Home Internet - force firmware update?

New customer since 9/1/2021

My Internet Gateway has firmware 1.2101.00.1609  installed.

I'm a bit disappointed with the spotty connectivity, slow DNS, and buffering on 4K Ultra HDR video streaming testing. I opened a complaint ticket with the cellular engineers ( via 844-275-9310 ), and I was informed that my tower is still awaiting a 5G upgrade. That doesn't match with the promotional flyer in the mail. 😟 The guy I talked with on the phone was able to confirm the relative direction of the tower, so I do have it located in the best-facing window of the home. I have to say that the service and attention provided on that call were superb. ( It may have helped that he recognized my experience in wireless and LAN networking ).

I'm not sure how well that little appliance functions as a DNS server, but it is probably an extra useless hop. So, I manually changed my DNS server setting on the laptop to Google's 8.8.8.8, and that helped improve name resolution times quite a bit.