBm: -69 ← Is in the excellent range (better value/representation for strength of the signal than RSSI)

• rsrq dB: -5 ← Is also in the excellent range

• rssi dBm: -64 ← Reflects the signal strength received (Good)

• sinr dB: 13 ← Is top of Medium or bottom of Good range 

So, signal to noise ratio is not bad but not stellar. What the RSRP and RSRQ do appear to reflect is that the tower must be fairly close to your location. The signal to noise ratio tells us that there are factors that cause noise for the signal. If the SINR were >=20 dB it would be excellent. Value of 13 not great but not bad.

So, with respect to the signal drops. If you run continuous pings to say quad9s 9.9.9.9 or Google 8.8.8.8 if the "drop" takes place the loss of the responses from the Quad9s and Google DNS servers would be apparent and would tell you the cellular has dropped. With the command to get the values out of the Arcadyan server for the cellular metrics would reflect if both the 4G LTE and 5G NR signals dropped or if only say the 5G NR signal dropped. I found if the 5G signal dropped the transition to 4G LTE was interrupted and was not very dependable. Once T-Mobile finally ironed out the operation of the equipment on the tower then those problems have pretty much gone away.

If you are getting drops that repeat multiple times in a day it is still worth making a call to T-Mobile support to ask if there is work being done on the tower equipment. They tend to do so during normal business hour in the day. If that equipment is being upgraded or worked on or just is having problems if others on the same tower DO call in then it is more likely to get attention and a response. Sure they should have monitoring of the equipment but unless someone sees the alarms, if they are set up, then nothing will be done. 

Regarding the Roku. It is worth looking at other conversations in the T-Moble community for ROKU as it is a Roku thing. T-Mobile does not establish a static external IP address for the router connections. So if the external NAT address of your router changes, for one reason or another, then it causes problems for a Roku. From what I have read that has to be worked out with Roku support. Some users may have resolved the behavior with the use of a VPN. However, if you changed from another ISP to T-Mobile and now are seeing the Roku not work then contact Roku support and ask about this. I believe, from what I have read in threads, that they can refresh the server end for the account "connection" to the IP on your end and get it working again. Of course that could change again so well you would know the drill. Hopefully T-Mobile will establish a practice that either extends the DHCP address duration to infinity. They don't want to have to maintain static IP addressing as more administrative overhead. If you make a long lease time for the IP addresses in the pool then it would have less impact on the end users.

Another good source for answers or clues is on reddit. There is a subreddit just for T-Mobile conversations and there is a great many conversations going on. Some good and some just rag sessions. Go for the conversations with helpful content and just ignore the trash talk. Well, that is my take as that gets you no where and the content with answers is what helps out.

Per Lifewire:

Mesh networks are meant to replace your current router, but you can use them with existing routers if you need to. It's generally recommended you remove your existing router when installing a mesh network. Using a router with a mesh network will disable some of that network's features.

If you can put it into bridge mode to leverage the T-Mobile GW you may miss some of the features you depend upon so research in advance before you go deep. 

Another part of the equation is you would want to disable the wireless radios upon the Arcadyan router so reviewing Nater Tater's YouTube video is a must unless you are software savvy. The Nater Tater video provides the information on how to turn the T-Mobile Arcadyan router's WIFI off to prevent conflicts with signals. It is not hard to do but is MORE effort than with the Nokia gateway due to the lack of control via the management interface GUI. 

If you do go there do your homework and determine if it is for sure the solution you want. If your gateway is connecting to n41 or n71 on 5G that is a good starting point to KNOW. From the description of your speeds so far I would guess you are seeing an n71 signal. If it is a nice stable signal and you have good solid signaling from the tower it would be worth working on it. If you are seeing a weak signal and there are obstructions between you and the tower where the signal source is then you need to evaluate things carefully. You can get the signal information out of the Arcadyan router with the commands that Nater Tater provides in his video. Once you KNOW more about your signal then you can make a better decision about what path you want to take.

kfite13 wrote:

My set up is the Arcadyan KVD21 5G gateway with a Nest Wifi mesh system.  I connected the Nest wifi to the gateway so I would not have to set up every device in my house.  The internet connection on the Nest Wifi will not stay on, it constantly drops and I am getting really frustrated with this.

If your gateway itself is not dropping internet, then your Nest is probably at fault.

Realize that the gateway does not have true pass-through or bridge mode, and that double NAT and DHCP errors can occur.

It's 2022, this should not be an issue at all.  I am extremely disappointed in the lack of settings in the gateway.  

Here is what I would do. Move your tmobile arcadyan centrally to your house and directly connect with tmobile wifi. Disable or turn off, unplug nest wifi. See if that solves your disconnection issues. If you are able to watch paramount without any issues with directly connected to tmobile home internet router/gateway then nest is the issue. If not, then return tmobile device.

Mamu wrote:

Here is what I would do. Move your tmobile arcadyan centrally to your house and directly connect with tmobile wifi. Disable or turn off, unplug nest wifi. See if that solves your disconnection issues. If you are able to watch paramount without any issues with directly connected to tmobile home internet router/gateway then nest is the issue. If not, then return tmobile device.

Again, still should not be an issue.  Defeats the whole purpose of already having my mesh system set up. Not to mention the time it will take to reconnect every single smarthome device and other items I have (probably 40).  Also, that would drasitically reduce the reach of my wifi.  I have a basement, so pretty sure it's not gonna suit my needs when it comes to wifi range doing it this way.

I agree 100% with MAMU that you need to isolate where the source of the drops are. If you see signal loss but the cellular still shows connectivity then it could well be due to a local wireless conflict. If you run the T-Mobile gateway and its wireless for a period of time and see stability without the Nest mesh then you have a good datapoint. If you then add the mesh and have double NAT and do not put the mesh router into bridge mode then expect multi-media delivery to be a possible issue. The problems with double NAT solutions are known and there are plenty of hits to be found on the internet regarding the topic. Cellular internet delivery via a router as such is a little more effort than a hard line connection to the ISP. In some cases it is great or just fine. In others not so much. It all depends upon location and exposure to a solid cellular signaling. In troubleshooting the drops to get community help post more specifics as to activity engagement and be specific about the types of traffic that drop. Post data and specifics and then community users will be able to respond with more helpful responses.

Ok, seems it is not a problem with my Nest Wifi.  I tried turning the wifi off with the instructions from Nater Tater (actually found it before your reply 😁)  and that didn't really fix anything.  Turned the wifi back on and connnected a couple devices to the gateway.  My PC is hardwired to the gateway and I had to try 4 times to load one webpage.  My Roku I connected wirelessly and it took me several attempts to get a baseball game on the MLB.TV app to play, kept saying I newtork error or I had no connetion.  Based on these results, I can almost certianly say it is the gateway itself and not my Nest Wifi.  Getting the signal info and it stays pretty much identical to this even when my devices are saying they is no connection.

"5g": {      "bands": [        "n71"      ],      "bars": 5.0,      "cid": 0,      "gNBID": 0,      "rsrp": -78,      "rsrq": -5,      "rssi": -72,      "sinr": 10

Any thoughts?

"rsrp": -78, ← This is in the excellent range for strength    "rsrq": -5, ← This is also in the excellent range     "rssi": -72, ← Power strength indicator, I dont have a table for this.     "sinr": 10 ← This is in the medium range, still not bad.

The SINR relates to signal to noise ratio so a value say >=20 db is excellent. If your positioning of the router/gateway can improve upon the SINR value greater than 10 db that would be good but this might be hard to do without an external antenna. If there are trees, hills, buildings, trains, power lines, etc.. between you and the tower signal or other towers about the noise may be hard to improve upon. with an external antenna at times, given topology and tower location in relation to external sources the SINR can be improved upon by using the house to shield the unwanted noise to get a cleaner signal from the tower. More money to do that. With an n71 signal a 2X2 MIMO external antenna from say Waveform.com could make a difference. If you have a cleaner signal you will have better performance. Adding an external antenna is possible, see Nater Tater's video on this as well. Expect to be in the ~$350 range for making that happen with a 2X2 MIMO antenna and lightning arrestors and well the cabling required. 

You can take the same measurements from the router after repositioning and see if there are improvements to the signal to noise ratio value. If the RSRP drops a little but the SINR is up a bit you could still see some improvement to performance. The reason is that when there is packet loss then there are retransmissions so things take longer for a session to complete due to the wait for damaged packets to be retransmitted.

Ok, Finally had time to find the spot in the house with the best signal.  I spent an hour walking around with my phone looking for the spot with the best SINR value and wierdly enough, it was not next to a window, it was against a wall in my bedroom.  

5g": {      "bands": [        "n71"      ],      "bars": 5.0,      "cid": 0,      "gNBID": 0,      "rsrp": -69,      "rsrq": -5,      "rssi": -64,      "sinr": 13

So that is what I came up with, it fluctuates a little but seems more stable.  Still get a drop here and there, but it's much better.  Also played around with streaming devices for my TV and found that the Roku just doesn't want to work well, even with the better signal.  My Chromecast with Google TV works the best and I can get Parmaount+ working by connecting my Wireguard VPN oddly enough.